flect the majority of those great
bodies, the luminaries of science, from their accustomed paths through
the heavens. _Tides_, indeed, we do create; there is a refluent
washing to and fro of magazine articles about our topic; but we have
not yet generated that wholesale perturbation of the scientific system
which our facts, if facts they be, must in time inevitably effect.

"Some of the best workers in the Society," says Mr. Wallace again,
"still urge that the evidence is very deficient, both in amount and in
quality, and that much more must be obtained before it can be treated
as really conclusive. This view, however," he adds, "appears to me to
be an altogether erroneous one." On the contrary, I venture to say,
this assertion of the need of more work, and consequently of more
workers, is of absolutely primary, absolutely urgent importance. What
would have become of the evolution theory itself (if I may use an
_argumentum ad hominem_ of no disrespectful kind), what would have
become of that theory itself, though urged at first by _savants_ of
such surpassing merit, had no one been able to repeat and confirm
their observations? And we who are dealing, not with plants and
animals which can be held fast and observed, but, for the most part at
any rate, with phantasmal sights, subjective impressions,--surely we
must feel a tenfold need of the multiplication of centres of
experiment and observation, of the formation of fresh bodies of record
in every country, and in each year that passes by. No single small
group can ever gain leverage enough to divert the world's prevalent
modes of thought, unless it is gradually reinforced by fellow-workers
enough to make the possible mistakes or possible death of a few
persons quite unimportant to the general result.

It has been suggested by Mr. Wallace and by other critics that we have
been too exclusively preoccupied with the idea of _telepathy_, that we
have tried to force into that category phenomena which need a
different or a further explanation. Considering the complexity of
these phenomena there may well be some truth in this criticism, yet we
should surely be unwise if we relaxed our insistence on the importance
of _telepathy_, or the transference of thought or feeling from mind to
mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense as the very
root and basis both of experiment and of theory as concerning an
unseen world. No one, of course, can suppose that the infinitel