ot. They are from notes of Piper
sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor Newbold.

To my taste the matter savors _very_ little of the reputed author. And yet
assuming for the moment that our great authors survive in a fuller life,
presumably they would have to communicate under very embarrassing
conditions: for not only would they have to cramp themselves to produce
work comprehensible here, but the System of Things would have to limit
them, lest their competition should upset the whole system of our literary
development, or rather would have involved a different one from the
beginning.

My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me to scout
it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what that great soul
would have sent from a better world if she had been permitted to
communicate anything more profound than we have been left to find out for
ourselves, or even if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her
manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came
through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come _from_ her, wherever it came
from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within
our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as
distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor
telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material
would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a
reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest
the weakest possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I
have no space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might
be expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from George
Eliot.

And now, since writing the last paragraph and going through the material
half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or perhaps worked myself
up to the conclusion, that if a judicious blue pencil were to take from it
what could be attributed to imperfect means of communication, and what
could be considered as having slopped over from the medium, there would be
a pretty substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without
straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the
heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and the rest of
us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective tastes. But what
would have to be taken out is often ludicr