d, of
course, photographic plates are at once rendered useless by an instant's
exposure to the sun. Again, it is known that sunlight has a more or less
destructive influence upon all forms of animal and vegetable protoplasm,
and it is very soon fatal to many of the lower forms of life. This being
so, it has always appeared to me perfectly reasonable to suppose that
the energy of the light-rays should interfere most seriously with the
delicate and subtle forces and forms of energy which are liberated in
the seance room. The old objection: "Why must these things always be
done in the dark?" has appeared to me very short-sighted and
inconsistent with all the facts above mentioned.

But, further! It is highly probable that life of any kind can only
originate in the dark. Certainly, conception invariably takes place in
complete darkness, and the whole period of embryonic development is
passed in that condition. Again, inter-stellar space is, of course,
absolutely black and devoid of any form of light save the faint
twinklings of the far-off stars. Without the surface of some globe to
reflect the sun's rays, no light of any kind would be possible; so that
if life were conveyed across space, from star to star, upon
infinitesimal specks of dust, under the influence of light pressure, as
postulated by Arrhenius (_Worlds in the Making_, pp. 212-30), this life
must exist, and in a sense originate, in the blackness of inter-stellar
space.[10] And, finally, if life on our globe originated, as many think,
in the ocean's depths,[11] this must have been in the densest darkness,
since light penetrates but a few fathoms below the surface of the ocean.
Below that all is blackness, complete and eternal. No light penetrates
to that depth--nor has it for millions of years! Yet it is in this
region that life is thought to have originated! As G. W. Warder
expressed it (_The Universe a Vast Electric Organism_, pp. 60-1):

"During this period of primeval 'darkness upon the face of the
waters' the resistless electric waves of the sun were beating upon
the cloud-enwrapped surface of the planet. It was the formative
period of elementary life, and the descendants and successors of
that mighty host of living beings have to this day to lay the
foundations of their being in similar conditions of darkness.
_Creative energy in its first stages of living form operates in
dense darkness_, and the first life upon the