gnition of the rights of conscience, and individual and intellectual
freedom.

The stability so apparent in Romanism relies solely on Ignorance,
Superstition, and Fear, enforced by the dogma of "_Infallibility_," and
reinforced by the power of "Excommunication" and the penalty of
"Anathema."

The unity and stability of the Roman Church, thus secured by force, will
presently be found to be apparent only. It could only work and hold in the
dark ages. Internal division and dissension, now known to exist, await
only some fresh act of oppression, or some new abomination, or abuse of
political power, to disrupt its solidarity.

In the meantime physical science has steadily advanced, opening new
avenues of wealth, industry, and opportunity, and so developing the
resources of this Western world.

But more important and far-reaching still have been the discoveries
regarding the finer forces of nature.

The wonderful development and application of discoveries in Electricity
have not only opened a new world previously unknown and unsuspected, but
have seemed to endow these subtle forces almost with an intelligence of
their own. Crass materialism is dead and space practically annihilated.

If a single wire or a vibrating disc cannot originate intelligent speech,
it can retain, repeat, and transmit the qualities, tones and inflections
of the human voice in a way that seems miraculous and uncanny. It is thus
that our concepts of nature have been enlarged, refined, and actually
spiritualized. "Brutal" and "dead" matter are no longer in evidence nor
even mentioned.

With the advent of modern spiritualism came another group of phenomena.
Making the largest allowance for fraud, self-deception, and all the
vagaries of the imagination, no intelligent individual, familiar with the
phenomena, will attempt to deny the extension of man's psychic world of
consciousness and the manifestation of intelligence in ways and under
conditions previously unknown. The identification of these intelligences,
always difficult, and generally problematical, need not here be discussed
at all. The facts and the phenomena are all that we are here concerned
with.

The most important consideration regarding all these phenomena is that
they do not _develop_, but on the contrary _dominate_ the individual. They
are, in fact, altogether subjective. The medium may put himself in the
negative or passive condition to be controlled, but he cannot _command_
nor _