ng at our good
deeds--in a word, acting the parts of guardian angels. And there are
many, even in our day, who hold such a faith. Yet it is a belief founded
in imagination and poetic ideas of beauty, rather than in sober truth
either of reason or of revelation. The strongest argument I have ever
heard against this belief is contained in the remark of a poor old
English peasant. 'Sir,' said he, 'I doan't believe the speerits can come
back to us; for if they go to the good place, they doan't want to come
back 'ere again; and if they goes to the bad place, why God woan't let
'em.' There was more philosophy in the remark than he knew of, and I
have not yet found the philosopher who did not stagger under it.

But there is another view of the subject. I hold that the bodily senses
can only perceive material things; and the spirit spiritual things; and
hence, that, admitting the actual presence of disembodied spirits,
neither could we perceive them, nor they us, as material bodies. They
might, indeed, perceive the souls within us, but could only be cognizant
of our actions as those of pure spirit; while we, blinded by the
impenetrable screen of the body, would be debarred of even this
recognition.

For through only three of the bodily senses--sight, hearing, and
feeling--have the boldest of so-called spiritualists dared to attempt
the proof of their doctrine. To begin with the latter, the essential
quality of the sense of feeling is _resistance_, without which there can
be no perception. And what is resistance? In one class of cases it is
simply the _vis inertiae_ of matter: in the other and only remaining one,
the opposition of some material matter to the force of gravity. Even the
perception of the lightest zephyr depends upon the resistance of the
atmosphere. Does spirit possess this quality of resistance? The argument
on this head is closed the moment the distinction is made between
material things and spiritual.

If the wave theory of light and sound be correct--and it is so generally
accepted that few writers dare risk their reputations in the defence of
any other--the senses of sight and hearing come, for the purposes of
this argument, in the same category. Nothing can affect the ear which is
not capable of producing vibration in the atmosphere, which may be
considered, in comparison with pure spirit, a material substance. Here
again the argument is clinched by the mere distinction between matter
and spirit, the one