pression that just at this
moment a faint but distinct step forward is being taken by competent
opinion in these matters. "Physical phenomena" (movements of matter
without contact, lights, hands and faces "materialized," etc.) have
been one of the most baffling regions of the general field (or perhaps
one of the least baffling _prima facie_, so certain and great has been
the part played by fraud in their production); yet even here the
balance of testimony seems slowly to be inclining towards admitting the
supernaturalist view. Eusapia Paladino, the Neapolitan medium, has
been under observation for twenty years or more. Schiaparelli, the
astronomer, and Lombroso were the first scientific men to be converted
by her performances. Since then innumerable men of scientific standing
have seen her, including many "psychic" experts. Every one agrees that
she cheats in the most barefaced manner whenever she gets an
opportunity. The Cambridge experts, with the Sidgwicks and Richard
Hodgson at their head, rejected her _in toto_ on that account. Yet her
credit has steadily risen, and now her last converts are the eminent
psychiatrist, Morselli, the eminent physiologist, Botazzi, and our own
psychical researcher, Carrington, whose book on "The Physical Phenomena
of Spiritualism" (_against_ them rather!) makes his conquest
strategically important. If Mr. Podmore, hitherto the prosecuting
attorney of the S. P. R., so far as physical phenomena are concerned
becomes converted also, we may indeed sit up and look around us.
Getting a good health bill from "Science," Eusapia will then throw
retrospective credit on Home and Stainton Moses, Florence Cook (Prof.
Crookes' medium), and all similar wonder-workers. The balance of
_presumptions_ will be changed in favor of genuineness being possible
at least in all reports of this particularly crass and low type of
supernatural phenomena.

Not long after Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared I was studying
with that excellent anatomist and man, Jeffries Wyman, at Harvard. He
was a convert, yet so far a half-hesitating one, to Darwin's views; but
I heard him make a remark that applies well to the subject I now write
about. When, he said, a theory gets propounded over and over again,
coming up afresh after each time orthodox criticism has buried it, and
each time seeming solider and harder to abolish, you may be sure that
there is truth in it. Oken and Lamarck and Chambers had been
tri