few official men of science,
whose names the public has heard,--and it is astonishing how famous
among his peers a scientific character may be, while the public has
never heard of him--can very easily answer their accusers: 'What,'
they may cry, 'are we to investigate? It is absurd to ask us to
leave our special studies, and sit for many hours, through many
years, probably in the dark, with an epileptic person, and a few
hysterical believers. We are not conjurers or judges of conjuring.'
Again, is a man like Professor Huxley, or Lord Kelvin, to run about
the country, examining every cottage where there are rumours of
curious noises, and where stones and other missiles are thrown
about, by undetected hands? That is the business of the police, and
if the police are baffled, as in a Cock Lane affair at Port Glasgow,
in 1864, and in Paris, in 1846, we cannot expect men of science to
act as amateur detectives. {11} Again, it is hardly to be expected
that our chosen modern leaders of opinion will give themselves up to
cross-examining ladies and gentlemen who tell ghost stories.
Barristers and solicitors would be more useful for that purpose.
Thus hardly anything is left which physical science can investigate,
except the conduct and utterances of the hysterical, the epileptic,
the hypnotised and other subjects who are occasionally said to
display an abnormal extension of the perceptive faculties, for
example, by way of clairvoyance. To the unscientific intelligence
it seems conceivable that if Home, for example, could have been kept
in some such establishment as the Salpetriere for a year, and could
have been scrutinised and made the subject of experiment, like the
other hysterical patients, his pretensions might have been decided
on once for all. But he merely performed a few speciosa miracula
under tests established by one or two English men of science, and
believers and disbelievers are still left to wrangle over him: they
usually introduce a question of moral character. Now a few men of
science in England like Dr. Gregory about 1851, and like Dr.
Carpenter, and a larger number on the continent, have examined and
are examining these peculiarities. Their reports are often
sufficiently astonishing to the lay mind.

No doubt when, if ever, a very large and imposing body of these
reports is presented by a cloud of scientific witnesses of esteemed
reputation, then official science will give more time and study to
th