a mode of motion.
Him Dr. Carpenter gracefully discredited as an 'amateur,' without 'a
broad basis of _general_ scientific culture'. He had devoted
himself 'to a branch of research which tasks the keenest powers of
_observation_'. Now it was precisely powers of _observation_ that
were required. 'There are _moral_ sources of error,' of which a
mere observer like Dr. Huggins would be unaware. And 'one of the
most potent of these is a proclivity to believe in the reality of
spiritual communications,' particularly dangerous in a case where
'spiritual communications,' were not in question! The question was,
did an indicator move, or not, under a certain amount of pressure?
Indiscreetly enough, to be sure, the pressure was attributed to
'psychic force,' and perhaps that was what Dr. Carpenter had in his
mind, when he warned Dr. Huggins against 'the proclivity to believe
in the reality of spiritual communications'.

About a wilderness of other phenomena, attested by scores of sane
people, from Lord Crawford to Mr. S. C. Hall, Dr. Carpenter 'left
himself no time to speak' (p. 105). This was convenient, but the
lack of time prevented Dr. Carpenter from removing our stumbling-
block, the one obstacle which keeps us from adopting, with no shadow
of doubt, the theory that explains all the marvels by the survival
and revival of savage delusions. Dr. Carpenter's hypothesis of
expectancy, of a dominant idea, acting on believers, in an ambiguous
state, and in the dark, can do much, but it cannot account for the
experience of wide-awake sceptics, under the opposite dominant idea,
in a brilliant light.

Dr. Carpenter exposed and exploded a quantity of mesmeric
spiritualistic myths narrated by Dr. Gregory, by Miss Martineau, and
by less respectable if equally gullible authorities. But, speaking
merely as perplexed and unconvinced students of argument and
evidence, we cannot say that he removed the difficulties which have
been illustrated and described.

Table-turning, after what is called a 'boom' in 1853-60, is now an
abandoned amusement. It is deserted, like croquet, and it is even
less to be regretted. But its existence enabled disputants to
illustrate the ordinary processes of reasoning; each making
assertions up to the limit of his personal experience; each
attacking, as 'superstitious,' all who had seen, or fancied they had
seen, more than himself, and each fighting gallantly for his own
explanatory hypothesis, which