l,
sometimes comic; but they are universally diffused, and as well
established as universally coincident testimony can establish
anything. Now, if there be but one spark of real fire to all this
smoke, then the purely materialistic theories of life and of the
world must be reconsidered. They seem very well established, but so
have many other theories seemed, that are long gone the way of all
things human.

Footnotes:

{0a} Fortnightly Review, February 1866, and in a lecture, 1895.

{0b} This diary was edited for private circulation, by a son of Mr.
Proctor's, who remembers the disturbances.

{0c} See essays here on Classical and Savage Spiritualism.

{0d} This was merely a cheerful obiter dictum by the learned
President.

{4} Not the house agent.

{9} Porphyry, Epistola xxi. Iamblichus, De Myst., iii. 2.

{11} The Port Glasgow story is in Report of the Dialectical
Society, p. 200. The flooring was torn up; walls, ceilings,
cellars, were examined by the police, and attempts were made to
imitate the noises, without success. In this case, as at Rerrick in
the end of the seventeenth century, and elsewhere, 'the appearance
of a hand moving up and down' was seen by the family, 'but we could
not catch it: it quietly vanished, and we only felt cold air'. The
house was occupied by a gardener, Hugh McCardle. Names of
witnesses, a sergeant of police, and others, are appended.

{12} Report of Dialectical Society, p. 86.

{17a} For ourselves, we have never seen or heard a table give any
responses whatever, any more than we have seen the ghosts, heard the
raps, or viewed the flights of men in the air which we chronicle in
a later portion of this work.

{17b} Report on Spiritualism, Longmans, London, 1871.

{18} Report, p. 229.

{21} Mr. Wallace may be credited with scoring a point in argument.
Dr. Edmunds had maintained that no amount of evidence would make him
believe in certain obvious absurdities, say the lions in Trafalgar
Square drinking out of the fountains. Mr. Wallace replied: 'The
asserted fact is either possible or not possible. If possible, such
evidence as we have been considering would prove it; if not
possible, such evidence could not exist.' No such evidence exists
for the lions; for the phenomena of so-called spiritualism, we have
consentient testimony in every land, period and stage of culture.
That certainly makes a difference, whatever the weight and value of
the