which were answered convincingly. While that was taking place, my father's hand was stroking and fondling the palm of mine from under the table cloth. At this time we could hear voices, and my name was distinctly uttered. The alphabet was asked for, and it was written. "There never was a happier spirit." Then birds were heard moving and chirping in the room. The paper that struck my hands then rose in the air, floated towards the door, and slowly crossed the room. The lady asked that it should be given to her, when it went and slowly fell in her lap. After this manifestation beautiful lights were again seen in the room, when the influence came to a close.

On Saturday evening a few gentlemen, all well known in Clifton, met to see Mr. Home, some of them eminent in science— one an M.D., one a minister of the gospel, one a teacher of classics in a public school, another a cultured private gentleman, with a lady and myself. Manifestations occurred, not the same as above, but equally strange. On this occasion, however, Mr. Home was entranced. I will not take up space to describe the transfiguration that then took place, nor the, to me and others, positive proof given that we were in the presence of intelligent beings that were once in bodies like our own. I will only say that while in this state his body was raised three times from the floor, and floated in the room, and while doing so the lady went and took his shoes off his feet, these being the height of her shoulder. He then was lowered gently to the floor. While in this state birds were again heard chirping and moving about the room. In this description I have omitted, for want of room, much that would have been far more interesting to the Spiritualist, and confined myself chiefly to those manifestations best adapted to impress doubting minds.

In conclusion, let me state, once for all, that the theory of deception has here no foothold whatever; in each case there were three senses at work, and the phenomena were not quietly accepted, but in each case carefully examined and tested. During the past year the question of Spiritualism has been so thoroughly sifted, that the last desperate effort of scientific men who still doubt, not the phenomena, but their spiritual origin, is to account for them by supposing the existence of hitherto unknown forces, emanating from the human body, or else that they are subjective and not objective. But one after another is finding these positions completely untenable. And it will be well when the ministers of that truth whose mission it is to lead men through physical into spiritual truth, take this movement by the hand, and direct it for good. JOHN BEATTIE.

Westbourne Place, Clifton, April 19, 1872.

THE

Spiritual Magazine.

AUGUST, 1872.

SPIRITUALISM VERSUS PSYCHIC FORCE.

A BRIEF REVIEW OF SPIRITUALISM ANSWERED BY SCIENCE: WITH THE PROOFS OF A PSYCHIC FORCE. BY EDWARD W. COX, S.L., F.R.G.S."

By THOMAS BREVIOR.

THE words "by Science" might with propriety have been omitted from the title page of this work. Mr. Serjeant Cox is not Science, and Science is not Mr. Serjeant Cox. The learned gentleman has creditably devoted some of his leisure hours to the cultivation of Science, and has evidently profited by so doing, but he is not therefore Science personified, nor even her accredited representative. Yet this, or something like it, seems to be assumed not only in the title page, but throughout the essay. Science and Mr. Serjeant Cox are identical. His opinions are always styled "scientific," and those who hold similar opinions are "scientific investigators;" their view is the "scientific" view as contrasted with that of the Spiritualists, who are regarded as given over to "superstition "heathens who know not science, and need instruction from its visible representative, Edward W. Cox, S.L., F.R.G.S.

Now, if Science is knowledge, we venture to affirm that there are thousands of Spiritualists, who, as regards Spiritualism at least, are more scientific," that is, who possess more full and accurate knowledge of the subject than their learned censor; who have given to it as many years of careful investigation and thought as he has given months; who could tell him many things about it which he evidently does not know; and some of whom might possibly even give him a few lessons in the physical sciences to which, as we are glad to learn from him, some of his leisure hours have been given.

N.S.-VII.

X

But as the title page of his work tells us, besides answering Spiritualism, Mr. Cox gives us "the proofs of a Psychic Force;" and this is indeed the main subject of his essay; only eleven out of his hundred and thirteen pages being directly devoted to the former object, though in many places it is incidentally referred to. Indeed, in any adequate sense of the term, not only is Spiritualism not answered in this essay, but it is not even considered. It deals only with two rudimentary phases of the physical phenomena of Spiritualism—the movement of objects and the production of sounds by invisible agency. Indeed the very limited scope of his inquiry is explicitly avowed by the author in the following passage:-" My object in this inquiry being purely scientific, I have purposely limited it to phenomena that are capable of demonstrative proof; that may be examined by the evidence of the senses; tested by the application of weights and measures; exhibited by mechanism that has no self-delusions; which are in no manner dependent upon merely mental impressions, always more or less subject to error. He excuses himself from considering the "higher phenomena" of Spiritualism. "I have only witnessed them, I have not subjected them to test or experiment. "They require protracted and laborious examination before it would be possible to form a judgment of them." "They are incapable of the demonstrative proof which science demands." "Moreover in a new field of scientific research it is necessary to proceed with care and circumspection," &c. However all this may be, it is clear that under these circumstances the examination of the learned Serjeant cannot at this stage of the enquiry be regarded as other than partial and defective. The verdict he pronounces against Spiritualism of "Not Proven" can be of little value in face of the admission that the major part of the evidence has designedly been kept out of court. It is easy to draw the inference you want from premisses expressly selected and prearranged for the purpose. In reproducing from the Quarterly Journal of Science, the series of experiments by Mr. Crookes, attested by himself and Dr. Huggins, he even suppresses the performing of a well-played tune by "Psychic Force" on a caged accordion, apparently lest it should suggest a conclusion not in his programme. This is not "Spiritualism answered;" it is only Spiritualism evaded.

Serjeant Cox's contention is twofold. First that the Force demonstrated by Mr. Crookes and other scientific experimenters, and to which he has given the name Psychic, is "a force emanating from or in some manner directly dependent on the human organization;" though from what part of the human structure-whether from brain, nerves, or ganglia, he considers

to be not yet ascertained; but he thinks it probable' that it 66 proceeds from, or is intimately associated with the nerve organization." To those persons who possess this unascertained peculiarity of constitution he gives the name "Psychics." Secondly, "We contend" he says, "that the intelligence that directs the Psychic Force, is the intelligence of the Psychic, and no other." The first position which assigns the source of the Psychic Force to the human organization, is placed by Serjeant Cox in contradistinction to the assertion of the Spiritualists, that "it is the operation of spirits of the dead," as though proof of the one proposition involved disproof of the other. But this is by no means evident. Spiritualists have all along recognized, and spirits have from the first affirmed, that an element or aura emanating from the human organization, especially of persons peculiarly constituted, is required for their physical manifestations, and that it is this peculiarity which qualifies them to become mediums for spirit-communication. Whether these emanations alone and in themselves constitute a force adequate to all the manifestations, or even to those which Serjeant Cox describes, is another question. Speaking of the experiments of the Investigating Committee of the Dialectical Society, of which he was a member, he says:

"The tables were in all cases heavy dining-tables, requiring strong efforts to move them; the smallest of them was five feet nine inches long, by four feet wide; and the largest, nine feet three inches long, and four and a half feet wide, and of proportionate weight." The free movement of these large and heavy tables without contact, and in different directions at request, and in intelligent response to questions, as reported by Serjeant Cox and the Committee of the Dialectical Society, is explained by ascribing them wholly to these bodily emanations, which Serjeant Cox expressly calls a "blind force," and which, he tells us, "appears in its operation, to be more in the nature of an influence than a motion of particles projected from the Psychic, and impinging on solid bodies, and by the impact causing motions and sounds in the bodies struck." In the next sentence he tells us, "The subject is extremely obscure." In his view of the case I should think it must be; and if it is so to himself, what must it be to his readers? I leave them to choose between his explanation and that given by the communications themselves-that the force is employed and controlled by disembodied spirits in the exercise of their own intelligence and free volition. That the force employed often transcends that of the Psychic (as in the experiments above alluded to) seems to receive further confirmation from Serjeant Cox, who tells us→→

"Psychic Force is often developed to an extraordinary extent

in children too young to be capable of contriving or conducting an elaborate fraud, and too weak to possess the requisite muscular power to move a heavy table. With all Psychics the phenomena simply occur in their presence, without effort of their own will to promote or check them-and, as all agree, without the slightest consciousness of any attendant sensation, bodily or mental.' ” แA child is usually a more powerful Psychic than a man."

But the difficulties of this or of any "blind force" theory are enormously increased as soon as we touch the question, What is "the intelligence that directs the Psychic Force?" Serjeant Cox, as we have seen, shirks the “higher phenomena,' in which an intelligence and will, ab extra, are most fully shown; but even in the lower phenomena to which he limits his enquiry, he is evidently embarrassed by his riches, and finds more intelligence before him than he knows what to do with. He says, There is a Force visibly, audibly, and palpably at work, and it is undoubtedly directed by intelligence;" but this intelligence, he contends, "is no other than that of the Psychic." The evidentials he adduces in support of this are two-fold. First, it is dependent on material conditions, and is specially affected by the mental, and bodily states of the circle and particularly of the Psychic. "The Force is materially affected by the conditions attendant on the formation of the circle." Whatever tends to bring all the brains present into harmonious action, obviously promotes the flow of the Force. On the contrary, whatever directs the various brains of the circle into diverse action, operates invariably to weaken and often to extinguish the Force during the continuance of such diversity of mental

action.

"The condition of the Psychic is found largely to affect the exhibition of the Force. Its presence and power are dependent upon the state of mind and of body in the Psychic, and vary from time to time with that state. Often a headache will destroy it; a cup of tea, that revives the nerve energy, revives also the Psychic Force. The state of the atmosphere visibly influences it. Accordingly as it is wet or dry, cold or hot, so is the power lesser or greater. . The opening of a door will sometimes produce an immediate flow of it; the change of two or three degrees of temperature will raise or depress it. In fact, whatever affects the Psychic personally, and to a less extent the persons with him, affects the power of the Force."

This is just the old argument of the materialists, whose conclusion from it Serjeant Cox so strenuously and inconsistently disputes, namely, that because mind invariably manifests itself to our perception through physical agencies, and is affected by ysical conditions, therefore it is itself physical. It is especially