than almost any other scientific phenomena. He has reproduced the career of Horkey with remarkable fidelity. No sincere inquirer has ever failed, if he made proper efforts, to obtain evidence of an active intelligence which is not material. In my first interview with a medium, over twenty-five years ago, loud sounds—not raps, but sounds like the creaking of a wooden mill—were freely produced at request in a small uncovered table in our parlor, when no person was in contact with it or within three feet of it. On making careful examinations, the sounds appeared to be developed in the loose marble slab which constituted its top, and, by feeling the slab on both sides, I could locate the sound and vibration with great accuracy in its centre. When no one was touching the table, it was held down by the spirit-power, when requested, with a force which I estimated at twenty pounds in lifting it.
But it is entirely useless to mention any such facts to bigots of the Carpenter class, or to sustain them by any amount of testimony; for to them all testimony is worthless concerning anything outside of the limit which Dr. Carpenter has marked off with a grand Cardinal Richelieu flourish, as the impassable limit where inquiry must halt and vituperation begin.
Great is the power of the speculative scientific dogmatism which enabled Dr. Carpenter to show in his "Physiology" that one hundred pounds of starch would support the life of a savage as long as four hundred pounds of venison or other game (Chapter VII. Of Food and the Digestive Process), although it would be as difficult to convince the unscientific savage that such an opinion is preferable to experience as to convince Crookes, Wallace, Flammarion, Hare, or even Victor Hugo, that Dr. Carpenter's opinions are preferable to their own careful observations.
Worthless as this book seems as an argument, and amusing as it is to those at whom it is aimed, it has some power for mischief the 'power of a demoralizing example—the power of position and reputation in giving a quasi-respectability to that which is philosophically silly and ethically corrupt. The most demoralizing influence which proceeds from a thoroughly depraved society is the doctrine that all men are knaves or fools, to which Dr. Carpenter has given his active cooperation—saving only a few self-styled "experts" from this satanic maxim. His unfair example is corrupting to scientific literature. The vast amount of mesmeric facts, which could scarcely be summarized and classified in the limits of his book, has been carefully ignored, and his readers would not suspect their existence, if dependent on him for information. Yet, as he is such a stickler for the scientific qualifications of witnesses, why could he not even allude to the testimony of Prof. Agassiz, who ranks before the world at least as high as himself? Prof. Agassiz was thoroughly mesmerized by the Rev. C. H. Townshend, and his letter describing his sensations and condition during the
