ing spirit who superintends the proceedings, or relegated to the charge of some sterner attendant who will hold him in check should he be unrepentant.
To the scientist who is unfamiliar with psychic work such a bald statement sounds wild, and I do not myself claim that Dr. Wickland has finally made out his case, but I do say that our experiences at rescue circles bear out the general idea, and that he has admittedly cured many cases which others have found intractable. Occasionally there is very cogent confirmation. Thus in the case of one female spirit who bitterly bewailed that she had not taken enough carbolic acid the week before, the name and address being correctly given (op. cit. p. 39).
It is not apparently everyone who is open to this invasion, but only those who are in some peculiar way psychic sensitives. The discovery, when fully made out, will be one of the root facts of the psychology and jurisprudence of the future.
NOTE ON CHAPTER XII
The experience of the young Frenchman and the letters or messages quoted are extracts from a long series in the curious little book called “Le Livre Pratique des Esprits.” It has been introduced because I have endeavoured, in drawing a sketch of Spiritualism as I have known it, to introduce the less pleasing shadows which intrude occasionally into the light. Such practices, I need not say, would be condemned by any ordinary Spiritualist, but it cannot be denied that their possibility is disquieting and opens up unpleasant lines of speculation. They are, however, so exceptional that it may well be doubted whether the Frenchman was not self-deceived even if he was not drawing upon his imagination.
NOTE ON CHAPTER XIII
DR. MAUPIUS’ EXPERIMENT
The Dr. Maupuis of the narrative is, as every student of psychic research will realise, the late Dr. Geley, whose splendid work on this subject will ensure his permanent fame. His was a brain of the first order, coupled with a moral courage which enabled him to face with equanimity the cynicism and levity of his critics. With rare judgment he never went further than the facts carried him, and yet never flinched from the furthest point which his reason and the evidence would justify. By the munificence of Mr. Jean Meyer he had been placed at the head of the Institut Metapsychique, admirably equipped for scientific work, and he got the full value out of that equipment. When a British Jean Meyer makes his appearance he will get no return for his money if he does not choose a progressive brain to drive his machine. The great endowment left to the Stanford University of California has been practically wasted, because those in charge of it were not Geleys or Richets.
The account of Pithecanthropus is taken from the “Bulletin de
