ch of our circle. Then or
afterwards I read a book by Monsieur Jacolliot upon occult phenomena in
India. Jacolliot was Chief Judge of the French Colony of Crandenagur,
with a very judicial mind, but rather biassed{sic} against
spiritualism. He conducted a series of experiments with native fakirs,
who gave him their confidence because he was a sympathetic man and
spoke their language. He describes the pains he took to eliminate
fraud. To cut a long story short he found among them every phenomenon
of advanced European mediumship, everything which Home, for example,
had ever done. He got levitation of the body, the handling of fire,
movement of articles at a distance, rapid growth of plants, raising of
tables. Their explanation of these phenomena was that they were done
by the Pitris or spirits, and their only difference in procedure from
ours seemed to be that they made more use of direct evocation. They
claimed that these powers were handed down from time immemorial and
traced back to the Chaldees. All this impressed me very much, as here,
independently, we had exactly the same results, without any question of
American frauds, or modern vulgarity, which were so often raised
against similar phenomena in Europe.

My mind was also influenced about this time by the report of the
Dialectical Society, although this Report had been presented as far
back as 1869. It is a very cogent paper, and though it was received
with a chorus of ridicule by the ignorant and materialistic papers of
those days, it was a document of great value. The Society was formed
by a number of people of good standing and open mind to enquire into
the physical phenomena of Spiritualism. A full account of their
experiences and of their elaborate precautions against fraud are given.
After reading the evidence, one fails to see how they could have come
to any other conclusion than the one attained, namely, that the
phenomena were undoubtedly genuine, and that they pointed to laws and
forces which had not been explored by Science. It is a most singular
fact that if the verdict had been against spiritualism, it would
certainly have been hailed as the death blow of the movement, whereas
being an endorsement of the phenomena it met with nothing by ridicule.
This has been the fate of a number of inquiries since those conducted
locally at Hydesville in 1848, or that which followed when Professor
Hare of Philadelphia, like Saint Paul, started forth to op