at it was not the spirit that was
changed in such cases, but the body through which the spirit worked,
just as it would be no argument against the existence of a musician if
you tampered with his violin so that only discordant notes could come
through.

I was sufficiently interested to continue to read such literature as
came in my way. I was amazed to find what a number of great men--men
whose names were to the fore in science--thoroughly believed that
spirit was independent of matter and could survive it. When I regarded
Spiritualism as a vulgar delusion of the uneducated, I could afford to
look down upon it; but when it was endorsed by men like Crookes, whom I
knew to be the most rising British chemist, by Wallace, who was the
rival of Darwin, and by Flammarion, the best known of astronomers, I
could not afford to dismiss it. It was all very well to throw down the
books of these men which contained their mature conclusions and careful
investigations, and to say "Well, he has one weak spot in his brain,"
but a man has to be very self-satisfied if the day does not come when
he wonders if the weak spot is not in his own brain. For some time I
was sustained in my scepticism by the consideration that many famous
men, such as Darwin himself, Huxley, Tyndall and Herbert Spencer,
derided this new branch of knowledge; but when I learned that their
derision had reached such a point that they would not even examine it,
and that Spencer had declared in so many words that he had decided
against it on a priori grounds, while Huxley had said that it did not
interest him, I was bound to admit that, however great, they were in
science, their action in this respect was most unscientific and
dogmatic, while the action of those who studied the phenomena and tried
to find out the laws that governed them, was following the true path
which has given us all human advance and knowledge. So far I had got
in my reasoning, so my sceptical position was not so solid as before.

It was somewhat reinforced, however, by my own experiences. It is to
be remembered that I was working without a medium, which is like an
astronomer working without a telescope. I have no psychical powers
myself, and those who worked with me had little more. Among us we could
just muster enough of the magnetic force, or whatever you will call it,
to get the table movements with their suspicious and often stupid
messages. I still have notes of those sittings and copi