his deed a temple was
erected at Delhi to Apollo, and the priestess was called the Pythia.
Regarded as the symbol of wisdom by the Egyptians, the serpent came to
be considered by the Greeks as representing the principle of evil.[8]
Ages before this, however, the history of our first parents, the
temptation, and the fall, and the prophecy that the Son should bruise
the serpent's head, had been recorded. The wonderful Chaldeans too had
mapped out the same story among the eternal stars, their great designs
being still traceable on the celestial globes of our common schools.

But the intellectual Greek was not long to be imposed upon. Men who
could discourse on the immortality of the soul had not much faith in the
nonsense often put forth by a priestess of Apollo. Themistocles made a
tool of the oracle in order to serve his own purposes, and Demosthenes
publicly denounced it. Convinced that the oracle was subsidized by
Philip of Macedon, and instructed to speak in his favor, he boldly
declared that the Pythia _philippized_, and bade the Athenians and
Thebans remember that "Pericles and Epaminondas, instead of listening to
the frivolous answers of the oracle, the resort of the ignorant and
cowardly, consulted only reason in the choice of their measures."

Had there been a London magistrate at hand in the days of the great
Athenian orator, it would certainly have gone hard with the poor Pythia.

No observer of human nature can doubt that we are bound by an "electric
chain," and that we are liable to impressions, the sources of which are
often unknown to us. Nor can we doubt that there have been abnormally
sensitive persons, like Swedenborg, whose receptivity was such that the
brain could be impressed by means which would entirely fail with the
normal brain. But in respect to the professional mediums,
notwithstanding the antiquity of the class and their many advocates, it
remains to be shown where they have been of the slightest practical
utility, or served any good or useful end. Nay more. It remains to be
shown wherein the modern medium is entitled to a particle more of
respect than the medium of Endor.

S. B. LUCE.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] This answer is the more remarkable from the fact that my mind was
intent upon the revelation of some new theory, while the other operator
was not at all familiar with the subject. The simplicity of the answer,
and its statement of what had been the common practice fo