o satisfy their material passions at least, if I may so say,
vicariously; they urge on incarnate men, all unaware, to abandon
themselves to these vices and passions. They incite the gambler to play,
the drunkard to drink; in a word, they push, as far as in them lies,
every vicious man to the bottom of the abyss created by his own vice;
crime and debauchery intoxicate them and fill them with joy. Further
developed and noble souls, in spite of all their efforts, are unable to
conjure away the influence of the undeveloped and evil souls. In a word,
we have here the old fable of demons and angels arranged to suit the
doctrines of modern spiritualism. It is indeed the old fable with a
difference; demons desire the perdition of man from jealousy, because
being themselves eternally condemned they wish to drag down with them as
many souls as possible; the evil souls of Stainton Moses desire the
perdition of man to gratify their own bad inclinations. Demons are
spirits, wicked indeed, but yet spirits, whereas the evil souls of
Stainton Moses are only miserable ghosts driven mad by love of matter.
Certainly everything is possible, as Professor Flournoy says, but this
theory is somewhat astonishing, for it seems to make the inhabitants of
the next world gravitate round our miserable earth, and is like the old
astronomical theory that placed our little globe in the centre of the
universe. If there be another world, it is hard to believe that its
inhabitants spend the greater part of their time in attending to us,
some of them to harm us and the rest to do us good.

Professor William Romaine Newbold, in a sitting which took place on June
19, 1895, asked George Pelham what we ought to think of this theory of
Stainton Moses.[67]

Professor Newbold.--"Does the soul carry with it into its new life all
its passions and animal appetites?"

George Pelham.--"Oh, no, indeed, not at all. Why, my good friend and
scholar, you would have this world of ours a decidedly material one if
it were so."

Professor Newbold.--"The writings of Stainton Moses claimed that the
soul carried with it all its passions and appetites, and was very slowly
purified of them."

George Pelham.--"It is all untrue."

Professor Newbold.--"And that the souls of the bad hover over the earth
goading sinners on to their own destruction."

George Pelham.--"Not so. Not at all so. I claim to understand this, and
it is emphatically not so. Sinners are sinners only in one