ty of the interference of spirits with human affairs. This is
no less a person than Lombroso, the well-known writer on criminology,
who has recently confessed that certain tests made by him showed
beyond all doubt that there were influences at work quite independent
of human powers, and showing the existence of a world apart from
matter. This immaterial world evidently interpenetrates, and may
interfere with things in the material world as we know it.

{384}

In a word, it may be said that if a man wants to keep the spiritual
side of things out of his purview of life, he may do so by refusing to
investigate any evidence that would demonstrate the existence of
spiritual forces in the world around him. The heavy price, however,
that he pays for absolute certainty and peace of mind in this
matter--is peremptory refusal to investigate. If he gives himself up
to investigations, he comes inevitably to the conclusion that there is
something in the belief in the existence of spirits all round us, and
of the possibility of their interference in the ordinary affairs of
life. It is true that after he has come to this conclusion he may not
be able to demonstrate it to others. His conviction of it, however,
will be none the less absolute because of this. His adhesion to the
new belief may seem to many people absurd. He will accept this view of
his state of mind quite calmly, and apparently enjoy the compensation
of finding the absurdity to be in the other point of view. It matters
not how distinguished a scientist he may be, he comes out of
investigation of spiritual phenomena persuaded of the existence of a
spiritual world.

This persuasion seems to come by some form of intuition not quite
dependent on the ordinary processes of intelligence. It is as if
spirit called to spirit across the abyss, from the immaterial to the
material, as if somehow we obtained a conviction of the existence of
spirits around us by the very sympathy of our natures and their
relationship to the immaterial world, rather than by the ordinary
avenues of intelligence. It is, in a word, a telepathy, the other
agent in which is not material, but quite independent of matter, yet
somehow is able to set up those vibrations in the ether which {385}
affect brain cells, and thus bring about communications, as Sir
William Crookes explains the curious phenomena in this line that occur
between human beings. Such an explanation may easily be dismissed as
highly imagi