e
subject was one for jest, but there is far more in it than jesters are
likely to discover. Mocking laughter never discovered anything except
the vacuous fool. The appearances of spiritual beings give but scant
opportunity for examination but serious investigation has now taken the
place of cheap sneering. After all religion is founded upon a philosophy
of apparitions. The vision of angels at Mons is no new thing.
Catholicism is founded on such visions and no religion worthy of the
name is without its story of angels. New aspects of matter have laid
many materialistic theories in the dust, the mysterious potencies of
matter which the latest science is revealing, the energy of electrons,
and radium are giving us a new science of super-sensual physics and with
it new vistas of thought.

It is no longer necessary to apologize for the work of psychic research,
that is among intelligent people. Light is gaining on the darkness. "I
felt another hand assisting me to steer," said a sailor man to me who
vainly tried to explain how he kept his boat from what appeared certain
destruction. He would scorn to be called a religious man. "There is
nothing of the ranter in me--you know sir," and he used uncomplimentary
remarks which I omit. "But there sir, it was no skill of mine. All I saw
was death and destruction for me and my mates, yet I knew we should pull
through all right. There was another that shipped as passenger in the
darkness."

The question of immortality and of the existence of spiritual entities
which had been relegated to the limits of illusions and dreams in
Victorian times by the fumbling amateur philosophers of that day, can
now be discussed with quiet in the old philosophic vein which
characterized the great age of thought when Greek sages argued in the
Gardens of Athens. This fact alone justifies a book of the present
character. The bumptious and dull ass who announces "Miracles do not
happen," is now seen in true perspective and he cuts a poor figure.

Apparitions, telepathy and clairvoyance are not explanations, but names
for facts demanding separate explanations. In regard to such the
"ecclesiastical damn" and the "scientific damn" have been freely used.
If men have been hypnotized by ghost stories, they certainly have been
deluded by stories of unnatural science. To deny activities of life
natural and super-natural is rather silly considering no man has solved
the life principle. The atoms forming the mate