ng through our
houses and our bodies, and through the air we breathe, and we never
suspect them. Shall we, then, infer that the air around us is full of
spirits of our departed friends? I hope it is, but I fail to see any
warrant for the belief in this kind of reasoning. It does not lend
color even to the probability, any more than it does to the
probability that we shall yet be able to read one another's thoughts
and become expert mind-readers. Mind-reading seems to be a reality
with a few persons, with one in many millions. But I cannot therefore
believe in spiritualism as I believe in the "defeat of the Invincible
Armada." Fleets have been defeated in all ages. Facts are amenable to
observation and experiment, but merely alleged facts do not stand the
laboratory tests.

If memory is not a function of the brain, of what is it a function? If
"judgment, reasoning, or any other act of thought" are not functions
of the brain, of what are they the functions? The scientific method is
adequate to deal with all questions capable of proof or disproof. If
we apply the scientific or experimental method to miracles, where does
it leave them? Ask Huxley. Thought-transference is possible, but does
this prove spiritualism to be true?

I know of a man who can answer your questions if you know the answers
yourself, even without reading them or hearing you ask them. He once
read a chemical formula for Edison which nobody but Edison had ever
seen. I am glad that such things are possible. They confirm our faith
in the reality of the unseen. They show us in what a world of occult
laws and influences we live, but they tell us nothing of any other
world.

METEORIC MEN AND PLANETARY MEN

There are meteoric men and there are planetary men. The men who now
and then flash across our intellectual heavens, drawing all eyes for
the moment, these I call meteoric men. What a contrast they present to
the planetary men, who are slow to attract our attention, but who
abide, and do not grow dim! Poets like Emerson, Whitman, and
Wordsworth were slow to gain recognition, but the radiance of their
names grows. I call such a poet as Swinburne meteoric, a poet of a
certain kind of brilliant power, but who reads him now? Stephen
Phillips with his "Marpessa" had a brief vogue, and then disappeared
in the darkness. When I was a young man, I remember, a Scottish poet,
Alexander Smith, published a "Life Drama," which dazzled the literary
world for a brief p