e topic than it is at present inclined to bestow. Mr. Wallace has
asserted that, 'whenever the scientific men of any age have denied,
on a priori grounds, the facts of investigation, they have _always
been wrong_'. {12} He adds that Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, Franklin,
Young, and Arago, when he 'wanted even to discuss the subject of the
electric telegraph,' were 'vehemently opposed by their scientific
contemporaries,' 'laughed at as dreamers,' 'ridiculed,' and so on,
like the early observers of palaeolithic axes, and similar
prehistoric remains. This is true, of course, but, because some
correct ideas were laughed at, it does not follow that whatever is
laughed at is correct. The squarers of the circle, the discoverers
of perpetual motion, the inquirers into the origin of language, have
all been ridiculed, and ruled out of court, the two former classes,
at least, justly enough. Now official science apparently regards
all the long and universally rumoured abnormal occurrences as in the
same category with Keely's Motor, and Perpetual Motion, not as in
the same category with the undulatory theory of light, or the theory
of the circulation of the blood. Clairvoyance, or ghosts, or
suspensions of the law of gravitation, are things so widely
contradictory of general experience and of ascertained laws, that
they are pronounced to be impossible; like perpetual motion they are
not admitted to a hearing.

As for the undeniable phenomenon that, in every land, age, and
condition of culture, and in every stage of belief or disbelief,
some observers have persistently asserted their experience of these
occurrences; as for the phenomenon that the testimonies of
Australian blacks, of Samoyeds, of Hurons, of Greeks, of European
peasants, of the Catholic and the Covenanting clergy, and of some
scientifically trained modern physicians and chemists, are all
coincident, official physical science leaves these things to
anthropology and folklore. Yet the coincidence of such strange
testimony is a singular fact in human nature. Even people of open
mind can, at present, say no more than that there is a great deal of
smoke, a puzzling quantity, if there be no fire, and that either
human nature is very easily deluded by simple conjuring tricks, or
that, in all stages of culture, minds are subject to identical
hallucinations. The whole hocus-pocus of 'spirit-writing' on slates
and in pellets of paper, has been satisfactorily exposed and
ex