Research are already becoming respectable and
attracting the attention of the generality of men of science and of our
clergy. Spiritualism and Mesmerism are still tabooed, but wait their
turn for popular recognition, having already been recognized by pioneers
distinguished in science and other professions.

Of course I speak only of the facts of these arts, I do not speak of the
theories put forward.

All these processes are in the very outermost court of the Temple of
True Magic, even if they are not outside the precinct. But they are
sufficient for our purpose, and should make the serious thinker and
unprejudiced enquirer pause before pronouncing the words, superstition
and hallucination, in too confident a tone, for he now must see the
necessity of having a clear idea of what he means by the terms.

It is not uncommon of late to hear the superficially instructed setting
down everything to "suggestion," a word they have picked up from modern
hypnotic research, or "telepathy," a name invented by psychical
research--the ideas being as old as the world--forgetting that their
mind remains in precisely the same attitude with regard to such matters
as it was in previously when they utterly denied the possibility of
suggestion and telepathy. But to the earnest and patient student
hypnotism and the rest are but the public reaeppearance of what has
always existed in spite of the denial of two hundred years or so, and
instead of covering the whole ground is but the forward spray from the
returning wave of psychism which will sweep the nations off their feet
and moral balance, if they will not turn to the experience of the past
and gain strength to withstand the inrush.

The higher forms of all these things, in the Western World, should have
now been in the hands of the ministers of the Church, in which case we
should not have had the reaeppearance of such powers in the hands of
vulgar stage exhibitions and mercenary public mediumship.

But so it is; and in vain is it any longer to raise the cry of fraud and
hallucination on the one hand and of the devil on the other. This is a
mere shirking of responsibility, and nothing but a reasonable
investigation and an insistence on the highest ideals of life will help
humanity.

I do not intend to enter into any review of the "wonders" attributed to
Simon, neither to deny them as hallucinations, nor attribute them to the
devil, nor explain them away by "suggestion." As a matter of