ight-of-hand tricks can repeat the cabinet
phenomena in every detail, and that the materialized spirit showmen have
been caught in numerous instances in the very act of fraud, throws utter
discredit on the business. No repetition by new mediums of other forms
of the exposed tricks carries any weight. In fact, in a matter of such
importance nothing can be accepted as settled until it has been
subjected to the strictest scientific tests and every possible
opportunity for deceit or trickery eliminated. We are not ready to
believe that the spirits of our departed friends are able and willing to
talk with or show themselves to us, or create disturbances in the
arrangement of our furniture, unless we are absolutely positive that our
eyes, ears, and nerves are not being cleverly fooled by some skilled and
unscrupulous show-man, or that we are not self-deceived by some
temporary vagary of our brains or senses.

In addition to the purely physical phenomena are others of a more or
less mental character. One interesting phase of the latter is that of
planchette-writing, which attracted so much attention a few years ago.
The planchette, a heart-shaped board moving easily on casters, and with
a pencil supporting it at one extremity, moves with great readiness when
touched by mediumistic fingers, and is responsible for acres of
communications purporting to come from the world of spirits, and
conveying the greatest variety of information, alike as to the thoughts
and deeds of particular spirits and the general conditions of
disembodied spiritual existence. In other instances the planchette is
dispensed with, and the writing done by a pencil held in the hand of the
medium, or occasionally, as some persons positively declare, by a pencil
that is held in no mortal hand. In still other cases the medium, either
awake or entranced, gives the communication by word of mouth. And this
is asserted to be the case not only in respect to brief messages, but in
long addresses, which are given every Sunday in our principal cities
before large audiences, and in the writing of books of considerable
length, but not, as a rule, of any great profundity or literary value.
To all these claims, however, we can simply record the verdict "not
proven." When a man writes or says anything we want more than his mere
assertion to prove that it does not come from his own mind. And, even if
we are satisfied that he is not consciously deceiving, the possibility
remai