medium is unentranced and wholly conscious. The will may be passive; it is not unconscious. And from facts already given it has been seen that even where the medium is apparently unconscious (so far as we can judge by our external senses), he may at the same time be in the exercise of a superior consciousness. Thus the facts show that Hartmann's objection that the spirits require "the medium's unconscious will" is founded in ignorance on his part.

In regard to the materialization phenomena, the theory that man can act as a spirit, produce any number of formmanifestations, and other phenomena, while he is yet tethered to the earth-body, surely justifies the theory that he may do as much, and more, when wholly detached from that body. He may then command those higher grades of matter, of the phenomena,- proving one of which, the fourth state, or "radiant matter,"-Wm.Crookes remarks: "These phenomena differ so greatly from those presented by gas in its ordinary tension, that we are in the presence of a fourth condition of matter, which is as far removed from the gaseous condition as gas is from the liquid condition." That there is an increase of energy as matter becomes more sublimated and refined, is also clearly proved by Crookes's experiments.

(2) The supposition that there are spirits of deceased persons, Hartmann tells us, involves the acknowledgment that men possess faculties of which they are unconscious as long as they live. And this is just the great fact that I have been contending for- that men do indeed possess such faculties. Hartmann's objection, which he would present as a dilemma, is therefore accepted as a confirmation, when coupled with the supplementary fact of discrete mental states, of the spiritual theory. How are we to account for the phenomena in the case of Laura Bridgman, whose only medium of communication with the world of intelligence was by the sense of touch, except on the theory of the

existence of spiritual senses, which, while the physical were shut up, made possible the mental development to which she attained?

(3) "But," objects Hartmann, "if this be so," (i. e. if men have spiritual faculties,)" then living men, too, could use those faculties unconsciously." And, as I have already claimed, it is consistent with the spiritual theory that certain high spiritual faculties, like prevision and divination, should be sometimes exercised by man in the flesh, and he have no consciousness of it in his normal state. I have shown that in sleep, in the act of drowning, and sometimes irrespectively of any abnormal conditions, faculties may be developed, of which we have no consciousness in our normal state. That this was the belief of some of the ancient sages, from Pythagoras to Plutarch, I have also shown.

Schelling distinguishes the "nature-element" of the Deity from his higher conscious intelligence; and there may be a great truth in this, if man is truly made in the divine image. If philosophical science can come so near to the borders of Theism as to admit a Divine Intelligence and Will, it is but taking one step more, and a very short one, into an ampler and higher generalization, to admit a Divine consciousness.

(4) Hartmann's fourth and last objection is an additional proof of his lack of acquaintance with the phenomenon. I have shown that the entranced medium's discourse may be often proportioned to his own intelligence and that of the persons present. But there are instances without number where the intelligence medially manifested is superior to that of the medium and of all the sitters, and can be accounted for only as coming, mediately or immediately, from an independent spirit.

Dr. Bloede, who shows the insufficiency of this fourth objection to support the conclusions which Hartmann would

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base upon it, remarks: "The trouble with these German philosophers, who, though claiming the privilege of calling their researches preeminently scientific,' are constantly constructing the world from the depths of their metaphysical vagaries, is their almost total ignorance of the overwhelming mass of spiritualistic facts, and their aversion to observing such when an occasion is offered them."

Hartmann contends that consciousness does not belong to the essence, but only to the phenomenal form, or manifestation, of individual being. On the contrary, our spiritual facts impress it upon us that mind, conscious of an object, is the very essence of being. Extinguish consciousness of every kind, finite and infinite, and the universe becomes meaningless and objectless. There can be no knowledge without a knower; and, in order to know, we must be conscious of knowing. The very phrase unconscious knowledge is logically indefensible.

The phenomena classed under the generalization of "consciousness" have baffled the penetration of the profoundest thinkers. The subject is still in dispute between the materialistic philosophers and those who believe in a psychical element in man. Spiritualism, in its proofs of a spiritual organism, and of discrete mental states, throws a light on the question which must bring the philosophy of the future into accord with the unquestionable facts.

UNDISCRIMINATING opponents have tried to make Spiritualism responsible for much more than belongs to it. Rightly defined, it is simply belief in the spiritual nature and continuous life of man, and in the power of freed spirits to communicate in some way, subjectively or objectively, with individuals still in the earth-life.

The attempt to identify Spiritualism proper with any other doctrines, collateral and independent, whether they come from freed spirits or from mortal seers, is the source of much misapprehension and injustice. The various opinions which so-called Spiritualists may hold upon subjects religious, moral, social, or political, will therefore be dismissed by the candid philosopher as foreign to the one question Has Spiritualism an actual basis of facts?

As the same sun which ripens fruit may quicken corruption, so Spiritualism may have a good or bad effect, according to the state of the recipient. To charge upon it the demerits of its professors is as gross an injustice as it would be to charge moral delinquencies upon the moral law. The arts of printing, of photography, of distillation, may all be used to subserve foul purposes as well as good. The art of writing makes possible the crime of forgery. Obvious as these considerations are, they are repeatedly

overlooked by our assailants. Spiritualism does not make characters, it finds them made. To the good it is an aid, like all divine truth, to further good. By the bad its very good may be made the means of evil. The tendency to criminate Spiritualism itself because the unwise or the unprincipled may adopt it, or because the unthinking may misconstrue it, or the incautious be misled by it, is as contrary to reason as it would be to decry religion because intemperate Christian preachers may seem to have driven sensitive minds to insanity.

The clergy, one would think, would welcome our facts as giving the most cogent objective proofs of the continuity of our individuality, unimpaired beyond the tomb. But some of them have raised objections which a little more reflection would have checked. The Rev. David Swing, of Chicago, says, "In modern Spiritualism the mind falls into a trance, and is eloquent without labor, wise without study, clairvoyant without eyes, artistic without study or taste;" mediums become "geographers without travels, readers of the strata of the earth without sinking a shaft." Hence, he argues, Spiritualism is "a new effort to leap over the great mediatorial laws" by which individual effort, skill, and labor "must be used for the accomplishment of an object."

In

It would be a sufficient reply to this to say: The facts persist, notwithstanding your disapproval of them. stead of taking the trouble to verify them experimentally, the critic sits in his closet and evolves his objections from his own à priori speculations. So Melancthon and other great men, instead of qualifying themselves by study to pass an opinion on the Copernican system, raised futile ol>jections out of their limited knowledge.

The boy Bidder being asked how he did certain wonderful computations, replied, "I don't do it, I see it." When the son of Bishop Lee, at a distance of some three