NUMBER OF NON-PROVIDED SCHOOLS IN LAST FIVE RETURNS OF THE BOARD OF

It is impossible to estimate the debt of the nation up to 1870 to the Church of England for elementary education. As regards her schools, as regards her position as to disestablishment and disendowment, there is surely grave need at this present time of some of that spirit of sobriety, sense of responsibility, and whole-hearted faith in the power of prayer, in the work of the Holy Spirit, which so distinguished the noble generation which not long ago passed from their work in this world. They had their difficulties as we have ours; the Church of England is no more frozen now than then. It was in and by the Church of England that we, now old, learnt the love and service of man-learnt to possess only to share and give. It was there we learnt the nobleness of human nature to be realised in the Incarnation. And as in the past so now; if God be with us who shall be against us? Now, as then, the whole secret lies not in numbers nor in Governments, but in Faith and Prayer.

La Muette: December 15, 1908.

SOPHIA M. PALMER,

Comtesse de Franqueville.

MODERN OCCULTISM

WHEN eminent men of science announce discoveries of great interest it is an obvious general rule that their conclusions receive respectful consideration and, in the absence of strong reasons to the contrary, are accepted without serious question. But there is an exception to this rule so curious that it may well deserve our attention. Among the most important questions with which thought has been engaged are those of the possible modes of interaction between mind and mind. Coupled with this is the question of the direct action of mind upon matter, or of matter upon mind without physical agency. Ideas of this subject are older than civilisation, and arise so naturally that nothing but suggestion is necessary to implant them in the mind of the child. Discredited by the general trend of modern thought, the affirmative view has very generally been classed with superstition as belonging to a stage of intellectual development which the world has now left behind it. Belief in witchcraft vanished from the minds of civilised men more than two centuries ago, and with it disappeared the belief in every form of mental interaction otherwise than through the known organs of sense. But now men of eminence, whose opinion is entitled to the greatest respect, are informing us that the instincts of our ancestors did not err so greatly as we have supposed, and that beliefs which our fathers called superstitious are well grounded in the regular order of nature. At least three scientific philosophers of the highest standing have placed themselves on record as accepting this view. Two of them, Sir Oliver Lodge and Professor Barrett, have, during the past year, informed us that not only is the direct transference of impressions from one mind to another a fact, but the spiritual world, which the thought of our time has been removing further and further from our every-day experience until it seemed likely to vanish from intellectual sight, is a reality knocking at our doors.

If these are truths, we can scarcely exaggerate their importance. Our most cherished aspirations and the consolations which religion offers to the dying and the bereaved are taken from the realm of sentiment and placed on the sure pedestal of science. A new view of mind is opened out, to the development of which we can set no

limit. Accepting it, a system of conveying impressions from mind to mind at great distances, and of reading the secret thoughts of our fellows, seems more likely than it would have seemed a century ago that electricity would enable us to communicate with our antipodes. With such prospects opened out to us by scientific authorities so high, it certainly seems more appropriate that the sceptic, if such there be, should make known his reasons for the faith that is in himperhaps we should say for his lack of faith-than that the doctrines should be treated as unworthy of attention.

A glance at the state of public opinion upon the subject will serve to guide the course of our thoughts. The class which fully accepts the views in question, notwithstanding its eminent respectability, is probably small in numbers. Between this class and those who entirely reject the views, as at least groundless, if not unworthy of consideration, there is an intermediate class holding that phenomena known as occult' are exhibited which science has not yet satisfactorily explained. Their view has recently been happily stated by an able writer in the Saturday Review: The existence of abnormal phenomena which science is only beginning to take notice of, a dim region of strange things which, even if they can be proved not to be supernatural, are at any rate outside the limits of organised experience,' has been proved by the work of the Society for Psychical Research. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy' has never ceased to express a feeling of the same general nature in the minds of intelligent men, and is at least one article of a creed always lending hope to the inquirer after the occult. This middle class, which thinks that there is something to learn in occultism, is certainly large, and perhaps makes up a majority of the intelligent community. It is to this class, as well as to that of believers, that the writer desires to address himself.

The personal element necessarily plays so large a part in any discussion of occultism that it may not be wholly out of place if the writer ventures on a brief statement of his own experience. The idea that the emotions of beloved relatives, sometimes at a great distance, might be agents in directing the various currents of feeling that run through the mind was imbibed in early childhood. Just how the idea originated he cannot say, but it is probably more common among children than we suspect. More than once, when hurrying home, he intently fixed his mind upon his mother with a strong desire that she should expect his coming, think about him, and prepare herself accordingly. But all these efforts proved failures. Another idea prevalent at a later period was that, by fixing the attention on someone sitting at a distance in front of you in church, you could move him to turn and look around him. But no systematic experiments in this direction were seriously attempted. When, in the early fifties, the great wave of spiritualism, with its rappings, table

moving, and communications from the dead, was reaching its height, he naturally took an interest in the subject. But what little he could see of these performances seemed so silly as to prejudice him against the whole subject.

About 1858 an event of prime importance in the history of spiritualism is worthy of being recalled. A warm discussion of the pretensions of certain mediums in the columns of the Boston Courier ended with the offer, by an anonymous writer,' to pay a large reward to any mediums who would, in the presence of a committee to be named by himself, perform any of their pretended feats-move a table without touching it, read a paper in a closed envelope, or produce a rap the cause of which could not be traced. The offer was promptly accepted by the leader of the Boston spiritualists, and several of the most famous mediums were brought from different parts of the country. The committee was three in number. At its head was Professor Louis Agassiz, and his coadjutors were two eminent scientific men of Cambridge. The séances were held in the room of a Boston hotel. The result was a failure so complete that the professors felt humiliated to sit hour after hour and see nothing to enliven the proceedings. Some cabinet feats of tying and untying were attempted, but nothing was done in this line except very elementary tricks of legerdemain. The mediums could assign no better reason for their failure than the contempt of the spirits for men who disbelieved in their existence. A large measure of abuse was heaped upon the committee by the spiritualists, but no argument better than this was adduced in explanation of their failure.

After this the general attitude of the writer towards the subject was this: I have no time to engage in the search after wonders. But tell me in any special case when I can go to a séance with any reasonable chance of seeing something out of the usual order of nature, and I will avail myself of the opportunity with alacrity.' What has especially struck him ever since has been the absence of any such opportunity. When he was told of wonderful phenomena, and inquired as to details, the stories were always about things that had happened long before. An inquiry where a medium of special power could be found elicited no answer but that her whereabouts was unknown, and she had probably left the city.

But after many years of waiting, an opportunity was at last presented. The most wonderful performer yet seen came to Washington, and her feats were vouched for by a party of intelligent gentlemen who had been invited to a private exhibition of her powers. She was a Miss Lulu Hirst, of Georgia. It must be said that spiritualism, as well as any other theory, was ignored by her; but this was a minor matter, as the feats were of the same kind as those essayed by the professional spiritualists. A day or two later arrangements were Understood to be Professor Felton, afterward President of Harvard University.

made for another series of tests, in which the writer took part. Without going into details, which were published fully at the time, it will suffice to remark in the present connexion that nothing was shown but what was obviously produced by the efforts of a muscular and dexterous young woman. She was quite frank and honest, without pretences to be investigated or trickery to be exposed. Every surprising element in the narrative proved to be based on imperfections of observation and misconception of what was seen. Only one feature was needed to complete the picture. When the public performance of the wonder-girl' came off, the Press reporters were, of course, present, and their accounts of her feats as narrated in the journals rivalled or outdid the performances of the most celebrated mediums.

After the English Society for Psychical Research was organised by a body of men eminent in various fields of thought and action, the past failures of the writer did not prevent his taking part in the formation of an American society of the same kind, of which he had the honour to be elected the first president. Two years of experiment, study, and reading confirmed his ideas on the subject; but he remained for some time longer in occasional communication and co-operation with Dr. Hodgson, a well-known member of the English society, then resident in Boston. He now invites the courteous consideration of the reader to the views of the subject which he has reached after a half-century of occasional study, coupled with reading the best he could find in support of occultism.

II

We may approach the heart of our subject in the easiest way by recalling two lines of research in which Sir William Crookes took a prominent part. The name of this eminent investigator has become a household word in science from his discovery that a singular radiance may be produced at the cathode of a vacuum-tube through which an electric current is passing. He also observed curious phenomena of motion among material objects in his laboratory for which he could not assign any physical cause. Several years elapsed after these discoveries before either of them seemed destined to develop into an important branch of science. Then the one first mentioned suddenly assumed importance.

In 1895 Professor Röntgen made the astounding discovery that certain rays from a Crookes' tube were capable of passing through opaque substances and imprinting themselves upon a photographic plate beyond. About the same time it was shown by Becquerel that rays of similar properties, but different in kind, could be produced from uranium. All the physical laboratories of the world were at

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