more save a decaying creed than vulgarity will destroy

a true one.

The Spiritualists have been too slow to appreciate the value of culture in the protection of truth among those who value that commodity more than the accuracy of their intellectual formulas. While abandoning the church and its creeds and appealing to facts, they have neglected scientific method as well as the ethical impulses of religion and the influence of good taste. Demanding the favor of both science and religion they despise the method of one and the ethical ideals of the other. No wonder the word Spiritualism has become a byword among intelligent people, and no redemption can come from calling themselves by a respectable name while their performances have no respectability in them.

If Spiritualism had long ago abandoned its evidential methods to science and joined in the ethical and spiritual work of the world it might have won its victory fifty years ago. Christianity was founded on psychic phenomena, and it neglected miracles in the interest of moral teaching, especially when it could no longer reproduce the healing of its founder. Its primary impulse was ethical teaching and not a vaudeville show. When Spiritualism has as much passion for morals as it has morbid curiosity for communication with the dead, it may hope for success, but not until then. The intelligent man, whether in the church or the college, will stay his interest until he is safe from the gibes of his friends for sympathy with the twaddle and unscientific discourse of the average psychic. But if the respectable classes know their duty they will organize the inquiry and combine truth and good taste with scientific method to revive the dying embers of religious and ethical passion. No intelligent person would allow the truth to perish because it is not clothed in

the majesty of art or the beauty of literary expression.

Spiritualism had one merit. It looked at the facts. The scientific man and the church cannot claim that defense in their objections to it. They allowed their æsthetics to influence judgments that should have subordinated taste to truth. But whatever apology can be made for Spiritualism in this one respect, it forfeited consideration because it did not and does not organize its position into an ethical and spiritual force for the redemption of individual and social life. It concentrated interest on communication with the dead and came to the facts only to witness "miracles." Christ complained that many of his followers were interested in his work only for the loaves and fishes, or for the spectacular part of it. The regeneration of their lives was secondary. St. Paul entered a similar complaint against the Athenians for being interested only in some new thing, not in the eternal truths in which salvation was found, no matter in what form you conceived that salvation. Communication with the dead has no primary interest in our problem. It is but a mere means to the establishment of certain truths which have a pivotal importance in the protection of an ethical interpretation of nature. To congregate only to see the chasm bridged between two worlds has no importance compared with other objects to be attained by it. We do not dig tunnels or build bridges just for the sake of the amusement. We have an ulterior object of connecting places and resources which have an intimate part in the economic and social structure. Communication with the dead is not to take the place of a theater or the movie, but to find a principle which shall be a means of starting an ethical inspiration, or of protecting the claims of those who have discovered the real meaning of nature.

I can understand the impression created by the

triviality of the facts in the communications, but I can hardly respect the minds that do not see why this is the case, or that suppose they are in the least testimony to the nature of the future life in their superficial interpretation. The inexcusable habit of many minds is to suppose that spirits are occupied in that life with the trivial matters communicated, and as our own spiritual life is much superior to any such conception as that, these people unfavorably compare the two worlds. They picture to themselves a world given over to thought and conversation about the little articles of household interest or of the past physical life; and having, under the tutelage of various religions, formed the conception that the next life is idyllic and paradisaic, even though they have in most cases construed this in materialistic terms and conceptions, they revolt against occupation with the trivialities of life. They do not take offense at pearly gates and golden streets, or a sublimated monarchy and its accompaniments, or at an intellectual banquet of literati, or anything except preoccupation with a duplication of the physical. But there is no reason to interpret the messages as either representing a physical life or as evidence of what the general life is like.

The problem, as we have shown, is one of personal identity and that requires trivial facts for its proof and assurance in regard to the supernormal character of the knowledge. The more elevated and inspiring communications are not evidence and have to be minimized in the treatment of the subject. Living men, when asked to prove their personal identity over a telegraph line or the phonograph, resort naturally to just such trivialities to effect their end, and they are not proof of their character or their general life. No one would think for a moment to ridicule them for such communications or use them to determine the general nature of their lives and occupations.

There are paradoxes and perplexities enough in certain communications, but they are such only for those who use materialistic categories or standards of judgment when interpreting them. Construe them as indicating a mental world, such a spiritual life as we denominate by that term right among ourselves in the physical life, as involving larger creating powers of consciousness than we now enjoy, and perhaps more direct creative powers, and we should have no trouble in displacing the sensuous ideas formed from the language employed in the communications. If we were not so materialistic now, we should not be so much astonished or offended at certain types of messages. But, supposing certain statements to be used as we would use them in describing the physical life as we know it, we receive from the language the effect of an absolute contradiction of our experience or else the statement of an impossibility which appears just as preposterous. But it appears so only because we try the case by the standards of sensory life which do not apply to a purely mental life, though their pictorial character may mislead us into mistakes and illusions.

However, once recognize the supersensible nature of that life; the inadequacy of sensory standards and conceptions of it, and the creative possibilities of thought as in dreams and other subconscious activities, and we may find all the paradoxes resolve themselves into casual proofs of the nature of a spiritual life. The process of communication between the two worlds is so fragmentary and confused that it may well suggest a chaotic and disordered world to those who do not know or recognize the fragmentary and confused nature of the process. But make this characteristic of it clear once for all, and we can build up a whole as science has enabled those who know to reconstruct an extinct animal from the fragments of skeleton which has lain for ages in the rocks.

Another important consideration in behalf of the spiritistic theory is its pivotal character. By this I mean its support to other truths which are independently believed to have value, or may even have their whole integrity determined by it. The same principle rules in other questions. For instance, the whole theory of Mechanics is dependent on the fact and law of inertia. If inertia were not true we should have Biology instead of Mechanics. We could not depend on the stability of our manufacturing processes but for inertia. The same is true of impenetrability and gravity. Again the law of gravitation is necessary to our construction of astronomical theories. We could not simplify our ideas of the cosmos without it. We might invent supporting theories as in the Ptolemaic system, but we should find confusion ever increasing with their invention and multiplication. But gravitation reduces the cosmos to a perfectly simple and intelligible conception. The law of supply and demand is necessary for understanding economics. It is pivotal to its structure. The rotundity of the earth was necessary to enable Columbus to make a reasonable plea for the means of discovering America.

It is similar with survival after death. It is the key to certain ideals and conceptions of life. It puts a value on personality which materialism must distinctly deny or weaken. Materialism cannot perpetuate any of the values which it recognizes. It can never reproduce anything but a succession of individuals with transient mental states. Sensation and copies of sensation in memory and imagination are all it can secure and these only for a short time. The individual personality is snuffed out of existence. But the instinct for self-preservation creates a tendency to prolong consciousness and to make this prolongation the standard of ethics in this life. The hostility to suicide, whether opposing the act in others or ourselves, is more or