SPIRITISM

It is refreshing at last to seen an eminent psychologist overcome his felling of courtesy and veneration for out guest, Sir Oliver Lodge to the extent of expressing the true views of a scientist on the question of spiritism. Professor G. Stanley Hall is President of Clark university and has devoted his life to the scientific study of the mind. Unlike so many who are antagonistic to spiritism, he does not rail against mediums and spirit-rappings in genera. but clearly shows that as yet no sound proof of the existence of an after-life through spirits has been demonstrated. Every one of the physical phenomena of spiritism has been reproduced, naturally, in daylight, by magicians and sleight-of-hand artists.

Science is willing to be convinced, but Sir Oliver Lodge can do little more than appeal to the sentiments of those seeking knowledge of their departed friends and he, too, must at times fall back on that final, unanswerable defense of all mediums that "it was spirits which caused me" to do this or that trick, which has been proved unsound.