the absentee's re-entrance, two persons who know the hiding-place stand one on either side of him, and establish some personal contact with him; one method being for each to place a finger on the shoulder next him, while another is for each to place a hand on his body, one on the front and the other on the back. He walks about the room between the two, and generally succeeds before long in finding the hidden object; being led towards it (as careful observation and experiment have fully proved) by the involuntary muscular action of his unconscious guides, one or the other of them pressing more heavily when the object is on his side, and the finder as involuntarily turning towards that side.

These and other curious results of recent enquiry, while strictly conformable to Physiological principles, greatly extend our knowledge of the modes in which states of Brain express themselves unconsciously and involuntarily in Muscular action; and I dwell on them the more, because they seem to me to afford the key (as I shall explain in my second lecture) to some of these phenomena of Spiritualistic divination, which have been most perplexing to many who have come in contact with them, without being disposed to accept the spiritualistic interpretation of them.

There seems no inherent improbability in the supposition, that the power of intuitively interpreting the indications involuntarily furnished by expression of countenance, gesture, manner, &c., so as to divine what is passing in the mind of another person, may be greatly intensified in that state of concentration

which has been already shown (p. 19), to produce a temporary exaltation of other faculties. There can be no question that this divining power is naturally possessed in a very remarkable degree by certain individuals; and that it may be greatly improved by cultivation, going in many instances far beyond what can have been learned by experience as to the meaning of the indications on which it rests. But I have not met with any cases, either in my own experience, or in the recorded experiments of such as have proved their competence to conduct them, of the exercise of this power without the intermediation of those expressional signs, which, as in the case I have just cited, are made and interpreted alike unconsciously.

LECTURE II.

SEVERAL years ago, an eminent Colonial Judge with whom I was discussing the subject on which I am now to address you, said to me, "According to the ordinary "rules of evidence, by which I am accustomed to be "guided in the administration of justice, I cannot refuse "credit to persons whose honesty and competence "seem beyond doubt, in regard to facts which they de"clare themselves to have witnessed; and such is the "character of a great body of testimony I have received "in regard to the phenomena of Spiritualism." In arguing this matter with my friend at the time, I took my stand upon the fact, well known not only to lawyers but to all men of large experience in affairs, that thoroughly honest and competent witnesses continually differ extremely in their accounts of the very same transaction, according to their mental prepossessions in regard to it; and I gave him instances. that had occurred within my own experience, in which a prepossession in favour of 'occult' agencies had given origin and currency to statements reported by witnesses whose good faith could not be called in question, which careful enquiry afterwards proved to have no real foundation in fact.

Subsequent study, however, of the whole subject

of the validity of Testimony, has led me not only to attach yet greater importance to what Metaphysicians call its subjective' element-that is, the state of mind of the witness who gives it; but, further, to see that we must utterly fail to appreciate, the true value of evidence, if we do not take the general experience of intelligent men, embodied in what we term 'educated common sense,' as the basis of our estimate. In all ordinary legal procedures, the witnesses on each side depose to things which might have happened; and in case of a 'conflict of testimony,' the penetration of the presiding judge, and the good sense of the jury, are exerted in trying to find out what really did happen ; their search being guided partly by the relative confidence they place in the several witnesses, but partly by the general probabilities of the case.

Now, it would be at once accepted as a guiding principle by any administrator of justice, that the more extraordinary any assertion-that is, the more widely it departs from ordinary experience—the stronger is the testimony needed to give it a claim on our acceptance as truth; so that while ordinary evidence may very properly be admitted as adequate proof of any ordinary occurrence, an extraordinary weight of evidence would be rightly required to establish the credibility of any statement that is in itself inherently improbable, the strength of the proof required being proportional to the improbability. And if a statement made by any witness in a Court of Justice should be completely in opposition to the universal experience of Mankind, as embodied in those Laws of Nature which

are accepted by all men of ordinary intelligence, the judge and jury would most assuredly put that particular statement 'out of court' as a thing that could not have happened; whatever might be the value they would assign to the testimony of the same witness as to ordinary matters. Thus if, in order to account for the signature of a will in London at a certain time, by a person who could be proved, beyond reasonable doubt, to have been in Edinburgh only an hour before, either a single witness, or any number of witnesses, were to affirm that the testator had been carried by 'the spirits' through the air all the way from Edinburgh to London in that hour, I ask whether the 'common sense' of the whole Court would not revolt at such an assertion, as a thing not in rerum naturâ. And yet there are at the present time numbers of educated men and women, who have so completely surrendered their 'common sense' to a dominant prepossession, as to maintain that any such monstrous fiction ought to be believed, even upon the evidence of a single witness, if that witness be one upon whose testimony we should rely in the ordinary affairs of life!

There is, indeed, no other test than that of 'common sense,' for distinguishing between the delusions of a Monomaniac, and the conclusions drawn by sane minds from the same data. There are many persons who are perfectly rational upon every subject but one; and who, if put on their trial, will stand a searching cross-examination without betraying themselves, especially if they know from previous experience what