MATERIALISM’S LAST ASSAULT. 
DOES MAHER DO IT ALL? 
A REPLY TO PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S LATEST 
ATTACK ON SPIRITUALISM. 
BY EPES SARGENT. 
[Repiinted from the New York Sun of Dec. 12th, 1875.] 
BOSTON: 
COLBY & KICU. 
1876. DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
EPE3 SABGENT’S REPLY TO TYNDALL ON 
SPIRITUALISM. 
Men of Science »lio have Thonght i< Worthy of Investiga- 
1 ion —Spiritualism now able to Take Care of Itself—Mate- 
rialism Contradicts Itself— Inconvenient Facts—I'niversal 
Science Bringing ITs Nearer the Higher I.ifc. 
Prof. John Tyndall—Sir: I find in the preface to your 
“ Fragments of Science,” in the Popular Science Monthly, for 
December, 1875, the following remark : 
“ TUe world will have religion of some kind, even though It should fly 
for it to the intellectual whoredom of Spiritualism. ” 
Seeing that your preface is largely made up of expressions 
that betray great soreness on your part because of the “hard 
words” which your “noisy and unreasonable assailants” of 
the pulpit have launched at you ; seeing that you express a wish 
that the minds which deal with “these high themes” were 
“the seat of dignity—if possible of chivalry—but certainly 
not the seat of littleness and that you regard as “ unman- 
nerly ” those persons who have denounced you for “ reject- 
ing the notion of a separate soul,” &c.—does it not appear 
like a disposition to mete out to the unpopular Spiritualists a 
measure which you sensitively shrink from having meted out 
to yourself, when, from the calm atmosphere, the “ Alpine 
heights ” of scientific meditation, you try to affix a foul, dis- 
honoring name to a subject which many eminent men of sci- 
ence among your contemporaries have thought worthy of 
their serious investigation ? 4 
If you ask to what men I refer, I could mention the names 
of Alfred Russell Wallace, President of the Anthropological 
Society of London, and known to seience as sharing with 
Darwin the discovery of the principle of natural selection ; 
Maximilian Perty, Professor of Natural History in the Uni- 
versity of Berne; J. H. Fichte, the illustrious son of an illus- 
trious father; the late Robert Hare, one of America’s fore- 
most chemists; Nicholas Wagner and Dr. A. Butlerof, both 
well-known physicists and professors of the University of St. 
Petersburg; Dr. Franz Hoffman, of Wiirtzburg University; 
Camille Flammarion, whose astronomical writings are well 
known to the readers of the Popular Science Monthly ; Dr. J. 
R. Nichols, chemist, and editor of the Boston Journal of Chem- 
istry ; the late Nassau William Senior, celebrated as a politi- 
cal economist; Hermann Goldschmidt, the discoverer of four- 
teen planets; William Crookes, F. R. S., a well-known chem- 
ist, and editor of the London Quarterly Journal of Science ; C. 
F. Yarley, F. R. S., electrician ; and the late Prof. De Mor- 
gan, eminent as a mathematician, and who once remarked of 
certain physicists like yourself, who “snap up ” the investi- 
gators of Spiritualism with the cry of unphilosophical, de- 
grading, even as the clergymen of a former generation thought 
to frighten free thinkers with the cry of infidel—“ They want 
taming, and will get it, for they wear the priest’s cast-off 
garb, dyed to escape detection.” 
DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
PROFESSORS ON THE LIST. 
I could enlarge this list considerably, as you must well know. 
In this very number of the Popular Science Monthly, contain- 
ing your “unmannerly” attack, is a paper by Prof. W. D. 
Gunning on “Progression and Retrogression,” showing that 
retrogression of types, as well as progression, belongs to the 
system of evolution, and is illustrated in the natural world. 
Prof. Gunning has long been a Spiritualist, and has written 
much and ably in defence of his belief. I might refer you to 
Prof. William Denton, an experienced geologist, and who has 
lately succeeded in taking casts of hands which he has reason DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
5 
to believe are projected by spirit power into temporarily ma- 
terial conditions ; also, to Dr. J. R. Buchanan of Kentucky, 
eminent as an anthropologist and cerebral anatomist. Arch- 
bishop Whately, the skilled logician, became a confirmed 
Spiritualist shortly before he died. Lord Lindsay, long devot- 
ed to scientific pursuits, testifies to having witnessed the levi- 
tation of Mr. Home, the medium. The late Lords Lyndhurst 
and Brougham, though advanced in years when they became 
interested in Spiritualism, had certainly given no signs of 
mental degeneracy. In a preface which Lord Brougham 
wrote, just before his death, for “Napier’s Book of Nature 
and Book of Man,” he says in conclusion : “ But even in the 
most cloudless skies of skepticism I see a rain cloud, if it be 
no bigger than a man’s hand; it is Modern Spiritualism.” I 
might instance the case of the late Dr. Elliotson, the studious 
physiologist, and editor of the Zoist, who, after advocating up 
to the age of seventy views as to the “potency of matter” simi- 
lar to your own, suddenly had the convictions of a lifetime re- 
versed by his recognition of the reality of certain phenomena 
through Mr. Home, and pathetically expressed a regret that 
he had not “ known these things earlier.” 
But there are evidences more recent of the profound im- 
pression which the facts of Spiritualism are making upon the 
cultivated classes in England. In the British Quarterly Re- 
view for October, 1875, is a paper on “Modern Necromancy,” 
the drift of which is that there are evidences of preternatural 
facts in the phenomena claimed as spiritual; that investiga- 
tors like Mr. Wallace and Mr. Crookes are not to be con- 
demned for examining into them; but that those facts, being 
such as were forbidden by the Mosaic law, and the moral con- 
ditions for their production being assumed to be objectionable, 
the moment we have become convinced of their reality we 
ought to drop them as Satanic. In other words, there is proof 
of the action of spirits, but as these are perhaps bad spirits, 
the less we have to do with them the better for our souls’ 
safety and the good of humanity. 
I will not risk giving offence by supposing that you, whose 6 
DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
expressions of scorn for the “fanatical, foolish, and more 
purely sacerdotal portion of Christendom ” are so emphatic, 
share in these nervous apprehensions of diabolical agency. 
You will doubtless agree with me that if it be right to test the 
facts, it must be right to draw inferences from them, even if 
these should lead to the spiritual hypothesis. 
The London Spectator, in some apt comments on the article, 
expresses itself as no longer surprised to find any inquirer ac- 
cepting—“what indeed so many intelligent persons day by 
day now become convinced of”—the assumption, namely, 
“that there is a solid nucleus of preternatural fact in the 
phenomena called spiritualistic.” 
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE. 
I might also call your attention to a remarkable paper on 
“ Theism ” in the last number of the Westminster Review, in 
which Spiritualism is referred to as “ the religion of the fu- 
ture,” and of which the writer says : 
“ It is in our midst to-day, with signs and wonders uprising like a swol- 
ien tide, and scorning the barriers of nature’s laws. It comes veiling its 
destined splendors beneath an exterior that invites contempt. Hidden 
from the prudent, its truths are revealed to babes. Once more the weak 
will confound the mighty, the foolish the wise. * * * Spiritualism 
will reestablish, on what professes to be ground of positive evidence, the 
fading belief in a future life—not such a future as is dear to the reigning 
theology, but a future developed from the present, a continuation under 
improved conditions of the scheme of things around us. ’ ’ 
I do not concur with this eloquent waiter in regarding Spir- 
itualism as a “religion,” or as “scorning the barriers of na- 
ture’s laws.” It is neither a religion nor a sect. Reconciling, as 
it does, to our reason, the theory of superior spirits, and hence 
a Supreme Spirit, infinite in His attributes, Spiritualism pre- 
sents the basis for a religion, even as the earth-life presents 
the basis for a morality; and all the “ signs and wonders ” 
are in harmony with universal law. 
Were it not that you would say they belong to the “ pre-sci- 
entific past,” I could quote nearly ail the leading Catholic au- 
thorities of the day in support of the facts (regarded by them DOES MATTER DO IT ALL ? 
7 
as demoniacal) which you would so confidently ignore. But I 
have named to you three of the organs of the highest intellect 
of Protestant England, whose language distinctly intimates a 
belief that there is in these phenomena a preternatural ele- 
ment. I have given you also the names of many distinguished 
men of science, your contemporaries, who have no doubt of 
the facts, and most of whom have explained them by the 
spiritual hypothesis. I could mention the names of some 
sixty journals in different parts of the world, all devoted to 
the discussion of these most interesting thaumaturgic occur- 
rences. And do you think to scare off investigation into 
them by hurling at the subject, from your scientific tripod, 
your missile of dirty words? Is it by such hectoring that you 
hope to suppress an inconvenient topic ? Are we to be awed, 
in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, by the “ priest’s 
cast-off garb, dyed to escape detection ? ” Nay, rather give 
us back the bigotry of religion, and spare us the bigotry of 
your “ positive science ! ” 
A DEATH-DEFYING PRINCIPLE. 
If, as is claimed, there be a “preternatural element” in- 
volved in the manifestations, what fact more important could 
be established ? The question of a death-defying principle 
in man, an invisible body, the continent of his individuality, 
of his entire self, unimpaired by the wreck of matter or by 
the transition to another stage of being ! Were it a question 
of the discovery of a beetle, distinguishable from all other 
known varieties by an additional spot, what respectful heed 
would be given to it by specialists like yourself, and how pa- 
tient would they be of all details ! 
The offence which you charge against the eminent persons 
I have named and other Spiritualists is, it appears, of the 
intellect, that faculty which investigates and reasons. The 
“whoredom” is “intellectual.” If by this you mean any- 
thing beyond mere obscene scurrility—if, to borrow the lan- 
guage of your complaint against the theologians, you are not 8 
DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
merely “ slipping out of the region of courtesy into that of 
scorn and abuse what you would say is that Spiritualism 
implies a prostitution of the intellect in the desertion of truth 
for imposture and delusion. Let us see. 
The primary question is one of facts. You will hardly con- 
tend that the facts, if provable, are not as legitimate a subject 
of scientific investigation as the facts of chemistry or geology. 
Contemptuous as have been your expressions, you have not 
yet had the rashness to say,'with Prof. Huxley : “Supposing 
the phenomena to be genuine, they do not interest me.” For, 
to mention only one of the phenomena, that of tlie sudden ap- 
pearance and disappearance of materialized hands, drapery, 
&o., you, a student of matter, cannot seriously say that you 
are indifferent to a fact which, if admitted, must reverse all 
current notions on the subject. 
Prof. Butlerof, the Russian physicist, of the University of 
St. Petersburg, remarks of the manifestations indicating this 
fact: 
* ‘ The recognition of their reality will very soon be the inevitable duty 
of every honorable observer, and Anally, of ill hufrtanity. This recogni- 
tion will destroy many of the present prevailing views; life and science will 
have to come to terms with it. Our old notions about the essential nature 
of matter dissolve in the light of the actuality of these facts, and new ideas 
present themselves of the endless variety of degrees and forms of exist- 
ence.” 
, , • i r i « 
And yet you, in the very breath in which you deplore the 
illiberality of the clergy toward your own free utterances, do 
your best to prevent investigation into these stupendous facts 
of nature by exerting your influence as a man of science to 
soil the subject with an opprobrious name ! You say, too, 
that Spiritualism is “ degrading; ” as if even that aspersion 
ought to deter a brave, earnest seeker from getting at the 
truth in yespect to it! You, sir, who, through one of your 
German quotations, complain of the “tactics ” of your oppo- 
nents in “treating you contemptuously and trying to dispar- 
age you gradually in the public esteem,” resort to the same 
“tactics” when Spiritualism comes in your way.. DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
9 
TROUBLESOME FACTS. 
I can imagine how exasperating it must be to a physicist of 
your experience to have certain new facts thrust in his face, 
which, if accepted, must unsettle confident theories born of 
years of pursuit of what he has regarded as scientific certain- 
ties. A busy man of science like yourself, how can he afford 
to give his attention to phenomena so subtle and evasive, so 
baffling and extraordinary, that they require much time and 
patience in the investigation, and which, if proved, he can 
classify under no law known to his code; facts for which 
there is no place in any of the pigeon-holes of his laboratory, 
and which flatly contradict, or threaten to contradict, some of 
the laws he has looked on as inviolable? 
The impatient contempt with which Faraday, ITuxley, your- 
self, and the Harvard professors have dismissed the transcend- 
ent facts of Spiritualism affords a lesson which is likely to be 
often referred to in the future as a check to those over-confi- 
dent votaries of science who, disregarding Bacon’s monition, 
make their own a priori objections the measure of nature’s 
possibilities. For you are one of those clever professors whom 
Goethe describes in a passage which you will pardon me for 
translating, since you let us frequently see how well you could 
have read it for yourself in the original: 
“Mast learned Don, 1 know you by these tokens: 
What you can feel not, that can no one feel; 
What comprehend not, no one comprehend; 
What you can’t reckon Is of no account, 
What you can’t weigh can no existence have, 
What you ’ve not coined, that must be counterfeit. ” 
Certain phenomena occur, to which the name spiritual is 
given, simply because they cannot be explained by any 
known physical laws, and because the intelligent force, from 
which they are supposed to proceed, declares itself to be a 
spirit. The establishment of these phenomena, as occurrences 
recognized by science, is merely a question of time. The 
question how far and in what sensC they are spiritual is like- 10 
DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
ly to remain an open one long after the facts are accepted as 
proven. Meanwhile how can any man of science, not crazed 
by prejudice or dwarfed by bigotry, charge it upon any in- 
vestigator of the facts, or holder of the hypothesis, that he is 
lending himself intellectually to a “degrading” subject ? Can 
the verification of any fact of Nature be degrading to the 
honest searcher after trutli ? 
You tell us of certain scientific considerations that will help 
us to see and feel “ what drivellers even men of strenuous in- 
tellect may become, through exclusively dwelling and dealing 
with theological chimeras.” Did it never occur to you what 
“ drivellers ” men of strenuous intellect may become through 
exclusively dwelling and dealing with the chimeras derived 
from one little group of facts to the exclusion of others, some- 
what different in their nature and in the conditions of their 
verification ? Give heed to the familiar wisdom of Arago, 
where he says : “ He who asserts that, outside of the domain 
of pure mathematics, anything is impossible, lacks prudence.” 
SPIRITUALISM ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF ITSELF. 
Spiritualism can now take care of itself. For the last quar- 
ter of a century those who hate and fear it have been com- 
forted almost daily with the assurance that it was at last dead 
and buried ; that some great exposure had taken place which 
explained its tricks and proved it to be all a fraud. Yet here 
it is, more irrepressible than ever, though its exposers seem to 
multiply, and its calumniators call it bad names, such as jug- 
glery, epilepsy, mediomania, and intellectual whoredom. It 
goes on, not at all affected, it would seem, by all these assaults 
of anger, malevolence, charlatanry, and pseudo-science. It 
has survived not only the frauds and misdemeanors of real or 
spurious mediums—not only the dislike and denunciation of 
the critical classes, the religious and the cultivated—but what 
is harder to endure, the help that is harmful, the imprudences 
of its own friends, and the heresies, credulities and stupidities 
that would seek a shelter under its name. DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
11 
Even if it were conclusively proved that two-thirds of those 
persons believed to be genuine mediums, though subject to 
human frailties, like Mrs. Holmes, the Eddys, and others, had 
occasionally, in the absence of supposed spirit-help, resorted 
to imposture, or that all their manifestations were frauds, it 
would not impair the force of the great, irresistible body of 
thoroughly tested facts on which Modern Spiritualism is 
based. 
The thrust at Spiritualism occupies but a line or two of your 
preface. The rest is devoted to a vindication of your thesis 
that “ matter contains within itself the promise and potency 
of all terrestrial life.” In your Belfast address you stated 
this somewhat more broadly, omitting the word terrestrial; 
and you have since so softened down your materialism with 
conditions, qualifications, and admissions that no one who 
has followed you through all your explanations could be sur- 
prised any day to hear of your subscribing to the Thirty-nine 
Articles. 
While seeming to repudiate materialism by conceding that 
there is “an impassable chasm, intellectually, between the 
physical processes of the brain and the facts of consciousness,” 
you take away all the force and grace of the concession by 
saying: 
“ Were not man’s origin implicated, we should accept without a mur- 
mur the derivation of animal and-vegetable life from what we call inor- 
ganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this way and no 
other. But this purity is troubled by our interests in this life and by our 
hopes and fears regarding the world to come. ” 
This looks very much like a contradiction. After having 
told us that “ the passage from the physics of the brain to the 
corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable,” you 
would have us suppose that nevertheless “ pure intellect,” 
untroubled by hopes and fears of a world to come, does not 
at all regard as unthinkable the derivation of animal life, in- 
cluding consciousness, of course, from “ inorganic nature,” 
or its equivalent, matter. 12 
DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
HOPES AND FEARS OF FUTURE LIFE. 
And so, after all, the “impassable chasm ” may be easily 
leaped by an esprit fort! If we will only give up our foolish 
little hopes and fears about a future life, it will not be so diffi- 
cult for us to ascribe all our faculties, including conscious- 
ness, genius, and love, to matter. 
But how can the chasm at once be passable and impassa- 
ble ? This disposition on your part to hedge—to make con- 
cessions which, when hard pressed by your clerical assailants, 
you can fall back on to prove that you are not the atheist 
they would make you out, while, at other times, you would 
create the impression that science and “ pure intellect ” favor 
your notion that matter is the all-sufficient factor—is mani- 
fest through all your argument, both in your present preface 
and in your Belfast address. No one will suppose you insin- 
cere ; but, to put the case mildly, does not this almost simul- 
taneous coquetry with opposite opinions indicate a somewhat 
unguarded and superficial way of treating a great subject ? 
If any further proof of your fickleness in arguing were 
needed, it may be found in that passage where you say : 
“ Noram I anxious to shut out the idea that the life here spoken of [the 
‘ life Immanent everywhere’] maybe hut a subordinate part and func- 
tion of a higher life, as the living, moving blood is subordinate to the liv- 
ing man. I resist no such idea so long as it is not dogmatically imposed.1 ’ 
Here, with a princely generosity, though not in lucid lan- 
guage, you permit us to entertain the theistic idea. Here 
you accept a supposition which wholly neutralizes the 
theory of materialism. Do you not see that iu granting to 
matter a spiritual property, an infusion from a "higher life,” 
a deific impulse, you abandon your dream of the “ promise 
and potency” of mere matter, and nullify your threat of 
“ wresting from theology the entire domain of cosmological 
theory ?” 
You cannot escape by saying that the theologic conception be- 
longs to the region of the emotions, while yours is the conclu- 
sion of pure science ; for you virtually admit with Locke that DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
13 
matter may be divinely gifted with the power of producing 
mind and other marvels. You do not “shut out ” that idea, 
only it must not be “dogmatically imposed.” No more must 
the idea of the “promise and potency” of mere matter be 
dogmatically imposed ! To your hypothesis, Theology replies 
with another which neutralizes it, and exposes the impotence 
of the threat you address to her. 
“ Promise and potency ! ” Have you never had any mis- 
giving as to your right to use these words in the way you do ? 
Are they not wholly metaphorical in their application to the 
processes of pure, unaided matter, or inorganic nature ? Have 
they any strictly scientific validity or fitness ? Shall we allow 
you to express unintelligent operations in terms of mind 
when your purpose is to prove that no mind is needed in the 
case ? 
REDUCING MATTER. 
You would reduce matter to a spiritual activity, having 
thinking and matter, the “potency” of appearing and perceiv- 
ing, for its two-fold functions ; and then you call upon us to 
regard it still as matter, having within itself the “ promise 
and the potency of all terrestrial life!” Reason cannot accept 
such postulates. Even Hartley, whose vibratory hypothesis 
was welcomed by materialists, admits that it is the same 
thing whether we suppose that matter has properties and 
powers unlike those which appear in it, and superior to them, 
or whether we suppose an immaterial substance. You say : 
“I have spoken above as If the assumption of a soul would save Mr. Mar- 
tineau from the Inconsistency of crediting pure matter with the astonish- 
ing building power displayed in crystals and trees. This, however, would 
not be the necessary result, for it would remain to be proved that the soul 
assumed is not itself matter.” 
And you then quote Tertullian to show that he “ was quite 
a physicist in the definiteness of his conceptions regarding the 
soul,” since he believed in its corporeal nature; and you won- 
der “what would have happened to this great Christain fa- 
ther amid the roaring lions of Belfast.” 
But you omit to inform your readers that Tertullian was 14 
DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
after all, a Spiritualist, in the strictly modern sense, since the 
corporeal soul in which he believed was simply the equivalent 
of the spiritual body of the teachings according to Spiritual- 
ism ; for he drew his notions of the soul not only from his in- 
terpretations of the Bible, but from the communications of a 
female medium, who, he says, described a soul as corporeally 
exhibited to her view, and as being “tender and lucid, and 
of aerial color, and every way of human form.” 
Tertullian was largely influenced by his knowledge of phe- 
nomena quite similar to those of Modern Spiritualism; but he 
left the question an open one how far all organisms are in- 
debted for life, intelligence, and formative power to a divine 
influx, a “ higher life.” The fact of such an influx is what 
no human science can prove or disprove. In the nature of 
things the eternal cause must be above all proof. To prove 
God would be to look down upon God, to be superior to God. 
After having admitted that “the life immanent everywhere” 
maybe “ a subordinate part and function of a higher life,” 
you, with a strange neglect of your admission, call upon Mr. 
Martineau to tell you at what moment the soul could have 
come in, if, in the production of the snow-crystal, for example, 
“an imponderable formative soul unites itself with the sub- 
stance after its escape from the liquid.” And you playfully 
ask, “ Did it enter at once or by degrees ? Is it distributed 
through the entire mass of the crystal ? lias it legs or arms ? 
What becomes of it when the crystal is dissolved? Why 
should a particular temperature be needed before it can exer- 
cise its vocation ?” &c. 
Did it never occur to you that the “ higher life,” which you 
concede as an idea not to be excluded, may account for the 
soul, not only in the formative power of the snow-crystal, but 
in all organisms, vegetable and animal? The force which 
every being and every thing is possessed of lies in its idea; 
and this idea—a vitalizing, spiritual principle—is from God, 
THE HIGHER LIFE. DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
15 
or, if you please, “ the higher life.” What would be thought 
of the reasoner who, for proof of the heat in a body, should 
ask, “ Has it legs or arms? What becomes of it? Did it en- 
ter at once, or by degrees ? ” 
Universal science is bringing us nearer every day to this 
conception of a single elementary substance or force, from 
which, by differentiation, transformation, and the infinite ad- 
justment of proportions, all the varieties, properties, and ex- 
quisite forms of matter and marvels of mind are produced ; 
and in this intelligent force, informing principle, or “higher 
life,” pervading all things and culminating in the human 
soul, we have a glimpse of the immediate agency of deity. 
You ask, “ If there be anything besides matter in the egg, 
or in the infant subsequently slumbering in the womb, what 
is it? ” And you conclude, “ Matter I define that mysterious 
thing by which all this is accomplished. How it came to have 
this power is a question on which I never ventured an opin- 
ion.” 
But, sir, it is to venture a very decided opinion to admit, as 
not in conflict with your hypothesis, the notion that the origin 
of the power may be in a “higher life,” of which the lower 
life, revealed in matter, maybe a “function.” And when 
you employ the words “promise and potency ” to character- 
ize the evolution issuing in manifestations of beauty, presci- 
ence, adaptation, mind, and consciousness, you invest mat- 
ter with that “ higher life,” the conception of which you seem 
at times, with a strange contradiction, to relegate to the re- 
gion of the emotions. Your “mysterious something” be- 
comes a two-faced unity, like “ the convex and concave of the 
same curve,” partaking of properties which the theologians 
call spiritual, and which you prefer to call “promise and po- 
tency.” 
A FRUITLESS CONTENTION. 
But what an aimless logomachy it is, then, that you are en- 
gaged in! After all the qualifications and elaborations of 
your argument—and I admire the eloquence and imaginative 16 
DOES MATTER DO IT ALL? 
grace which you put forth in your style—you are brought to 
an admission which dematerializes your vaunted matter, in- 
troduces a mysterious agency which, for all that you can show 
to the contrary, may be spiritual, and points, in spite of your 
skeptical “What is it?” to “something besides matter in the 
egg.” 
You express, in conclusion, a hope that the minds of the fu- 
ture may be “purer and mightier than ours, partly because of 
their deeper knowledge of matter and their more faithful con- 
formity to its laws.” 
And yet here are phenomena, attested to by thousands of 
competent witnesses, for which it is claimed that they prove 
the instant apparent production and dissipation of matter by 
what is believed to be a superior intelligent force or will- 
phenomena going on under your very nose, and which have 
been tested by Wallace, Crookes, Yarley, Wagner, Butlerof, 
Aksakof, Harrison, Sexton, Buchanan, Gunning, Denton, 
and hundreds of other respectable physicists ; and yet you, 
without giving to the subject the study that you would have 
to give to a fly’s wing in order to test what science asserts of 
it, escape from the whole amazing body of facts, and the hy- 
pothesis that would account for them, with the brave, ingen- 
uous cry of 
But I will spare you the repetition of the ribald scoff. If it 
came to you from those higher moods, those “ Alpine sum- 
mits,” those “moments of clearness and vigor,” to which you 
claim to be sometimes lifted, what form of speech would you 
have found unclean enough for the lower level of your ordi- 
nary discourse ? 
Respectfully, Epes Sargent. 
No. 68 Moreland street, Boston, Mass., Dec. 11th, 1875.