quence of the moist air acting as a conductor. Agreeably to some experiments which I made, a fog from hot water does not act as a conductor. Evidently, were a fog or a cloud a conductor, the air and moisture forming a thunder cloud could not be electrified, so as to give the discharges which constitute lightning.

1884. It is well known that a tube will carry more lightning than a rod, of which the sectional area should comprise the same quantity of metal. Yet, when the wire is too small to carry a charge outside, it is acted upon intestinally and may be explosively deflagrated. But while the existence of a film of moisture upon the glass legs of an electrical machine, may paralyze its power, to a powerful galvanic battery moisture is well known to be essential.

1885. If the poles of a powerful voltaic series, while highly charged, were severally to have a conducting communication with the conductors of an electrical machine, it would discharge them so rapidly, that the most active working would not enable them to give a spark; yet at the poles of the same series there might be charges accumulated which would, in effecting chemical decomposition, heating, deflagrating wire, or inducing magnetism, be immensely superior to that created by a machine.

1886. Farraday's reasoning and observations, founded on the idea that the only difference between galvanic and frictional electricity was that between quantity and intensity, led him to take up the idea that a grain of water with an equivalent of zinc would evolve as much electricity as sixteen millions of square feet of coated glass, charged by a powerful machine of fifty inches in diameter. I am surprised that Farraday did not consider his premises erroneous, when he found them involving such startling conclusions.

1887. The source of this startling inference was, I think, as follows: Farraday entertained the opinion, that the only difference between voltaic and frictional electricity was that of quantity and intensity. He went so far as to intimate that this opinion would be entertained the more confidently as the electrician forming his decision should be better acquainted with the subject. I advanced what appeared to me unanswerable objections to this conclusion, but such as were not deemed by him worthy of reply. Unduly confident in his postulate, Farraday first ascertained the greatest effect which could be produced by a certain number of turns of a powerful machine, with a fifty inch plate, in causing a deviation of the galvanometric needle, and then, comparing the quantity of zinc and water required to produce the same effect through galvanic action, by a rule-ofthree statement the result above mentioned was obtained. In my view the error arose from overlooking the fact that in the one case the whole discharge was exercised in polarizing the ponderable matter, while in the other only a portion of the discharge was thus employed, being only a secondary effect of the polarization of the circumambient medium. Only

that portion of the charge which was forced into an association with the ponderable matter, had any effect on the galvanometric needle.

1888. According to Gaziot's experiments, a Grove's battery of 320 pairs would not give a spark before contact at any distance, although frictional machines, proportionally powerful, have given sparks at twenty inches.

1889. Thus the laws of conduction and insulation, as respects the two kinds of electricity in question, are different; the waves of polarization are in the case of the galvanic circuit confined to absolute contact with conducting ponderable matter. It cannot pass through the electrical medium or the air by the diruptive process. When once a passage has been made for it, it may pass convectively, carrying with it the polarizable matter, as may be seen in the arch formed between the poles of a powerful voltaic series after contact.

1890. This arch cannot be formed between two metallic points, because none but those of a most fixed and infusible nature can support the heat produced. It is only between charcoal points that it can be created, because no other competent conductor is infusible at the temperature of its volatilization. It is in fact only by the process in question, that charcoal can be volatilized per se. It may be inferred that as those waves of electro-polarity which require the presence of ponderable as well as ethereal matter cannot pass over an interval without the assistance of ponderable matter such as is supplied by the coal. On contact with each other, the points completing the circuit are subjected to an intensity of the polarizing power which causes the carbon of the points, in the state of vapour, to become associated with the ethereal waves, and thus produces the flaming arch, which distinguishes the scene of reciprocal neutralization.

Of Mind, as existing independently, and as distinguished from Matter. 1891. Three ideas must coexist in every rational being; nihility, mind, and matter. We can, of course, conceive of a perfectly void space, and likewise of a mathematical point, which designates a position not an entity. Yet, position cannot be determined without surrounding entities, between which this point exists, without having claim to any portion of those entities, whether there be only one actual material surface, or where several are cornered together. Of such points we have already treated, as forming at the immovable centre of a rotating mass, so that a centre is, of course, one state of the existence of such a point.

1892. After the considerations already presented, it will be seen that there is great difficulty in conceiving of the existence of an atom of matter endowed with polarity, and of course with two centres of two analogous, but opposite and irreconcilable forces. And we must consider that there are more than fifty such heterogeneous elementary atoms, all endowed with various degrees of affinity, so as that two may unite energetically to the ex

clusion of a third. This is designated as a case of decomposition, and may be exemplified by the process in which water is explosively decomposed by potassium, with which the oxygen of the water unites to the exclusion of hydrogen. When we see that from seven parts, by weight, of charcoal, and about nine parts of water, sugar ensues; that the sweetness with which this sugar is endowed, is the result of a difference between this substance and starch, in the proportion of the watery elements: starch consisting of less water than sugar, with the same amount of charcoal; when we learn that twelve parts, by weight, of charcoal, fourteen parts of nitrogen, and one of hydrogen, constitute the deadly prussic acid; and when, in fact, we discover that the atoms of matter which compose our flesh are capable of entering into as many active chemical combinations as the beads of a kaleidoscope can be productive of figures, then it will be manifest that the phenomena characterizing what we call matter, as well as the powers of that matter, are such as to prove our utter incapacity to comprehend the powers and properties of material atoms, and that we must not object to any wonder that nature may produce, because it is beyond our comprehension.*

1893. The belief in the powers displayed by matter does not then result from their being explicable, but from their being evident, just as the elaboration of the chick from the egg demonstrates the fact that the yolk and the white have been converted into a chicken without our being enabled to comprehend the process by which it has been effected. Such being the imperfection of our knowledge respecting the intricate nature of matter and its reactions, it seems to me inconsistent that there should have been such backwardness to believe in the independent existence of mind, of which the phenomena and properties are quite as evident as those of matter, the mode of existence and operation in either ease being inscrutable.

1894. The great distinction between mind and matter is the presence of will on the one side, and the absence of it upon the other. Vis inertiæ is the antipodes of will; and if gravitation have any association with will, it will be that of the Creator; but in the inert mass actuated, it serves only to add to the evidence of incapability of self-actuation.

1895. Passion and reason, the parents of will, are properties as manifest as those which, surrounding a centre, give to it that idea of a central force which indicates the presence of material atoms, though it does not constitute them, as I have urged.

1896. The existence of vis inertiæ, gravitation, and chemical affinity,

* It were absurd to draw any conclusion from this, that incomprehensibility is a reason for believing the miracles ascribed to Mohammed or any other religious impostor. That we cannot understand how a result is accomplished is no reason for disbelieving it in opposition to the evidence of our senses; but, at the same time, it forms no reason for believing, of itself, but is rather a clog upon belief, when intuitively awakened.

is not more evident as properties of ponderable matter than reason and passion and consequent will are of mind; nor is will less evidently the offspring of reason and passion, than momentum is of vis inertiæ and gravitation. The existence of these attributes of mind is as evident as is the existence of those of ponderable matter, and the incomprehensibility of their origin or mode of operation should no more be an obstacle to belief in the former case than in the latter.

1897. Nothing is more thoroughly fundamental and essential in the. doctrine inculcated by revelation than the omnipotency of the will of God. According to Scripture, the whole heaven and earth, and all that is in them, sprung into existence in consequence of the fiat of the Deity, whose will, under the designation of "overruling providence," is alleged to regulate every thing, even to the fall of a sparrow, or the advent of a pestilence. It follows that the suggestions which I have made respecting the powers of mind are perfectly orthodox, so far as the mind of the Creator is concerned; and as, according to orthodoxy, man is made after God's own image, however humble and minute may be the being so made, his mind, so far as it exists, must be, within the sphere allotted to it, existing upon an analogous footing to that of its author. The idea of all things coming from the creative power of God as the first cause, involves the existence of the divine-will power, of the first cause; and consequently, beings endowed with an analogous will, must, so far as they have any available existence, be endowed with will-power, of which the potentiality may be more extensive in spirits than in mortals.

1898. It is because there is no other imaginable power which can be productive of the rationality of the universal creation, that forms the great argument for assuming the will of a reasoning Deity to be the cause of causes. Vain were it to appeal to any irrational force under the name of odylic, or any other, to explain the divine attributes on which this argument reposes. In like manner, the assailants of Spiritualism cannot find any nominal force, whether new or old, which can explain the rationality of the results which I have submitted to the public in this book, as coming from the minds of my spirit friends.

Of Spirit independently, or as distinguished from Mind and Matter. 1899. It has been alleged above, that three ideas must exist in the conception of every rational being; nihility, mind, matter.

1900. Mind is distinct from matter in its usual acceptation; but it also differs from nihility. There are some attributes common to mind and matter; since they cannot be considered as nothing, they must both be something. Therefore, the word thing applies to either, and thing is sometimes received as synonymous with matter. But between these two kinds of things, mind and matter, we have an intermediate thing called

spirit, which is sometimes confounded with mind. In its original sense, this word merely denoted a thin or refined matter, such as air, wind, breath. In chemistry, it has been applied to every thing obtained by distillation, as, for instance, spirit of wine, spirit of salt, spirit of nitre, of vitriol, spirit of turpentine.*.

1901. Hence, by analogy, when the mind of a mortal, after death, was seen, or supposed to be seen, in a shadowy form called a ghost or shade, it was conceived to be the spirit or essence of the mortal body which it had inhabited. It was the body which the mind took or kept for its integuments after abandoning its perishable mundane casket, as the spirits are wont to call the carnal body.

1902. It is difficult for us mortals to conceive of mind without such a spiritual body. Yet, agreeably to information from my spirit friends, the substances of which the bodies, the country, and habitations of spirits are constituted, seem to have the attributes of materiality no less than the substances of which the bodies, the territory, and the habitations of mortals are constituted. Their spiritual substances perform for them the same offices as our material substances do for ours, yet it is expedient to distinguish them by different appellations, and those cited here have been sanctioned by custom at least as far as the time of St. Paul, or when these words in Genesis were first used: "The spirit of God moved on the surface of the water."

1903. Hence, the words materialism and materialist have been made synonymous with unbelief or unbeliever in a future state of spiritual existence.

1904. Spirit has also been confounded with mind or soul, or so associated that we speak of the spirit of a friend, when intending to convey the idea of soul or mind.

1905. The soul seems to be understood as the basis both of the passions

* In this last sense it is used as synonymous with essence. By chemists, latterly, spirit of turpentine is called oil of turpentine. All the volatile oils obtained by delicate distillation, usually with water, like oil of turpentine, are called essential oils or essences.

As respects the employment of language to express ideas when a new view is originated, there is a choice of evils; we are placed between Scylla and Charybdis. There is no alternative but to use an old word in a sense more or less new, or to coin a new one. In either case there is a manifest disadvantage; and the question arises, shall we teach a new meaning for an old word, or present to those to whom we would convey our ideas a new idea with a new word to designate it? The word matter, it will be found, has, in Webster's dictionary, ten meanings assigned to it? Though in some of its acceptations it may be considered as applicable to every thing that exists, so as to qualify space so far as to distinguish it from nihility. Nevertheless, it has been used as distinguishing those substances which are neither spiritual nor mental. The antagonism of spirit and matter in the words, "There is a spiritual body and a material body," is not warranted in che mistry, since the distillate or spirit evolved by distillation is a material body, however it may be more volatile or of less density than the caput mortuum left in the alembic or retort.