And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in the same category.
The only good that I can see in a demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a séance.
I am, sir, etc.,
T. H. Huxley.
29th January, 1869.
As if opposing a direct negative and rebuke to this radical scepticism, based on a single séance of observation (!) the learned electrician, Cromwell Fleetwood Varley, in 1867, who did so much to forward and encourage the laying of the third (and finally successful) Atlantic cable between Europe and America, hastened to identify himself with the investigations, and by his aid materially furthered the progress of this scientific examination.
The report, with its various pieces of testimony, was presented to the Dialectical Society on the 20th of July, 1870. But, in order not to compromise the society, it was decided not to publish it officially, under the ægis of the association. Consequently the committee unanimously resolved to publish the report on its own responsibility. It reads as follows:
Your Committee have held fifteen meetings, at which they received evidence from thirty-three persons, who described phenomena which, they stated, had occurred within their own personal experience.
Your Committee have received written statements relating to the phenomena from thirty-one persons.
Your Committee invited the attendance and requested the co-operation and advice of scientific men who had publicly expressed opinions, favourable or adverse, to the genuineness of the phenomena.
Your Committee also specially invited the attendance of persons who had publicly ascribed the phenomena to imposture or delusion.