"I am ready," said Miller, promptly. "Garland, will you purvey another psychic and conduct the pursuit?"
"Yes, provided you all come in with spirits attuned, ready to wait patiently and observe silently. The law of these materializations seems to be this: the forces of the psychic are proportional to the harmoniousness of the circle and in inverse proportion to the light. Accepting this law as proved by our illustrious fellow-experimenters abroad, are you ready to try again along the lines they have marked out?"
As with one voice, all agreed.
"Very well," said I; "I will see what I can do for you in the way of a new psychic and new phenomena. We will now experiment with design to prove the identity of the reappearing dead. Of this I am fully persuaded. Men will be discovering new laws of nature ten thousand years from now, just as they are to-day. It is inconceivable that the secrets of the universe should ever be entirely made plain. The world of mystery retires before the dawn. Nothing is really explained—what we call familiar facts are at bottom inexplicable mysteries, and must ever remain so."
"Then why go on? Why not stop now and save ourselves the trouble of investigation?"
"Because there is joy in the pursuit—because it is in the nature of man to pursue this quest. Who knows but the conclusions of Venzano and Morselli, of Bottazzi and Foà, have opened new vistas in human nature? These 'supernormal powers' may chance to be of immense value to the race, quite aside from their bearing upon the problem of death. Furthermore, these reports come at a time when a hard-and-fast literalism of interpretation is the fashion among scientists like Miller. Perhaps they and the art of the day will alike be offered new inspiration by these mystifying enlargements of human faculty. I for one feel profoundly indebted to these brave and clear-brained Italian scientists. I should like to see the physicists of our own universities busying themselves with this most absorbing and vital problem."
"But they don't," retorted Fowler. "They will not even read Bottazzi's reports."
And I fear he is justified in his belief.
[As I am reading proof on this page a fat letter from a friend in Naples comes to my desk, filled with the several corroborative accounts of a special sitting with Paladino which Professor Bottazzi kindly arranged for them. My correspondent is a New York editor, and in his party of six was the associate professor of chemistry in a big Eastern college. After detailing the many marvellous phenomena which took place in his presence, Professor M—— says: "In view of the phenomena with which I am habitually concerned, I did not want to believe in Paladino's supernormal powers, but I had to accept what I saw." These reports bring Bottazzi's experiments closer to the dead. I hope they will bring them a little nearer to my readers. "Bottazzi has no slightest doubt of the phenomena," is the concluding line of my friend's letter.]