mysteries, and the glory of the next? May not this be the new era that
is about opening in the progress of all things? It may be asked, is it
not possible that a new principle is about being evolved, that will
admit of communication between the living and the physically dead? May
it not be that the world and its surroundings, have become so changed,
that what was impossible thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago,
may have become, or be about to become possible now? That the same
process which carried this earth forward from the beginning, that so
changed the atmosphere of old, rendered it fit to sustain animal life
in its rudest structure, that so changed it again, as to make it
capable of sustaining a higher order of animal organism, that kept on
changing, and improving the whole face of the earth, that so arranged
organic matter, as to make this world, at last, a fit residence for
man, may be going on still; approaching all things nearer, and nearer
to perfection, until we have arrived upon the threshold of an era,
when living men may commune with the spirits of the physically dead?
An era as yet but in its dawn, when the stupendous future can be seen
only as through a glass darkly?

"Remember, I do not assert my faith in a theory which is indicated by
an affirmative answer to these inquiries, for I have none. I give the
record of the earth's progress in the past, as it is written upon the
rocks, standing out upon precipices, brought to light by the
researches, and translated by the energy of science from forgotten and
buried ages. The deductions to be drawn from it, I leave to those who
have a taste for the speculative, neither believing in, nor
quarrelling with the theory which they may predicate upon it."