Spiritualist power cease.

The bare statement of the conditions whereunder the Mediums maintain
that the manifestations of Independent Slate Writing are alone possible,
involves the extreme difficulty, we might almost say the impossibility,
of any genuine or rational investigation. Even the very spirit of
investigation, or of incredulity, seems to exercise a chilling effect
and prevents a successful manifestation. Indeed Mr. Hazard once told us
that the true spirit in which to approach the study of Spiritualism is
'an entire willingness to be deceived.' In Independent Slate Writing, in
our experience, there is a period, of longer or shorter duration, when
the slate is concealed. During this period the investigator's eye must
not watch it. When the slate is held under the table, knees and feet
and clothing exert no deleterious effect, but the gaze of a human eye is
fatal to all Spiritual manifestation; although to one of our number, on
three occasions, a pocket mirror, carefully adjusted, unknown to the
Medium, gave back the reflection of fingers, which were clearly not
Spiritual, opening the slates and writing the answer.

There is really no step in the bare process of producing this writing,
as we have observed it, which might not be accomplished by trickery or
by legerdemain. Of course, therefore, we were sincerely anxious to
disprove in these experiments the presence of those discreditable
elements, not only for the credit of human nature, but for the sake of
the great scientific interest involved. We are perfectly ready to accept
any fact of Spiritual power; and so far from flinching from an open
avowal of our belief in this revelation of a novel force in Nature, we
would welcome it. But no one, not a Spiritualist, we should suppose, can
demand of us that we should accept profound mysteries with our eyes
tight shut, and our hands fast closed, and with every avenue to our