unascertained personal conditions, the reluctance of physicists to
examine them is very natural and intelligible.

Whether the determination to taboo research into them, and to
denounce their examination as of perilous moral consequence, is
scientific, or is obscurantist, every one may decide for himself.
The quest for truth is usually supposed to be regardless of
consequences, meanwhile, till science utters an opinion, till Roma
locuta est, and does not, after a scrambling and hasty inquiry, or
no inquiry at all, assert a prejudice; mere literary and historical
students cannot be expected to pronounce a verdict.

Spiritualists, and even less convinced persons, have frequently
denounced official men of science for not making more careful and
prolonged investigations in this dusky region. It is not enough,
they say, to unmask one imposture, or to sit in the dark four or
five times with a 'medium'. This affair demands the close scrutiny
of years, and the most patient and persevering experiment.

This sounds very plausible, but the few official men of science,
whose names the public has heard,--and it is astonishing how famous
among his peers a scientific character may be, while the public has
never heard of him--can very easily answer their accusers: 'What,'
they may cry, 'are we to investigate? It is absurd to ask us to
leave our special studies, and sit for many hours, through many
years, probably in the dark, with an epileptic person, and a few
hysterical believers. We are not conjurers or judges of conjuring.'
Again, is a man like Professor Huxley, or Lord Kelvin, to run about
the country, examining every cottage where there are rumours of
curious noises, and where stones and other missiles are thrown