"I don't know what to say. But dogs are extraordinarily sensitive. I do
not think it beyond the bounds of possibility that the tumult of your
nerves--for there was tumult; you confess it--communicated itself to
him."

"And was the cause of his conduct?"

"Yes. In the course of my career I have been consulted by a great many
patients whose nervous systems have been disastrously upset by the
practices you describe, by so-called spiritualism, table-turning, and
so forth. One man I knew, trying to cultivate himself onto what he
called 'a higher plane,' cultivated himself into a lunatic asylum,
where he still remains."

"Then you consider spiritualism--?"

"I have too much respect for the soul, too much belief in its great
destiny, Cresswell, to juggle with it, or to play tricks with it. When
one meets a genius one does not want to have a game at puss-in-the-corner
with him. One is rather anxious to hear him talk seriously and display
his mind. When I come into contact with a soul, I don't want to try to
detach it from the home in which a divine power has placed it for a time.
I glory in many limitations against which it is the prevailing fashion
to fight uselessly. The soul can do all its work where it is--in the
body. The influence you exercise over your friend Addison convinces me
of the existence of spirits, things which will eventually be freed from
the body, more certainly than any amount of material manifestations,
sights, sounds, apparent physical sensations. Why should we not be
satisfied with remaining, for a time, as we are? I consider that you and