philosophy. At present, they appear to be astride the fence between
philosophy and science, as if they hoped in some way to make the former
satisfy the latter's demands. But the difference between the evidence that
demonstrates a fact and the evidence that confirms a truth is, once more,
a difference less of degree than of kind. We can never obtain sensible
verification of a proposition that transcends sense. We must accept it
without material proof, or not at all. We may believe, for instance, that
Creation is the work of an intelligent Divine Being; or we may disbelieve
it; but we can never prove it. If we do believe it, innumerable
confirmations of it meet us at every turn: but no such confirmations, and
no multiplication of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For belief is ever
incommunicable from without; it can be generated only from within. The
term "belief" cannot be applied to our recognition of a physical fact: we
do not believe in that--we are only sensible of it.

In this connection, a few words will be in order concerning what is called
Spiritism,--a subject which has of late years been exciting a good deal of
remark. Its disciples claim for it the dignity of a new and positive
revelation,--a revelation to sense of spiritual being. Now, the entire
universe may be described as a revelation to sense of spiritual being--for
those who happen to believe _a priori_, or from spontaneous inward
conviction, in spiritual being. We may believe a man's body, for example,
to be the effect of which his soul is the cause; but no one can reach that
conviction by the most refined dissection of the bodily tissues. How,
then, does the spiritists' Positive Revelation help the matter? Their
answer is that the physical universe is a permanent and orderly phenomenon
which (setting aside the problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for
itself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such as rapping, table-
tipping, materializing, and so forth, are, if not supernatural, at any
rate extra-natural. They occur in consequence of a conscious effort to