So far, many curious phenomena were alleged to have occurred, but now Dr. Edmunds, who started the whole inquiry, sent in a separate report.  He complained that convinced spiritualists had ‘captured’ the editing sub-committee, as people say, and had issued a report practically spiritualistic.  He himself had met nothing more remarkable than impudent frauds or total failure.  ’Raps, noises, and movements of various kinds,’ he had indeed witnessed, and he heard wondrous tales from truthful people, ’but I have never been able to see anything worthy of consideration, as not being accounted for by unconscious action, delusion, or imposture’.  Then the editors of the Report contradicted Dr. Edmunds on points of fact, and Mr. A. R. Wallace disabled his logic, {21} and Mr. Geary dissented from the Report, and the editors said that his statements were incorrect, and that he was a rare attendant at seances, and Serjeant Cox vouched for more miracles, and a great many statements of the most astounding description were made by Mr. Varley, an electrician, by D. D. Home, by the Master of Lindsay (Lord Crawford) and by other witnesses who had seen Home grow eight inches longer and also shorter than his average height; fly in the air; handle burning coals unharmed, cause fragrance of various sweet scents to fill a room, and, in short, rival St. Joseph of Cupertino in all his most characteristic performances.  Unluckily Mr. Home, not being in the vein, did not one of these feats in presence of Mr. Bradlaugh and sub-committee No. 5.  These results are clearly not of a convincing and harmonious description, and thus ended the attempt of the Dialectical Society.  Nobody can do otherwise than congratulate Professor Huxley and Mr. Lewes, on their discreet reserve.  The inquiry of the Dialectical Society was a failure; the members of the committees remained at variance; and it is natural to side with the sceptics rather than with those who believed from the first, or were converted (as many are said to have been) during the experiments.  Perhaps all such inquiries may end in no more than diversity of opinion.  These practical researches ought not to be attempted by the majority of people, if by any.  On many nervous systems, the mere sitting idly round a table, and calling the process a seance, produces evil effects.

As to the idea of purposely evoking the dead, it is at least as impious, as absurd, as odious to taste and sentiment, as it is insane in the eyes of reason.  This protest the writer feels obliged to make, for while he regards the traditional, historical and anthropological curiosities here collected as matters of some interest, in various aspects, he has nothing but abhorrence and contempt for modern efforts to converse with the manes, and for all the profane impostures of ‘spiritualism’.