and the senses apparently produced by some action of a distant mind, of hallucinations coincident with remote events, of physical prodigies that contradict the law of gravitation, or of inexplicable sounds, lights, and other occurrences in certain localities.  These are just the things which Medicine Men, Mediums and classical Diviners have always pretended to provoke and produce by certain arts or rites.  Secondly, whether they do or do not occasionally succeed, apart from fraud, in these performances, the ‘spontaneous’ phenomena are attested by a mass and quality of evidence, ancient, mediaeval and modern, which would compel attention in any other matter.  Living, sane, and scientifically trained men now,—­not to speak of ingenious, and intelligent, if superstitious observers in the past,—­and Catholic gleaners of contemporary evidence for saintly miracle, and witnesses, judges, and juries in trials for witchcraft, are undeniably all ‘in the same tale’.

Now we can easily devise an explanation of the stories told by savages, by fanatics, by peasants, by persons under ecclesiastical influence, by witches, and victims of witches.  That is simple, but why are sane, scientific, modern observers, and even disgusted modern sceptics, in a tale, and that just the old savage tale?  What makes them repeat the stories they do repeat?  We do not so much ask:  ‘Are these stories true?’ as, ‘Why are these stories told?’ Professor Ray Lankester puts the question thus, and we are still at a loss for an answer.

Meanwhile modern science has actually accepted as real, some strange psychological phenomena which both science and common-sense rejected, between 1720 and 1840, roughly speaking.  The accepted phenomena are always reported, historically, as attendant on the still more strange, and still rejected occurrences.  We are thus face to face with a curious question of evidence:  To what extent are some educated modern observers under the same illusions as Red Men, Kaffirs, Eskimo, Samoyeds, Australians, and Maoris?  To what extent does the coincidence of their testimony with that of races so differently situated and trained, justify curiosity, interest, and perhaps suspense of judgment?

The question of the value of the facts is one to be determined by physiologists, physicians, physicists, and psychologists.  It is clear that the alleged phenomena, both those now accepted and those still rejected, attend, or are said to attend, persons of singular physical constitution.  It is not for nothing that Iamblichus, describing the constitution of his diviner, or seer, and the phenomena which he displays, should exactly delineate such a man as St. Joseph of Cupertino, with his miracles as recounted in the Acta Sanctorum {9} (1603-1663).  Now certain scientific, and (as a layman might suppose), qualified persons, aver that they have seen and even tested, in modern instances, the phenomena insisted on by Iamblichus, by the Bollandists, and by a great company