at hearing that any one they know is a socialist, would be still more amazed if they knew how many of the very salt of the earth belong (or did belong) to this despised and much dreaded body of thinkers. Grant Allen, one of the most intellectual and many-sided men of our time, was one of us; so is Sir Oliver Lodge, one' of our foremost students of physical science; and Professor Karl Pearson, a great mathematical evolutionist. Among the clergy we have the Rev. John Clifford, R. C. Fillingham, and many others among the Christian socialists, who are as much socialists as any of us. Among men of university training or of high literary ability we have H. M. Hyndman, Edward Carpenter, J. A. Hobson, Sydney Webb, Hubert Bland, H. S. Salt, J. C. Kenworthy, Morrison-Davidson, and many others. Of poets there are Gerald Massey and Sir Lewis Morris. The labour members of Parliament are almost all socialists; while Margaret Macmillan, the Countess of Warwick, and many less known women are earnest workers for the cause.

I should almost think that Mrs. Humphrey Ward was a socialist at heart or as an ideal, or she could not have set forth its principles and the arguments for it so well as she has done in "Marcella." But the weak and illogical conclusion of that and some other books caused me to write to Grant Allen, urging him to write a thorough socialistic story, which I felt sure he could do better than any one I knew. His reply was so interesting from a literary point of view that I give it here. It is the last letter I received from him.

"Hotel Royal, Varenna, Italy, April 24.

"I despair of giving you in writing all the reasons why your suggestion is for me an impossible one. There are eleven thousand; I will content myself with two. The first is practical. I have to write stories which editors will accept and the public will buy. Now, no editor will take a socialistic story-I have tried, and failed; and the public will not buy such stories to a sufficient extent to pay for the trouble. As a general rule, the more in earnest I am about a subject, the

less I get for it. The second reason is artistic. A story grows out of a plot or situation, and cannot be forced in the way you describe, as I at least do not know how to force it. Plots come. I could not invent a plot in order to sustain a particular thesis. Thank you so much for the many kind expressions in your letter. Come and see us some day on Hind Head, when you are passing up or down, and we will thrash this matter out more fully.

I do not know to what he alludes when he says he "has tried and failed." "The Woman who Did" was not socialistic, and I can only suppose he refers to a short story of life in a phalanstery, where all children in the least deformed are killed at one year old, for the improvement of the race; and the feelings of the mother for her first-born are vividly described, though, as the law was absolute and known from childhood, it was submitted to uncomplainingly! But neither of these stories had any necessary connection with socialism, and were especially repugnant to our customs and ideals. But there is nothing whatever repugnant in socialism itself, and I cannot believe that a story by a well-known and talented writer would be unsaleable merely because its field of action was a successful socialistic community.

I may conclude this chapter with the answer I recently gave to the question, "Why am I a Socialist?" I am a socialist because I believe that the highest law of mankind is justice. I therefore take for my motto, "Fiat Justitia Ruat Cœlum;" and my definition of socialism is, "The use, by every one of his faculties for the common good, and the voluntary organization of labour for the equal benefit of all." That is absolute social justice; that is ideal socialism. is, therefore, the guiding star for all true social reform.

It

CHAPTER XXXVI

MESMERISM TO SPIRITUALISM-CORRESPONDENCE WITH
SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY MEN

I HAVE already described my first introduction to mesmerism at Leicester, how I found that I had considerable mesmeric power myself, and could produce all the chief phenomena on some of my patients; while I also satisfied myself that almost universal opposition and misrepresentations of the medical profession were founded upon a combination of ignorance and prejudice. I will here only add that my brother Herbert also possessed the power, and that when we were residing together at Manaos, he used to call up little Indian boys out of the street, give them a copper, and by a little gazing and a few passes send them into the trance state, and then produce all the curious phenomena of catalepsy, loss of sensation, etc., which I have already described. This was interesting because it showed that the effects could be produced without any expectation on the part of the patients, and, further, that similar phenomena followed as in Europe, although these boys had certainly no knowledge of such phenomena. One day, I remember, when we were going out collecting, we entered an Indian's hut, where we had often been before, and my brother quietly began mesmerizing a young man nearly his own age. He did not entrance him, but obtained enough influence to render his arm rigid. This he instantly relaxed, and asked the Indian to lie down on the floor, which he did. My brother then made a pass along his body, and said, "Lie there till we return." The man tried to rise but could not, though several of his relatives were present. We then walked out, he crying and begging to be loosed. Thinking he would certainly overcome the influence we went on, and coming back about two hours later we found the

man still on the ground, declaring he could not get up. On a pass from my brother and his saying, "Now get up," he rose easily. We gave him a small present, but he did not seem much surprised or disturbed, evidently thinking we were white medicine-men. Here, again, it seemed to me pretty certain that the induced temporary paralysis was a reality, and by no means due to the imagination of the usually stolid Indian.

During my eight years' travels in the East I heard occasionally, through the newspapers, of the strange doings of the spiritualists in America and England, some of which seemed to me too wild and outrê to be anything but the ravings of madmen. Others, however, appeared to be so well authentiIcated that I could not at all understand them, but concluded, as most people do at first, that such things must be either imposture or delusion. How I became first acquainted with the phenomena and the effect they produced upon me are fully described in the "Notes of Personal Evidence," in my book on "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," to which I refer my readers. I will only state here that I was so fortunate as to be able to see the simpler phenomena, such as rapping and tapping sounds and slight movements of a table in a friend's house, with no one present but his family and myself, and that we were able to test the facts so thoroughly as to demonstrate that they were not produced by the physical action of any one of us. Afterwards, in my own house, similar phenomena were obtained scores of times, and I was able to apply tests which showed that they were not caused by any one present. A few years later I formed one of the committee of the Dialectical Society, and again witnessed, under test conditions, similar phenomena in great variety, and in these three cases, it must be remembered, no paid mediums were present, and every means that could be suggested of excluding trickery or the direct actions of any one present were resorted to.

At a later period I paid frequent visits, always with some one or more of my friends as sceptical and as earnest inquirers after fact as myself, to one of the best public mediums for

physical phenomena I have ever met with-Mrs. Marshall and her daughter-in-law. We here made whatever investigations we pleased, and tried all kinds of tests. We always sat in full daylight in a well-lighted room, and obtained a variety of phenomena of a very startling kind, as narrated in the book referred to. During the latter part of my residence in London (1865-70) I had numerous opportunities of seeing phenomena with other mediums in various private houses in London. These were sometimes with private, sometimes with paid mediums, but always under such conditions as to render any kind of collusion or imposture altogether out of the question. During this time I was in frequent communication with Sir William Crookes, Mr. Cromwell Varley, Serjeant Cox, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, Mr. E. T. Bennett, Mr. S. C. Hall, Professor and Mrs. de Morgan, Mr. W. Volckman, Rev. C. Maurice Davies, Dr. and Mrs. Edmunds, William Howitt, Mrs. Catherine Berry, and many other friends, who were either interested in or were actively investigating the subject; and through the kindness of several of them I had many opportunities of witnessing some of the more extraordinary of the phenomena under the most favourable conditions. At a much later period, when I visited America on a lecturing tour, I made the acquaintance of some of the most eminent spiritualists in Boston and Washington, and had many opportunities of seeing phenomena and obtaining tests of a different kind from any that I had seen in England; and some of these I may refer to later on. What I propose to do now is to give a consecutive outline of my correspondence with some of my scientific and literary friends on this subject, which will, I think, have some historical interest now that investigations into physical phenomena are not treated in the same utterly contemptuous way they were in the early period of my inquiries.

When I had obtained in my own house the phenomena described in my "Notes of Personal Evidence," I felt sure that if any of my scientific friends could witness them they would be satisfied that they were not due to trickery, and