Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Spiritualism, Scientific Practitioners, Methodology, Narcotics

    Reporting that 'the spirits of Spiritualism [...] are still rapping away', although making 'little noise outside of spiritual "circles"', argues that spirits 'never will come into Court, or allow themselves to be brought to book by any crucial test'. Distinguishes between 'the nature of things spiritual' and 'things natural' and believes there is a 'corresponding difference between Spiritualists and Philosophers'. The latter 'have no familiar spirits of the disembodied kind' although their 'familiarity' with 'distilled' spirits is 'sometimes rather too thick'; the former, according to an extract in the Medium and Daybreak, are 'almost everywhere [...] staunch teetotallers'. Concludes that the teetotaller and spiritualist share the same 'mental condition or temperament' but points out that, given the number of 'communications' from the spirits of eminent individuals received at séances, 'Dipsomania and Teetotalism, combined as it is with Spiritualism, are extremes which sometimes appear to meet on the plane of delirium tremens'.