the Christ be still regarded with fervor and celebrated with more than mediaval éclat, it is because of a certain ethnic fact and principle underlying the Christmas tide and giving thereto its significance and vitality. This fact is that Christmas itself is ultimately an Aryan and by no means a Semitic festival. It was in the first place a fact and feast of paganism, and only in the secondary intent a fact and feast relating to the birth and work of the Poor Man of Capernaum. Christmas was adopted out of paganism because as an already existing institution it, like Easter, seemed to the early church a necessary, or at least a most useful part of her own observance and ceremonial. The transplanted institution of Christmas was regarded for long by the ignorant folk of the middle ages as a peculiarly God-given part of Christian observance, having its significance wholly with respect to the Christ and his salvation.

With the dawn of modern inquiry, with the attack of knowledge on credulity, and with the rising prevalence of a larger view of history and of human life, the mystical and superstitious part of Christmas began to die away, but the poetical and human part has remained and still remains in the most flourishing and withal happy anniversary of the year. The Aryan concept of nature and man survives in the winter snows. Woden hurling his hail makes a holiday, and the reindeer of the snowy north come cantering with candies. The old Brahmanical and Teutonic notions and fancies come back out of the oblivion of ages, reviving in the human mind, rising like bubbles from the unfathomable springs of our old race life, and breaking on the surface what time the yule log is brought in, and the holly is hung, and the feast is spread, and happiness is rekindled on the common hearthstone of our humanity.

The new Christmas is a surviving aspect of ancient Aryanism inspired with merrymaking, flecked with laughter and hope, warmed with generosities, and only slightly reminiscent of the unknown date and mystical circumstances surrounding the birth of the poor outcast of Nazareth who has for so many centuries contributed the moral precepts without being able to control the conduct of mankind.

A SÉANCE WITH EUSAPIA PALADINO:

PSYCHIC FORCES.'

To the Editor of THE ARENA.

SIR AND DEAR CONFRÈRE: You requested me to let you have, whenever the opportunity should present itself, an article on the subject of such psychic phenomena as I could bear personal witness to. After considerable delay, due in part, it is true, to the astronomical labors which constantly absorb my time, I am now able to respond to your request.

Quite recently, on the 27th of July last, at the invitation of an excellent and worthy family named Bleck, who were rusticating at Montfort-Lamauray, in Seine-et-Oise, I had the great satisfaction of being able to observe personally, and under the strictest test conditions, the celebrated medium Eusapia Paladino, who had already been made a subject of study under various conditions by MM. Lombroso, Schiaparelli, Charles Richet, the Comte de Rochas, M. Dariex, and a great number of other scientists. Owing to circumstances beyond my control, I had not hitherto myself been able to witness these manifestations.

Moreover, they had been described to me in somewhat contradictory fashion by different observers. Some had declared themselves absolutely convinced as to the extraordinary phenomena attributed to the medium; others had doubted them; others had denied them, accusing her of fraud and falsehood; several had stated that she had been caught in deception.

For my own part, during the past thirty years or thereabouts, I have studied nearly all the mediums whose manifestations have made the greatest noise in the world-Daniel Home, who, at the Tuileries, gave such extraordinary séances before the emperor Napoleon III, his family and friends, and who was employed later by Sir William Crookes in his careful scientific researches; Slade, who, with the astronomer Zöllner, produced those inconceivable manifestations wherein

1 Written for THE ARENA: translated from the French by FREDERICK T. JONES.

geometry was able to preserve itself only by admitting the possibility of a fourth dimension of space; Buguet, whose photographic negatives bore impressions of the spirits of the dead; Lacroix, at whose voice spirits seemed to come in crowds; besides many others who strongly attracted the attention of spiritualists and investigators by manifestations more or less strange and marvellous.

I ought to admit that as a general thing I had been completely disappointed. Whenever I took the necessary precautions to put the medium beyond the possibility of trickery, I obtained no results. If I pretended to see nothing, I detected the trickery out of the corner of the eye. And, in general, such phenomena as were produced came during moments of distraction, when my attention was for an instant relaxed. Pursuing the investigation a little more closely, I have with my own eyes caught sight of the previously prepared negatives of Buguet; with my own eyes have detected Slade writing beneath the table on a concealed slate. As for this famous medium Slade, one day, in concert with Admiral Mouchez, director of the Paris Observatory, I handed to him two slates sealed with Observatory paper in such a way that if he had tampered with them the fraud could not have been disguised. He accepted the conditions of the test. The slates remained, not for a quarter of an hour, not for half an hour, not for one hour, but for ten consecutive hours under the control of the medium, and when he returned them to us they had not the least vestige of writing inside, such as he had produced by substituting prepared slates.

Without going into other details, it will suffice to say that, having been very frequently deceived by impudent, dishonest, and lying mediums, I had acquired from my experiences a reserve of scepticism, doubt, and suspicion with regard to Eusapia. The test conditions are in general so deceptive that it is easy to become a dupe. And men of science are perhaps the easiest to dupe of all men, because scientific observations and experiments are always honest, so that we need never be on our guard against nature, whether a star or a chemical molecule is in question; and we have acquired the habit of taking for granted facts as they appear.

Moveover, men of science for whom I have the very highest respect, and whose judgment has the utmost weight in my eyes, have been present during Eusapia's manifestations without having been convinced of their genuineness. In particular, my illustrious colleague M. Schiaparelli, director of the Milan Observatory, to whom astronomy is indebted for so many discoveries of the first order, has written to me a letter from which a few extracts are appended:

During the autumn of 1892 I was invited by M. Aksakoff to attend a number of spiritualistic séances, held under his auspices and through his courtesy, with the medium Eusapia Paladino, of Naples. I there witnessed some very surprising things, some of which, however, could be explained by very ordinary means. But there were others the production of which I was unable to explain in accordance with any principles known to physics. I add without hesitation that, had it been possible to exclude entirely all suspicion of trickery, it would be incumbent on us to recognize in these facts the beginnings of a new science pregnant with results of the very highest importance. But it must certainly be admitted that these experiences were produced in a fashion but little calculated to convince unbiassed men of their genuineness. Invariably conditions were imposed on us which prevented us from knowing what really took place. Whenever we proposed modifications necessary to give to the experiences the character of clearness and of needful evidence, the medium always declared that success would thereby be made impossible. In short, we did not experiment in the true sense of the word; we were obliged to content ourselves with observing what took place under unfavorable conditions imposed by the medium. Moreover, whenever this scrutiny was pushed a little, the phenomena either ceased to be produced or lost their intensity and their marvellous character.

Nothing is more disgusting than these games of hide and seek to which one is obliged to submit. Such things are well calculated to excite distrust. Having spent my whole life in the study of nature, which is always sincere in its manifestations and logical in its operations, it is repugnant to me to turn my mind to the investigation of a class of truths which a malicious and disloyal power seems to conceal with a perversity the motive of which is incomprehensible. In such investigations it is no longer sufficient to employ the ordinary methods of natural philosophy, which are infallible but very limited in their scope; it is neces

sary to have recourse to that other method of examination, more liable to error, but more audacious and more efficacious, which is practised by police officers and magistrates when the business in hand is to disentangle the truth from a mass of testimony, and at least one of the parties has an interest in concealing that truth.

In view of these reflections I am unable to declare myself convinced of the reality of the manifestations which are comprehended under the extremely ill-chosen name of spiritualism. But I do not deem myself entitled to deny everything, because to deny with good reason it is not enough to suspect deceit; it is necessary to prove it. These experiments, which I have found so little satisfactory, other investigators of high ability and reputation have been able to make under more favorable circumstances. I have not the presumption to oppose a dogmatic and bold denial to such proofs, when scientific men of such great critical acumen as MM. Crookes, Wallace, Richet, and Oliver Lodge have discovered a real basis worthy of their examination, even to the point of devoting long study to it; and it would be a grievous mistake were I to believe that the men who are most firmly convinced of the truth of spiritualism are all fanatics. During the experiments of 1892 I had the pleasure of meeting several such men, and I was forced to admire their sincere desire to ascertain the truth; and in some of them I discovered well considered and most profound philosophical ideas, with a character altogether worthy of esteem. This is why it is impossible for me to declare that spiritualism is a ridiculous absurdity. I ought therefore to abstain from pronouncing any opinion whatever; my mental attitude on the subject can perhaps be defined by the word agnosticism.

I have read with great care all that Doctor Zöllner has written on this subject. His explanation has a purely physical basis, that is to say, the hypothesis of the objective existence of a fourth dimension of space; an existence which cannot be comprised within the limits of our intuitions, but the possibility of which cannot be denied merely on that ground. Conceding the reality of the experiences which he describes, it is evident that his theory of these manifestations is about the most ingenious and the most plausible that could be devised. According to that theory these mystical and mystifying phenomena occur in the domain of physics and ordinary physiology. They will necessitate a very considerable extension of these sciences, such that their discoverer should be placed beside Galileo and Newton. Unhappily, these experiences of Zöllner's have been obtained