beings distinct from men and too vulger in their manifestations to be confounded with God and His blessed angels. Such agents in Scriptures are called devils and intercourse with them is styled superstition, seeking their assistance is magic or witch-craft and consulting them is fortune-telling. All these practices are directly and strictly forbidden in the Scriptures.

Some of these effects are connected with bodily cures and thus are of interest to physicians. For instance, spiritualistic mediums, whether connecting their practices with magnetism or not, though entirely ignorant of medicine, are at times able to state the exact bodily indisposition of sick persons living at a great distance, put into communication with them by holding some object belonging to them. They will indicate the seat of the disorder, its nature and progress, its complications. They propose simple and efficacious remedies, using not infrequently technical terms which are certainly unknown to themselves before. They manifest the thoughts of others, reveal family secrets, answer questions put in languages of which they know nothing. To deny facts attested by thousands of witnesses of various nations, belonging to various religious denominations or professing no religion at all, is not the spirit of science. It is certain that much, very much imposture is mixed up with many undeniable facts, but that does not dispose of the real facts mixed up with the impostures. Tyndall once caught an ill-starred spiritualistic imposter at his juggling. He coucluded that all other spiritists were imposters. The world now laughs at him for his foolish reasoning.

What must we think of the nature of spiritism, with its spirit-rappings, table-turning, spirit-apparitions and so on? Can such of the facts as are not impostures and realities be explained by the laws of nature, the powers of material agents and of men? All that could possibly be done by the most skilled scientists, by the most determined materialists who believe neither in God nor demon, as well as by the most conscientious Christian, has only served to demonstrate to perfect

evidence that effects are produced which can no more be attributed to natural agency than speech and design can be attributed to a piece of wood. One principle of science throws much light on the nature of all those performances, namely, that when the effect shows knowledge and design, the cause must be intelligent. Now many of the marvels evidently show knowledge and design; therefore the cause is certainly intelligent.

A table cannot understand and answer questions; it cannot move at a person's bidding. A medium cannot speak in a language he has never learned, nor know the secret ailment of a patient far away, nor prescribe the proper remedies without knowledge of medicine. Therefore these effects, when they really exist, are due to intelligent agents, agents distinct from the persons visibly present; invisible agents; therefore, spirits of another world.

Who are these agents? God and His good angels cannot work these wretched marvels, the food of a morbid curiosity; nor could they put themselves at the disposal of impious men to be marched out as monkeys on a stage. The spirits which are made to appear at the seances are degraded spirits. Spiritualists themselves tell us they are lying spirits. Those lying spirits say they are the souls of the departed, but who can believe their testimony if they are lying spirits, as they are acknowledged to be? The whole combination of impostures and superstition is simply the revival in a modern dress of a very ancient deception of mankind by playing on man's craving for the marvellous.

Many imagine these are recent discoveries peculiar to this age of progress. This, however, is not the case, for spiritwriting is and has been for centuries extensively practiced in benighted, pagan China, while even Africans and Hindoos are great adepts at table-turning. It is simply the revival of an ancient witch-craft, which Simon Magus practiced in St. Peter's time; which flourished in Ephesus while St. Paul was preaching the Gospel there. It is still more ancient. These were the abominations for which God commissioned the Jews

in Moses' time to exterminate the Canaanites and the other inhabitants of the Promised Land.

In the book of Moses, called the Second Law, admitted as divine by Catholics, Protestants and Jews alike, we have this fact very emphatically proclaimed by the Lord. He says: "When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee, beware lest thou have a mind to imitate the abominations of those nations; neither let there be found among you any one that consulteth soothsayers, or observeth dreams and omens, neither let there be any wizard, nor charmer nor any one that consulteth fortune-tellers, nor that seeketh the truth from the dead."

Is not this just what spiritualists pretend to do? Many call it only trifling and play. The Lord does not. The Scriptures continue: "For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations He will destroy them at his coming." I certainly do not mean to say that all that passes for spiritualism is thus downright deviltry to-day, nor was it in pagan times. Much imposture is mixed with it.

The oracles of the pagan gods and goddesses were not all the work of the pythonic spirits. Much was craft of the priests of idols; and yet all were abominations before the Lord, on account of the share that Satan took in the deceptions.

What must be the attitude of the scientific men towards all such matters? It should be an attitude of hostility and opposition.

Science should frown down all impostures and superstition. Medicine in particular, intended to be one of the choicest blessings of God to man, should not degrade its noble profession by pandering to a vulgar greed for morbid excitement. Not only will you personally keep aloof from all that is allied to quackery and imposture but your powerful influence for good will be most efficient in guarding others against such evils, and even perhaps in withdrawing from such associations those who have already got entangled in dangerous

snares.

At all events the enlightened views you shall have formed to yourself on all such impostures and impieties will be a power for good in the social circle in which your mental superiority and your moral integrity will make you safe guides for your fellow men.

My authority for the foregoing are Chambers Encyclopaedia, The American Catholic Quarterly Review and a lecture of Rev. C. J. Coppens.

DISCUSSION.

DR. HARRY HAKES:-"The Borderland of Science" is entirely too indefinite a proposition to enable us to forcast the probable line of thought of the essayist, therefore we are obliged to hear the essay before we can formulate remarks upon the same that may be pertinent thereto. By the phrase, however, we may be permitted to presume that the author has in mind either some preliminary limits to the beginning of science or to conditions posterior to scientific conclusions. Science undoubtedly has some starting point or beginning and purpose, as well as some conclusion. At either end of the subject we may assume a border, and no other can be considered, and that leaves us to infer (if we can) which of the two aspects the author proposes to discuss. Either point of view is legitimate and pertinent for same purpose.

Science has to do first, with things noumenally considered, and secondly, and of much greater consequence and significance, things in their relations, in contradistinction to ideas of things. Science then is the study of facts, or rather the demonstration of the facts of things noumenally considered, and secondly in their various and varied relations.

When the scientist has completed his labors, proofs and demonstrations in this behalf, he may say that his task is completed as a scientist, having reached his ultimate border. And this I assume the essayist has in mind, as the borderland in the proposition of his essay. Obviously the three great professions of law, theology and medicine are interested in common, first in its establishment of all matters of fact in such perfection that philosophy may take up the work of harmoniously adjusting the findings of science into a philosophised unity in each of the learned professions, each of which is designed for the general good of the human race. This was the scheme and the dream of the immortal Socrates.

Philosophy commences where science leaves off. Science. discoveres the facts, and philosophy interprets them. The borderland of the essayist, I conjecture, to lay between the objects and conclusions of science on the one hand and philosophy on the other. Science seeks and classifies facts; science examines and classifies facts; science seeks to know the universe, philosophy to understand it. Moreover, all science is tributary to philosophy, for philosophy looks out upon the cosmos that science has discovered, and revealed with intent to understand it. It takes the results of science, and interprets them with reference to higher meanings than science by itself could discover. If the facts found by science are true, philosophy is not likely to be deceived when she comes to make her final conclusions and judgment. Until law, theology and medicine can present such an agreed state of facts to the philosopher, as will enable him to commence his philosophical structure upon a sure and substantial basis, the alleged borderland will not have approached such nearness as to become intelligently discernable.

In so far as this or any other medical society is interested or related to the subject in hand, we may in a general way assume that in so far as anatomy, chemistry and the rules governing obstetric and surgical practice is concerned, claim to be sufficiently advanced as to lay some reasonable claim for a philosophy; but as relates to physiology, therapeutics, the philosophy and pathology of the nervous system, and so-called medical practice, the facts that can at present be presented offer little inducement to such a philosophical statement as we may all most abundantly and most devoutly desire.

Though science and philosophy are agreed handmaids for the establishing of ultimate truths, they yet appear as jealous one of the other as two old maids for the caresses of a fine young man, possessed of abundant financial assets. There is no greater or more consequential problem facing the present brilliant age than, "How to make philosophy scientific and science philosophic." The land separating science from philosophy is broad enough but the specific borders await a pioneer to blaze the pathway to guide the footsteps of future travelers.

This so-called borderland between science and philosophy finds its counterpart separating the world of reality from the world of ideas. The great Socrates threw himself into the battle between realism and idealism, obliterating at once the