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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... hand being near it." It is hard to see where fraudulent manipulation could be possible, in a case like this. Now, unless we are prepared to assert that Sir William Crookes and the other sitters present all deliberately falsified, in their narration of the events that took place at these seances, what hypothesis are we to adopt to account for such facts as the foregoing? I have read the criticisms of Mr. Evans1 and Mr. Podmore,2 and I can only say that, while I consider this summing up very fine indeed, it is not convincing to me, in that it seems to dwell too much on the suspicious and the insignificant, and omits from consideration much of the strongest evidence, which seems to be hardly a fair way of treating the reports. I have discussed this at some length on p. 337, and omit further consideration of the question here. Nothing has ever been proved against Home, that much is certain; and the internal evidence of the sittings (though it will doubtless be estimated variously by various individuals) certainly seems to suggest that fraud alone would by no means account for all the phenomena witnessed at the seances. One can quite appreciate Sir William Crookes's attitude, when, writing in the Journal S. P. R., Vol. IX., p. 324, he said: "For nearly twenty-five years I have been attacked on account of these experiments, and I have not replied. All the attacks I have seen have been criticisms of one or two isolated experiments or statements I made, with an entire avoidance of the passages which would explain the former. They have been written more with the object of showing I was wrong and untrustworthy than with the object of getting at the real truth. . . . When the ' higher criticism ' appears, in which all I have written on the subject...