WCP3448

[1]

Geanies,

Rossshire N[orth].B[ritain].¹

June 28/90

Dear Mr. Wallace,

I suppose "bad taste", like other things, is apt to beget its like[?]. I did not consider it good taste when you published — not merely a short and strongly counterbalanced sentence, but — a whole article under the title "Romanes versus Darwin"² It deeply hurt me then, and has continued to do so ever since, in a manner that I am glad to see from your last letter that I have not "injured"[?] you, and mine was fair comment while yours was not.

As regards the other matter, I am not aware that there has[2] ever been — as you appear to suppose — any hiding[?] up of my views on spiritualism. I have not published them, because there is obviously nothing in them that is worthy of publication. But I have always spoken them out in private, as I have now no objection to speak them out to you.

I have never concealed that in the investigation of William's³ performance, to which you allude, I witnessed certain phenomena the causation of which I have never been able to explain. In the first instance my then youthful judgment was too hastily formed, and in my excitement I wrote the letters to Darwin^4,5 from which you quote.⁶ Soon afterwards, however,[3] I detected Williams cheating; but did not claim this in itself a sufficient ground for repudiating all the other phenomena which he exhibited, and which I had not been able to explain by imposture. So I had a cage made for him, and when in his cage nothing ever happened outside it.

Now, to my mind, this latter fact does ^"logically justify change of opinion". For surely, as a mere matter of scientific method, there is a far cry between not being able to explain "how" a trick is done and concluding that it must have been done by some supernatural means. If it were so done, why should the interposition of a perforated zinc cage have suspended the "power"? I have that cage still, and as soon[4] as any other medium can do inside it, any of the things that Williams so successfully accomplished outside it, I will publish both the researches together. But, as a man of science, can you recommend me "to publish the letter with a full detail of the whole discovery of imposture"? Spiritualists would not be satisfied that it was such a "discovery", while men of science would simply say ^{— and rightly} — "what a fool you were in the first instance to write like that to Darwin before you tried the cage; and what a still bigger fool you are to suppose that anybody can now be interested in the publication of your folly."

Again, with regard to the mental questions, I afterwards found that I never got them answered unless my own hands were on the[5] table together with those of my relatives. Therefore I came to the conclusion in which I have ever since reposed[?] as what seems to me the most rational conclusion. Namely, that I myself unconsciously activated the table — or, rather, gave the impulse to actuation[?], which was then unintentionally reinforced[?] by the others.

I don not know that there is anything more to say. If either you or anybody else can show me phenomena which cannot do not admit of being possibly explained by any process[6] of ordinary causation (i.e. what causation which may be termed physical as opposed to hyper-physical) I am still prepared, as I was before I met Williams, to investigate the facts, and to publish the results should they conclusively prove to be of the nature which you believe. But until evidence of this conclusive nature is forthcoming, I must continue to hold that the "ought" to which you allude lies on the side of publishing nothing where there is nothing to publish.

Trusting that this explanation may serve to satisfy[7] you that my position with regard to these matters is neither illogical nor insincere.

I remain | yours very faithfully

Geo. J. Romanes [signature]

P.S. I ought to add that your explanation as to the circumstances under which you found copies of my letters to Mr. Darwin is, of course, quite satisfactory. Also, that I have written by this post to F. Darwin⁷ upon the subject. G.J.R.