3d. Electro-Genetic Faculties. These, exhibited in a very striking manner by the electric eel, torpedo, and a few other aquatic animals, exist in quiescence, yet often visible, among terrestrial animals, especially in the feline genus, and in certain human organisms. They differ from the magnetic or magnetizing faculty, and the two either may or may not be observed in the same person. Thus are exhibited a regular series of phenomena, bridging over the gulf between the commonest experiments with a stick of sealing wax, and the loftiest of sleep-waking and clairvoyance. Man, as somnambulist poet and seer, has evidently made all the advances which courtesy could require of him in view of establishing a cordial intercourse with other spheres or states of existence. Modern Spiritualism pretends that the ultramundane spirits have on their part done as much, and that amicable relations and intramundane hospitality, with all the etiquette thereto appertaining, is in the very crisis of fulfilment. Let us now examine the objections urged by reason and good taste against the alleged style of proceeding, leaving out of view in the present article all sifting of evidence and special repetitions of what every one is already familiar with, whether they believe or not in what they see and hear. Objection 1.-The trivial character of most of these pretended communications, whether by rappings or writing mediums. The chief force of this objection is derived from our preconceived ideal of the dignity and solemnity of all that has passed the portals of the grave. The bat and the owl, emblems of superstition and of clerical imposture, and which greatly affect the scenery of tombs and catacombs, may furnish some useful lessons on this score. They are, when all is known, as silly birds or nondescripts as any other. For the rest, an a priori conclusion on this subject is invalid in logic, and if we condescend to accept strictly human analogies of conduct, we shall find the ghost addresses well enough in keeping with our own "How d'ye do," "Fine weather," and other insipidities of stereotyped greetings between either friends or strangers. If our own high converse is very rare, why quarrel with the ghosts for being as chary of their good things? The obstacles of mediumship are strongly analogous to those of interpretation between interlocutors ignorant of each others' language. We know how much every discourse loses in fire and pith by this form of transmission, and how little of fluent spontaneity can exist without the direct exchange of personal aromas or influences. Even after we have ourselves begun to speak a new language, and have acquired familiarity with its grammatical structure, we long keep fearfully to the shore, in the shallow waters of common-place politeness, nor dare to trust ourselves in the deeps of thought and sentiment. Let us next take into account the phenomena of passional katalysis, a term borrowed from chemistry, or that mysterious influence by which one person emancipates all our powers by his presence, and another paralyzes them, while between these two antipodal impressions lies every intermediate shade. If we, well stuffed with grosser flesh and blood, are still so sensitive that a look can go through us like a dagger, a tone move us to wrath or to tears, and even a silent presence overmaster us; if suspicion mantles the cheek of innocence with shame, and hangs lead upon the lips of the just; if so few of us can act or speak without the encouragement of sympathy, or at least the courtesy of its seeming should we feel surprise that those more delicate-bodied spirits, subtler than the quick nerve, should evince caprice as to their company, or hesitation in their answers? What must it be then, when the nearest and dearest ones doubt the identity of those who address them? Under such circumstances, it is the absence of embarrassment that would be matter of wonder. --- If there is any general fact or law which impresses itself upon the mind, after listening patiently to all the stammering utterances of this babe new-born into our world of facts, it is that the social and spiritual affections, and not intellection or industry, chiefly preoccupy those whom death has emancipated from their servitude to things. They do not seem to know much, but perhaps they love the better on that account; and if their additions to literature have not risen above the average of the silliest sophomore college themes, perhaps this gives just the hint of what they are, and that the new gospels now pouring upon us, like dirty water from the slop-tubs of the ghostfolk, are just the rudimental exercises in composition made by poor, ignorant working-people, who never got any chance of an education while with us, and who now take a comical revenge upon their literary superiors by enforcing on public attention, through the prestige of a mystery, and the assumption of renowned names, productions which would otherwise have dropped into oblivion without causing even a ripple. It is a common remark with us, that the conversation of lovers appears but silly talk to those who are not in love. Now, though I shrewdly suspect such lovers used to say silly things before they fell in love, let us admit the same excuse in behalf of the ghostfolk, that we extend to the rest of society. It is certain that those who glow most warmly in their social affections, care less about intellectual brilliance, than others who polish with infinite zeal this outside of their cup of life. The faculties which we now cultivate in action, sleep, perhaps, beyond the grave, while others, here deprived of action, wake and develop in their kind. What the ghost-folk can impart, being what they still have in common with ourselves, will only be their dreams, fragmentary and confused impressions of their waking hours. Finally, let us remark, that in transition movements, generally, the inferior characters take the lead. Thus, to the ignoble bat and the ornithorhyncus are assigned the conspicuous posts of ascending and descending transitions between the world of beasts and the world of birds; and to grey twilight, shorn of the double glory of the day and night, it is given to announce the Sun or to reveal the stars. Little as our civilization may have to show of wisdom or goodness, for an experience of some four thousand years or more, we should still consider it quite unfair to be judged by the manners of those frontier swarms which society throws off like its chaff or scum, and which constitute, as at Botany Bay, or about the doggeries of the far Southwest, the transition between the civilizee and the savage. Perhaps we might be equally unjust if we judged the population of the ghost-world by such communications as they have first extended to us. This is their transition; and what is ours? Are not the greater number of our sleep-wakers and persons endowed with ultramundane faculties, invalids, and very inferior types of our ordinary life? Throughout this article it may be observed that we have avoided using the word spirits in speaking of the ghost-folk. It is because we consider ourself to be just as much a spirit as any of them; and we will not call them disembodied spirits, because we believe they have got bodies as well as the rest of us, although we can not always see them. That death does not affect a man's muscular strength seems to be sufficiently evidenced by feats in lifting tables and pianos. To conclude, we are far from being satisfied that spirits or ghosts of other sphere than ours are the causes of such effects; but we are willing to adopt the hypothesis, and use it like an algebraical z or y, in computing the bearings of a problem hitherto unsolved. any M.. E. L. THE LATE LAWSUIT. MEN AND WOMEN VS. CUSTOM AND TRADITION. WHEN, in 1844, Margaret Fuller gave "The Great Lawsuit' to the pages of the first Dial, she stated with transcendant force the argument which formed the basis of the first "Woman's Rights Convention," in 1848. Nothing has since been added to her statement, nothing can ever be taken away from it, and every new step in the movement crowns her brow with a new laurel ; for to her it was left to make a complete, scholarly exposition of a question, only the first third of which came to treatment under the hands of Mary Wollstoncraft. ment. The progress of the "Woman's Rights' "" movement seems rapid, only because we have not traced its gradual historic developThe law of Christ, involving perfect human justice, is constantly changing future possibilities into present facts. Previous to the time of Christ, and indeed for some centuries after his coming, eminent women in several countries had seized position and privilege. The oppressions and innuendoes of Vedantic lore could not annihilate the metaphysical and mathematical power of the Hindu Lilirati, but scores of commentators have wearied themselves for ages in explaining, in a miraculous manner, such an exception to her sex. Aspasia defied the insults of actors and play-wrights, and unveiled her features in the streets of Athens as freely as under the blue heaven of her native isle. It was doubtless due, in a great measure, to the Empress Theodora, that in the reign of Justinian the Roman law underwent a favorable change. Unhappy were the women who died before the invention of the printing press! What the character of this Empress was, the insight and patience of some woman may yet reveal; but certainly history so far has not enlightened us. The woman whose first thought, when raised from a life of infamy to the throne of the world, was to save the wretched companions of her early career, even though she could not solve the problem she set to herself; the woman whose courage and presence of mind saved not merely Justinian, but the peace of the empire in the alarming sedition of 532 A. D., was a woman worth saving. Procopius, who was not too tender to put vile stories of her into his anecdotes, praises her in his history; and contemporaries did not hesitate to call pious the woman whom her husband, weak coward that he was, unceasingly regretted. But position and privilege, seized after this Old-World fashion, however pleasant they may have proved to the individual, secured no position, opened no privilege to the sex. Fortunately for us, no daily record of womanly life at that period survives; only now and then long-buried walls, covered with the street drawings of Pompeii, or abominable decorations of Old-World cathedrals, give to the instructed eye some dim vision of the depths out of which woman has arisen. In England, centuries later, the general corruption of manners which characterized the Stuart Courts brought its own remedy. Women of surpassing beauty, or more than average ability, born to wealth and station, fell in groups before the prevailing contempt which classic studies and continental habits had not failed to nurture. But these women fell to find the tyranny of license no better than the tyranny of law; and to learn, by a bitter experience, that restraints may be divine in their nature and effects. The first cry of the tortured victims was for education- education which should raise them to a certain social equality, and should defend them from the inevitable miseries of worn-out toys, whose use departed with their beauty; and this cry met with a certain sort of response for education, vocation, and civil position, were not yet linked by logic in the public mind. Among those who took a high rank in this movement was Mary Astell, a woman distinguished for theological and literary labors, and the intimate friend of a celebrated Platonist, John Norris, of Bemerton. "A Letter to a Lady," in "Defence of the Female Sex," went through three editions in the year 1697. "A Proposal to Ladies, for the Advancement of their True Interests,” composed by her, was so effectively written that a wealthy friend, supposed to be Lady Elizabeth Hastings, immediately offered £10.000 towards the erection of a college for the education of women; and the scheme would have been carried into execution, but for the bigoted opposition of Bishop Burnet. Her "Reflections on Marriage" were said by a contemporary "to be the strongest defence that ever appeared in print, of the rights and abilities of her sex." Between the death of Mary Astell, in 1731, and that of Mary |