the belief in a most acute form amongst the lowest peoples of the earth. They believed it still in Europe and America in the middle of the nineteenth century. The ghost-story was one of the most popular forms of literature. The haunted house was as common as the public-house. This was not genuine Spiritualism, as no medium was required, and there was no systematic cultivation of this supposed connection with the other world. But the fact remains that until at least the middle of the nineteenth century the great majority of people believed that at any time spirits of the dead might rap on their doors at midnight, trail ghostly chains along the corridor, or make. In sepulchral tones, some terrible communication from another world.
All these more or less heretical forms of, or outgrowths from, the old belief grew steadily from the time of Voltaire to the middle of the nineteenth century. It may seem, at first sight, that this throws no light on the birth and extraordinary growth of Spiritualism in America, and many writers look almost exclusively to the peculiar conditions of American life. We have, however, to remember that the first feature of the American population of those days was that it was largely made up of adventurous men and eccentric refugees from Europe. As a rule, only the bolder would in those days brave the storms of the Atlantic in such small vessels as they had, and then advance out upon the mighty prairie to carve out their farms. The other most common type was the man who fled from persecution in
