22 THE PREPARATION OP THE WORLD iiiie oi The Principles of Nature (lUl). There is no need to examine the book seriously. The scientific enois and cradities of it release any person from considering whether there was any element of reve- lation in it. It is enough to recall that he traced the line of evolution from the clam to the tadpdb, and from the tadpole to the quadruped I Moreover, Davis was a palpable cheat. He maintained that up to that date he had read only one book in his life, and that book was a novel We know from his admirers that this was not true, and any person can recognise in his pages a very crude and badly digested mess of early scientific literature. He plainly read much on the sly. I should say that he was very gifted, and with training might have become a notable writer. There are very few youths of twenty-one who could have put together his crude mass of material in the rhetorical and pseudo-philosophical manner which he sustained day after day for several months. A professor at New York University — a Swedenborgian, be it said — ^pronounced his book
- a profound and elaborate discussion of the philo-
sophy of the universe. It was assuredly neither profound nor accurate, but it was a remarkable performance for such a youth. Davis and his followers were presently swallowed up in the spiritualist movement, but they did no slight wori^ in preparing the way for it. The new Spiritualism, which originated in Hydesville, did not reach New York until the end of 1840. Davis preceded it by two years. One can .imagine the
