“The earliest trace of the Toy family is found in England in the person of Robert Toy, bookseller in Saint Paul's Churchyard in 1640. Members of the family came to America about 1720, and settled first in New Jersey and then in Baltimore, whence Professor Toy's grandfather moved to Virginia about the beginning of this century” [19th]. This grandfather died in 1814 leaving an infant son, Thomas Dallam Toy, 1814–1879.

Ethiopia or Cush extends from the upper end of the First Cataract in the Nile southwards to somewhere near the junction of the White and the Blue Niles at Khartum. Strictly speaking, the name “Cush” was applied by the ancient Egyptians to that part of the valley which lies between the Second and the Fourth Cataracts while the name “Wawat” was given to that between the First and Second Cataracts. More general names were “Ta-set” (or perhaps “Ta-Khent”), “Khenthennefer,” and “Tanehsi” (= Land of the Negroes), and a still more general name was “The Southern Lands,” applied to all the southland including Wawat, Cush, Punt and the tribal districts along the Red Sea and in the eastern and the western deserts. The people of Ethiopia are usually called neḥsi which is translated inaccurately “negro;” and neḥsi are represented in the monuments as typical woolly-haired black men. But it is clear from the pictures of men from Ethiopia and from the skeletons found in the ancient cemeteries that Ethiopia was inhabited by a race, dark-skinned it is true, but easily distinguished from the true negro. Thus it is probable that the proverb in Jeremiah 13 23 (“Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots ?”) was founded on the Egyptian tradition rather than on a first-hand knowledge of the Ethiopians.

Psychic Research, “not to put too fine a point upon it,” means for the most part thus far a careful and systematic investigation of the phenomena of spiritualism. A more elegant and reputable camouflage might be devised for it, and of course the name can be legitimately used to designate the study of many things with which spiritualism has nothing to do. But words have to be taken in the sense which common usage gives to them, and practically psychic research is the study of spiritualism. It used to be said by almost everybody, except the spiritualists, that the matter was not worth investigation; it was all an unwholesome mass of fraud, imposture, and delusion, to which no reasonable person would think for a moment of giving serious attention. Very likely a good many people are saying that still; but not if they have enough knowledge of the facts to serve as the basis of intelligent judgment. Whatever frauds may be practiced in the name of spiritualism, there are plenty of occurrences which no sane mind, having real knowledge of them, will attribute to that source.

The problem of evil is nearly as old as philosophy itself. At present, however, it is occupying a very prominent place in philosophic thought, perhaps because the horrors of the great war and the unsettled social conditions have brought home to us with added emphasis the evil in the world, and have upset some of our theories of the even tenor and progress of mankind.