Clairvoyance, strictly speaking, is supposed to be an abnormal power of the medium: a range of vision, a fineness of sense, that we less gifted beings do not possess. But the performance is very apt to resolve itself into a claim that the medium sees invisible spirits and is communicating with them. Of real clairvoyance—of a power to read a closed book or a folded paper or see a distant spot—no instance has ever yet been recorded that will pass scrutiny. Many scientific men, as I said, who do not believe in spirits do believe in the abnormal powers of mediums. They would like to get a proof of clairvoyance, but they are unable to offer us one. The wonderful stories told of the gift in Spiritualist circles vanish, like the stories about Home and Moses, the moment the critical lamp is turned upon them.

We are therefore reduced to the Spiritualist claim that a medium really receives information from spirits, and we have to see on what sort of evidence this is based. Now there is an aspect of this question which even the leading Spiritualists do not face very candidly. More than twenty years ago it was felt, and rightly felt, by Spiritualists that at least a long step forward would be made if they left sealed or cipher-messages at death, and communicated the contents or the key of these from "beyond." It is well known how Myers left with Sir Oliver Lodge a sealed message of this description. A month after his death he "got into touch" with Lodge through the medium Mrs. Thompson. Unhappily he had forgotten all about the message, and even about the Society for Psychical Research! Next the supremely gifted Mrs. Verrall got into touch with Myers. By this time—it was the end of 1904—Myers had had time to get adjusted, and was talking more or less rationally through Mrs. Verrall. If there had not been a very material test in reserve, Sir O. Lodge and his friends would have sworn that the messages were from the spirit of Myers. As it was, they were so confident that on December 13, 1904, they solemnly opened the precious envelope. They were struck dumb when there was not the least correspondence between Mrs. Verrall's message from Myers and the message he had left in the envelope.

Miss Dallas tries, in her Mors Janua VitÆ, to soften the blow, but her pleas are useless. The final failure utterly stultifies all the days and months of supposed messages. And this is not the only case. Hodgson had adopted a similar test, and it was a ghastly failure. Other Spiritualists left sealed messages when they died, and not a syllable of one of them has been read. Our Spiritualists do not get into communication with the dead. This is negative evidence, but it is far more impressive than any of the rhetorical and inaccurate accounts of experiences which they give us. It is precise and unmistakable. Every Spiritualist who dies now knows that this is the supremely desired test, yet we have twenty years of complete, unmitigated failure. Men like Sir O. Lodge tell us that they recognize the personality of Hodgson beyond mistake in the messages they get through mediums; but the one sure test, the getting of the key to the cipher-messages which Hodgson left behind, is an absolute failure. It would become our Spiritualists to strike a more modest note, and not assure the ignorant public, as Sir A. C. Doyle does, that the time for proof has gone by and it is for their opponents now to justify themselves. The experience of the last twenty years has been deadly to Spiritualist pretensions.

The truth is that here again Spiritualists had been led into their belief, that messages from the spirit-world were easy and common, by a vast amount of mediumistic trickery. The earliest method was by raps, and we have seen that since 1848 this performance has been a matter of trickery. The next way was to rap out messages with a leg of the table, which was merely a variation of the table-lifting we have studied. These forms are so often used by amateur mediums that it is necessary to recall our warning that the distinction between paid and unpaid mediums is not of the least use. Carrington, Maxwell, Podmore, and Flammarion give numbers of instances of cheating by men and women of good social position. Carrington tells of an American lawyer who deliberately—not as a joke—made his friends believe that he could make a poker stand upright and do similar abnormal phenomena. He did his tricks by means of black threads. Podmore gives a similar case in England. Flammarion tells us of a Parisian doctor's wife who cheated flagrantly in order to get credit for abnormal powers. This sort of prestige has as much fascination for some people as money has for others.

The professional mediums, however, early developed in America the trick of receiving messages from spirits on slates, and this is fraud from beginning to end. The supreme artist in this field was Henry Slade, whom Sir A. C. Doyle regards as a genuine intermediary between the lofty spirits of the other world and ourselves. As Truesdell's account of the way in which he unmasked Slade as early as 1872 contains one of the richest stories in the whole collection of Spiritualist anecdotes, one would have thought that a story-teller like Sir A. C. Doyle could not possibly have forgotten it. From it we learn that Slade was from the outset of his career an adroit and brazen and confessed impostor.

Truesdell paid the customary five dollars, and received pretty and edifying, but inconclusive, messages from the spirits. Incidentally he detected that the spirit-touches on his arms were done by Slade's foot, to distract his attention; but he could not see the method of the slate-trick. However, as the main theme of the messages was an exhortation to persevere in his inquiries (at five dollars a sitting to the medium), he made another appointment. It was on this occasion that he left a misleading letter in his overcoat in Slade's hall, and found the spirits assuming that he was "Samuel Johnson, Rome, N.Y." But before Slade entered the room, or while Slade was going through his overcoat-pockets, he rapidly overhauled Slade's room. He found a slate with a pious message from the spirits already written on it, signed (as was usual) by the spirit of Slade's dead wife, Alcinda. Beneath the message Truesdell wrote "Henry, look out for this fellow—he is up to snuff! Alcinda," and replaced the slate. Slade came in, and gave a most dramatic performance. In his contortions, under the spirit-influence, he drew the table near to the hidden slate, and "accidentally" knocked the clean slate off the table. Of course, he picked up the prepared slate. His emotions can be imagined when he read the words which Truesdell had written on it. After a little bluster, however, he laughingly acknowledged that he was a mere conjurer, and he told Truesdell many tricks of his profession.[14]

This was in 1872. Four years later Slade came to London, where Sir E. Ray Lankester and Sir Bryan Donkin again exposed him. Sir E. Ray Lankester snatched the slate before the message was supposed to be written on it, and the message was already there. He prosecuted Slade, who was sentenced to three months' hard labour. He had charged a guinea a sitter. But a few words had been omitted from the antiquated form of the charge (which I have previously given in the case of Craddock), and before Slade could be again prosecuted he fled to the continent. There, we saw, he duped a group of purblind professors, and he returned to America in higher repute than ever. In 1882 an inspector of police at Belleville, in Canada, snatched the slate just as Sir E. Ray Lankester had done, and exposed him again. He escaped arrest only by a maudlin appeal for mercy; and on his return to the States he succeeded in persuading the Spiritualists—who solemnly stated this in their organ, the Banner of Light—that the man exposed at Belleville was an impostor making use of his name! In 1884 he faced the Seybert Committee, and its sharp-eyed members saw and exposed every step in his trickery. Eventually, as I have said, he lived in drink and misery, developed Bright's disease, and died in the common asylum. Such was the man whom Sir A. C. Doyle seriously regards as the chosen instrument of his spiritual powers.

The Seybert Committee found two different kinds of writing on Slade's slates. Some messages were short and badly written, and they concluded that these were written by him with one finger while he held the slate under the table (as the custom was) to receive a spirit-message. Other messages were relatively long, well written, and dignified; and they regarded these as prepared in advance. Both points were fully verified. At one sitting they noticed two slates resting suspiciously against the leg of the table. These doubtless had messages written on them, and were to be substituted for the blank slate when this was supposed to be put under the table. Slade would then produce the sound of the spirits writing by scraping with his nail on the edge of the slate. On this occasion, however, Slade saw that they had their eyes on the slates and he dare not use them. But one of the members of the committee, determined to do his work thoroughly, carelessly knocked the two slates over with his foot, and the messages were exposed.

The reception of messages from the spirits on slates may linger in rural or suburban districts, but it has lent itself to such trickery, and been exposed so thoroughly, that mediums have generally abandoned it. For whole decades it was the chief way of communicating with the spirits, and weird and wonderful were the artifices by which the medium defeated the growing sense of caution of the sitters. In spite of the exposures of Slade, the English medium Eglinton adopted and improved his methods, and he was one of the bright stars of the Spiritualist world for twenty years. He was detected in fraud as early as 1876. At that time he gave materialization-sÉances, at which the ghostly form of "Abdullah" appeared. Archdeacon Colley found the beard and draperies of Abdullah in his trunk. But exposure never ruins a medium in the Spiritualist world, and ten years later Eglinton was the most successful and respected medium in England, especially for slate-messages.

Hodgson more than suspected him, and he at last found a man, Mr. S. J. Davey, who was able to reproduce all his tricks. He wrote messages while he held the slates under the table, and he substituted prepared slates for clean slates under the noses of his sitters. Perhaps the most valuable part of his experience was this substitution, which is one of the fundamental elements of mediumistic trickery. Spiritualists—indeed, inquirers generally—honestly flatter themselves that they have taken care that there was no deception of this kind. Such confidence is foolish, as the professional conjurer does this kind of substitution under our eyes habitually, and we never see him do it. In order to make people more cautious Davey, with Dr. Hodgson's connivance, set up as a medium and gave sittings to Spiritualists. They afterwards sent accounts of their experiences to the Society for Psychical Research. They were, as usual, certain that there was no trickery, and that the messages were genuine. Davey then wrote correct accounts of what he had done, and it was seen that the accounts of the sitters were inaccurate and their observation faulty. Some of them indignantly retorted that Davey was a genuine medium, but found it more profitable to pose as a conjurer and exposer of mediums!

In a work specially devoted to this subject (Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena, 1899) Mr. W. E. Robinson gives about thirty different fraudulent ways of getting spirit-messages. Indeed, many of these may be sub-divided, and you get scores of methods. One method, for instance, is to write a message with invisible fluid on paper, seal the apparently blank paper in an envelope, and then let the message appear and pretend that the spirits wrote it. Mr. Robinson gives thirty-seven different recipes for the "invisible ink," and sixteen of these require only heat, which is easily applied, to develop them. In other cases the inside of the envelope has been moistened with a chemical solution which develops the hidden writing. One medium used to put an apparently blank sheet of paper in a clear bottle and seal it. Here trickery seemed impossible, and the sitter was greatly impressed at receiving a pious message on the paper. But the message had been written in advance with a weak solution of copper sulphate, and the bottle had been washed out with ammonia, which develops it.

In slate-messages much use is made of a false flap, or a loose sheet of slate which fits imperceptibly on one side of the framed slate. It conceals the message written on the slate, and is removed under the table or under cover of a newspaper. A sheet of slate-coloured silk or cloth is sometimes fitted on the slate, and it is drawn up the medium's sleeve or rolled into the frame of the slate. Invisible messages may be written on the slate with onion or lemon juice, and developed by lightly passing over them a cloth containing powdered chalk. Double-frame slates lend themselves to infinite trickery. Slates are provided by "the trade" with false hinges and all kinds of mechanism. But even when the sitter brings his own slates, as ZÖllner did, and ties them up and seals them, the medium is not baffled. They are laid aside, for the spirits to write on at their leisure. At the first convenient opportunity the medium removes the wax, without spoiling the seal, by passing a heated knife-blade or fine wire beneath it, and, after untying the strings, heats the under-surface of the wax and sticks it on again.

Mediums found that sitters were greatly impressed if they heard the sound of the spirits writing on the slate. This was easily done by scraping with the finger nail, and cautious people wanted to have a security against fraud. One medium gave them adequate security. He held both hands above the table, yet writing was distinctly heard underneath it. The man had attached to the table a clamp holding a bit of slate-pencil, and against this he rubbed a pencil which was fastened to his trousers by loops of black silk. Others can use a pencil with their toes—I have seen an armless Bulgar girl use a pen with her toes as neatly as a good writer uses his fingers—and hold both hands above the table.

This trick is often used when a message is wanted in answer to a question and cannot be written in advance. The usual method is, however, to hold the slate under the table-top and write on it while it is held there. At first this was done by means of a tiny bit of slate-pencil slipped under the nail of the big finger. Slade soon found that this was suspected, and he made a point of keeping his nails short. The trade which is at the back of mediums then supplied thimbles with bits of pencil attached, which the medium could slip on to his finger as he put the slate under the table. Even thimbles with three differently coloured chalks were made, and the innocent sitter would be invited to select his own colour for the spirits to write in. The most amazing tricks were developed. Robinson tells of a man who would let you bring your own slate and hold it against your own breast, and the message then appeared on it. He "tried" your slate when you brought it by writing on it with his pencil. But, of course, he sponged out all his writing before he handed the slate back to you, as you could see. He had a double pencil—slate at one end and silver nitrate at the other—and what he wrote with the latter was invisible until it was damped with salt-water. Well, the sponging (or damping) had been done with salt-water, and so the message (in silver nitrate) appeared as the slate dried against your breast.

When you thus allow the medium to use his own apparatus in his own room you need not be surprised at any result whatever. The sensible man will remember that behind the mediums is the same ingenious industry which supplies conjuring outfits. Mr. Selbit showed Mr. Moseley a typewriter, on an ordinary-looking table, which spelt out, by invisible fingers, a message in reply to your question. There was an electrical mechanism in the table, and an electrician in the next room controlling it by a wire through the hollow table-leg. But even without such elaborate mechanism mediums can baffle quite vigilant sitters. There was one who would allow you to examine his nails, yet he got slate-messages without putting the slate under the table. He had ground slate-pencil to dust, mixed it with gum, and then cut the mixture into little cubes or pellets. He simply stuck these on his trousers, and, after you had examined his nails, helped himself to one.

When the answers are given on paper a hundred other tricks are employed. First the medium must learn the question you are putting to the spirits. If you put it mentally, you will never get more than a lucky or unlucky guess, unless you happen to be one of those sitters for whom the medium was prepared. You need not fear telepathy. It must be admitted to-day that the evidence for telepathy or thought-transference is in as parlous a condition as the evidence for Spiritualism. After all the challenges and discussions not a single serious claim lies before us. Sir A. C. Doyle, it is true, tells (Debate, p. 28) quite confidently of Mr. Lethem getting an answer to his unspoken questions. But Sir Arthur, as usual, does not tell all the facts. The unspoken questions to which Mrs. Lethem, as a medium, gave "correct answers" were precisely the two test questions which Mr. Lethem had put to a medium some time before! We may surely presume that he had confided that wonderful experience to the wife of his bosom.

No, there is no clear case of telepathy, or answers to unspoken questions, on record. The medium gets you to write your questions. Spirits are supposed to be more at home in reading such spiritual things as thoughts than in reading material scribbles; but your medium is not a spirit, and you will get no answer unless he knows the question. If you write your question on the pad which he kindly offers, it is easy. There is a carbon paper underneath, which gives him a duplicate. In one very elaborate case the carbon and duplicate were under the cloth, and were drawn off, when you had finished writing, through a hollow leg of the table into the next room. One medium developed the art of reading what you wrote from the movements of the top of your pencil. Others, like Foster, artfully stole your bit of paper and substituted dummies. But I will quote from Mr. Carrington a last trick which will give the reader a sufficiently large idea of the wonderful ingenuity which mediums use in these spirit messages.

He tells in his Personal Experiences of Spiritualism of a pair of Chicago mediums—the same Misses Bangs who painted spirit pictures before your eyes, as I have previously described—whose method was extraordinarily difficult to detect. You wrote a letter to a deceased person. You folded a blank sheet with this letter, and sealed them yourself in an envelope. This letter you handed to Miss Bangs as she sat at the table opposite you. After a long delay, but without her leaving the room, she restored the envelope (which had lain on the table under a blotter) to you intact, and you found a letter to you from your spirit friend written on the blank sheet you had enclosed.

Mr. Carrington admits that he can only guess the way in which this striking performance was done, but the reader who cares to read his full and interesting account will feel that his conjecture is right. The letter did not remain on the table. Under cover of the blotting pad and various nervous movements it was conveyed to the medium's lap, and from there to a shallow tray on the floor under the table. The medium, he noticed, sat close to a door which led into an adjoining room, and he believes that the tray was pulled by a string from under the table into the next room. An expert whom he afterwards sent to examine the house, under cover of a sitting, verified his conjecture that there was space enough at the bottom of the door to pull a shallow tray through. In the next room it was easy for Miss Bangs No. 2 to open the letter, write the reply, and seal the envelope again. Even wax seals offer no difficulty to mediums. The letter was re-conducted to the table in the same furtive way. A desperate Spiritualist may say that his hypothesis is simpler than this. But there is one little difficulty. No such person had ever existed as the supposed dead relative to whom Mr. Carrington addressed his letter! He had hoaxed the hoaxer.

Here were two quiet and inoffensive-looking spinsters earning a good living by deceptive practices (this and the spirit-painting trick) which they had themselves, apparently, originated, and which taxed the ingenuity of an expert conjurer to discover. What chance has the ordinary inquirer, much less the eager Spiritualist, against guile of this description? A boy of sixteen can buy a box of conjuring apparatus for a guinea. It contains only tricks which have been scattered over the country for years. Yet in your own drawing-room he can, after a little practice, cheat your eyes every time, although you know that there is trickery, and are keenly on the look-out for it. What chance have you, then, against a man or woman who has been conjuring for twenty years? What chance have you in a poor light? What earthly chance have you in the dark? It is amazing how inquirers and Spiritualists forget this elementary truism. They tell you repeatedly, with the air of supreme experts in conjuring, that "there was no possibility of fraud." That is sheer self-deception. Even expert conjurers have been completely deceived by mediums, as Bellachini was with Slade (a confessed impostor) and Carrington was with Eusapia Palladino. The man who tells you that there was no fraud because he saw none is as foolish as the man who expects you either to explain where the fraud was or else embrace Spiritualism.

There is one other method of receiving messages which we must briefly notice. It is, to Spiritualists, the most impressive of all. The ghost of the dead talks directly to you. A "direct voice" medium is, of course, required, and some kind of trumpet is provided by the medium through which the spirit speaks to you. If you are known to the medium, or if you have a good imagination and are very eager, you can recognize the very accents of your dead wife or mother-in-law. But there is one disadvantage of this impressive phenomenon. It must take place in complete darkness; and we remember the warning of that high and experienced psychic authority, Dr. Maxwell, that the man who seeks any kind of phenomena in complete darkness is wasting his time.

Spiritualist writers are amusing when they try to reconcile us to the conditions which their mediums have imposed on them. Are there not certain conditions for the appearance of all scientific phenomena, they ask us? Most assuredly. You cannot grow carrots without soil, and so on. Is not darkness a condition of certain scientific processes? Again, most certainly. The photographic plate must be prepared in the dark, or in a dull red light. Therefore.... That is just where the Spiritualist fails. If the darkness under cover of which the photographic chemist prepares his plates lent itself equally to cover fraud or to protect his operations, there would be a parallel. As it is, there is no parallel.

The red light of the photographer can serve only one purpose. When the medium uses it, there are two purposes conceivable. One is, on the Spiritualist theory, that white light may interfere with the "magnetism," or the "psychic force," or whatever the latest jargon is. The other conceivable purpose is that it may cover fraud. Everybody admits that the darkening of the planet since 1848 has covered "a vast amount of fraud," to use the words of Baron Schrenck. Few people admit that it has favoured real phenomena. It is therefore quite absurd to attempt to reconcile us to the darkness by the analogy of photographic operations. There is no analogy at all. In the one case the poor light certainly favours fraud, and does not certainly do anything else. In the other case the red light never covers fraud, but has a single clear purpose.

Red light, as I have said, is the most tiring for the eye of all kinds of light. The man who thinks that he can control the hands and feet of seven mediums in such a light cannot expect to be taken seriously. He can expect only to be taken in. But the man who pays any attention to phenomena for which the medium requires pitch darkness is even worse. Why not simply imagine that the dead still live, and save the guinea? You have not the slightest guarantee of the genuineness of the phenomena. Imagining that you can recognize the voice or the features is one of the oldest of illusions.

In the summer of 1912 our Spiritualists were elated by the discovery of a new medium of the most powerful type. Mrs. Ebba Wriedt came from that perennial breeding-ground of great mediums, the United States, where she had long been known. In 1912 she illumined London. Through her W. T. Stead was able once more to address Spiritualists viva voce. One recognized the familiar voice unmistakably. Scepticism was ludicrous. Did not a Serbian diplomatist talk to the spirit in Serb, which Mrs. Wriedt did not know, and answer for the genuineness of the phenomena? Light had wonderful columns on Mrs. Wriedt's marvels. She was, the editor of a psychic journal said, "the pride and the most convincing argument of the whole Spiritualist and Theosophical world." In admiring her powers, even the mutual hostility of Spiritualist and Theosophist was laid aside, it seems.

Norwegian Spiritualists were eager to avail themselves of this rare gift, and they asked if Norwegian spirits could speak through the great medium. After consulting the spirits—a cynic would say, after practising a word or two of Norwegian—Mrs. Wriedt replied in the affirmative, and boldly crossed the sea.

There is, of course, no intrinsic reason, on the Spiritualist theory, why spirits should be confined to the language of the medium. In "direct voice" they do not even have to use her vocal organs. A trumpet lies on the ground or the table, and the spirits lift it up and megaphone (very softly) through it. It is quite inexplicable to those of us who are mere inquirers why the spirits must always talk English in England, American in America, and so on. Even when they try, as in the case of the Thomas brothers, to talk their native American to us in England, the result is half bad American and half Welsh-English. It would be much more impressive to our hesitating generation if a half-dozen foreigners were brought to the sitting, and each had a real conversation—not a word or two—with a ghost of his own nationality. Somehow the spirits insist on speaking the language, and even the dialect, of the medium. We shall consider in the next chapter a few supposed variations from this unfortunate rule of spirit-intercourse.

Well, Mrs. Wriedt went to Norway, and confronted her new inquirers with all the solidity and confidence of the well-built American matron. Somehow, the vocabulary of the Norwegian dead, who came along, was very limited. They could say only "Yes" or "No" in Norwegian. Otherwise the first sÉance was very good. To make up for their culpable ignorance of their native tongue the Norwegian ghosts scattered flowers about the dark room, gave ghostly music, and did other marvellous things. But there were two ladies and a professor—Frau Nielsen and Frau Anker and Professor Birkeland—who did not like this "Yes" and "No" business. It was scriptural, but not ladylike. So the professor held Mrs. Wriedt's hands very firmly at the second sÉance, and for twenty minutes the spirits were dumb. They always resent such things, as every Spiritualist knows. The trumpets lay on the floor, neglected and silent.

At length Professor Birkeland heard some very faint explosive sounds which his ears located in the trumpets or horns (in shape something like the old coach-horn). He looked steadily and saw them move slightly, a phosphorescent light in them making the movements clear. A good Spiritualist would have seen that this was the beginning of manifestations, and he would have paid close attention to the trumpets and relaxed his hard control of Mrs. Wriedt. The professor was, however, of the type which mediums call "brutal." He jumped up, switched on the electric light, and, before the Spiritualists could interfere, had snatched the two trumpets from the floor and bolted to the nearest analytic chemist. So the curtain fell on one more glorious act in the Spiritualist drama. Mrs. Wriedt had put in the trumpet particles of metallic potassium which, meeting the moisture she had also thoughtfully provided, explained the "psychic movements." Close examination disclosed that on other occasions she had used Lycopodium seeds to produce the same effect.

Professor Birkeland did not discover how the voices were produced, but they offer no difficulty. The trumpets were, he found, telescopic. Each consisted of three parts, and could stretch to nearly three feet. When some guileless lady, who is controlling the medium, allows a hand to stray in the usual way, the trumpet is seized, and it will give a "direct voice" over the heads of the sitters or close to any one of them. When the trumpet remains on the ground during the ghostly message, the medium has a rubber speaking-tube fitted to it. When no trumpet is provided at all, it makes no difference. The medium has thoughtfully brought one of these telescopic aluminium tubes in his trousers. It folds up to less than a foot. In some of the earlier cases, possibly still in some cases, the medium's little daughter, who sits demure and mildly interested on the couch before the light is switched off, mounts the furniture in the dark, and obligingly impersonates the ghost.

No one would accuse Mr. Crawford, of Belfast, of being ultra-critical, yet his experience confirms my conclusions. His marvellous experiences with the pious Kathleen drew the attention of the Spiritualist world, and all sorts of mediums came to help. First he tried the clairvoyants. But they saw such weird and contradictory things that he was worried. None of them saw the wonderful "psychic cantilever" which he thought the spirits made to lift the table, but they all saw ghostly hands where he did not want them; and the worst of it was that the same spirits which had confirmed his theory of a cantilever, and even allowed him to take a photograph (which he has meanly refused to publish) of it, now joyously confirmed the quite different theory of the Spiritualist clairvoyants.

So he gave it up, and next tried a "direct voice" medium. He is fairly polite about the result. He got plenty of voices from all quarters—in total darkness. Not only did a voice come from the ceiling, but a mark was made on it. The medium's silk coat was frivolously taken off her by the ghosts, and flung on the lap of one of the sitters. Strangely, these things do not impress him as much as the raising of a two-pound stool to a height of four feet does. He drops dark hints that things were said about this "direct voice" medium. She was a big woman, and she was not searched; and telescopic aluminium tubes take up little room. Mr. Crawford put his little electrical register near her feet, and she was "annoyed and nervous." In short, Mr. Crawford seems to have formed the same opinion as any sensible person would in the circumstances.[15]

We have still to examine the claims of the automatic writers; but, after all this, the reader will not expect much. Never yet was a message received which could not have been learned by the medium in a normal way. The overwhelming mass of the messages which are delivered daily in every country are fraudulent. In an amusing recent work (The Road to En-Dor) two officers have shown us how easy it was to dupe even educated men by these professions of marvellous powers. The advantage is on the side of the conjurer every time, and the sitter has little chance. Let the mediums come before a competent tribunal. All sorts of inducements have been offered to them to do so, but they are very shy of competent investigators. In 1911 an advertisement in the Times offered £1,000 to any medium who would merely give proof of possessing telepathic power, and there was not a single offer. This year Mr. Joseph Rinn, a former member of the American Society for Psychical Research and a life-long inquirer, has deposited with that Society a sum of £1,000 for any evidence of communication with the dead under proper conditions. There will again be no application. Mediums prefer a simpler and more reverent audience, even if the fees be smaller. But those who consult them under their own conditions, knowing that fraud has been practised under those conditions from San Francisco to Petrograd ever since 1848, must not talk to us about "evidence."