In my inquiry so far the reader will note that I have taken one thing for granted—the fact of telepathy. In order to convince him to the extent to which this great scientific truth has convinced me, it would be necessary for me to lead him through a thousand pages of evidence for telepathic phenomena, attested by some of the leading physicists of the day. I am aware that there are still sceptics on the subject of telepathy, but the testimony is overwhelming, and every year sees the ranks of scepticism growing thinner.

Not many years ago a very learned man, the late Professor von Helmholtz, although confronted with prima-facie evidence of thought transference or telepathy, declared: "I cannot believe it. Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own senses, would lead me to believe in the transmission of them from one person to another. It is clearly impossible." An opinion in these terms is very rare to-day. We are apt to express our incredulity in language far more guarded and less emphatic.

About hallucinations, however, there is no scepticism. We have remarked sensory hallucinations of an occasional nature; we now come to regard them as a cult, for I suppose there is no manifestation in the world, no gift, no prodigy even, that is not prone to the fate of being exploited for particular ends.

A poet, we will say, by some rare "subliminal uprush," produces a beautiful poem. He is at once chained to his desk by publishers and compelled to go on producing poetry for the rest of his life. It is inevitable that many of his manifestations will be false; and for that reason, in spite of an occasional jewel of truth, he runs serious risks of being denounced in the end as no poet.

I have no doubt it is the same with the producers or the agents of occult phenomena. Sensory hallucinations may be stimulated. They may be stimulated by intoxication and disease, or they may be stimulated by the morbid conditions of a spiritualistic sÉance. Everything in these conditions—the prolonged darkness, the emotional expectancy—promotes the peculiar frame of mind apparently requisite. Constant exercise—perpetual aspiration develops the power of seeing visions. After a time, in well-known cases, they appear to need no inducement to come spontaneously.

One well-known medium, Mr Hill Tout, confesses that building and peopling chateaux en Espagne was a favourite occupation of his in his earlier days. This long-practised faculty is doubtless a potent factor in all his characterisations, and probably also in those of many another full-fledged medium.

Hallucinations need not be visual only; they are frequently auditory. Miss Freer gives an account of one induced by merely holding a shell to the ear. There is another case of a young woman in whom auditory hallucinations would be excited on hearing the sound of water running through a tap. Given the basis of actual sound, the hallucinable person quickly causes it to become articulate and intelligible. Thus, is it unreasonable to suppose that the vague, nebulous lights seen at dark sÉances would furnish the raw material, so to speak, for sense deception?

Thus, we have the basis and beginning, from one point of view, of modern spiritualism. But before we examine the question of clairvoyance or trance utterances of spiritualistic mediums we must first of all go into the subject of physical phenomena.

So-called physical phenomena are a comparatively modern excrescence on the main growth. It is only within the last half-century that they have attained any considerable development. The faith in the communion and intervention of spirits originated before their appearance and will probably outlast their final discredit. At the best, whatever effect they may have had in advertising the movement with the vulgar, they seem to have exerted only a subsidiary influence in inducing belief with more thoughtful men and women.

These physical phenomena consist chiefly of table rapping, table moving, ringing of bells, and various other manifestations for which a normal cause is not apparent. For a long time, in the early days of modern spiritualism, the cult was chiefly confined to "miracles" of this sort. One of its most notable props was the manifestations, long continued and observed by many thousands, of the famous Daniel Dunglas Home. It is fifty years ago now since Home came to England and began his sÉances, which were attended by Lord Dunraven, Lord Brougham, Sir D. Brewster, Robert Owen, Bulwer Lytton, T. A. Trollope, Garth Wilkinson, and others. For thirty years Home was brought before the public as a medium, dying in 1886. He seems to have been an amiable, highly emotional man, full of generous impulses, and of considerable personal charm. His frankness and sincerity impressed all those who came in touch with the man. Mr Andrew Lang has called him "a Harold Skimpole, with the gift of divination."

Home dealt with both clairvoyance and physical manifestations. Ostensibly through him came an enormous number of messages purporting to proceed from the dead friends of certain of those attending the sÉances. In the records of these sÉances will be found the signed statements of Dr Garth Wilkinson, Dr Gully, Mr and Mrs S. C. Hall, the present Earl of Dunraven, Earl of Crawford, Dr Hawksley, Mrs Nassau Senior, Mr P. P. Alexander, Mr Perdicaris, and others, that they had received messages giving details of a private nature that it seemed in the last degree probable could be known to the medium. Home's manifestations were for the most part those which any attendant at a spiritualistic sÉance can witness for himself to-day. The room he used was, compared with those used by other mediums who insisted on complete darkness, well lighted, as he had a shaded lamp, a gas-burner, or one or two candles lighted. The manifestations generally began with raps; then followed a quivering movement of the table, which one present described as like "the vibration on a small steamer when the engines begin to work"; by another as "a ship in distress, with its timbers straining in a heavy sea." Then, suspended in the air, the table would float, and in its shelter musical instruments performing could be heard; the sitters could feel their knees being clasped and their dresses pulled; many things would be handed about the circle, such as handkerchiefs, flowers, and even heavy bells. During the performance messages were rapped out by the spirits, or delivered through the mouth of the medium. In this respect, where intelligence is shown, they would partake of the nature of trance utterance, a thing to be analysed later.

Robert Bell, a dramatist and critic, having been present at one of these sÉances, acknowledged that he had seen things which he was satisfied were "beyond the pale of material experiences." After describing various manifestations, hands felt under the table, touching the knees, and pulling the clothes, bells rung by invisible agency, and various articles thrown about the room, he proceeds to describe "levitation":

"Mr Home was seated next the window. Through the semi-darkness his head was dimly visible against the curtains, and his hands might be seen in a faint white heap before him. Presently he said, in a quiet voice, 'My chair is moving—I am off the ground—don't notice me—talk of something else,' or words to that effect. It was very difficult to restrain the curiosity, not unmixed with a more serious feeling, which these few words awakened; but we talked, incoherently enough, upon some different topic. I was sitting nearly opposite Mr Home, and I saw his hands disappear from the table, and his head vanish into the deep shadow beyond. In a moment or two more he spoke again. This time his voice was in the air above our heads. He had risen from his chair to a height of four or five feet from the ground. As he ascended higher he described his position, which at first was perpendicular, and afterwards became horizontal. He said he felt as if he had been turned in the gentlest manner, as a child is turned in the arms of a nurse. In a moment or two more he told us that he was going to pass across the window, against the grey, silvery light of which he would be visible. We watched in profound stillness, and saw his figure pass from one side of the window to the other, feet foremost, lying horizontally in the air. He spoke to us as he passed, and told us that he would turn the reverse way and recross the window, which he did. His own tranquil confidence in the safety of what seemed from below a situation of the most novel peril gave confidence to everybody else; but with the strongest nerves it was impossible not to be conscious of a certain sensation of fear or awe. He hovered round the circle for several minutes, and passed, this time perpendicularly, over our heads. I heard his voice behind me in the air, and felt something lightly brush my chair. It was his foot, which he gave me leave to touch. Turning to the spot where it was on the top of the chair, I placed my hand gently upon it, when he uttered a cry of pain, and the foot was withdrawn quickly, with a palpable shudder. It was evidently not resting on the chair, but floating; and it sprang from the touch as a bird would. He now passed over to the farthest extremity of the room, and we could judge by his voice of the altitude and distance he had attained. He had reached the ceiling, upon which he made a slight mark, and soon afterwards descended and resumed his place at the table. An incident which occurred during this aerial passage, and imparted a strange solemnity to it, was that the accordion, which we supposed to be on the ground under the window close to us, played a strain of wild pathos in the air from the distant corner of the room."

A well-known physician, Dr Gully, who was present at this sÉance, wrote confirming the account in The Cornhill Magazine given by the above writer.

During the ensuing forty years mediumistic performances became of common and almost daily occurrence in this country. Two or three forms of so-called spirit manifestation—such as materialisation, spirit photography, and slate-writing—afterwards became connected with many of the sÉances. But first the manifestations in daylight consisted of raps and tiltings of a table; afterwards, when the lights were turned out or turned very low, spirit voices, touches of spirit hands, spirit lights, spirit-born flowers, floating musical instruments, and moving about or levitation of the furniture.

Until Sir William Crookes began to investigate the alleged spiritualistic phenomena, all investigation had been undertaken by persons without scientific training. After a year of experiments he issued a detailed description of those conducted in his own laboratory in the presence of four other persons, two of whom, Sir William Huggins and Sergeant Fox, confirmed the accuracy of his report. The result was that he was able to demonstrate, he said, the existence of a hitherto unknown force, and had measured the effect produced. At all events, these inquirers were convinced of the genuineness of Home's powers.

Suppose we glance at the possible alternative—viz. that Home was a conjurer of consummate skill and ingenuity. For one of the physical phenomena, that of tilting a table at a precarious angle without displacing various small objects resting on its polished surface, Mr Podmore suggests an explanation. He thinks that the articles were probably held in position on the table when it was tilted by means of hairs and fine threads attached to Home's dress. He has various explanations for other of the phenomena, but he confesses that there remain a few manifestations which the hypothesis of simple trickery does not seem to fit. In going over a mass of evidence relating to Home, the hypothesis of conjuring seems to be rather incredible; when one bears in mind Home's long career as a medium, how his private life was watched by the lynx-eyed sceptics, eager to pounce upon the evidence of trickery, and that he was never detected, it certainly seems to me, at all events, that Home's immunity from exposure is strong evidence against the assumption of fraud. Home was merely the type of a large class of mediums purporting to be controlled by spirit power, whose sÉances are a feature of modern life.

Certain experiments of Sir William Crookes with Home came very near to satisfying the most stringent scientific conditions, especially those in the alteration in the weight of a board. In these experiments one end of the board was on a spring balance and the other rested on a table. The board became heavier or lighter as Home placed his fingers on the end resting on the table and "willed" it, and the different weights were recorded by an automatic register. This effect might have been produced, says Mr Podmore, by using a dark thread with a loop attached to some part of the apparatus—possibly the hook of the spring balance—and the ends fastened to Home's trousers. But this particular trick does not seem to have occurred to those experimenting, and the description of the sÉances does not exclude it.

Suggesting an explanation of an event does not prove that it so occurred, and Mr Podmore adds: "It is not easy to see how the investigators ... could have been deceived, and repeatedly deceived, by any device of the kind suggested."

One of the most remarkable of Daniel Dunglas Home's manifestations occurred on 16th December 1868, at 5 Buckingham Gate, London. There were present the Master of Lindsay (now the Earl of Crawford), Viscount Adare (the present Earl of Dunraven), and Captain Wynne. The Master of Lindsay has recorded the circumstances, as follows:—

"I was sitting with Mr Home and Lord Adare and a cousin of his. During the sitting Mr Home went into a trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window. The distance between the windows was about seven feet six inches, and there was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a twelve-inch projection to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers on. We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in air outside our window. The moon was shining full into the room; my back was to the light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the window-sill, and Home's feet about six inches above it. He remained in this position for a few seconds, then raised the window and glided into the room feet foremost and sat down."

Here is Lord Adare's account of the central incident:

"We heard Home go into the next room, heard the window thrown up, and presently Home appeared standing upright outside our window; he opened the window and walked in quite coolly."

Captain Wynne, writing to Home in 1877, refers to this occasion in the following words:

"The fact of your having gone out of the one window and in at the other I can swear to."

It is surely not a little remarkable that an occurrence of so extraordinary a nature should be testified to by three such clear-headed men as Captain Wynne and Lords Lindsay and Adare. To cross from one window to another by ordinary means was clearly impossible, and it would be a brave conjurer indeed who would essay such a feat at a distance of eighty-five feet from the ground. What then is the explanation? Mr Podmore suggests that the three witnesses were the victims of a collective hallucination; but this theory is not easy to accept, and Mr Andrew Lang has heaped it with ridicule. "There are," he writes, "two other points to be urged against Mr Podmore's theory that observers of Home were hallucinated. The Society's records contain plenty of 'collective, so-called telepathic hallucinations.' But surely these hallucinations offered visionary figures of persons and things not present in fact. Has Mr Podmore one case, except Home's, of a collective hallucination in which a person actually present is the hallucination; floats in the air, holds red-hot coals and so forth—appears outside of the window, for instance, when he is inside the room? Of course, where conjuring is barred. Again, Home's marvels are attested by witnesses violently prejudiced against him, and (far from being attentively expectant) most anxious to detect and expose him."

If the case of Home presents difficulties to the rational sceptic, that of William Stainton Moses, who died in 1892, presents an even harder problem. I will refer to Moses later when we come to discuss clairvoyance, but at first his mediumistic powers were manifested in physical phenomena. He was a clergyman and a scholar, an M.A. of Oxford, and for nearly eighteen years English master in University College School. He was held in esteem and even affection by all who were most intimately associated with him. Yet Moses was responsible for table rapping, levitation of furniture, playing of musical instruments and "apports"—the latter term expressing the movement or introduction of various articles either by the request of the sitters or spontaneously, such as books, stones, shells, opera-glasses, candle-sticks, and so forth. All this began in 1872, and the phenomena observed at the various sÉances were carefully recorded by the medium's friends, Dr and Mrs Speer, C. T. Speer, and F. W. Percival. It must be borne in mind that Moses was in his thirty-third year before he suspected mediumistic powers. There have been any number of hypotheses to account for the physical phenomena furnished at these sÉances. Jewels, cameos, seed pearls, and other precious things were brought and given to the sitters. Scent was introduced; familiar perfumes—such as sandalwood, jasmine, heliotrope, not always recognised—were a frequent occurrence at these sÉances. Occasionally it would be sprayed in the air, sometimes poured into the hands of the sitters, and often it was found oozing from the medium's head and even running down.

In Mrs Speer's diary for 30th August there is the following record:—

"Many things were brought from different parts of the house through the locked door this evening. Mr S. M. was levitated, and when he felt for his feet they were hanging in mid-air, while his head must have almost touched the ceiling."

Dr Speer also records a "levitation" on 3rd December:

"Mr M. was floated about, and a large dining-room chair was placed on the table."

Mrs Speer tells us that they sat in the fire-light, and that the sÉances were held in more or less complete darkness. Moses' own account of the levitation is much fuller. He says that he was fully conscious that he was floating about the room, and that he marked a place on the wall with a pencil, which was afterwards found to be more than six feet from the floor. Subsequently musical sounds became a feature of the manifestations. In September 1874 Mrs Speer gives a list of them, mentioning ten or more different kinds, including the tambourine, harp, fairy-bells, and many stringed instruments, and ascribes their production to eight different spirits.

In the early materialisations of Stainton Moses we find that hands, and occasionally the fore arm, were seen holding lights. These spirit lights are described as hard, round, and cold to the touch. In his description of one incident at a sÉance Moses himself pens a significant passage, which seems to confirm the suspicion that the spirit lights were really bottles of phosphorised oil:

"Suddenly there arose from below me, apparently under the table, or near the floor, right under my nose, a cloud of luminous smoke, just like phosphorus. It fumed up in great clouds, until I seemed to be on fire, and rushed from the room in a panic. I was fairly frightened, and could not tell what was happening. I rushed to the door and opened it, and so to the front door. My hands seemed to be ablaze, and left their impress on the door and handles. It blazed for a while after I had touched it, but soon went out, and no smell or trace remained.... There seemed to be no end of smoke. It smelt distinctly phosphoric, but the smell evaporated as soon as I got out of the room into the air."

Such candour disarms us: can there be any ground for the theory that here was a case of self-deception on a large scale? Or is there yet an alternative explanation? Perhaps we shall discover one.