Jane T. Stoddart

“ It was with a deep sense of responsibility, we may be sure, and with a consciousness of surrounding danger, that the world-famed scientist wrote these words: “Self-control is more important than any other form of control, and whoever possesses the power of receiving communications in any form should see to it that he remains master of the situation. To give up your own judgment and depend solely on adventitious aid is a grave blunder, and may in the long run have disastrous consequences. ”

“ Under the Second Empire, about the time of the Crimean War, table-turning and spirit-rapping were the amusements of every drawing-room. While our great war lasted the need for distraction was felt by those who in normal times are known as “the pleasure-loving classes.” Individuals among these classes—hundreds, nay thousands, of them—were occupied to the limit of their strength in public service. Crowded theatres and music-halls proclaimed their need of respite and excitement. Spiritualism had its distractions to offer to the weary rich. ”

“ A similar disappointment awaits the pushing crowd which gazes through the telescope of Spiritualism. “Have patience,” say the masters of science, “we are only on [Pg 167] the threshold of knowledge. In a single generation we have added two vast provinces to the human spirit. By wireless telegraphy we have turned the farthest ocean solitudes into man’s whispering gallery. In conquering the air we have revolutionised the course of history.” ”

“ The dead who are so gloriously alive can hold fellowship with the living who have not yet died. The communion of saints is not to be limited to those who still dwell in this temporal and material world; it extends to those who have passed to the other side of death.... The only way in which we can combat Spiritualism is ourselves to rescue this truth about fellowship from the neglect into which it has fallen—to speak and think in a more Christian way about those who have passed on.... ”

“ How can the impartial inquirer hope to discern the truth amid heaps of lies? The cheating medium could be detected and cast out; the “controls” are as irresponsible as the fairies of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Sir Oliver Lodge’s views on the “controls” are of extreme interest, though he is fully committed to the defence of Spiritualism. “The dramatic semblance of the control,” he says, “is undoubtedly that of a separate person—a person asserted to be permanently existing on the other side, [Pg 66] and to be occupied on that side in much the same functions as the medium is on this.” ”

“ The Principals of our theological institutions are level-headed men, and they did not see their way to provide a dark-room for the séance, as hotels supply a dark-room for the amateur photographer. The Churches have rejected the proposal that they should enter into competition with the experts on whom it falls to investigate the phenomena of Spiritualism. Is their refusal based on cowardice? Very far from it. Sir Walter Scott, in “The Monastery,” has shown us once for all how a great Christian, before the dawn of modern science, met the onset of what seemed to him a supernatural being. ”

“ It is upon that rock that the great vessel of modern Spiritualism is in imminent danger of being wrecked.... In the Spiritualist hymn-book the name of Jesus is deleted—e.g., ‘angels of Jesus’ reads ‘angels of wisdom.’ At their services His name is carefully omitted in the prayers, and the motto of very many is, ‘Every man his own priest and his own saviour.’ Christian Spiritualists, who rejoice in many of the revelations of the séance room, are alarmed. ”

“ QUALITY OF THE ALLEGED MESSAGES When a Spiritualist tells us that he receives messages from discarnate human beings through the medium and the medium’s “control” certain questions immediately arise. “Of what nature are these messages? What have you learned from them? How have they affected your judgment of this world and the next? Are they likely to help mankind in its upward progress?”
I
A twofold answer reaches us from within the ranks of Spiritualism. ”

“ AUTOMATIC WRITING The Society for Psychical Research has for many years given close attention to the subject of automatic writing. This has been defined as “the faculty possessed by certain people of holding a pencil over a sheet of paper and writing coherent and intelligible sentences without any conscious volition.” Sometimes the medium sits entranced with averted face, and the circle looks on while “the moving finger writes.” The script, in most cases, purports to emanate from a human being who has passed into the Unseen. ”

“ Can we doubt that from the wonderful works of God, no less than from His holy Word, new light and truth will yet break forth for humanity? Science is prepared for extensions of man’s physical and mental powers which will put to shame the phenomena of Spiritualism. ”

“ Honest-minded Spiritualists are groping after a natural explanation of the phenomena. The best of them, we are sure, would agree with Dr. Barnes that automatic writing, taken as a whole, has no evidential value in favour of the theory that it is possible to communicate with the dead. As the “table phenomena” point to dimly realised extensions of man’s physical powers, so the unexplained facts of automatic writing find their probable explanation in thought-transference, or in that mysterious realm where experts talk of “the dissociation of the personality.” ”

“ Many sayings of Scripture confirm the Christian’s assurance that the faithful dead, having passed the waves of this troublesome world, are at rest in their desired haven. Newman’s words on the calm of Ascensiontide belong in part not only to the exalted Saviour, but to each of His brethren now absent from the body: “He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness—stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy—that most perfect of joys, the utter, profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine essence. ”

“ Barnes that it is not uncommon to hear in Christian pulpits an admission that the medium can receive communications from another world, and to find this admission coupled with the suggestion that these communications are sent by evil spirits. We entirely agree with Dr. Barnes [Pg 100] that the worst way of attacking Spiritualism is to admit its fundamental claim that communication with “spirits” can be set up, and then to assert that the “spirits” with whom intercourse is established are evil. “Such teaching attempts to combat Spiritualism by a revived belief in demonology.” ”

“ In every land which war has visited arms are stretched out towards the young and beautiful who have fallen, and the cry is heard from mourners’ lips, “I am determined to take the hazard of the night along with you.” ”

“ We are impressed at once, as we seek to answer these questions, by the contemptuous indifference of the learned world as a whole. Spiritualists ring the changes on a handful of eminent names. How is it that the leaders of the Psychical Society have not drawn after them a larger following? Canon Barnes, himself a Doctor of Science, observes that the most distinguished supporters of Spiritualism have not themselves received messages which prove the possibility of communication with the dead. The messages have come through others, for the most part professional mediums. ”

“ Hill thinks it probable that in many mediums there is a dissociation of consciousness, and no external spirit-agency at all. He warns Spiritualist societies against “encouraging the flow of [Pg 65] platitudinous or almost meaningless verbiage which, whether it comes from a medium’s subliminal or from a discarnate spirit, can hardly be helpful to anybody, and must be very bad for the minds of most hearers.” He admits that in “at least some cases of trance-control there is no reason to believe the control to be other than a subliminal fraction of the automatist’s mind.” ”

“ THE MEDIUM’S “CONTROL” Professor Jacks remarked in a recent address [9] that the whole problem of Spiritualism is largely centred in the “controls.” The “control” professes to be the spirit of some departed person, which has taken possession of the entranced medium, and which causes the medium to speak or write in an abnormal manner. Sir Oliver Lodge writes of “a separate intelligence ... which some think must be a secondary personality—which indeed certainly is a secondary [Pg 58] personality of the medium.” ”

“ It is the danger to the will, fully recognised and acknowledged, which leads Sir Oliver Lodge and others to press on students of Spiritualism the need for a primary absorption in worldly affairs. Camille Flammarion, the chief French authority, urges the same view. “There are foods and drinks,” he says, “which it is most wholesome to take only in small quantities.” After a lifetime devoted to the study of mediumship, this brilliant Frenchman thought that three principles only were established:
(1) The soul exists as a real entity independent of the body. ”

“ THE MEDIUM In ordinary trance-mediumship, at least four distinct entities are involved. There is first the inquirer, next the medium, thirdly the medium’s alleged “control” or controlling spirit, and, lastly, the presumed discarnate being who speaks to the inquirer through the “control” and through the medium.
I
“Mediumship” is a word with ugly associations, as every honest-minded Spiritualist will admit. It used to be said that the Psychical Society found its [Pg 44] chief occupation in exposing fraud and trickery. ”

“ We need to guard against self-deception, he thinks, even in people whose character is beyond reproach.
(2) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle greatly dislikes the commercial element in mediumship. In a letter to Light [6] he pleads for the “training and segregation of mediums.” Like Sir William Barrett, he condemns the whole system of paying by results. “It is only when the professional medium can be guaranteed an annuity which will be independent of results,” he says, “that we can [Pg 49] eliminate the strong temptation to substitute pretended phenomena when the real ones are wanting.” ”

“ The phenomena of Spiritualism to the French astronomer look like twinkling stars in the Milky Way of science. Thomas Hardy, in “Two on a Tower,” dwells on man’s sense of infinite littleness as he confronts the stellar universe. ”

“ If the Churches cannot speak to the mourners words of Divine consolation, Spiritualism will rush in with its false and fatal comfort. Shallow writers have told us in recent months that “the dead are sleeping in their graves, already half-forgotten.” So it seems, because life’s routine proceeds as usual in homes where “one is not.” ”

“ Spiritualist leaders of to-day would not dispute that point. “Yes, of course,” they would say, “it is always possible that the inquirer may get in touch with ‘naughty boys’ on the other side. The spirit passes over just as it was on earth. Bad influences as well as good are present in every séance.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has said plainly: “We have, unhappily, to deal with absolute cold-blooded lying on the part of wicked or mischievous intelligences. ”

“ John’s Eve, when the bonfire is lit and the priests and choir have gone past in long procession with banners and relics, places are set beside the glowing embers for those whose bodies are in the churchyard, that they, too, may look in at the dancers. ”

“ A table or other object may move in some inexplicable way, but that is no proof of ‘spirits’; the energy is supplied from physical matter—mainly the medium’s and sitters’ bodies, apparently—and it is only through evidential messages conveyed by the phenomena that spirit agency can reasonably be inferred. ”

“ Piper’s trance phenomena (which were closely observed by experts) Mrs. Sidgwick says that the trance “is probably a state of self-induced hypnosis in which her hypnotic self personates different characters either consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and believing herself to be the person she represents, and sometimes probably in a state of consciousness intermediate between the two.” Sir William Barrett also believes that the messages “often spring from, and are invariably influenced by, the medium’s own subconscious life.” ”

“ Sir Oliver Lodge regards the medium as “a delicate piece of apparatus, wherewith we are making an investigation.” “The medium is an instrument whose ways and [Pg 52] idiosyncrasies must be learnt, and to an extent humoured, just as one studies and humours the ways of some much less delicate piece of physical apparatus turned out by a skilled instrument maker.”
These words of Sir Oliver Lodge raise a serious question. Do our investigators care enough about the moral and physical injury which the “sensitive” may suffer under the trance condition? ”

“ The séance is not regarded as a “means of grace” for the believer in Spiritualism, therefore the outsider should avoid these dark and perilous ways. “Not [Pg 39] for nothing,” says the Rev. Cyril E. Hudson, “has the Church throughout her history discouraged the practice of necromancy, the morbid concern with the dead which must inevitably interfere, and does in fact interfere, with the proper discharge of our duties in that plane of existence in which God has placed us.” ”

“ Hill’s intelligence should forget that we are living in a Christian land, and that Spiritualism professes to bring new certainties about the future life to those whose hope and anchor on futurity has hitherto rested wholly in the Christian faith. ”

“ Barnes, “that all the well-attested evidence, on which the theory of spirit-communication is based, will ultimately be explained by a fuller knowledge of the interchange of consciousness between living persons.”
(3) We reject the crude theory that [Pg 108] mediumistic phenomena are caused by diabolic intervention.
(4) We believe that mental and moral ruin may result from “borderland” studies, because in these the personality is peculiarly liable to the loss of will-power and self-control. “We shall do well to keep the doors of the soul shut until we can open them to God.” ”

“ Arthur E. Waite, in a passage on automatic script, refers to “that dark border-line of mystery where deception and self-deception meet and join hands.”
“It is, indeed, open to question,” he says, “whether under some aspects ‘the spirit teachings,’ for example, obtained through the mediumship of the Rev. Stainton Moses are not, on the whole, more hopeless than the quality of the trance address delivered in a back street on a Saturday night before a circle of mechanics, for the simple [Pg 88] reason that from the normal gifts of the medium we had fair reason to look for better.” ”