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.