The revelations conveyed through “Spirit Teachings” suggest to this experienced occultist that “if the dead have spoken at any time since the beginning of the Rochester knockings they have said nothing to arrest our attention or to warrant a continued communication.” Mr. Podmore, in “Modern Spiritualism,” mentions that “Imperator” and his associates were supposed to represent personages of some importance on earth. Their real names were revealed by Stainton Moses to one or two friends. After the migration of these “controls” to Mrs. Piper, “they more than once professed, as a proof of identity, to give their names, but their guesses have been incorrect.”
Mr. Podmore thought that the clue to the enigma of Stainton Moses’ life “must be sought in the annals of morbid psychology.” In justice to the medium it should be added that, while working as a curate in the Isle of Man, he showed remarkable courage and zeal during an outbreak of smallpox, helping to nurse sick and bury the dead. In the various positions he held as parish clergyman and schoolmaster he was liked and respected by all. The physical phenomena of his mediumship were always said to be secondary; his own wish was to emphasise the religious teaching he promulgated through automatic writing.
Spiritualists of to-day reject entirely the notion that the phenomena associated with Stainton Moses were produced by fraud, but as Mr. Hill says, “Whether they were due to spirits is another question, not to be finally settled until we know the extent of our subliminal self’s hidden powers.”
II
If doubts are felt by Spiritualists themselves with regard to the origin of such a standard work as “Spirit Teachings,” can we wonder that all but the most credulous reject great masses of ordinary automatic writing and concentrate their attention on a possibly valuable “residuum”? As Sir William Barrett recognises, the automatist, even when absolutely above suspicion, may unconsciously guide the pencil or the indicator of the “ouija board.” May not the explanation of surprising communications, when such occur, be found in “thought-transference from those who are sitting with the medium, or telepathy from other living persons who may know some of the facts that are automatically written?”[23]
Sir William Barrett asks the question, though he does not consider that an affirmative answer covers the facts. 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.”
Mr. Gerald Balfour, whose writings on Psychical Research deserve the closest and most attentive study, discussed in the Hibbert Journal ten years ago the problem of dissociation, “whereby an element of the normal self may be supposed to become in a lesser or greater degree divided off from that self, and to acquire, for the time being, a certain measure of independence.”
“It would appear to be with this secondary self (or selves, if there be more than one of them) that we have to reckon in dealing with the facts of automatism rather than with the normal self: a deduction drawn from the consciousness or unconsciousness of the latter may be altogether inapplicable to the former. How ready these second selves are to act a part, and how cleverly they often do so, the experience of hypnotism is there to show.”
III
“Nearly every woman,” writes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in “The New Revelation,” “is an undeveloped medium. Let her try her own powers of automatic writing.” Doctors have cried out against this dangerous advice given by one of the medical fraternity, and we have not found it supported by any leading authority in the ranks of Spiritualism. We are able to state, on excellent authority, that the late Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace strongly deprecated any similar attempts by amateurs. In private conversation he used to tell of a man who, having practised automatic writing, became absolutely incapable of writing the simplest note without his hand being used by other agencies. He was not able to hinder this by his own will, and in order to effect a cure he was obliged to abstain for years from using a pencil at all. Dr. Russel Wallace had a strong belief in the existence and activity of malignant low-grade spirits who seek to gain control over men.