After meeting my first medium I came away with the feeling that he was a rather artful liar; but now, whilst retaining that opinion, I am ready to admit that perhaps his lying was not a product of his consciousness. I know nothing of his history, but he was accepted by intelligent people as honest and respectable; moreover, records of spiritualism contain so many examples of people whose belief in their own supernatural powers must be accepted as real in spite of manifest deceit, that we must again fall back upon dissociation to explain their state of mind.
I shall assume the existence of three groups just as in connection with hysteria, and classify mediums, clairvoyants, water-diviners and other producers of the supernatural into—
1. The deceiver pure and simple.
2. The deceiver who has repressed the consciousness of deceit and become a Dissociate.
3. The subject who has never been conscious of deceit, but, led astray by his unconscious, has deceived himself from the beginning and finished as a Dissociate.
To place any performer in the proper group is again a matter of judgement. Having a small repertory of tricks, including water-divining and a few manifestations with a pack of cards, I have sometimes put myself in the first group with temporary success.
The development of a case of the second group is probably not a phenomenon that has ever been continuously observed, but Robert Browning has formed such an excellent conception of it in Mr. Sludge, the Medium, that his description bears comparison with my theory of the development of some hysterics. David Sludge is a house-servant and his master is pictured discussing high finance with his guests when the boy breaks in, saying, 'Sir, I've a five-dollar note.' The scorn of the guests is immediate:—'He stole it, then; shove him out'. And David is given the swift kick of ignominy.
'But,' says the poet,
'Let the same lad hear you talk as grand
Of signs and wonders, the invisible world.
If he break in with "Sir, I saw a ghost!"
Ah, the ways change!'
Browning leaves us to imagine the boy's motive; perhaps his was just a boyish trick inspired by a desire for notoriety of which he himself was scarcely conscious, but, like the unfortunate hysteric who meets credulity, David is led on to produce more manifestations.