matician Professor de Morgan, entitled
"From Matter to Spirit." There is a sympathetic preface by the
husband. The book is still well worth reading, for it is a question
whether anyone has shown greater brain power in treating the subject.
In it the prophecy is made that as the movement develops the more
material phenomena will decrease and their place be taken by the more
spiritual, such as automatic writing. This forecast has been
fulfilled, for though physical mediums still exist the other more
subtle forms greatly predominate, and call for far more discriminating
criticism in judging their value and their truth. Two very convincing
forms of mediumship, the direct voice and spirit photography, have also
become prominent. Each of these presents such proof that it is
impossible for the sceptic to face them, and he can only avoid them by
ignoring them.

In the case of the direct voice one of the leading exponents is Mrs.
French, an amateur medium in America, whose work is described both by
Mr. Funk and Mr. Randall. She is a frail elderly lady, yet in her
presence the most masculine and robust voices make communications, even
when her own mouth is covered. I have myself investigated the direct
voice in the case of four different mediums, two of them amateurs, and
can have no doubt of the reality of the voices, and that they are not
the effect of ventriloquism. I was more struck by the failures than by
the successes, and cannot easily forget the passionate pantings with
which some entity strove hard to reveal his identity to me, but without
success. One of these mediums was tested afterwards by having the
mouth filled with coloured water, but the voice continued as before.

As to spirit photography, the most successful results are obtained by
the Crewe circle in England, under the mediumship of Mr. Hope and Mrs.
Buxton.[2] I have seen scores of these photographs, which in several
cases reproduce exact images of the dead which do not correspond with
any pictures of them taken during life. I have seen father, mother,
and dead soldier son, all taken together with the dead son looking far
the happier and not the least substantial of the three. It is in these
varied forms of proof that the impregnable strength of the evidence
lies, for how absurd do explanations of telepathy, unconscious
cerebration or cosmic memory become when faced by such phenomena as
spirit photography, materialisation, or the direct voice. O