ch, in the case of some of them, invariably marked the
display of their powers, the sittings were simply farcical; nor did I
ever find, in the doings of the mediums, or in the revelations of the
regular spiritistic circles (and I sat in the most important one of
them, that over which Judge Edmonds presided, during the two winters)
in which no paid medium took part, anything which was not, or could
not have been, imposture.

The reason is simple. The professional medium, paid to display certain
powers, which are in any case extremely uncertain in their response to
the call for them, invariably begins to imitate them when they fail.
The mediums are invariably persons of an inferior order of intellect,
avid of notoriety, and mostly mercenary, so that the results of the
consultations with them were almost sufficient to deter serious-minded
people from dealing with them a second time, while the people who
formed the regular circles and had made a sect with a devotional
character in it, rapidly degenerated into a credulity and materialism
which were more discouraging than the most arid skepticism. Physical
phenomena which met every demand for absolute guarantee of their
genuineness, were very rare, and to meet with them required great
patience and persistence, while the scientific student, in the habit
of dealing with experiments that had definite results, obeying known
or conjectured laws, if entering into an investigation which met at
the threshold a frivolous, and possibly fraudulent, "manifestation,"
threw up the subject, the more readily that in general the student of
physical science has no sympathy with psychical research.

Recognizing the correctness of this attitude and the unreliability
as well as the utter want of essential importance in the physical
manifestations and the invariable inconsequence and silliness of
the intellectual results, I withdrew entirely from circles in which
mediums took part or in which physical phenomena were sought for, and
limited my investigations to the cases in which the good faith of all
the company was unquestionable, and the investigation conducted
in privacy and sincerity. Here, of course, there was still great
uncertainty, and often the most curious triviality and low
intelligence, but we were able to check the possible tendency to the
simulation of the supra-normal activity. And even so the character
of the "manifestation" was generally so trivial and opposed to all
preconceive