he net of the speculator and the landlord. He has to get money,
and in order to get it he has to impress those who already have
it--people whose minds and souls have been deformed by the system of
parasitism and exploitation.

So the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he refuses, he becomes a
martyr, and founds a church which becomes a church of charlatans. I
care not how sincere, how passionately proletarian a religious prophet
may be, that is the fate which sooner or later befalls him in a
competitive society--to be the founder of an organization of fools,
conducted by knaves, for the benefit of wolves. That fate befell
Buddha and Jesus, it befell Ignatius Loyola and Francis of Assisi,
John Fox and John Calvin and John Wesley.

A friend of mine who has made a study of "Spiritualism" describes to
me the conditions in that field. The mediums are people, mostly women,
with a peculiar gift; whether we believe in the survival of
personality, or whether we call it telepathy, does not alter the fact
that they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new faculty which
science must investigate. They come, poor people mostly--for the
well-to-do will seldom give their time to exacting and wearisome
experiments. They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering
with cold, obviously undernourished; and their survival depends upon
their producing "phenomena"--which phenomena are capricious, and will
not come at call. So, what more natural than that mediums should
resort to faking? That the whole field should be reeking with fraud,
and science should be held back from understanding an extraordinary
power of the subconscious mind?

Ever since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have been telling us
about the wondrous powers of a mulatto-woman, a manicurist at the
city's most fashionable hotel. The other day, out of curiosity, my
wife and I went; the moment the "medium" opened her mouth my wife
recognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to
get me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is
seeking to communicate with me! The #seance# was a public one, a
gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and
half of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a
vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the
room was made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, and then the spirit
of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bo