ious, seems ubiquitous throughout the range
of physical phenomena of spiritism, and false pretence, prevarication
and fishing for clues are ubiquitous in the mental manifestations of
mediums. If it be not everywhere fraud simulating reality, one is
tempted to say, then the reality (if any reality there be) has the bad
luck of being fated everywhere to simulate fraud. The suggestion of
humbug seldom stops, and mixes itself with the best manifestations.
Mrs. Piper's control, "Rector," is a most impressive personage, who
discerns in an extraordinary degree his sitter's inner needs, and is
capable of giving elevated counsel to fastidious and critical minds.
Yet in many respects he is an arrant humbug--such he seems to me at
least--pretending to a knowledge and power to which he has no title,
nonplussed by contradiction, yielding to suggestion, and covering his
tracks with plausible excuses. Now the non-"researching" mind looks
upon such phenomena simply according to their face-pretension and never
thinks of asking what they may signify below the surface. Since they
profess for the most part to be revealers of spirit life, it is either
as being absolutely that, or as being absolute frauds, that they are
judged. The result is an inconceivably shallow state of public opinion
on the subject. One set of persons, emotionally touched at hearing the
names of their loved ones given, and consoled by assurances that they
are "happy," accept the revelation, and consider spiritualism
"beautiful." More hard-headed subjects, disgusted by the revelation's
contemptible contents, outraged by the fraud, and prejudiced beforehand
against all "spirits," high or low, avert their minds from what they
call such "rot" or "bosh" entirely. Thus do two opposite
sentimentalisms divide opinion between them! A good expression of the
"scientific" state of mind occurs in Huxley's "Life and Letters":

"I regret," he writes, "that I am unable to accept the invitation of
the Committee of the Dialectical Society. . . . I take no interest in
the subject. The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have ever had the
opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as
ever came under my notice. But supposing these phenomena to be
genuine--they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the
faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the
nearest provincial town, I should decline the privilege, having better
things t