air. He wrote 'automatically'. Knocks resounded in his
neighbourhood, in the open air. 'Lights' of all varieties hovered
in his vicinity. He spoke 'automatically,' being the mouth-piece of
a 'spirit,' and very dull were the spirit's sermons. After a
struggle he believed in 'spirits,' who twanged musical notes out in
his presence. He became editor of a journal named Light; he joined
the Psychical Society, but left it when the society pushed
materialism so far as to demonstrate that certain professional
mediums were convicted swindlers.
The evidence for his marvels is the testimony of a family, perfectly
respectable, named Speer, and of a few other witnesses whom nobody
can suspect of conscious inaccuracy. There remain, as documents,
his books, his MS. notes, and other corroborative notes kept by his
friend Dr. Speer, a sceptic, and other observers.
It is admitted that Mr. Moses was not a cautious logician, his
inferences are problematic, his generalisations hasty. As to the
facts, it is equally difficult to believe in them, and to believe
that Mr. Moses was a conscious impostor, and his friends easy dupes.
He cannot have been an impostor _unconsciously_ in a hypnotic state,
in a 'trance,' because his effects could not have been improvised.
If they were done by jugglery, they required elaborate preparations
of all sorts, which must have been made in full ordinary
consciousness. If we fall back on collective hallucination, then
that hallucination is something of world-wide diffusion, ancient and
continuous, for the effects are those attributed by Iamblichus to
his mystics, by the Church to her saints, by witnesses to the
'possessed,' by savages to medicine-men, and by Mr. Crookes and Lord
Crawford to D. D. Home. Of course we may be told that all lookers-
on, from Eskimo to Neoplatonists and men of science, know what to
expect, and are hallucinated by their own expectant attention. But,
when they expect nothing, and are disappointed by having to witness
prodigies, the same old prodigies, what is the explanation?
The following tabular statement, altered from that given by Mr.
Myers in his publication of Mr. Moses and Dr. Speer's MS. notes,
will show the historical identity of the phenomena. Mr. Moses was
the agent in all; those exhibited by other ancient and modern agents
are marked with a cross.
Rev. D. D. Iamblichus St. Eskimo Australian
'Spontaneous
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