CHAPTER XIII

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MEDIUM After meeting my first medium I came away with the feeling that he was a rather artful liar; but now, whilst retaining that opinion, I am ready to admit that perhaps his lying was not a product of his consciousness. I know nothing of his history, but he was accepted by intelligent people as honest and respectable; moreover, records of spiritualism contain so many examples of people whose belief in their own supernatural powers must be accepted as real in spite of manifest deceit, that we must again fall back upon dissociation to explain their state of mind. I shall assume the existence of three groups just as in connection with hysteria, and classify mediums, clairvoyants, water-diviners and other producers of the supernatural into-- 1. The deceiver pure and simple. 2. The deceiver who has repressed the consciousness of deceit and become a Dissociate. 3. The subject who has never been conscious of deceit, but, led astray by his unconscious, has deceived himself from the beginning and finished as a Dissociate. To place any performer in the proper group is again a matter of judgement. Having a small repertory of tricks, including water-divining and a few manifestations with a pack of cards, I have sometimes put myself in the first group with temporary success. The development of a case of the second group is probably not a phenomenon that has ever been continuously observed, but Robert Browning has formed such an excellent conception of it in _Mr. Sludge, the Medium_, that his description bears comparison with my theory of the development of some hysterics. David Sludge is a house-servant and his master is pictured discussing high finance with his guests when the boy breaks in, saying, 'Sir, I've a five-dollar note.' The scorn of the guests is immediate:--'He stole it, then; shove him out'. And David is given the swift kick of ignominy. * * * * * 'But,' says the poet, 'Let the same lad hear you talk as grand Of signs and wonders, the invisible world. If he break in with "Sir, I saw a ghost!" Ah, the ways change!' Browning leaves us to imagine the boy's motive; perhaps his was just a boyish trick inspired by a desire for notoriety of which he himself was scarcely conscious, but, like the unfortunate hysteric who meets credulity, David is led on to produce more manifestations. 'And, David, (is not that your Christian name?) Of all things, should this happen twice--it may-- Be sure while fresh in mind, you let us know!' Then later:-- '"... came raps! While a light whisked" ... "Shaped somewhat like a star? Well, like some sort of stars, ma'am." "So we thought! And any voice? Not yet? Try hard, next time, If you can't hear a voice; we think you may." * * * * * 'So David holds the circle, rules the roast, Narrates the vision, peeps in the glass ball, Sets-to the spirit-writing, hears the raps, As the case may be.' Then begins his conflict; like the patient who successfully feigns symptoms, he finds withdrawal difficult:-- 'You'd prove firmer in his place? You'd find the courage--that first flurry over, That mild bit of romancing-work at end, ... To interpose with "It gets serious, this; Must stop here. Sir, I saw no ghost at all. Inform your friends I made--well, fools of them, And found you ready-made. I've lived in clover These three weeks: take it out in kicks of me!" I doubt it. Ask your conscience!' Says poor David:-- 'There's something in real truth (explain who can) One casts a wistful eye at.' Now he faces the same dilemma that the developing hysteric has to meet, and as the hysteric reaches a false salvation by the repression of the knowledge of deceit so does David:-- 'Why, when I cheat, Mean to cheat, do cheat, and am caught in the act, Are you, or, rather, am I sure o' the fact? Well then I'm not sure! I may be, perhaps, Free as a babe from cheating: how it began, My gift ... no matter; what 'tis got to be In the end now, that's the question; answer that! Had I seen, perhaps, what hand was holding mine, Leading me whither, I had died of fright.' Nor does the poet omit the development of Receptivity:-- 'I'm eyes, ears, mouth of me, one gaze and gape, Nothing eludes me, everything's a hint, Handle and help.' At the last the youth, once an innocent jester, pours a stream of half-believed lies upon the man who, having caught him in his fraud, lets him go with a chance to start life afresh. Browning does not carry the idea of repression as far as I do, Sludge producing clouds of rationalisations to cover his inconsistencies. The idea of dissociation does not present itself, but the whole picture can be taken to represent the evolution of many mediums with their mixture of belief and deception. Just as in the hysteric we meet with mechanical ways of deceit, shown by self-inflicted injuries, so in the medium we meet with mechanical tricks for the production of spurious phenomena. In both cases fully-conscious deceit, reconciled to the moral complexes by rationalisations, is the easiest explanation, but sometimes fully-conscious deceit is unlikely. There is a disappointing lack of originality in spiritualist literature, for the same stories of the marvellous are repeated in one book and another. The Fox Sisters, Slade, Eglington, Eusapia Palladino and others appear according to the fancy of the writer, and their fraudulent tricks may or may not be acknowledged. It is a peculiarity of spiritualist reasoning that if a medium is caught cheating it only proves that he was cheating when he was caught; if he is not caught next time, we must accept as genuine the phenomena then produced. But no spiritualist writer can avoid the names of Home, Stainton Moses and Mrs. Piper, for _they were never caught cheating_; nevertheless, we apparently need testimonials at great length to their honesty. Mr. J. Arthur Hill gives two pages of testimonials to Stainton Moses, and repeats a story telling how the Reverend medium made an automatic drawing of a horse and truck and gave a spirit message concerning a man who had been killed that day under a steamroller in Baker Street. Mr. Hill says: 'Mr. Moses had passed through Baker Street in the afternoon, but had heard nothing of any such incident.'[26] [Footnote 26: _Spiritualism_, p. 64. Cassell & Co., 1918.] If Mr. Hill knew anything about dissociation he would not give us this oft-quoted but flimsy story. Whence does he obtain his evidence that the medium had heard nothing of the incident? Of course, from the honest personality of Mr. Stainton Moses himself. But a story of some terrifying episode is often, by psychological technique, extracted from a war-strained soldier only to be repressed and honestly denied by the man a little while later. If the dissociated sufferer can deny the truth of an incident which, when recalled again, fills him with horror, then the denial by another Dissociate that he has heard of a street accident does not carry weight, even if we read a bookful of testimony to his honesty. The accounts of this famous medium, who is still held in awe by believers, are full of such happenings. On another occasion the spirit in possession of him gave the names of members of a family who had died in India and were unknown to him or any one present. The names were verified by reference to the obituary column of _The Times_ of a few days before. We can assume that the honest Stainton Moses did not read _The Times_, but that the dissociated Stainton Moses read and remembered. With this dissociation well established and having for its object the production of occult phenomena, we can understand the rest of the manifestations that he produced for his circle of friends. He received numerous communications from the dead, produced spirit lights, transferred objects from one room to another through closed doors, floated about, and, in short, went through all the spiritualist repertory. The ball is kept rolling by all sorts of people. The late Archdeacon Wilberforce, who believed in 'objective entities that seem able to manipulate or influence nerve currents, or magnetic ether, or whatever it is, of persons in the flesh',[27] wrote approvingly of him: 'The most remarkable medium I ever knew was the Reverend Stainton Moses, a clergyman in my father's diocese of Oxford'.[28] [Footnote 27: _There is no Death_, p. 14.] [Footnote 28: _Ibid._, p. 62.] Of the same medium Mr. Podmore says: 'Apart from the moral difficulties involved, there is little or nothing to forbid the supposition that the whole of these messages were deliberately concocted by Mr. Moses himself and palmed off upon his unsuspecting friends.'[29] [Footnote 29: _Studies in Psychical Research_, p. 133.] The moral difficulties disappear when we consider the case as one of dissociation. His spirit communications were psychologically identical with the automatic writings of the Glastonbury archaeologists (see