Part 5

Sir Oliver Lodge, eleven years ago, took practically the same view as Robert Chambers in 1853. “I can move this tumbler with my hand,” he said, “but the question remains whether I can move the same tumbler at a distance of a couple of feet from my hand without actually touching it. Note that there is nothing inconceivable about this. The boundary of an organism, as of everything else, is more or less arbitrary; we know that in a sense a vortex ring exists, not only where it is seen, but at some distance also, and that the influence of every atom extends throughout the visible universe. And so, perhaps, on analogous lines, we may look for some explanation of these curious occurrences which will not take them altogether beyond the reach of more ordinary experience.”

III

We have given the opinion of scientific men in 1853 and in 1908 with regard to the phenomena of table-turning. Spiritualists to-day are much interested in the experiments of a distinguished Belfast scientist, Dr. W. J. Crawford, with the Goligher family, whose table experiments have satisfied him that “the invisible operators” are “the spirits of human beings who have passed into the beyond.” Sir William Barrett, who has personally watched the Belfast experiments, suggests that “many of the physical manifestations witnessed in a Spiritualistic séance are the product of human-like, but not really human, intelligences. Good or bad dæmonia they may be; elementals some have called them, which aggregate round the medium--drawn from that particular plane of mental and moral development in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and moral plane of the medium.”

Sir Oliver Lodge, in a recent article, speaks of “many grades of development” in the other world, “some lower than humanity.”

Mr. Arthur E. Waite, writing more than twenty years ago on Spiritualistic phenomena, set forth the theory of the Kabalists that “shells and elementals,” the “low life deeps of the world of souls,” might exercise a baneful influence on humanity. “The revelations of the unseen world which have come to us through Spiritualism,” he says, “can have come only from the dregs and lees of the unseen, or, as I should prefer to put it, from the roots and the rudiments of that house which, however, on account of those rudiments, may not be less the House of God.”

Scientific students of to-day seem divided between two theories as they examine the table phenomena. These are ascribed (1) to supernormal and little understood powers of the human personality, or (2) to the intervention of irresponsible and, it may be, sub-human intelligences.

Readers of “Raymond” will remember Sir Oliver Lodge’s reference to the difficulties of “table-sittings.” Various passages show that he himself has been greatly puzzled. Accounts of sittings at “Mariemont,” Sir Oliver Lodge’s home, tell of obstreperous doings on the part of the tables. Two got broken, and “a stronger and heavier round table with four legs was obtained, and employed only for this purpose.” In one of the séances with “Feda,” the alleged spirit of Raymond referred through the “control” to table-doings at Mariemont.

“Other spirits get in, not bad spirits, but ones that like to feel they are helping. The peculiar manifestations are not him, and it only confuses him terribly. Part of it was him, but when the table was careering about it was not him at all. He started it, but something comes along stronger than himself, and he loses the control.”

In a later sitting with the same medium and control we find the sentence (supposed to come from Raymond), “The Indians have got through their hanky-panky.” The reference was understood by his brother to mean “playing with the table in a way beyond his control.”

Mr. J. Arthur Hill has some sensible remarks on the general subject of table phenomena. “There seems no particular point,” he says, “in physical phenomena alone, except as providing a problem for the physicist and psychical researcher. A table or other object may move in some inexplicable way, but that is no proof of ‘spirits’; the energy is supplied from physical matter--mainly the medium’s and sitters’ bodies, apparently--and it is only through evidential messages conveyed by the phenomena that spirit agency can reasonably be inferred.” Mr. Hill disapproves of “private circles,” except when held for investigation by qualified persons.

Table phenomena, of whatever kind, afford no proof that discarnate human spirits are seeking to communicate with friends on earth.

We close this chapter with the words of Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, whose name is so highly honoured in Spiritualistic circles:--

“The physical phenomena ... do not prove the existence of spirits, and may possibly be explained without them ... that is, by unknown forces, emanating from the experimenters, and especially from the mediums.”

FOOTNOTES:

Fully reported in the Journal of the S.P.R. for December, 1908.

Weekly Dispatch, May 18th, 1919.

“Raymond,” pp. 182, 183.

ibid., p. 273, and see also pp. 276-277 for table phenomena.

Chapter VI

AUTOMATIC WRITING

The Society for Psychical Research has for many years given close attention to the subject of automatic writing. This has been defined as “the faculty possessed by certain people of holding a pencil over a sheet of paper and writing coherent and intelligible sentences without any conscious volition.” Sometimes the medium sits entranced with averted face, and the circle looks on while “the moving finger writes.” The script, in most cases, purports to emanate from a human being who has passed into the Unseen.

STAINTON MOSES

The most remarkable automatist of the Victorian period was the Rev. William Stainton Moses (“M.A., Oxon”), whose “Spirit Teachings” are still widely read, and whose character was regarded with admiration by men like F. W. H. Myers and Sir W. F. Barrett. Mr. Moses, who was a clergyman of the Church of England, and a master at University College School, revealed to a curious world the existence of a group of “spirits,” who concealed their identity, for the most part, under such pseudonyms as “Imperator,” “Rector,” “Mentor,” and “Doctor.” It has often been pointed out that the messages of “Imperator,” who was a spirit of a highly didactic and clerical turn of mind, were very much what the curate William Stainton Moses might have written of his own volition. Their main purpose appears to have been the inculcation of Broad Church theology.

Mr. Podmore considered that Stainton Moses was “perhaps the most remarkable private medium of the last generation,” but of his trance utterances this critic said: “They contain no evidence of supernormal faculty.”

Mr. Arthur E. Waite, in a passage on automatic script, refers to “that dark border-line of mystery where deception and self-deception meet and join hands.”

“It is, indeed, open to question,” he says, “whether under some aspects ‘the spirit teachings,’ for example, obtained through the mediumship of the Rev. Stainton Moses are not, on the whole, more hopeless than the quality of the trance address delivered in a back street on a Saturday night before a circle of mechanics, for the simple reason that from the normal gifts of the medium we had fair reason to look for better.”

The revelations conveyed through “Spirit Teachings” suggest to this experienced occultist that “if the dead have spoken at any time since the beginning of the Rochester knockings they have said nothing to arrest our attention or to warrant a continued communication.” Mr. Podmore, in “Modern Spiritualism,” mentions that “Imperator” and his associates were supposed to represent personages of some importance on earth. Their real names were revealed by Stainton Moses to one or two friends. After the migration of these “controls” to Mrs. Piper, “they more than once professed, as a proof of identity, to give their names, but their guesses have been incorrect.”

Mr. Podmore thought that the clue to the enigma of Stainton Moses’ life “must be sought in the annals of morbid psychology.” In justice to the medium it should be added that, while working as a curate in the Isle of Man, he showed remarkable courage and zeal during an outbreak of smallpox, helping to nurse sick and bury the dead. In the various positions he held as parish clergyman and schoolmaster he was liked and respected by all. The physical phenomena of his mediumship were always said to be secondary; his own wish was to emphasise the religious teaching he promulgated through automatic writing.