ip that perhaps it would be
well to consider this curious condition a little more closely. The
question of mediumship, what it is and how it acts, is one of the most
mysterious in the whole range of science. It is a common objection to
say if our dead are there why should we only hear of them through
people by no means remarkable for moral or mental gifts, who are often
paid for their ministration. It is a plausible argument, and yet when
we receive a telegram from a brother in Australia we do not say: "It is
strange that Tom should not communicate with me direct, but that the
presence of that half-educated fellow in the telegraph office should be
necessary." The medium is in truth a mere passive machine, clerk and
telegraph in one. Nothing comes FROM him. Every message is THROUGH
him. Why he or she should have the power more than anyone else is a
very interesting problem. This power may best be defined as the
capacity for allowing the bodily powers, physical or mental, to be used
by an outside influence. In its higher forms there is temporary
extinction of personality and the substitution of some other
controlling spirit. At such times the medium may entirely lose
consciousness, or he may retain it and be aware of some external
experience which has been enjoyed by his own entity while his bodily
house has been filled by the temporary tenant. Or the medium may
retain consciousness, and with eyes and ears attuned to a higher key
than the normal man can attain, he may see and hear what is beyond our
senses. Or in writing mediumship, a motor centre of the brain
regulating the nerves and muscles of the arm may be controlled while
all else seems to be normal. Or it may take the more material form of
the exudation of a strange white evanescent dough-like substance called
the ectoplasm, which has been frequently photographed by scientific
enquirers in different stages of its evolution, and which seems to
possess an inherent quality of shaping itself into parts or the whole
of a body, beginning in a putty-like mould and ending in a resemblance
to perfect human members. Or the ectoplasm, which seems to be an
emanation of the medium to the extent that whatever it may weigh is so
much subtracted from his substance, may be used as projections or rods
which can convey objects or lift weights. A friend, in whose judgment
and veracity I have absolute confidence, was present at one of Dr.
Crawford's experiments with Kathl