es in some directions far greater than any
displayed by the waking subject. Add to this that the trance
intelligence habitually reflected the ideas in general and especially
the religious orthodoxy of her interlocutors; that on occasion she
showed knowledge of their thoughts and intentions which could not
apparently have been acquired by normal means; that she was, in
particular, extraordinarily skillful in diagnosing, prescribing for, and
occasionally foretelling the course of diseases in herself and
others--the proof must have seemed to the bystanders complete."[71]

[Footnote 71: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. I, p. 77.]

_The Beginnings of Trance-Mediumship_

We have here plainly enough the beginnings of trance mediumship. It
needed only unstable personalities, capable of self-induced trance
states, so to widen all this as to supply the bases of spiritistic
faith and the material for the immensely laborious investigation of the
Society for Psychical Research. In the main, however, French interest in
Mesmerism and animal magnetism took a more scientific turn and issued in
the brilliant French studies in hypnotism. Spiritualism has made little
headway in Catholic countries. The authority of the Church is thrown so
strongly against it as to prohibit the interest of the credulous and the
penetrating minds of the southern European scientists have been more
concerned with the problems of abnormal personality than the continued
existence of the discarnate.

The interest in Germany took another line. There was less scientific
investigation of hypnotism and trance states as abnormal modifications
of personality and far more interest in clairvoyance and spirit
existence. Men whose names carried weight accepted the spiritistic
explanation of phenomena ranging from broken flower pots to ghosts. Very
likely the German tendency toward mysticism and speculation explains
this. Jung followed Swedenborg and the mystics generally in affirming a
psychic body, but was a pioneer in associating it with the luminiferous
ether in a range of speculation which in our time supplies an
hypothetical scientific basis for the environment of the discarnate. (So
Sir Oliver Lodge.) Podmore concludes that the foundations of modern
Spiritualism were laid by the German magnetists of the first half of the
nineteenth century.

The movement developed along these lines till 1875. Once broadly in
action it touches at one point or another the who