The Vital Message | Page 9

some portion of one's bodily substance for the use of outside

influences. Why should some have this power and some not? We do not know--nor do we
know why one should have the ear for music and another not. Each is born in us, and
each has little connection with our moral natures. At first it was only physical
mediumship which was known, and public attention centred upon moving tables,
automatic musical instruments, and other crude but obvious examples of outside
influence, which were unhappily very easily imitated by rogues. Since then we have
learned that there are many forms of mediumship, so different from each other that an
expert at one may have no powers at all at the other. The automatic writer, the clairvoyant,
the crystal-seer, the trance speaker, the photographic medium, the direct voice medium,
and others, are all, when genuine, the manifestations of one force, which runs through
varied channels as it did in the gifts ascribed to the disciples. The unhappy outburst of
roguery was helped, no doubt, by the need for darkness claimed by the early
experimenters--a claim which is by no means essential, since the greatest of all mediums,
D. D. Home, was able by the exceptional strength of his powers to dispense with it. At
the same time the fact that darkness rather than light, and dryness rather than moisture,
are helpful to good results has been abundantly manifested, and points to the physical
laws which underlie the phenomena. The observation made long afterwards that wireless
telegraphy, another etheric force, acts twice as well by night as by day, may, corroborate
the general conclusions of the early Spiritualists, while their assertion that the least
harmful light is red light has a suggestive analogy in the experience of the photographer.
[1] "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena." "Experiences in Psychical Science." (Watkins.)
There is no space here for the history of the rise and development of the movement. It
provoked warm adhesion and fierce opposition from the start. Professor Hare and Horace
Greeley were among the educated minority who tested and endorsed its truth. It was
disfigured by many grievous incidents, which may explain but does not excuse the
perverse opposition which it encountered in so many quarters. This opposition was really
largely based upon the absolute materialism of the age, which would not admit that there
could exist at the present moment such conditions as might be accepted in the far past.
When actually brought in contact with that life beyond the grave which they professed to
believe in, these people winced, recoiled, and declared it impossible. The science of the
day was also rooted in materialism, and discarded all its own very excellent axioms when
it was faced by an entirely new and unexpected proposition. Faraday declared that in
approaching a new subject one should make up one's mind a priori as to what is possible
and what is not! Huxley said that the messages, EVEN IF TRUE, "interested him no
more than the gossip of curates in a cathedral city." Darwin said: "God help us if we are
to believe such things." Herbert Spencer declared against it, but had no time to go into it.
At the same time all science did not come so badly out of the ordeal. As already
mentioned, Professor Hare, of Philadelphia, inventor, among other things, of the oxy-
hydrogen blow-pipe, was the first man of note who had the moral courage, after
considerable personal investigation, to declare that these new and strange developments
were true. He was followed by many medical men, both in America and in Britain,
including Dr. Elliotson, one of the leaders of free thought in this country. Professor
Crookes, the most rising chemist in Europe, Dr. Russel Wallace the great naturalist,
Varley the electrician, Flammarion the French astronomer, and many others, risked their
scientific reputations in their brave assertions of the truth. These men were not credulous

fools. They saw and deplored the existence of frauds. Crookes' letters upon the subject
are still extant. In very many cases it was the Spiritualists themselves who exposed the
frauds. They laughed, as the public laughed, at the sham Shakespeares and vulgar Caesars
who figured in certain seance rooms. They deprecated also the low moral tone which
would turn such powers to prophecies about the issue of a race or the success of a
speculation. But they had that broader vision and sense of proportion which assured them
that behind all these follies and frauds there lay a mass of solid evidence which could not
be shaken, though like all evidence, it had to be examined before it could be appreciated.
They were not such simpletons as to be driven away from a great truth because there are
some dishonest camp followers who hang upon its