The
result followed as surely as the flash follows when the electric
battery and wire are both properly adjusted. Corresponding
experiments, where effect, and cause duly follow, are being
worked out at the present moment by Professor Crawford, of
Belfast, as detailed in his two recent books, where he shows that
there is an actual loss of weight of the medium in exact
proportion to the physical phenomenon produced.[1] The whole
secret of mediumship on this material side appears to lie in the
power, quite independent of oneself, of passively giving up 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.
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