that. We can only hope, and continue to experiment!

5. Psychical research, therefore, may continue to progress, in spite of the innate difficulties and the obstacles with which the subject is surrounded. It is our duty to see that it does! For it is certain that the subject will receive serious set-backs, from time to time, in the shape of unjust misrepresentations or bitter attacks from the outsiders, determined to "prove a case," even if the cause of truth be abandoned in order to do so. Take, e.g., the recent volume of Dr. Tanner and Dr. G. Stanley Hall (Studies in Spiritism). They received certain "lying communications," in spite of Professor William James' warning that "the personalities are very suggestible" and that "every one is liable to get back from the trance very much what he puts into it." Even Deleuze could have told Drs. Tanner and Hall this fact—having ascertained it nearly a hundred years before (1813); for he wrote in his Critical History of Animal Magnetism (pp. 134-5), in reply to those who would question the somnambulist upon points of practical advantage:

And Dr. A. E. Fletcher, in The Other World and This, says:

Even Maudsley, in his Pathology of Mind (p. 77), says:

These passages illustrate, at least, the delicate and often-times suggestible nature of the trance; and how inconclusive, to say the least, are such experiments as those of Drs. Tanner and Hall!

6. On the other hand, it may be asked: If the messages we receive at séances really do come from the departed, why should they be so fleeting and so uncertain as they are? And why should not many more messages be received from the hundreds and thousands who die yearly, and who are doubtless longing to communicate?

Answers to these questions are manifold. In the first place, it may be pointed out that the ability to communicate may be rare indeed, and not a universal possibility, as is generally supposed. As Dr. Hodgson expressed it (Proceedings, xiii., p. 362): "It may be a completely erroneous assumption that all persons, young or old, good or evil, vigorous or sickly, and whatever their lives or deaths may have been, are at all comparable with one another in their capacity to convey clear statements from the other world to this." Further, it must not be supposed that all "messages" received by mediums (even granting their complete honesty) really issue from the "Great Beyond." Many mediums simply tell their sitters the ideas, impressions, and "messages" which come into their minds, and which they believe to come from external sources, i.e., "spirits," but which, as a matter of fact, issue from their own subconsciousness. These scraps of information resemble "bubbles" breaking upon the surface of water—the finished product of latent incubation, and doubtless have every appearance and every feeling of external origin. Even if genuine spirit-messages are at times received, it is highly probable that the bulk of the messages are the product of the medium's subliminal, which catches up and amplifies the original external impetus received from without. Professor William James believed, e.g., the following: that "genuine messages have been given through Mrs. Piper's organism, but he also contended that every time an intelligence appeared, calling itself Hodgson, and beginning: 'Hello! Here I am again in the witness-box! How are you, old chap?' etc., this was not Hodgson at all, but Mrs. Piper's subliminal, and that genuine supernormal information only came in 'touches' or 'impulses,' as it were, as though the spirit could touch or come into contact with the medium's mind at a number of points, making a number of 'dips down,' ... as it were, imparting information at each dip which the medium's mind thereupon seized upon, elaborated, and gave out in its own dramatic form and setting." If this be true of Mrs. Piper (whose messages are shot at you from a cannon's mouth, as it were), how much truer must it be of other types of mediums, in which the communications are certainly far less direct and impressive? Mrs. Piper might be styled the "possession" type of medium—as opposed to the "subliminal" type—commonly seen; and, as before said, if the messages be so indirect in the case of Mrs. Piper, how much more fragmentary and indirect must they be in the case of all other mediums—less developed and less direct than she? It is hardly to be wondered at that the information given is of the vaguest, the most hazy and indistinct character, and that recognition and proof of identity is almost an impossibility.

7. As to the theory that comparatively few (of those who die) make good communicators, I may be permitted to suggest, perhaps, a tentative explanation of the rarity of good communicators (and communications), based upon this principle. Certain it is that special adaptability and idiosyncrasy are necessary to the one on this side—this constituting, in fact, a "medium," as we understand it. It seems highly probable that a medium is born and not made, that the gift is hereditary, and that it depends but little, if at all, upon physical, mental, or moral characteristics, but rather upon a peculiar and innate make-up which is independent of all of these. A person is a good psychic or medium just as another is a good painter or sculptor or pianist. It can be cultivated by training, but the "germ" must be latent within the individual, in order that its development may be possible at all.

Granting all this, it seems to me very natural to suppose that some similar characteristic might be essential to the one on the "other side," in order that he might be a good communicator. Only a few might possess this special gift—without which communication would be impossible—no matter how gifted or clever the individual