seldom conforms to our opinion of what is most appropriate.

We have a larger experience of such phenomena now, and we can
define with some accuracy what it was that happened at Hydesville
in the year 1848. We know that these matters are governed by law
and by conditions as much as any other phenomena of the universe,
though at the moment it seemed to the public to be an isolated
and irregular outburst. On the one hand, you had a material,
earth-bound spirit of a low order of development which needed a
physical medium in order to be able to indicate its presence. On
the other, you had that rare thing, a good physical medium. 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