actually been in communication with his father.[1]
The sittings with Mrs. Piper since 1900 have been—with few exceptions—equally unproductive. The control of the entranced organism has been taken over by a band of spirits, Imperator, Rector, Prudens, etc., who proclaim themselves to be the same who directed the mediumship of the late Stainton Moses. Stainton Moses, a clergyman of the Church of England, and English Master at University College School, was perhaps the most remarkable private medium of the last generation. Of his trance utterances I have already spoken. They contain no evidence of supernormal faculty. He was also a physical medium, but he performed only in a small circle of intimate friends, and the evidence for the supernormal powers claimed by him rests entirely on the conviction entertained by these friends of the medium's honesty. No precautions against trickery were taken, and if trickery were practised, it is not likely that it would have been detected.[2] It cannot be said, therefore, that the migration of Imperator and his associates from Stainton Moses to Mrs. Piper is calculated to strengthen the presumption of spirit-communication.
But the whole subject is surrounded with diffi-
- ↑ The reader who has leisure and patience may possibly care to peruse the voluminous record and form his own opinion as to its merits. But he is advised first to read Dr. Hodgson's Report in Proceedings, vol. xiii., which gives the case of Mrs. Piper at its best.
- ↑ I have discussed at length the case of Mr. Stainton Moses in my Modern Spiritualism, vol. ii., pp. 276–88.
