The case against spiritualism

Professor Jacks remarked in a recent address[9] that the whole problem of Spiritualism is largely centred in the “controls.” The “control” professes to be the spirit of some departed person, which has taken possession of the entranced medium, and which causes the medium to speak or write in an abnormal manner. Sir Oliver Lodge writes of “a separate intelligence … which some think must be a secondary personality—which indeed certainly is a secondary personality of the medium.”[10] Elsewhere he states very clearly the divergence of view among psychical students with regard to this mysterious entity. “This personality,” he says, “is believed by some to be merely the subliminal self of the entranced person, brought to the surface, or liberated and dramatised into a sort of dream existence, for the time.” Others think we have here a case of dual or multiple personality, while a third section believe it to be in reality the separate intelligence it claims to be.[11]

I

It is hardly surprising that Spiritualists should differ among themselves as to the nature of the controls, for some of these controls are very curious people. Let us consider, for instance, the group which appears in “Raymond.” One of the most active is “Moonstone,” who tells inquirers that he was a Yogi, who lived as a hermit on earth, “a good life, but a selfish one.” He now desires to help humanity, “and so that is why I came back to my Medie, and try to bear through him the sorrows of the world.” Another control is “Redfeather,” who is apparently of North American Indian origin, though this is not distinctly stated. At one point the spirit of the supposed Raymond says, “Chap with red feather helping.”[12] “Redfeather” remarks when first taking command, “I come dis little minute to try experiment. If we succeed, all right; if we don’t, don’t mind.… Who could help better than me?… Long ago I was killed.”[13]

To relieve the tension of a strongly emotional scene which follows, an old Irishwoman named Biddy takes control. She begins: “Sure it’s meself that has come to speak. Here’s another mother.… I come to help to soothe the nerves of the medium.… I was a washer-woman, and lived next a church, and they say cleanliness comes next to godliness! One of my chains is to help mothers.”

Most singular of all the controls in “Raymond” is the Oriental girl “Feda,” who in her broken language talks of “Yaymond,” and pronounces three-syllabled words in a careful and drawn-out manner. The controls, as Dr. Jacks says, are often remote people, and he mentions the case of an Egyptian priest belonging to the time of one of the Pharaohs.

What are we to think of “Dr. Phinuit,” that singular control of Mrs. Piper, who described himself as a French doctor born at Marseilles about 1790? He gave particulars of his birth, education, and life in Paris, where, according to his own account, he died about 1860. Enquiries failed to reveal any trace of his existence. He gave no indication of possessing any scientific knowledge of medicine. More surprising still, his knowledge of French appeared to extend only to a few simple phrases, which might have been familiar to the medium. As Mr. J. Arthur Hill remarks, “The French doctor spoke no more French than Mrs. Piper herself might be supposed to know.”[14]

How many Spiritualists believe to-day that William Grocyn, the teacher of Erasmus, acted as a control to Mr. Stainton Moses? Or that the group of Broad Church controls—Imperator, Rector and the rest—who inculcated their theology through the mediumship of Mr. Moses, afterwards invaded the personality of Mrs. Piper?

II

Responsible leaders of the Spiritualist movement incline to a verdict of Not Proven, while impartial students, among whom Mrs. Sidgwick is pre-eminent, have expressed the strongest doubts as to the real nature of the controls. Writing of Mrs. Piper’s trance phenomena (which were closely observed by experts) Mrs. Sidgwick says that the trance “is probably a state of self-induced hypnosis in which her hypnotic self personates different characters either consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and believing herself to be the person she represents, and sometimes probably in a state of consciousness intermediate between the two.” Sir William Barrett also believes that the messages “often spring from, and are invariably influenced by, the medium’s own subconscious life.”[15] He agrees, on the whole, with Mrs. Sidgwick, and he gives examples of absurd communications. Thus, in a sitting with Mrs. Piper, in 1899, the Jewish lawgiver Moses purported to communicate, and prophesied a great war in the near future, in which Russia and France would be on one side, Britain and America on the other. Germany, according to “Moses,” would not take any serious part in the war.[16] Another time “Sir Walter Scott” announced to Dr. Hodgson that he had visited all the planets and could give information about Mars. “Asked if he had seen a planet further away than Saturn, the soi-disant novelist answered, ‘Mercury.’” Julius Cæsar, Madame Guyon and George Eliot were personated, and George Eliot is reported as saying: “I hardly know as there is enough light to communicate,” and “do not know as I have ever seen a haunted house.”

Mr. J. Arthur Hill says: “I am not convinced that the regular trance-controls are spirits at all.” His views on certain aspects of the problem may be gathered from the following passage: “At Spiritualist meetings a trance-control or inspirational speaker will sometimes hold forth with surprising fluency at incredible length. The secretary of the Spiritualists’ National Union once backed the late W. J. Colville to talk ‘till this time next week without intervals for meals,’ yet with a dullness and inanity that would drive any but a very tolerant audience mad. Spiritualists certainly have the virtue of patience.”[17]

Mr. Hill thinks it probable that in many mediums there is a dissociation of consciousness, and no external spirit-agency at all. He warns Spiritualist societies against “encouraging the flow of platitudinous or almost meaningless verbiage which, whether it comes from a medium’s subliminal or from a discarnate spirit, can hardly be helpful to anybody, and must be very bad for the minds of most hearers.” He admits that in “at least some cases of trance-control there is no reason to believe the control to be other than a subliminal fraction of the automatist’s mind.”

How can the impartial inquirer hope to discern the truth amid heaps of lies? The cheating medium could be detected and cast out; the “controls” are as irresponsible as the fairies of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Sir Oliver Lodge’s views on the “controls” are of extreme interest, though he is fully committed to the defence of Spiritualism. “The dramatic semblance of the control,” he says, “is undoubtedly that of a separate person—a person asserted to be permanently existing on the other side, and to be occupied on that side in much the same functions as the medium is on this.” It is true, he admits, that in the case of some mediums “there are evanescent and absurd obtrusions every now and then, which cannot be seriously regarded. These have to be eliminated, and for anyone to treat them as real people would be ludicrous.”[18] The excuse given for their appearance is that the medium may be “overdone or tired.” Sir Oliver Lodge advises “sitters,” nevertheless, to “humour” the controls by “taking them at their face value.” With the utmost respect for so great a scientist, the task of discrimination, we may safely say, lies beyond the capacity of ordinary men and women. Sir Oliver Lodge thinks that “the more responsible kind of control is a real person,” and he has much to say of “the serious controls,” but he admits the occurrence of “mischievous and temporary impersonations.”

The question may fairly be asked, Cannot the fourth personality in that strange group—composed of the inquirer on this side, the medium, the medium’s control, and the spirit communicator—speak directly from within the veil? Sir Oliver Lodge, while admitting that an exceptional more direct privilege is occasionally vouchsafed to persons in extreme sorrow, gives his answer, on the whole, in the negative. The normal process “involves the activity of several people,” and we conclude from his writings that he desires to uphold professional mediumship.