In brief, the problem of spiritualism in general presents itself to us thus:  in ancient, modern, and savage thaumaturgy there are certain automatic phenomena.  The conjurer, priest, or medium acts, or pretends to act, in various ways beyond his normal consciousness.  Savages, ancient mystics, and spiritualists ascribe his automatic behaviour to the control of spirits, gods or demons.  No such hypothesis is needed.

On the other side, however, are phenomena not automatic, ‘spiritual’ lights, and sounds; interferences with natural laws, as when bodies are lifted in the air, or are elongated, when fire does not fasten on them, and so on.  These phenomena, in ancient times, followed on the performance of certain mystic rites.  They are now said to occur without the aid of any such rites.  Gods and spirits are said to cause them, but they are only attained in the presence of certain exceptional persons, mediums, saints, priests, conjurers.  Clearly then, not the rites, but the peculiar constitution of these individuals is the cause (setting imposture aside) of the phenomena, of the hallucinations, of the impressions, or whatever they are to be styled.  That is to say, witnesses, in other matters credible, aver that they receive these peculiar impressions in the society of certain persons and not in that of people in general.  Now these impressions are, everywhere, in every age and stage of civilisation, essentially identical.  Is it stretching probability almost beyond what it will bear, to allege that all the phenomena, in the Arctic circle as in Australia, in ancient Alexandria as in modern London, are, always, the result of an imposture modelled on savage ideas of the supernatural?

If so we are reduced to the choice between actual objective facts of unknown origin (frequently counterfeited of course), and the theory,—­which really comes to much the same thing,—­of identical and collective hallucinations in given conditions.  On either hypothesis the topic is certainly not without interest for the student of human nature.  Even if we could, at most, establish the fact that people like Iamblichus, Mr. Crookes, Lord Crawford, Jesuits in Canada, professional conjurers in Zululand, Spaniards in early Peru, Australian blacks, Maoris, Eskimo, cardinals, ambassadors, are similarly hallucinated, as they declare, in the presence of priests, diviners, Home, Zulu magicians, Biraarks, Jossakeeds, angakut, tohungas, and saints, and Mr. Stainton Moses, still the identity of the false impressions is a topic for psychological study.  Or, if we disbelieve this cloud of witnesses, if they voluntarily fabled, we ask, why do they all fable in exactly the same fashion?  Even setting aside the animistic hypothesis, the subject is full of curious neglected problems.