It is admitted that Mr. Moses was not a cautious logician, his inferences are problematic, his generalisations hasty.  As to the facts, it is equally difficult to believe in them, and to believe that Mr. Moses was a conscious impostor, and his friends easy dupes.  He cannot have been an impostor unconsciously in a hypnotic state, in a ‘trance,’ because his effects could not have been improvised.  If they were done by jugglery, they required elaborate preparations of all sorts, which must have been made in full ordinary consciousness.  If we fall back on collective hallucination, then that hallucination is something of world-wide diffusion, ancient and continuous, for the effects are those attributed by Iamblichus to his mystics, by the Church to her saints, by witnesses to the ‘possessed,’ by savages to medicine-men, and by Mr. Crookes and Lord Crawford to D. D. Home.  Of course we may be told that all lookers-on, from Eskimo to Neoplatonists and men of science, know what to expect, and are hallucinated by their own expectant attention.  But, when they expect nothing, and are disappointed by having to witness prodigies, the same old prodigies, what is the explanation?

The following tabular statement, altered from that given by Mr. Myers in his publication of Mr. Moses and Dr. Speer’s MS. notes, will show the historical identity of the phenomena.  Mr. Moses was the agent in all; those exhibited by other ancient and modern agents are marked with a cross.

Rev. D. D. Iamblichus St. Eskimo Australian ’Spontaneous

Stainton Home Joseph of
(Glanvil,

Moses Cupertino
Bovet,

Telfair,

Kirk)

1.  X X ?  X 2.  X X X X X 3.  X X X X X X X 4.  X X 5.  X 6.  X X 7.  X X 8.  X X X X 9.  X X X 10.  X X X X X 11.  X X 12.  X X X

1.  ‘Intelligent Raps.’ 2.  ‘Movement of objects untouched.’ 3.  ‘Levitation’ (floating in air of seer). 4.  Disappearance and Reappearance of objects.  The ‘object’ being the medium in some cases. 5.  Passage of Matter through Matter. 6.  Direct writing.  That is, not by any detected human agency. 7.  Sounds made on instruments supernormally. 8.  Direct sounds.  That is, by no detected human agency. 9.  Scents. 10.  Lights. 11.  Objects ‘materialised.’ 12.  Hands materialised, touched or seen.

There are here twelve miracles!  Home and Iamblichus add to Mr. Moses’s repertoire the alteration of the medium’s height or bulk.  This feat still leaves Mr. Moses ‘one up,’ as regards Home, in whose presence objects did not disappear, nor did they pass through stone walls.  The questions are, to account for the continuity of collective hallucinations, if we accept that hypothesis, and to explain the procedure of Mr. Moses, if he were an impostor.  He did not exhibit before more than seven or eight private friends, and he gained neither money nor dazzling social success by his performances.