The apparatuses devised by these men of science to test the mediumistic power have been in the highest degree ingenious. They have been of four different kinds: (a) machines to determine whether electrical or magnetic currents were operating; (b) whether the movement of heavy articles, such as tables touched by the medium, was caused by either conscious or unconscious muscular contraction; (c) whether intelligent communications may be received by a sitter under circumstances precluding any possible trickery by the medium; and (d) what are the conditions for the manifestation of this new form of energy and the extreme limitations of its action. Of course, in an hour’s lecture, I could not describe a tenth part of these machines, but I may take two as illustrating two of the above-enumerated branches of research. The first is to be found described in Professor Hare’s work. The medium and enquirer sit facing each other, the medium’s hands resting upon a bit of board so hung and adjusted that, whether he presses on the board or not, he merely moves that and nothing else. In front of the visitor is a dial, like a clock face, around which are arranged the letters of the alphabet, the ten numerals, the words “Yes,” “No,” “Doubtful,” and perhaps others. A pointer, or hand, that is connected with a lever, the other end of which is so placed as to receive any current flowing through the medium’s system, but not to be affected by any mechanical pressure he may exert upon the hand-rest, travels around the dial and indicates the letters or words the communicating intelligence wishes noted down. The back of the dial being towards the medium, he, of course, cannot see what the pointer is doing, and if the enquirer conceals from him the paper on which he is noting down the communication, he cannot have even a suspicion of what is being said.

I mention these two mechanical contrivances merely to show those who, perhaps, have never enquired into the matter, but have nevertheless fallen into the common error of thinking the phenomena to be all deceptions, that the utmost care has been taken by the cleverest scientists to guard against the possibility of fraud in the course of their experiments. If ever there was a fact of science proved, it is that a new and most mysterious force of some kind has been manifesting itself since March, 1848, when this mighty modern epiphany was ushered in, with a shower of raps, at an obscure hamlet in New York State. Beginning with these percussive sounds, it has since displayed its energy in a hundred different phenomena, each inexplicable upon any known hypothesis of science, and in almost if not quite, every country of our globe. To advocate its study, expound its laws, and disseminate its intelligent manifestations, hundreds of journals and books have from time to time been published in different languages; the movement has its schools and churches, or meeting halls, its preachers and teachers; and a body of men and women, numbering thousands at the least, are devoting their whole time and vital strength to the profession of mediumship. These sensitives, or “psychics,” are to be found in every walk of life, in the palaces of royalty as well as the labourer’s cottage, and their psychical, or mediumistic, gifts are as various as their individualities.

What has caused this world-wide expansion of the new movement, and reconciled the public to such a vast sacrifice of comfort, time, money, and social consequence? What has spurred on so many of the most intelligent people in all lands, of all sects and races, to continue investigating? What has kept the faith alive in so many millions, despite a multitude of sickening exposures of the rascality of mediums, of the demoralizing tendency of ill-regulated mediumship, and the average puerility and frequent mendaciousness of the communications received? This: that a hope has sprung up in the human breast that at last man may have experimental proof of his survival after bodily death and a glimpse, if not a full revelation, and his future destiny. All these millions cling, like the drowning man to his bank, to the one hope that the old, old questions of the What? the Whence? the Whither? will now be solved, once and for all time. Glance through the literature of Spiritualism and you shall see what joy, what consolation, and what perfect rest and courage these weird, often exasperating, phenomena of the séance room have imparted. Tears have ceased to flow from a myriad eyes when the dead are laid away out of sight, and broken ties of love and friendship are no longer regarded by these believers as snapped for ever. The tempest no longer affrights as it did, and the terrors of battle and pestilence have lost their greatest power for the modern Spiritualist. The supposed intercourse with the dead and their messages have sapped the infallible authority of dogmatic theology. The Spiritualist with the eye of his new faith now sees the dim outlines of a Summer Land where we live and are occupied much as upon Earth. The tomb, instead of seeming the mouth of a void darkness, has come to look merely like a somber gateway to a country of sunlight brightness and never-ending progression towards the crowning state of perfectibility. Nay, so definite have become the fancy pictures of this Summer Land, that one constantly reads of baby children growing in spirit life to be adults; of colleges and academies for mortal guidance, presided over by the world’s departed sages; and even of nuptial unions between living men or women and the denizens of the spirit world! A case in point is that of the Rev. Thomas Lake Harris - founder of the socialistic community on Lake Erie, which Laurence Oliphant and his mother have joined - who gives out that he is duly married to a female spirit and that a child has blessed their union! Another case is that of the marriage of two spirits in the presence of mortal witnesses, by a living clergyman, which was reported last year in the Spiritualistic papers - a Mr Pierce, son of an ex-President of the United States and long since dead, is said to have “materialized,” that is, made for himself a visible, tangible body, at the house of a certain American medium, and been married by a minister summoned for the occasion, to a lady spirit who died at the very tender age of seven months and who, now grown into a blooming lass, was also materialized for the ceremony! The vows exchanged and the blessings given, the happy couple sat at table with invited friends, and, after drinking a toast or two, vanished -- dress-coat, white gloves, satin, lace and all - into thin air! This you will call the tomfoolery of Spiritualism, and you will be right; but, nevertheless, it serves to show how clear and definite, not to say brutally materialistic, are the views of the other world order which have replaced the old, vague dread that weighed us down with gloomy doubts. Up to a certain point this state of mind is a decided gain, but I am sorry to say Spiritualists have passed that, and become dogmatists. Little by little a body of enthusiasts is forming, who would throw a halo of sanctity around the medium, and, by doing away with test conditions, invite to the perpetration of gross frauds. Mediums actually caught red-handed in trickery, with their paraphernalia of traps, false panels, wigs and puppets about them, have been able to make their dupes regard them as martyrs to the rage of sceptics, and the damning proofs of their guilt, as having been secretly supplied by the unbelievers themselves to strike a blow at their holy cause! The voracious credulity of a large body of Spiritualists has begotten nine-tenths of the dishonest tricks of mediums. As Mr Crookes truly observed - in his preliminary article in the Quarterly Journal of Science: “In the countless number of recorded observations I have read, there appear to be few instances of meetings held for the express purpose of getting the phenomena under test conditions.” Still, though this is true, it is also most certain that within the past thirty-two years, enquirers into the phenomena have been vouchsafed thousands upon thousands of proofs that they occur under conditions quite independent of the physical agency of persons present, and that intelligence, sometimes of a striking character, is displayed in the control of the occult force or forces producing the phenomena. It is this great reserve of test fact upon which rests, like a rock upon its base, the invincible faith of the millions of Spiritualists. This body of individual experiences is the rampart behind which they entrench themselves whenever the outside world of sceptics looks to see the whole “delusion crumble under the assault of some new buna critic, or the shame of the latest exposure of false mediumship or tricking mediums. It ought by this time to have been discovered that it is worse than useless to try to ridicule away the actual evidence of one’s senses; or to make a man who has seen a heavy weight self-lifted and suspended in air, or writing done without contact, or a human form melt before his eyes, believe any theory that all mediumistic phenomena are due to “muscular contractions,” “expectant attention,” or “unconscious cerebration”. It is because of their attempts to do this, that men of science, as a body, are regarded with such compassionate scorn by the experienced psychologist. Mr Wallace tells us that, after making careful inquiry, he has never found one man who, after having acquired a good personal knowledge of the chief phases of the phenomena, has afterwards come to disbelieve in their reality. And this is my own experience also. Some have ceased to be “Spiritualists” and turned Catholics, but they have never doubted the phenomena being real. It will be a happy day, one to be hailed with joy by every lover of true science, when our modern professors shall rid themselves of the conceited idea that knowledge was born in our days, and question in an humble spirit the records of archaic science.

We have seen that the existence of a force-current has been proved by the experiments of Dr Hare and Mr Crookes, so we need trouble ourselves no more with the many crude conjectures about table-moving, chair-lifting, and the raps being the result of the muscular energy of the medium or the visitor, but pass on to notice some of the forms in which this force has displayed its dynamic energies. These may be separated into phenomena indicating intelligence and conveying information, and purely physical manifestations of energy. Of the first class, the one demanding first place is the so-called “spirit-rap”. By these simple signals the whole modern movement called Spiritualism was ushered in. These audible concussions vary in degree from the sound of a pinhead ticking to that of blows by a hammer or bludgeon powerful enough to shatter a mahogany table. The current of psychic force producing them seems to depend upon the state of the medium’s system, in combination with the electric and hygrometric condition of the atmosphere. With either unpropitious, the raps, if heard at all, are faint; with both in harmony, they are loudest and most persistent. Of themselves these rapping phenomena are sufficiently wonderful, but they become a hundredfold more so when we find that through them communications can be obtained from intelligences claiming to be our dead friends: communications which often disclose secrets known only to the enquirer and no other person present; and even, in rare cases, giving out facts which no one then in the room was aware of, and which had to be verified later by consulting old records or distant witnesses. A more beautiful form of the rap is the sound of music, as of a stroke on a cut glass vessel, or a silver bell, heard either under the medium’s hand or in the air. Such a phenomenon has been often noticed by the Rev Stainton Moses, “M. A. Oxon.,” in his own house, and Mr Alfred R Wallace describes it as occurring in the presence of Miss Nichol, now Mrs Volckmann, at Mr Wallace’s own house. An empty wine-glass was put upon a table and held by Miss Nichol and a Mr Humphrey to prevent any vibration. Mr Wallace tells us that, “after a short interval of silence an exquisitely delicate sound, as of tapping a glass, was heard, which increased to clear silvery notes like the tinkling of a glass bell. These continued in varying degrees for some minutes, etc.” Again, Mr Wallace, says that when a German lady sang some of her national songs “most delicate music, like a fairy musical box, accompanied her throughout . . . This was in the dark, but hands were joined all the time.” Several of the persons in this present audience have been permitted by Madame Blavatsky to hear these dulcet fairy-bells tinkle since she came to Simla. But they have heard them in full light, without any joining of hands, and in whatsoever place she chose to order them. The phenomenon is the same as that of Miss Nichol, but the conditions very different; and of that I will have something to say further on.

Mr Crookes found the force-current to be extremely variable in the same medium on different days, and, in the medium from minute to minute, its flow was highly erratic. In his book he gives a number of cuts to illustrate these variations, as well as of the ingenious apparatus he employed to detect them.

Among many thousands of communications from the alleged spirits that have been given to the public, and which for most part contain only trivial messages about family or other personal affairs, the details of which were at least known to the enquirers to whom addressed, and which might be attributed to thought-reading, we occasionally come across some that require some other explanation.

I refer to those the details mentioned in which are unknown to anyone present at the sitting. Mr Stainton Moses records one such - a case in which a message was given in London, purporting to come from an old man who had been a soldier in America in the war of 1812 and to have died there. None in London had ever heard of such a person, but upon causing a search to be made in the records of the American War Department, at Washington, the man’s name was found and full corroborative proofs of the London message were obtained. Not having access to books here, I am obliged to quote from memory, but I think you will find my facts essentially correct. In another case, for which Mr J. M. Peebles vouches, that gentleman received, either in America or somewhere else, far away from England, a message from an alleged spirit who said he lived and died at York, and that if Mr Peebles would search the records of that ancient city the spirit’s statements would be found strictly true. In process of time he did visit York and search old birth and burial registers, and there, sure enough, he found just the data he had been promised.

A highly interesting example of the non-intelligent class of phenomena came under my notice in the course of our search after a medium to send to Russia. A lady medium, named Mrs Youngs, had a reputation for causing a pianoforte to rise from the floor and sway in time to her playing upon the instrument. Madame Blavatsky and I went one evening to see her, and what happened was reported in the New York papers of the following day. As she sat at the piano playing, it certainly did tilt on the two outer legs - those farthest from her - and, with the other two, raised six or eight inches from the ground, move in time to the music. Mrs Youngs then went to one end of the piano and, laying a single finger against the under side of the case, lifted the tremendous weight with the greatest ease. If any of you care to compute the volume of psychic force exerted, try to lift one end of a 7½ octave piano six inches from the floor. To test the reality of this phenomenon I had brought with me a raw egg, which I held in the palm of my hand, and pressed it lightly against the under side of the piano case at one end. I then caused the medium to lay the palm of her hands against the back of mine that held the egg, and told her to command the piano to rise. A moment’s pause only ensued when, to my surprise, one end of the piano did rise without so much pressure upon the egg as to break the shell. I think that this, as a test of the actuality of a psychic force, was almost as conclusive an experiment as the water-basin and spring-balance of Mr Crookes. At least it was to myself, for I can affirm that the medium did not press as much as an ounce weight against the back of my hand, and it is quite certain that but very few ounces of pressure would have broken the thin shell of the egg.

And you have the testimony of Lords Lindsay, Aberdare, Dunraven, and other unimpeachable witnesses, to the fact of a medium’s body having floated around the room and sailed out of a window, seventy feet from the ground and into another window. This was in an obscure light, but I have seen, in the twilight, a person raised out of her chair until her head was as high as the globes of the chandelier, and then gently lowered down again.

What I shall now relate about my adventures at the Eddy Homestead in Vermont, America, will tax your indulgence more than all that has preceded. For some years previous to 1874, I had taken an active interest in mediumistic phenomena. Nothing surpassingly novel had been reported as occurring, and the intelligence communicated through mediums was not usually instructive enough to induce one to leave his books and the company of their great authors. But in that year it was rumoured that at a remote village, in the valley of the Green Mountains, an illiterate farmer and his equally ignorant brother were being visited daily by the “materialized,” souls of the departed, who could be seen, heard and, in cases, touched by any visitor. This tempting novelty I determined to witness, for it certainly transcended in interest and importance everything that had ever been heard of in any age. Accordingly, in August of that year, I went to Chittenden, the village in question, and, with a single brief intermission of ten days, remained there until the latter part of October. I hope you will believe that I adopted every possible precaution against being befooled by village trickery. The room of the ghosts was a large chamber occupying the whole upper floor of a two-story wing of the house. It was perhaps twenty feet wide by forty long - I speak from memory. Below were two rooms - a kitchen and a pantry; a kitchen chimney was in the gable end, of course, and passed through the séance room to the roof. It projected into the room two feet, and at the right, between it and the side of the house, was a plastered closet with a door next to the chimney. A window, two feet square, had been cut in the outer wall of the closet to admit air. Running across this end of the large room was a narrow platform, raised about 18 inches from the floor, with a step to mount by at the extreme left, and a handrail or baluster along the front edge of the platform. Every evening, after the last meal, William Eddy, a stout-built, square-shouldered, hard-handed farmer, would go upstairs, hang a thick, woollen shawl across the doorway, enter the closet and seat himself on a low chair that stood at the extreme end. The visitors, who sometimes numbered forty of an evening, were accommodated on benches placed within a few feet of the platform. Horatio Eddy sat on a chair in front, and discoursed doleful music on a fiddle and led the singing - if such it might be called without causing Mozart to turn in his grave; a feeble light was given by a kerosene lamp placed on the floor at the end of the room farthest from the platform, in an old drum from which both heads had been removed. Though the light was certainly very dim, yet it sufficed to enable us to see if anyone left his seat, and to distinguish through the gloom the height and costumes of the visitors from the other world. At a first sitting this was difficult, but practice soon accustomed one’s eyes to the conditions.

I will not attempt to give you, in these few minutes of our lecture, even the bare outline of my observations during those eventful weeks. Suffice it to say that I saw as many as seventeen of these revenants in a single evening, and that, from first to last, I saw about five hundred. There were a certain few figures that seemed especially attached to the medium’s sphere of influence, but the rest were the appearances of friends of the strangers who daily flocked to the place from the most distant localities - some as far away as 2,000 miles. There were Americans and Europeans, Africans and Asiatics, Red Indians of our prairies and white people; each wearing his familiar dress and some even carrying their familiar weapons. One evening, the figure of a Kurd, a man whom Madame Blavatsky had known in Kurdistan, stepped from the closet, clad in his tall cap, high boots and picturesque clothes. In the shawl twisted about his waist were thrust a curved sword and other small arms. His hands were empty, but after salaaming my friend in his native fashion, lo! his right hand held a twelve foot spear which bore below the steel head a tuft of feathers. Now, supposing this farmer medium to have been ever so much a cheat, whence, in that secluded hamlet, did he procure this Kurdish dress, the belt, the arms and the spear at a moment’s notice? - for Madame Blavatsky had but just arrived at Chittenden, and neither I nor anyone else knew who she was, nor whence she had come. All my experiences there were described by me, first in a series of letters to a New York journal, and afterwards in book form, * [People from the Other World] and I must refer the curious to that record for details, both as to what was seen and what precautions I took against deception. Two suspicions have doubtless occurred to your minds while I have been speaking - (a) that some confederate or confederates got access to the medium through the closet window, or dresses and dolls were passed up to him from below through a trap or sliding panel. Of course, that would occur to anyone with the least ingenuity of thought. It occurred to me, and this is what I did. I procured a ladder and on the outside of the house tacked a piece of mosquito net over the entire window, sash frame and all, sealing the tack-heads with wax, and stamping each with my signet ring. This effectively prevented any nonsense from that quarter. And then, calling to my help an architect and a clever Yankee inventor and mechanic, with those gentlemen I made a minute, practical examination of the chimney, the floor, the platform, the rooms below and the lumber-loft overhead. We were all perfectly satisfied that if there was any trickery in the case, it was done by William Eddy himself without confederacy, and that if he used theatrical dresses or properties, he must carry them in with him. In the little narrow hole of a closet there was neither a candle, mirror, brush, wig, clothes, water-basin, towel, cosmetic, nor any other of the actor’s paraphernalia, nor, to speak the truth, had the poor farmer the money to buy them with. He took no fee for his séances, and visitors were charged only a very small sum for their board and lodging. I have sat smoking with him in his kitchen until it was time for the séance to begin, gone with him to the upper chamber, examined the closet before he entered it, searched his person, and then seen the selfsame wonderful figures come out as usual in their various dresses. I think I may claim to have proceeded cautiously, for Mr A. R. Wallace, F.R.S., quoted, and eulogized my book in his recent controversy with Professor W.B. Carpenter. Carpenter himself went to America to enquire into my character for veracity, and publicly admitted it to be unimpeachable. Professor Wagner, of St Petersburg, reviewed the work in a special pamphlet, in which he affirms that I fulfilled every requirement of scientific research, and three European psychological societies elected me Honorary Member. It should also be noted that four years of very responsible and intricate examinations, on behalf of the War Department - during our late American War, the proofs of which service have been shown by me to the Indian authorities - qualified me to conduct this inquiry with at least a tolerable certainty that I would not be imposed upon. Having then seen all that has now been outlined to you, will you wonder that I should have been thoroughly convinced of the reality of a large group of psychic phenomena, that science helplessly tried to offer some explanation for? And can you be surprised that whatever man of science has, since 1848, seriously and patiently investigated modern Spiritualism, he has become a convert, no matter what may have been his religious belief or professional bias?

The handbills announce me as the President of the Theosophical Society, and you gathered here to learn what Theosophy is and what are its relations with Spiritualism.