943 A. A general account of "The Experiences of W. Stainton Moses" was given by me in Proceedings S.P.R. vol. ix. pp. 245-352, and vol. xi. pp. 24-113. The following extract is from vol. ix. pp. 245-252.

I. Among his printed works the most important for our present purpose are -

1. Researches in Spiritualism. This unfinished work was published in Human Nature - a periodical now extinct - in 1874-5, and not re-printed. It is now difficult of access.

2. Spirit Identity, published in 1879. This work also has been for some years out of print.

3. Spirit Teachings, published in 1883; [reprinted after his death in a Memorial Edition (London, 1894) with a short biographical notice by Mr. Charlton Speer.] Two other volumes, Psychography and Higher Aspects of Spiritualism, contain little which bears on our present theme. Besides these books, Mr. Moses wrote much in the weekly periodical Light, of which he was for some years the editor.

II. Mr. Moses' MSS. entrusted to me, and of which I have made use, consists of thirty-one note-books, ranging from September 1872 to March 1883, and various letters.

The note-books may be divided as follows:-

Twenty-four books of automatic script, numbered 1-24, and extending from March 1873 to March 1883.

Four books of records of physical phenomena, September 1872-January 1875. These books run concurrently with the books of automatic script. The first book of this series (April-September 1872) is missing. Those which remain I have numbered 2 B, 3 B, 4 B, and 5 B.

Three books of retrospect and summary, which I number 25, 26, 27. Books 25 and 26 recapitulate physical phenomena, with reflections. Book 27 is entitled The Identity of Spirit, and contains, in briefer form, much of the evidence first printed in Spirit Identity; which work, indeed, this later tractate may have been intended to supersede. Some of the letters also are of value, but mainly as adding contemporary confirmation to facts already to be found in the note-books.

III. Among the records made by friends the most important are Mrs. Stanhope Speer's "Records of Private Seances, from notes taken at the time of each sitting." Over sixty instalments of these records have now (October 1893) been published in Light. They begin in 1872 and go down to 1881 - considerably beyond the date (1875) at which Mr. Moses' extant records of physical phenomena obtained in his seances cease. As will be seen later on, these independent and contemporary records are evidentially of capital importance. Dr. and Mrs. Stanhope Speer were Mr. Moses' most intimate friends; and they, often with another intimate friend, Mr. F. W. Percival (Barrister-at-Law and Examiner in the Education Department), were the habitual members, and generally the only members, of the small group who witnessed the phenomena about to be described.

Mr. Percival, the late Dr. Speer, Mr. W. H. Harrison, Dr. Thomson, and the late Mr. Serjeant Cox have at different times printed short first-hand records of certain of Mr. Moses' phenomena, and Mrs. Garratt and Miss Birkett took some contemporary notes of sittings at which they were present.

Two note-books and other MSS. by Dr. Speer have been placed in my hands, and contain independent contemporary records of much evidential value.

[Many additional records of the automatic script from Mr. Moses' note-books have been published in Light during the last few years].

IV. In estimating the evidential value of oral intercourse as to Mr. Moses' phenomena, the character of my own friendship for him is an item on which I am Bound to be explicit. Friendship it might truly be called, for it was based upon a consciousness of common pursuits of great moment, and I felt for him much both of gratitude and of esteem. He responded to my unfeigned interest with a straighforward intimacy of conversation on the experiences of which I cared so much to learn. But there was no such close personal attraction as is likely to prompt me to partiality as a biographer; and indeed both Edmund Gurney and I were conscious in him of something like the impatience of a schoolmaster towards slow students; - natural enough in a man whose inborn gifts have carried him irresistibly to a conviction, on the edge of which less favoured persons must needs pause and ponder long. I am bound to add that the study of his note-books, by making him more intimately known to me as he was in his best days, has brought me nearer to the warm and even enthusiastic estimate implied in the letters of various more intimate friends of his which lie before me.

More important, however, than the precise degree of attractiveness, or of spiritual refinement, in Mr. Moses' personal demeanour are the fundamental questions of sanity and probity. On these points neither I myself, nor, so far as I know, any person acquainted with Mr. Moses, has ever entertained any doubt. "However perplexed for an explanation," says Mr. Massey, "the crassest prejudice has recoiled from ever suggesting a doubt of the truth and honesty of Stainton Moses." "I believe that he was wholly incapable of deceit," writes Mr. H. J. Hood, barrister-at-law, who knew him for many years. The people who assumed that he must somehow have performed the phenomena of his dark seances himself - who asked triumphantly, "Where was Moses when the candle went out?" - even these never, so far as I know, suggested anything beyond unconscious fraud in a trance-condition.