950. The leading personage in the third and most remote group of spirits is the one known as "Imperator".

This spirit claims responsibility for the whole series of manifestations, and should therefore be mentioned here, although there is no proof of his identity with the historical personage whom he asserts himself to be. His character, however, claimed and obtained Mr. Moses' entire confidence. He answers for the identity and veracity of spirits introduced; he explains the phenomena, so far as they are explained; and he throughout impresses on Mr. Moses his own teaching.

If such high and sweeping claims were made by any ordinary writer, we should expect to find much in the course of his writings which would prove their extravagance. If we ask ourselves how to disprove Imperator's claims we shall find no very definite answer. In the teachings themselves, however, it is over and over again emphasised that there must be distortion of the messages owing to their passage through the mediumistic channel, and if, as is possible, there may have been thus an increase of accuracy in some cases where Mr. Moses had some definite subliminal knowledge, there may also have been many causes of error due to his theological and other dogmatic preconceptions. With regard to the other remote communicators, these, according to the explanations given by Imperator, are high spirits, aiming at the advance of knowledge, and especially of religion, who have been able to discern Mr. Moses' gifts, and have to some extent themselves trained him for the purpose required. They have modified his early life: for instance, by prompting him to his period of retirement on Mount Athos, and by keeping him from wishing to marry.

Some of these spirits, however, stand in very distant relation to Mr. Moses, and their indications of presence or collaboration are of a purely arbitrary kind.

There are a group of spirits, it is said, belonging to various ages and countries, who are united by their desire to inform mankind of their destiny and duties. Each member of this group desires to show approval when an attempt is made at such communication. They cannot all take an active share, but, while some work actively, others express sympathy by choosing either a signature, or some special physical manifestation, to be associated with their names, even if not actually produced by themselves. This form of communication is of course not meant to be in itself evidential; it depends on the confidence reposed in the "control" in charge of the manifestations; - much as when letters of encouragement are read at a public meeting, their genuineness is taken on trust from the chairman. Even when the handwriting produced (either automatically through the medium, or directly, without the intervention of human hands), resembles that of the deceased person, this, as elsewhere explained, does [not in itself prove identity.

Well-known signatures especially may be copied by other spirits.

As soon, however, as it is understood that such messages are not intended to be evidential, it seems not unnatural that they should be given thus. It needs no derogation from the dignity of even the highest spirit to express his sanction of any scheme designed to convey to "men of goodwill," in fashion however humble and unassuming, some message of their eternal fate.

But where identity is absolutely unprovable, as in the case of this group of "men of old time," it would be futile to discuss the probabilities on either side. I cannot blame Mr. Moses for his injunction to leave these spirits - eminent but not Divine - under the mask of the symbolic titles which they chose to assume. His reverence for Imperator was of a filial type which led him to desire that although there must be discussion about the doctrines, there should be none about the actual personality of the teacher to whom he felt that he owed all that was best in his own inner life.

951. We must now briefly go through the points which make such messages as were received by Mr. Moses prima facie evidential, which indicate, that is to say, that they actually do come in some way from their alleged source. A brief recapitulation of the main stages of evidential quality in messages given by automatic writing or by trance-utterances is all that will be needed here.

(1) Evidentially lowest comes the class of messages which is by far the most common; messages, namely, in which, although some special identity may be claimed, all the facts given have been consciously known to the automatist. Here we may well suppose that his own personality alone is concerned, and that the messages have a subliminal, but not an external source.

(2) Next above these come messages containing facts likely to be known to the alleged spirit, and not consciously known to the automatist; but which facts may nevertheless have some time been noted by the automatist, even unwittingly, and may have thus obtained lodgment in his subliminal memory.

(3) Next come facts which can be proved, - with such varying degrees of certainty as such negative proof allows, - never to have been in any way known to the automatist; but which nevertheless are easily to be found in books; so that they may have been learnt clairvoyantly by the automatist himself, or learnt and communicated to him by some mind other than that of the alleged spirit.

(4) Next come facts which can be proved, with similar varying degrees of certainty according to the circumstances, never to have been known to the automatist, or recorded in print; but which were known to the alleged spirit and can be verified by the memories of living persons.

(5) Above this again would come that class of experimental messages, or posthumous letters, of which we have as yet very few good examples (see 876); where the departed person has before death arranged some special test - some fact or sentence known only to himself, which he is to transmit after death, if possible, as a token of his return.

952. (6) Thus much for the various kinds of verbal messages, which can be kept and analysed at leisure. We must now turn to evidence of a different and not precisely comparable kind. In point of fact it is not these inferences from written matter which have commonly been most efficacious in compelling the survivor's belief in the reality of the friend's return. Whether logically or no, it is not so much the written message that he trusts, but some phantom of face and voice that he knew so well. It is this familiar convincing presence, - on which the percipient has always insisted, since Achilles strove in vain to embrace Patroclus' shade.

How far such a phantasm is in fact a proof of any real action on the part of the spirit thus recognised is a problem which has been dealt with already in Chapter VII (Phantasms Of The Dead). The upshot of our evidence to my mind is that although the apparition of a departed person cannot per se rank as evidence of his presence, yet this is not a shape which purely hallucinatory phantasms seem often to assume; and if there be any corroborative evidence, as, for instance, writing which claims to come from the same person, the chance that he is really operative is considerable. In Mr. Moses' case almost all the figures which he saw brought with them some corroboration by writing, trance-utterance, gesture-messages (as where a figure makes signs of assent or dissent), or raps.

(7) And this brings us to a class of cases largely represented in Mr. Moses' series, where writings professing to come from a certain spirit are supported by physical phenomena of which that spirit claims also to be the author. Whether such a line of proof can ever be made logically complete or no, one can imagine many cases where it would be practically convincing to almost all minds. Materialisations of hands, or direct writing in the script of the departed, have much of actual cogency; and these methods, with others like them, are employed by Mr. Moses' "controls" in their efforts to establish their own identities. Physical phenomena in themselves, however, carry no proof of an intelligence outside that of the sensitive himself, and, as I have said, may in many cases be a mere extension of his own ordinary muscular powers, and not due to any external agency at all.