922. And now suppose that a possessing spirit can use my organism more skilfully than I can. May he not manage to emit from that organism some energy which can visibly move ponderable objects not actually in contact with my flesh? That would be a phenomenon of possession not very unlike its other phenomena; - and it would be telekinesis.

By that word (due to M. Aksakoff) it is convenient to describe what have been called "the physical phenomena of spiritualism," as to whose existence as a reality, and not as a system of fraudulent pretences, fierce controversy has raged for half a century, and is still raging.

My own method of dealing with this thorny subject in this book will be as follows:- I have first indicated, in the pages just preceding, that telekinetic phenomena can be fitted, with no manifest illogicality, into that conception of possession which forms the most advanced point to which our evidence leads us. I shall next feel bound to utter an earnest warning against the fraud and folly which have gathered with exceptional thickness round this special group of phenomena. I shall then refer to certain phenomena of telekinesis, in cases where they are inextricably mixed up with the psychological phenomena which I consider as my more especial field. And finally, in a long Appendix (926 A), I shall set forth a "Scheme of Vital Faculty" which will suggest some possible parallels between the operations of the supraliminal self, the subliminal self, and the possessing spirit.

923. Along this line, as I believe, we reach important truths; - and truths entirely concordant with the psychological evidence of preceding chapters. And yet it is with a half-reluctant feeling that I admit the topic into this work. So sorely needed here is the word of warning of which I have spoken; - so humiliating is the confession which must be made of the fraud and folly which have made of spiritualism a kind of by-word in scientific circles; - which have presented the very men who have obtained the first inkling of momentous truths in the guise of a credulous sect, preyed upon by a specially repulsive group of impostors. The fact is, that just here, and not earlier, we reach the points where the enormous issues, which have in truth underlain each stage and step in our long inquiry, become conspicuous to the ordinary mind. We somewhat suddenly pass from speculations and experiments on which the public look with the indifference which they feel for philosophy to speculations and experiments on which they look with the interest which they feel in the religious dogmas which are to decide their own future. I do not say that the public interested has been a very wide one.

It has indeed been wide enough, as I have said, to foster and support a particularly detestable group of charlatans; but it has not been wide enough, or earnest enough, to compile any considerable mass of careful experiment. I conjectured in a previous chapter that not a hundred men, at the ordinary professional level, had up till now made the study of the phenomena of hypnotism the main intellectual business of their lives. If for hypnotism we substitute these "phenomena of spiritualism" the list of serious students might probably be reduced to fifty.

It is well to point out the scantiness of efficient investigators of these problems, in view of the objection often made to the lack of progress in the difficult task. Outside some comparatively small group the number of spiritists rather resemble that multitude of indiscriminate givers who, in the days of haphazard charity, encouraged impostors, and brought philanthropy into contempt.

Confronted with these evils, the early members of the Charity Organisation Society had a painful and invidious task to perform. They had to repress where they would fain have stimulated; to act as detectives where they would fain have acted as benefactors; to pass judgment on men whose charitable impulses were as pure and ardent as their own.

Only through the seeming sternness of such training could the public learn to help the miserable without fostering the impostors.

The parallel at which I am pointing here is obvious enough; but in the realm of psychical research - as indeed in the realm of almsgiving - that needed lesson has as yet been very imperfectly acquired. I propose to indicate in Appendices (923 A and B) some of the work which the Society for Psychical Research has done in exposing and guarding against fraud and credulity; and I further refer my readers to a forthcoming book by my friend and colleague, Mr. Podmore, in which the imposture which has dogged so-called "Modern Spiritualism" from its inception will be exposed with a distinctness which needs must be salutary; - even though in a history so complex it be always possible that more intimate knowledge might have modified judgment on one or other detail.1