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< A Theory of Mediumship (continued from page 8-343) >
exact similitude of manifestations time after time as exhibited by the medium, his associates, and imitators.
Evolution, in all probability, is the moulding principle under the influence of which our bodies are, to use Professor Clifford’s words, “merely complicated examples of practically universal physical rules;” but in addition to the uniformity in the order of nature, which is so loudly proclaimed as the death-note of the possibility of mediumistic manifestations, we can read other indications where well-established uniformity is departed from. A violation of normal functional activity, we know not how, sometimes results in the production of abnormal forms in nature called monsters. The supply of energy is not interfered with, but the directive agency is; and here we have the analogue to the mediumistic manifestations, where the form'' of the combination of Clifford’s “eject elements,” abnormal in such instances, is the underlying and unseen in correspondence with the abnormal phenomenon.
The variation in the. form of these combinations must, however, correspond to the limits of possible functional range, and hence we may formulate an expression for the universality, that is, reality, of effects produced by mediums, and witnessed by any convenient number of observers, viz., the functional activities of the medium during abnormal manifestations are endorsed and guaranteed by the possible activities of the observers; the thing-in-itself which underlies the phenomenal being as truly related to the possible as to the actual, and, consequently, remaining identical in both the active and passive members .of the circle. This is the functional integration which was spoken of when the analogy of linked machinery was used higher up in illustration of a functional revelation of new powers existing latent in the human organism.
This is a rough outline of a way of looking at the subject of mediumship that I think may be useful. While denying that anything’ more than the acknowledgment of a certain functional elasticity is demanded (clairvoyance and mesmeric sympathy incontrovertibly prove the fact of such elasticity) to reconcile modern Spiritualism and science, it makes use of a doctrine which asserts that “Matter is a mental picture in which mind-stuff is the thing represented,” to account for possible pseudo-material constructions in space, the mind-stuff, or unconscious feeling, underlying the phenomenal being supplied through the agency of the medium’s nervous system. The mere expenditure of the stored-up energy of the medium’s blood and tissues through unusual channels it does not attempt to account for, regarding it simply as a matter of fact which neither docs nor can violate the principle of conservation. The directed expenditure of energy without the aid of its special machine, a muscle, will of course oblige us to take enlarged views of the relation of volition to energy; but this is a matter of detail.
In conclusion, I may say that experience goes to show that apart from special functional peculiarities, mediums are very little different from average men and women, except in the fact that with them nerve tissue is, as it were, more explosive in its physical character, and that, consequently, as a compensating influence, manifestations are determined and educationally developed which save the unstable individual from chaotic externalisations of energy, such as fits or insane impressions. The artistic nature is present in some form in, perhaps, all mediums, and hence the strange flood of energy has already a channel more or less completely prepared for its efflux, whereby the immediate safety of the medium is ensured, though often at the expense of his higher nature. It would almost seem as if original creative genius were the high and perfect form of that which, as mediumship, can only be regarded as an imperfection, mental and mechanical, and thereby well-suited to be one factor in the production of the seemingly useless and isolated facts in nature known as Spiritualistic manifestations.
Editor's notes