HPB-SB-14-55: Difference between revisions

{{Style P-Title|NOTES BY THE WAY.}}

Mr. Alfred R. Wallace puts in his striking letter considerations that have for a long time past so presented themselves to my mind as to make me hesitate in pronouncing any opinion about so difficult a subject as materialisation. They have apparently led him to believe that what is called fraud is not properly so called. It may be so: we cannot tell; but assuredly it will be taken as such. And when the paraphernalia of premeditated imposture are discovered on the person of the medium, it is impossible not to arrive at the conclusion that fraud has been planned and perpetrated. Considerations such as these have induced me to insist so strongly on the injustice and iniquity of placing a medium under conditions that are so suspicious. What has apparently led Mr. Wallace to the conclusion that materialisation phenomena are usually genuine, (I think he makes no place at all for imposture) has led me to desire conditions which, first of all, shall make imposture impossible: secondly, shall relieve the observer from the necessity for speculating whether what he is looking at is a materialised form, or a transfigured medium, or an elaborate fraud; and, lastly, shall prevent these recurrent exposures which discredit honest mediums, and make Spiritualism a byword.