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As to the personality of mediums, they have seemed to me to
be very average specimens of the community, neither markedly
better nor markedly worse. I know many, and I have never met
anything in the least like "Sludge," a poem which Browning might
be excused for writing in some crisis of domestic disagreement,
but which it was inexcusable to republish since it is admitted to
be a concoction, and the exposure described to have been
imaginary. The critic often uses the term medium as if it
necessarily meant a professional, whereas every investigator has
found some of his best results among amateurs. In the two finest
seances I ever attended, the psychic, in each case a man of
moderate means, was resolutely determined never directly or
indirectly to profit by his gift, though it entailed very
exhausting physical conditions. I have not heard of a clergyman
of any denomination who has attained such a pitch of altruism--
nor is it reasonable to expect it. As to professional mediums,
Mr. Vout Peters, one of the most famous, is a diligent collector
of old books and an authority upon the Elizabethan drama; while
Mr. Dickinson, another very remarkable discerner of spirits, who
named twenty-four correctly during two meetings held on the same
day, is employed in loading canal barges. This man is one
gifted clairvoyants in England, though Tom Tyrrell the
weaver, Aaron Wilkinson, and others are very marvellous.
Tyrrell, who is a man of the Anthony of Padua type, a walking
saint, beloved of animals and children, is a figure who might
have stepped out of some legend of the church. Thomas, the
powerful physical medium, is a working coal miner. Most mediums
take their responsibilities very seriously and view their work in
a religious light. There is no denying that they are exposed to
very particular temptations, for the gift is, as I have explained
elsewhere, an intermittent one, and to admit its temporary
absence, and so discourage one's clients, needs greater moral
principle than all men possess. Another temptation to which
several great mediums have succumbed is that of drink. This
comes about in a very natural way, for overworking the power
leaves them in a state of physical prostration, and the stimulus
of alcohol affords a welcome relief, and may tend at last to
become a custom and finally a curse. Alcoholism always weakens
the moral sense, so that these degenerate mediums yield
themselves more readily to fraud, with the result that
several who had deservedly won honoured names and met all hostile
criticism have, in their later years, been detected in the most
contemptible tricks. It is a thousand pities that it should be
so, but if the Court of Arches were to give up its secrets, it
would be found that tippling and moral degeneration were by no
means confined to psychics. At the same time, a psychic is so
peculiarly sensitive that I think he or she would always be well
advised to be a life long abstainer--as many actually are.
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