All things considered, as in the other attempts and notably those of the famous medium Stainton Moses, there is the same characteristic inability to bring us the veriest particle of truth or knowledge of which no vestige could be found in a living brain or in a book written on this earth. And yet it is inconceivable that there should not somewhere exist a knowledge that is not as ours and truths other than those which we possess here below.
The case of Stainton Moses, whose name we have just mentioned, is a very striking one in this respect. This Stainton Moses was a dogmatic, hard-working clergyman, whose learning, Myers tells us, in the normal state, did not exceed that of an ordinary schoolmaster. But he was no sooner “entranced” before certain spirits of antiquity or of the middle ages, who are hardly known save to profound scholars, among others St. Hippolytus, Bishop of Ostia, Plotinus, Athenodorus, the tutor of Augustus, and, more particularly, Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus, took possession of his person and manifested themselves through his agency. Now Grocyn, for instance, furnished certain information about Erasmus which was at first thought to have been gathered in the other world, but which was subsequently discovered in forgotten, but nevertheless accessible books. On the other hand, Stainton Moses’ integrity was never questioned for an instant by those who knew him; and we may therefore take his word for it when he declares that he had not read the books in question. Here again, the mystery, inexplicable though it be, seems really to lie hidden in the midst of ourselves. It is unconscious reminiscence, if you will, suggestion at a distance, subliminal reading, but, no more than in cross correspondence, is it indispensable to have recourse to the dead and to drag them by main force into the riddle, which, seen from our side of the grave, is dark and impassioned enough as it is. Furthermore, we must not insist unduly on this cross correspondence. We must remember that the whole thing is in its earliest stages and that the dead appear to have no small difficulty in grasping the requirements of the living.
_The Survival of Man_, Chap. xxv, p. 325.
In this connexion, however, we find two or three rather perturbing facts, a remarkable one being, at a spiritualistic meeting held by the late W. T. Stead, the prediction of the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga, described with the most circumstantial details. A verbatim report of this prediction was drawn up and signed by some thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to beg the Servian minister in London to warn the king of the danger that threatened him. The event took place, as announced, a few months later. But “precognition” does not necessarily require the intervention of the dead; moreover, every case of this kind, before being definitely accepted, would call for prolonged investigation in every particular.