Some readers may expect me to say a word here about "clairaudience." The only word I feel disposed to say is that it is one of the worst pieces of nonsense in the movement. Clairvoyance means to read the contents of a sealed letter, or to see spirits which ordinary mortals cannot see. It is half the stock-in-trade of the ordinary medium. You pay your guinea or half-guinea, and the gifted lady sees your invisible dead friends and describes them. Sometimes she is quite accurate, "on information received." Generally the performance is a tedious medley of guesses and grotesque inaccuracies. As is known, Mr. Labouchere quite safely promised a thousand-pound note to any clairvoyante who would see the number of it through a sealed envelope. The French Academy of Science had invited clairvoyants, and thoroughly discredited the claim, years before. Yet the imposture goes on daily, all over England and America, and some now offer the novelty of "clairaudience," or hearing spirit voices which we ordinary mortals cannot hear. It is the same fraud under another name. When some clairaudient comes along who can hear the spirits of Myers, and so many other deceased Spiritualists answer the crucial questions they have never yet answered, we may become interested. Until then a new addition to this world of cranks, frauds, decadents, and nervous invalids is not a matter of much importance. FOOTNOTES: [12] _The Newer Spiritualism_, p. 180. [13] Mr. Clodd, as will be read in the preface to the second edition of Dr. Mercier's book, sent a copy of this letter to _Light_. The editor declined to publish it. So Sir A. C. Doyle may justly plead that he knew nothing about it. Will he ask why? CHAPTER VII MESSAGES FROM THE SPIRIT-WORLD Clairvoyance, strictly speaking, is supposed to be an abnormal power of the medium: a range of vision, a fineness of sense, that we less gifted beings do not possess. But the performance is very apt to resolve itself into a claim that the medium sees invisible spirits and is communicating with them. Of real clairvoyance--of a power to read a closed book or a folded paper or see a distant spot--no instance has ever yet been recorded that will pass scrutiny. Many scientific men, as I said, who do not believe in spirits do believe in the abnormal powers of mediums. They would like to get a proof of clairvoyance, but they are unable to offer us one. The wonderful stories told of the gift in Spiritualist circles vanish, like the stories about Home and Moses, the moment the critical lamp is turned upon them.