Spiritualist teachers are not without a sense of the impropriety of such attempts, when pressed on grounds of curiosity alone. Sir William Barrett advises that those who have attained the assurance of survival by means of the séance should not pursue the matter further, but rather learn more of the spiritual world and spiritual communion from the Christian mystics of all countries. He recommends especially a study of the writings of Swedenborg. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, unlike Sir W. F. Barrett, regards Spiritualism as a religion, but he advises his readers to get away from the phenomenal side, and learn the “lofty teaching” from such books as those of Stainton Moses. The cult of the séance, he says, may be very much overdone. “When once you have convinced yourself of the truth of the phenomena, the physical séance has done its work, and the man or woman who spends his or her life in running from séance to séance is in danger of becoming a sensation-hunter.” In all such writing there is a note of uneasiness. The séance is not regarded as a “means of grace” for the believer in Spiritualism, therefore the outsider should avoid these dark and perilous ways. “Not for nothing,” says the Rev. Cyril E. Hudson, “has the Church throughout her history discouraged the practice of necromancy, the morbid concern with the dead which must inevitably interfere, and does in fact interfere, with the proper discharge of our duties in that plane of existence in which God has placed us.”[2] FOOTNOTES: [2] _Nineteenth Century_, May, 1919, p. 919. _Chapter III_ THE MEDIUM In ordinary trance-mediumship, at least four distinct entities are involved. There is first the inquirer, next the medium, thirdly the medium’s alleged “control” or controlling spirit, and, lastly, the presumed discarnate being who speaks to the inquirer through the “control” and through the medium. I “Mediumship” is a word with ugly associations, as every honest-minded Spiritualist will admit. It used to be said that the Psychical Society found its chief occupation in exposing fraud and trickery. The great Russian authority, Aksakof, complained bitterly of the frequent transmission of obviously false messages. He wrote of “the deception which appeared along with the dark séance and materialisations, and which was confirmed in my experience, not only from literature, but also through my personal relations with the most celebrated professional mediums.” He would have agreed with Mrs. Sidgwick’s words: “The chief scandal of Spiritualism is the encouragement it gives to the immoral trade of fraudulent mediumship.”