"You will gain nothing; you will even lose the advantages which you might derive from his lucidity. It is very possible that you could make him speak upon all the subjects of your indiscreet curiosity; but in that case, as I have already warned you, you will make him leave his own sphere and introduce him into yours. He will no longer have any other resources than yourself. He will utter you very eloquent discourses, but they will no more be dictated by the internal inspirations. They will be the product of his recollections or of his imagination; perhaps you will also rouse his vanity, and then all is lost; he will not re-enter the circle from which he has wandered.... The two states cannot be confounded.... These somnambulists are evidently influenced by the persons who surround them, by the circumstances in which they are placed." And Dr. A. E. Fletcher, in _The Other World and This_, says: "Trance mediums, more than any others, are the victims of the embodied and the disembodied. If the medium is subject to the influence of a spirit, how much more likely is he to be affected by the character of those around him! Strong minds in the body may take control of his brain, instead of spirit intelligences. Such persons must be of a highly sensitive order, and cannot come under the same line of human criticism and judgment as might be applied to those in everyday life." Even Maudsley, in his _Pathology of Mind_ (p. 77), says: "The main feature which the abnormal states (trance, etc.) present in common are: first, that coincident with a partial mental activity there is more or less inhibition, which may be complete, of all other mental action; secondly, that the individual in such condition of limited mental activity _is susceptible only to impressions which are in relation with his character and are consequently assimilated by it_...."[1] These passages illustrate, at least, the delicate and often-times suggestible nature of the trance; and how inconclusive, to say the least, are such experiments as those of Drs. Tanner and Hall! 6. On the other hand, it may be asked: If the messages we receive at seances really _do_ come from the departed, why should they be so fleeting and so uncertain as they are? And why should not many more messages be received from the hundreds and thousands who die yearly, and who are doubtless longing to communicate?