Answers to these questions are manifold. In the first place, it may be pointed out that the ability to communicate may be rare indeed, and not a universal possibility, as is generally supposed. As Dr. Hodgson expressed it (_Proceedings_, xiii., p. 362): "It may be a completely erroneous assumption that all persons, young or old, good or evil, vigorous or sickly, and whatever their lives or deaths may have been, are at all comparable with one another in their capacity to convey clear statements from the other world to this." Further, it must not be supposed that all "messages" received by mediums (even granting their complete honesty) really issue from the "Great Beyond." Many mediums simply tell their sitters the ideas, impressions, and "messages" which come into their minds, and which they believe to come from external sources, i.e., "spirits," but which, as a matter of fact, issue from their own subconsciousness. These scraps of information resemble "bubbles" breaking upon the surface of water--the finished product of latent incubation, and doubtless have every appearance and every feeling of external origin. Even if genuine spirit-messages are at times received, it is highly probable that the bulk of the messages are the product of the medium's subliminal, which catches up and amplifies the original external impetus received from without. Professor William James believed, e.g., the following: that "genuine messages have been given through Mrs. Piper's organism, but he also contended that every time an intelligence appeared, calling itself Hodgson, and beginning: 'Hello! Here I am again in the witness-box! How are you, old chap?' etc., this was not Hodgson at all, but Mrs. Piper's subliminal, and that genuine supernormal information only came in 'touches' or 'impulses,' as it were, as though the spirit could touch or come into contact with the medium's mind at a number of points, making a number of 'dips down,' ... as it were, imparting information at each dip which the medium's mind thereupon seized upon, elaborated, and gave out in its own dramatic form and setting." If this be true of Mrs. Piper (whose messages are shot at you from a cannon's mouth, as it were), how much truer must it be of other types of mediums, in which the communications are certainly far less direct and impressive? Mrs. Piper might be styled the "possession" type of medium--as opposed to the "subliminal" type--commonly seen; and, as before said, if the messages be so indirect in the case of Mrs. Piper, how much more fragmentary and indirect must they be in the case of all other mediums--less developed and less direct than she? It is hardly to be wondered at that the information given is of the vaguest, the most hazy and indistinct character, and that recognition and proof of identity is almost an impossibility.