Of the same medium Mr. Podmore says: 'Apart from the moral difficulties involved, there is little or nothing to forbid the supposition that the whole of these messages were deliberately concocted by Mr. Moses himself and palmed off upon his unsuspecting friends.'[29] [Footnote 29: _Studies in Psychical Research_, p. 133.] The moral difficulties disappear when we consider the case as one of dissociation. His spirit communications were psychologically identical with the automatic writings of the Glastonbury archaeologists (see Chapter IX); he read obituary notices, studied out-of-the-way stories of men and women, and from the stores of his unconscious he produced this information as news from the spirit world. But, knowing nothing of the ways of the unconscious and becoming a prey to his own dissociated stream, he fed this stream and drifted with it into something a little removed from sanity. I know not how the manifestations began, and whether he belonged to my second or third group I do not attempt to discuss; I am satisfied if I have made it clear that the work of this wonderful medium can be explained otherwise than by one of the two alternatives of spiritualism or conscious deceit. We meet with the same rush to testify to the honesty of Mrs. Piper. Sir Oliver Lodge of course guarantees her, and the late Professor William James, the Harvard psychologist, wrote of her: 'Practically I should be willing now to stake as much money on Mrs. Piper's honesty as on that of any one I know, and am quite satisfied to leave my reputation for wisdom or folly so far as human nature is concerned to stand or fall by this declaration.'[30] [Footnote 30: Re-quoted from _Spiritualism_, p. 75.] This honesty of the main personality of the Dissociate leads astray professors of physics or of the old psychology.[31] It is the honest but mistaken man who misleads his fellows. We are on our guard against the rogue, and the conscious deceiver must needs be a good actor if he would succeed. The best actor knows he is acting, but the Reverend Moses needed no effort to preserve for years the appearance of straightforwardness and honesty. As far as he knew, he _was_ straightforward and honest, though beneath his consciousness lay fathomless possibilities of deceit, ever ready to take advantage of the externals of an honest man. [Footnote 31: I may owe an apology here to the memory of Professor James, for the original quotation is given without its context.]