166. Hearing mediums, who only transmit what is said to them by spirits, are not what are properly called speaking mediums, who very frequently hear nothing; the spirit merely acting upon their organs of speech, as he acts upon the hand of writing mediums. A spirit, when he wishes to communicate, makes use of the most flexible organ that he finds in the medium; from one, he borrows the hand; from another, the voice; from a third, the hearing. The speaking medium generally speaks without knowing what he says, and often gives utterance to instructions far above the reach of his own ideas, knowledge, and intelligence. Though he may be perfectly awake, and in his normal state, he rarely remembers what he has said; in short, his voice is only an instrument employed by a spirit, and by means of which a third party can converse with a spirit, as he can do through the agency of a hearing medium.
The passiveness of speaking mediums is not, however, so complete in all cases; for some of them have an intuition of what they say at the time they pronounce the words transmitted through them by the spirit. We shall return to this variety when we treat of intuitive mediums.