166. Hearing mediums, who transmit only what they hear, are not, properly speaking, talking mediums; these last very often hear nothing; with, them the spirit acts on the organs of speech, as he acts on the hand of writing mediums. The spirit wishing to com- municate acts on the organ he finds most flexible; of one the hand, of another the speech, of another the hearing. The talking medium usually expresses him- self without having a consciousness of what he says, and often says things completely beyond his custom- ary ideas, his knowledge, or even the height of his intelligence.
Though he may be perfectly awake, .and in a normal state, he rarely preserves the remembrance of what he has spoken ; in a word, speech is, with him, the instru- ment the spirit uses, and through which another per- son can enter into communication, as can be done by the interposition of the hearing medium.
The passivity of the hearing medium is not always so complete; there are some who have the intuition of what they say at the moment of pronouncing the words. We shall return to this variety when we treat of intuitive mediums.
