John Edmonds, a highly distinguished public figure, claimed that spiritualism provided public knowledge. One way around the grave difficulties of this claim was to re-interprete Edmonds’ claims subjectively. In 1869, a newspaper article sympathetic to spiritualism took this approach:

If Judge Edmonds should say I saw John Doe strike Richard Roe, we should all believe him. When he says, “I saw the apparition of a late associate,” are we to disbelieve? Not his veracity, certainly; but, perhaps, his power to distinguish an external form from an internal impression upon his sight may be doubted.^