Part 12

The psychological aspect of the phenomena of Spiritualism may be presented in a consideration of these questions: How is it that the manifestations produced in evidence of spirit-control carry conviction? What is the origin of this mass of testimony in favor of spiritualistic marvels? Whence this general tendency to believe in the reality of spirit-influence as thus manifested? For the purposes of these inquiries it will be profitable to consider a few typical manifestations and to observe their true inwardness. Among the most influential mediums was Henry Slade; through him many were converted to Spiritualism, including the famous Zöllner coterie, for whom he gave a spiritual demonstration of the reality of the fourth dimension of space. After all the prominence which has been given to the Zöllner sittings and the importance attached to them by reason of the eminence of the participants, it is somewhat unexpected to read in the report of a reliable observer who interviewed Zöllner's associates, that "of the four eminent men whose names have made famous the investigation, there is reason to believe one, _Zöllner_, was of unsound mind at the time, and anxious for an experimental demonstration of an already accepted hypothesis (the fourth dimension of space); another, _Fechner_, was partly blind, and believed because of Zöllner's observations; a third, _Scheibner_, was also afflicted with defective vision, and not entirely satisfied in his own mind as to the phenomena; and a fourth, _Weber_, was advanced in age, and did not even recognize the disabilities of his associates." None knew anything about conjuring, and, deservedly honored as these men were in their own specialties, they were certainly not fitted to compete with a professional like Slade. One of Slade's standard performances was the production of communications on a slate held beneath a table, in answer to questions asked by his sitters verbally or in writing, the writing in some cases being concealed in folded slips of paper. In his performances before the Seybert Commission it was soon discovered that the character of the writing on the slates was of two kinds. The long messages were neatly written, with the i's dotted and the t's crossed, and often produced unasked, or not in direct answer to a question; while the short ones in prompt answer to direct questions were scrawled, hardly legible, and evidently written without the aid of the eye. The many methods of producing the short writings were repeated by a professional prestidigitateur much more skillfully than by Slade. The commission distinctly saw every step in Slade's method on one occasion or another, but were utterly baffled by the conjurer (Mr. Harry Kellar), who subsequently revealed his methods to one of their number. The long messages were written beforehand, on slates to be substituted at a favorable opportunity for the ones supplied to the medium. At the last séance with Dr. Slade, two prepared slates were resting against a table behind him, and one of the investigators kept a sharp watch upon these slates. "Unfortunately, it was too sharp; for one second the medium saw me looking at them. It was enough. That detected look prevented the revelation of those elaborate spirit messages. But when the séance was over, and he was signing the receipt for his money, I passed round behind his chair and pushed these slates with my foot, so as to make them fall over, whereupon the writing on one of them was distinctly revealed." The medium at once pushed back his chair, snatched the slates, hurriedly washed them, and could with difficulty regain sufficient composure to sign the receipt for the exorbitant payment of his services. Another observer says with regard to Slade: "The methods of this medium's operations appear to me to be perfectly transparent, and I wish to say emphatically that I am astonished beyond expression at the confidence of this man in his ability to deceive, and at the recklessness of the risks which he assumes in the most barefaced manner. The only reason of our having any so-called 'manifestations,' under the circumstances, was because of the fact that the committee had agreed in advance to be entirely passive, and to acquiesce in every condition imposed." Mrs. Sidgwick, an able English observer, detected the fraudulent character of Slade's performances from the beginning. She points out five important grounds of suspicion: "His conjurer-like way of trying to distract one's attention, his always sitting so as to have the right hand to manipulate the slate, the vague and general character of the communications, his compelling one to sit with one's hands in a position that makes it difficult to look under the table, and his only allowing two sitters at a time."

The Seybert Commission, it should be explained, owes its origin to the bequest of an ardent believer in Spiritualism, Mr. Henry Seybert, to the University of Pennsylvania; which was coupled with the condition that this university should appoint a commission to investigate modern Spiritualism. It is from their report[6] that several of my illustrations are taken. The members of this commission began their investigations with an entire willingness to accept any conclusion warranted by facts; and their chairman, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, confessed "to a leaning in favor of the substantial truth of spiritualism." They examined many of the most famous mediums and the manifestations that contributed most to their fame. Their verdict, individually and collectively, is the same regarding every medium with whom they saw anything noteworthy: gross, intentional fraud throughout. The mediums were treated with the utmost fairness and courtesy; their conditions were agreed to and upheld; every one, in each kind of manifestation, was caught in the act of trickery, or else the trick was repeated and explained by one of the commission. This testimony goes far to justify the substitution of "trick" for "manifestation," of "senseless cant" for "spiritualistic explanation," of "adroit conjurer" for "medium." While the accumulative force of this conclusion can only be appreciated by a reading of the report itself, a few further illustrations will contribute to a realization of the nature of the "manifestations" and their typical _milieu_. Mrs. Patterson, medium, gives a performance similar to that of Slade. Dr. Knerr had a sitting with her, and adjusted a mirror about his person so as to reflect whatever was going on beneath the table. "In the mirror I beheld a hand ... stealthily insert its fingers between the leaves of the slate, take out the little slip (containing the question), unfold and again fold it, grasp the little pencil ... and with rapid but noiseless motion ... write across the slate from left to right a few lines; then the leaves of the slate were closed, the little pencil laid on the top," and the spirits were graciously invoked to send a message.

The monotony of the narrative of somewhat vulgar deception is agreeably relieved by the entertaining account given by Dr. Furness of his experiences with mediums. He sent out sealed letters, the contents of which certain mediums claimed to be able to read and to answer by the aid of spirits, and found the seals tampered with, and mucilage and skill used to conceal the crime; he asked the same question of various mediums and received hopelessly contradictory answers; he detected the form of the medium in her assumed materializations, and found the spirit ready to answer to any and every name in fiction or reality, from "Olivia" of "The Talking Oak" to Shakespeare. One of the questions asked by Mr. Furness related to the ownership in life of a skull in his possession, used for a long time as the "Yorick's skull" at a Philadelphia theatre. He was told by one medium that it was "Marie St. Clair," by another that it was "Sister Belle." Hence these remarks: "Marie St. Clair, who, on spiritual authority as I have shown above, shares the ownership with Sister Belle of 'Yorick's' skull in my possession, has never failed to assent whenever I ask a Spirit if it be she. To be sure, she varies with every different medium, but that is only one of her piquant little ways, which I early learned to overlook and at last grew to like. She is both short and tall, lean and plump, with straight hair and with curls, young and middle-aged, so that now it affords me real pleasure to meet with a new variety of her." Equally amusing is the conversation with a Spirit who was led to assent to the suggestion that she was "Olive," and at length was addressed thus: "'Oh, Olive, there's one thing I want so much to ask you about.... What was the matter with you that afternoon, one summer, when your father rode his hunter to the town, and Albert followed after upon his; and then your mother trundled to the gate behind the dappled grays? Do you remember it, dear?' 'Perfectly.' 'Well, don't you remember, nothing seemed to please you that afternoon, you left the novel all uncut upon the rosewood shelf, you left your new piano shut, something seemed to worry you? Do you remember it, dear one?' 'All of it; yes, yes.' 'Then you came singing down to that old oak, and kissed the place where I had carved our names with many vows. Tell me, you little witch, who were you thinking of all the time?' 'All the while of you,' she sighed. 'And do you, oh, do you remember that you fell asleep under the oak, and that a little acorn fell into your bosom and you tossed it out in a pet? Ah, Olive dear, I found that acorn, and kissed it twice and kissed it thrice for thee! And do you know that it has grown into a fine young oak?' 'I know it,' she answered softly and sadly, 'I often go to it.' This was almost too much for me, and as my memory, on the spur of the moment, of Tennyson's 'Talking Oak' was growing misty, I was afraid the interview might become embarrassing for lack of reminiscences;" so the materialization of a very human form was brought to a close. To this may be added--to illustrate the barefacedness of the medium's business--the fact, communicated to me by Dr. Furness, that a noted medium had visited a professional juggler, and, "making no secret to him of his trickery as a medium for independent slate-writing, had purchased from the juggler several other tricks with which to carry on his spiritualistic trade."

There is both entertainment and instruction in Dr. Knerr's account of a séance in which the spirit of an Indian and the mysterious use of a drum were to form parts of the performance. He tells of his success in getting some printer's ink on the drum-sticks just before the lights were lowered, and of the bewildered astonishment (when the lights were turned up after the Indian had manifested) at the condition of the medium's hands. "How in the world printer's ink could have gotten smeared over them while under the control of 'Deerfoot, the Indian,' no one, not even the medium, could fathom." We may read how a medium who professed to materialize a "spirit" right-hand while apparently holding his sitter's hand or arm with both his own, was shown to imitate this double grip with one hand and to do the hocus-pocus with the other. We may vary the nature of the fraud almost indefinitely and observe how universal, how coarse, how degrading it is, and how readily it may be induced to leave its hiding-place to snatch at a cunningly offered bait,--until in the end, if it were not so sad, it would be only ridiculous.

In the reports of the investigations of mediums, published by the Society for Psychical Research (vol. iv.), we find accounts of the performances of one Englinton, also with slate-writing, and whose success, as described by enthusiastic sitters, does not fall short of the miraculous. Yet the description of this wonder-worker's doings by a competent observer, Professor Carvill Lewis, renders the manifestations absolutely transparent. He sat intently watching Englinton for an hour, and nothing happened; fearing a blank séance, he purposely diverted his attention. The moment he looked away the manifestations began, and he could see "the medium look down intently toward his knees and in the direction of the slate. I now quickly turned back my head, when the slate was brought up against the table with a sharp rap." The manœuvre was repeated with the same result; and while the writing was going on, Professor Lewis distinctly saw "the movement of the central tendon in his wrist corresponding to that made by his middle finger in the act of writing. Each movement of the tendon was simultaneously accompanied by the sound of a scratch on the slate." Again, for the answer to the request to define "Idocrase," Englinton required the use of a dictionary, and left the room for a minute; the answer was then written just as it is given in Webster's dictionary; but, unfortunately, _albumina_ was read for _alumina_. When the slate, which acts with a spring, was to be closed, Englinton suddenly sneezed; when the writing was small and faint, he shifted his position until he came within a few inches of it; a postage stamp secretly glued across the two leaves of the double slate prevented all manifestations; a double fee immediately caused further manifestations, when, owing to the exhaustion of power, such had just been declared to be impossible; and the writing on the slates was identified by an expert as that of Englinton. It was the same Englinton who was convicted of connivance with Mme. Blavatsky in the production of a spurious theosophic marvel; and it is to him that the following story, supplied by Mr. Padshah and indorsed by Mr. Hodgson (the exposer of Mme. Blavatsky), relates: Mr. Padshah and a friend had asked for Gujerati writing at a séance, but without success. Mr. Padshah (without informing his friend) sent anonymously to Englinton a poem in Gujerati; and the friend received from the medium a minutely faithful copy of the same on a slate, as the direct revelation of the spirits!

II

But all this accounts for only part of the problem. To convict every medium of fraud is not a complete explanation of the appearance which this belief presented in its most characteristic form some decades ago, and still presents. It remains to account for the great success of the movement; for the fact that so many have been deceived and so few have really understood; to show why we are to believe the Seybert Commission, and not credit the countless miracle-mongers. This is psychologically the most interesting portion of the problem, and has been very successfully treated by Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. Hodgson, and Mr. Davey, of the Society for Psychical Research.

There is a very broadspread notion that anybody can go to a spiritualistic séance and give a reliable opinion as to whether what he or she may chance to see is explicable as conjuring or not. Especially where the right to one's opinion is regarded as a corollary to the right of liberty, does this notion prevail. It is probably not an exaggeration to maintain that most such claimants are about as competent to form a trustworthy opinion on such a subject as they are to pronounce upon the genuineness of a Syriac manuscript. The matter is in some aspects as much a technical acquisition as is the diagnosticating of a disease. It is not at all to the discredit of any one's powers of observation or intellectual acumen to be deceived by the performances of a conjurer; and the same holds true of the professional part of mediumistic phenomena. Until this homely but salutary truth is impressed with all its importance upon all intending investigators, there is little hope of bringing about a proper attitude towards these and kindred phenomena. We believe that there will be an eclipse of the moon when the astronomer so predicts, not because we can calculate the time or even understand how the astronomer does it, but because that is a technical acquisition which he has learned and we have not; and so with a thousand other and more humble facts of daily life. Spiritualism, to a large extent, comes under the same category; and observers who have acquainted themselves with the possibilities of conjuring and the natural history of deception, who by their training and endowment have fitted themselves to be competent judges of such alleged ultra-physical facts--these persons have the same right to our confidence and respect as a body of chemists or physicians on a question within their province. It by no means follows that all scientists are fitted for an investigation of this kind, nor that all laymen are not; it does follow that a body of trained and able observers, who are aware of the possibilities of faulty observation and of the tendency to substitute hasty inference for fact, who know something about deception as a psychological characteristic, who have acquired or call to their aid the technical requisites for such an investigation, are better fitted to carry it to a logical outcome than are others, equally distinguished in other directions and equally able, if you will, but who have not these special qualifications. It follows that it is not fair for you to set up what you think you have seen as overthrowing their authority; even if you happen to be an unprejudiced and accurate observer and have weighed the probability of your observations being vitiated by one or other of the many sources of error in such observation, it is only a small fact, though of course one worthy of notice. There is no good reason why the average man should set so much store by his own impressions of sense, when the fallibility of other witnesses is so readily demonstrable.

Whatever of seeming dogmatism there is in this view is removed by the experimental demonstration furnished by Messrs. Hodgson and Davey, that the kind and amount of mal-observation and faulty description which an average observer will introduce into the account of a performance such as the medium gives, is amply sufficient to account for the divergence between his report of the performance and what really occurred. The success of a large class of tricks depends upon diverting the observer's attention from the points of real importance, and in leading him to draw inferences perfectly valid under ordinary circumstances but entirely wrong in the particular case. It must be constantly remembered that the judging powers are at a great disadvantage in observing such performances, and that it is a kind of judgment in which they have little practice. In the intercourse of daily life a certain amount of good faith and of confidence in the straightforwardness of the doings of others prevents us from exercising that close scrutiny and suspicion here necessary. We know that most of our neighbors have neither the intention nor the sharpness to deceive us, and do not live on the principle of the detective, who regards every one as dishonest until proven to be otherwise. This attitude of extreme suspicion is indispensable in dealing with the phenomena now under discussion. It follows, therefore, that the layman cannot serve as a pilot for himself or for others in such troubled waters. This, however, if duly recognized, need not be a matter of concern. "This unpreparedness and inobservancy of mind in the presence of a conjurer," says Mr. Hodgson, is not "a thing of which any one who is not familiar with the tricks already need be ashamed." Even a professional may be nonplussed by a medium's performance, if he have no experience in the special kind of sleight-of-hand required for the trick. This is the experience of Mr. Harry Kellar; he at first declared himself unable to explain slate-writing as a trick, but now can repeat the process in a variety of ways, and with far greater skill than is shown by the mediums. We may therefore approach Mr. Davey's investigation with the assurance that, in all probability, we too should have failed to detect what was really done, and should have rendered quite as erroneous account of what we saw as did his actual sitters; and according to our training and temperament we should have drawn our several conclusions, and all of them variously wide of the mark.

Mr. Davey (who, by the way, was at one time deceived almost into conversion by spiritualistic phenomena, and who, before he took up the matter seriously, recorded his conviction that "the idea of trickery or jugglery in slate-writing communications is quite out of the question") was an expert amateur conjurer, and repeated the slate-writing performances of such as Englinton with at least equal skill. He arranged with Mr. Hodgson to give sittings to several ladies and gentlemen, on the condition that they send him detailed written accounts of what they had seen. He did not pose as a medium nor accept a fee, but simply said that he had something to show which his sitters were to explain as best they could, and with due consideration of trickery as a possible mode of explanation. The "medium" has here a decided advantage over Mr. Davey, because his sitters come to him with a mental attitude that entertains, however remotely, the possibility of witnessing something supernatural; and this difference is sufficient to create an adjustment of the powers of observation less fitted to detect trickery than if the performer refrains from announcing himself as the go-between of the supernatural. This is well illustrated in the reports of Mr. Davey's sitters; for a few friends who were told beforehand that they were to witness a sleight-of-hand performance, or were strongly led to believe it such, made much less of a marvel of the performance than those who had not been thus enlightened. "Nevertheless" (I am citing from Mr. Podmore's résumé), "the effect produced was such that a well-known professional conjurer expressed his complete inability to explain the results by trickery; that no one of his sitters ever detected his _modus operandi_; that most were completely baffled, or took refuge in the supposition of a new form of electricity, or 'a powerful magnetic force used in double manner: (1) a force of attraction, and (2) that of repulsion'; and that more than one spiritualist ascribed the phenomena to occult agency, and regarded--perhaps still regard--Mr. Davey as a renegade medium."

Mr. Davey's performances, _as described_ by many of his sitters, like the descriptions of the performances of many a medium, are marvelous enough to demand the hypothesis of occult agency: "Writing between a conjurer's own slates in a way quite inexplicable to the conjurer; writing upon slates locked and carefully guarded by witnesses; writing upon slates held by the witnesses firmly against the under-surface of the table; writing upon slates held by the witnesses above the table; answers to questions written secretly in locked slates; correct quotations appearing on guarded slates from books chosen by the witnesses at random, and sometimes mentally, the books not touched by the 'medium'; writing in different colors mentally chosen by the witnesses, covering the whole side of one of their own slates; messages in languages unknown to the medium, including a message in German, for which only a mental request had been made, and a letter in Japanese in a double slate locked and sealed by the witness; the date of a coin placed by the witness in a sealed envelope correctly written in a locked slate upon the table, the envelope remaining intact; a word written between slates screwed together and also corded and sealed together, the word being chosen by the witness after the slates were fastened by himself, etc., etc. And yet, though 'autographic' fragments of pencil were 'heard' weaving mysterious messages between and under and over slates, and fragments of chalk were seen moving about under a tumbler placed above the table in full view, none of the sitters witnessed that best phenomenon, _Mr. Davey writing_."