Chapter 13

In fact, it is evident to those who have taken the trouble to investigate the question seriously, and who do not dismiss it with an _a priori_ decision, that in addition to the fraudulent mediums who make it their business to trick the public, and are ready to produce a new marvel for every new dollar, and to call "spirits from the vasty deep" of the unseen universe in form and shape to suit every customer, there are some private and strictly honest mediums, and many phenomena which no theory of conjuring will explain. To what they are due is another question, in regard to which no hypothesis is here offered. It may be said here, however, that the work of the Psychic Research Society has demonstrated rather conclusively that certain hitherto unknown and unsuspected powers and laws of nature do exist, and that man's five senses are not the only means by which he gains a knowledge of what is going on in other minds than his own. The facts of thought-transference, of mesmeric control, of apparitions of the living, and the like, as critically tested by the members of this society, seem to indicate clearly that mind can affect, influence, and control mind through some other channel than that of the senses, usually over short distances, but in case of strong mental concentration over long distances. That some psychic medium, some ethereal atmosphere, infiltrates our grosser atmosphere, and is capable of conveying waves of thought as the luminiferous ether conveys waves of light, is the theory advanced in explanation of these phenomena. Spiritualists had long before advanced a like theory in explanation of their phenomena, claiming that disembodied as well as living minds have the power of influencing and controlling other minds, through the agency of such a psychic atmosphere, and also of acting upon and moving physical substances through a like agency. As to the probability of all this, no opinion is here offered.

It is our purpose simply to select some of the more striking instances of spiritualistic phenomena, as recorded by scientific observers. Those placed on record by the numerous unscientific and unknown investigators are not the kind of material to present to the general public. Statements of an unusual character need to be thoroughly substantiated before they can be accepted, and the remarkable phenomena adduced as spiritual demand evidence of the most unquestionable character. There is always the feeling that the observer may have been deceived by some shrewd trickery, or have credulously accepted what others would have readily seen through, or that the senses may have been under some form of mesmeric control. Instances of such phenomena, therefore, need to be attested by the names of persons of well-known honesty, judgment, and discrimination, and attended with an exact statement of the tests applied, before they can be accepted as thoroughly trustworthy accounts. Some instances of this character may be here given.

The phenomena known under the general name of spirit-manifestations vary greatly in different instances. In some cases they take the form of strange dreams, in which some warning or information concerning coming events is given that afterward proves true. In others they occur as seeming apparitions of persons recently or long dead. In others, as in the case of haunted houses, there are noises of great variety, moving of objects, opening and shutting of doors, appearances of unknown forms, and all the phenomena which might be produced by an invisible inhabitant of the house who was able to become visible under certain circumstances. More ordinary manifestations are rapping sounds and lifting of heavy bodies, writing either with or without apparent human agency, and mental communication of facts unknown to or forgotten by the persons present. Other phases are those presented by professional mediums,--the tying and untying of ropes, playing on musical instruments, the production of luminous phenomena, slate-writing under tables, and the like. Performances of this character are usually done in the dark, and the fraud which may be present is therefore not easily detected. It is impossible to apply tests under such circumstances, and nothing can be accepted as positive that cannot be tested. Performances similarly surprising are constantly offered by professional conjurers, and nothing claiming the high origin of spiritual phenomena can be received in evidence where trickery is possible or has not been rendered impossible by the employment of adequate tests.

To the same class belong the cabinet performances and the so-called materialization of spirit forms, which have been the favorite cards of professional mediums of late years. So far as yet offered in public, they may be dismissed in the mass as pure trickery. The fact that stage-performers of sleight-of-hand tricks can repeat the cabinet phenomena in every detail, and that the materialized spirit showmen have been caught in numerous instances in the very act of fraud, throws utter discredit on the business. No repetition by new mediums of other forms of the exposed tricks carries any weight. In fact, in a matter of such importance nothing can be accepted as settled until it has been subjected to the strictest scientific tests and every possible opportunity for deceit or trickery eliminated. We are not ready to believe that the spirits of our departed friends are able and willing to talk with or show themselves to us, or create disturbances in the arrangement of our furniture, unless we are absolutely positive that our eyes, ears, and nerves are not being cleverly fooled by some skilled and unscrupulous show-man, or that we are not self-deceived by some temporary vagary of our brains or senses.

In addition to the purely physical phenomena are others of a more or less mental character. One interesting phase of the latter is that of planchette-writing, which attracted so much attention a few years ago. The planchette, a heart-shaped board moving easily on casters, and with a pencil supporting it at one extremity, moves with great readiness when touched by mediumistic fingers, and is responsible for acres of communications purporting to come from the world of spirits, and conveying the greatest variety of information, alike as to the thoughts and deeds of particular spirits and the general conditions of disembodied spiritual existence. In other instances the planchette is dispensed with, and the writing done by a pencil held in the hand of the medium, or occasionally, as some persons positively declare, by a pencil that is held in no mortal hand. In still other cases the medium, either awake or entranced, gives the communication by word of mouth. And this is asserted to be the case not only in respect to brief messages, but in long addresses, which are given every Sunday in our principal cities before large audiences, and in the writing of books of considerable length, but not, as a rule, of any great profundity or literary value. To all these claims, however, we can simply record the verdict "not proven." When a man writes or says anything we want more than his mere assertion to prove that it does not come from his own mind. And, even if we are satisfied that he is not consciously deceiving, the possibility remains that he is affected by some unconscious mental action. We shall certainly not accept his declaration that spirits of the dead are talking through him unless he gives information that could not possibly have been in his own mind, and could not have been received by thought-transference from the mind of any other person present or in _rapport_ with him at a distance. The discoveries in thought-transference open possibilities of mental influence between living persons which aid to explain many hitherto incomprehensible phenomena.

Clairvoyant and clairaudiant mediums fall into the same category. They profess to see forms which no one else can see, and to hear voices which no one else can hear, and describe these forms, or repeat the words of these voices, often with the effect of recalling the appearance or character of deceased persons whom they could not possibly have known. Yet the fact remains that the persons who recognize these descriptions as accurate must have known the parties described, and it becomes possible that the mental impression of the medium may have been received by thought-transference from them. We do not assert that it has been so received. We assert nothing. In fact, phenomena are claimed to occur which it is difficult or impossible to explain on any such theory, or on any other theory yet promulgated. Among these is the conveyance of matter through matter, as of an object from the interior to the exterior of a corked and sealed bottle, of other objects from a distance into locked rooms, of writing by a sliver of pencil in the interior of a double slate firmly screwed together, of the placing of close-fitting steel rings in one solid piece around human necks, and their subsequent removal, of writing and speaking in languages unknown to some or all of the persons present, and a considerable variety of similar performances, declared to have occurred under strict test-conditions. Yet if we cannot explain we retain the right to doubt, and such statements cannot be received as facts except on the strongest substantiation.

The phenomena whose main forms we have here given, but whose actual variety we cannot attempt to give, are offered on the testimony of a great variety of persons, many of whom are plainly too credulous for their evidence to be of any value whatever, while others, who seem to have exercised great caution and cool judgment, are unknown to the general public, and therefore not likely to be accepted as witnesses in such a critical case. Others, again, who are well known and highly respected, have invalidated their testimony by clearly letting themselves be deceived. Such was the case with Robert Dale Owen, one of the main historians of spiritual phenomena, who permitted himself to be pitifully humbugged in Philadelphia by the somewhat famous spirit of Katie King, whose spirit face was afterward discovered on the sturdy shoulders of a very decidedly incarnate young lady. This was one of the first instances of that throng of materialized frauds with which this country has ever since been well supplied.

But there have been numerous investigators of spiritualism who cannot be placed in any such category, many of them men of high standing in the scientific world, whose word is still taken as positive evidence in support of very surprising scientific statements, since they are known to examine and test phenomena with the closest and most accurate scrutiny. This class of observers is particularly abundant in the London scientific world, and includes in its list such noted names as Alfred Russel Wallace, the celebrated naturalist, Dr. William Crooks, whose discoveries in chemistry and physics have been of a remarkable character, and Dr. Huggins, the equally celebrated astronomer. In America the most noted scientific observer was the late Dr. Hare, of Philadelphia, a chemist of world-wide fame. Of those who, if not professed scientists, have been otherwise of high standing, Professor Wallace names, in a recent communication to the "Times," Dr. Robert Chambers, Dr. Elliotson, and Professor William Gregory, of Edinburgh, Dr. Gully, a scientific physician of Malvern, and Judge Edmonds, one of the best known American lawyers. Names of similar reputation in the scientific and professional world might be adduced from Germany and France, prominent among them the late Professor Zöllner, of Leipsic, a well-known astronomer; but the above-given will suffice as evidence that the investigation of spiritualism has not been confined to the unknown, unlearned, and credulous, but has been pursued by men of the very highest standing for probity, learning, sound judgment, and critical discrimination.

The results reached by these men are therefore of great weight, and go far to fix the status of the phenomena examined. We may say here that several of them have become acknowledged converts to the spiritual theory. More generally, however, they have declined to express positive opinions as to the cause of these phenomena, while positively testifying that they are not the result of trickery, but that they indicate the existence of some power or energy in nature which is able to suspend or overcome the operation of nature's ordinary forces. Only two prominent scientists, who have made any pretence to examine these phenomena, have declared that they are _in toto_ the result of fraud. These two are Professor Faraday and Dr. Carpenter. But the investigations made by these noted personages were too trivial to render their decision of any value. Faraday briefly examined the phenomena of table-tipping, and decided that it was due to involuntary muscular movement. Dr. Carpenter reasserted the same, years after this explanation had been shown to be entirely inadequate, and declared that the mental phenomena were due only to _unconscious cerebration_, or the action of memories and ideas long since stored in the mind, when the consciousness is otherwise engaged and the person is unaware of the activity of his mental stores. This theory, we may also say, is utterly inadequate to explain all the phenomena, and only applies by a strained interpretation to the instances which Dr. Carpenter gives in illustration.

One of the most striking of these instances we may here append. A student relates that a professor had said to his class in mathematics, of which this student was a member, "'A question of great difficulty has been referred to me by a banker, a very complicated question of accounts, which they themselves have not been able to bring to a satisfactory issue, and they have asked my assistance. I have been trying, and I cannot resolve it. I have covered whole sheets of paper with calculations and have not been able to make it out. Will you try?' He gave it as a sort of problem to his class, and said he would be extremely obliged to any one who would bring him the solution on a certain day. This gentleman tried it over and over again. He covered many slates with figures, but could not succeed in resolving it. He was a little put on his mettle, and very much desired to attain the solution. But he went to bed on the night before the solution, if attained, was to be given in, without having succeeded. In the morning, when he went to his desk, he found the whole problem worked out in his own hand. He was perfectly sure that it was his own hand. And this was a curious part of it, that the result was attained by a process very much shorter than any he had tried. He had covered three or four sheets of paper in his attempts, and this was all worked out on one page, and correctly worked, as the result proved. He inquired of the woman who attended to his room, and she said that she was certain no one had entered it during the night. It was perfectly clear that this had been worked out by himself."

Instances of this kind are certainly very curious, and seem to show that the mind, when set in any train of thought by intense concentration, may pursue it after consciousness has been withdrawn. And the result indicates that the mind acts with innate logic when not disturbed by distracting considerations, and can be trusted to do more correct work when thus set going and left to run of itself than when consciously held to its work. Yet an examination of every recorded instance of this kind strongly indicates that no such unconscious mental action ever takes place except when the consciousness has been earnestly directed to the subject in advance, that no marked instances of this activity ever occur except in the unconsciousness of sleep or trance, and that it ceases when the mental excitement that started it has gradually subsided. There is not an instance on record to show that the mind ever originates unconscious action, or that any of its remote stores or powers ever spring into activity without being aroused by sensation or conscious thought. Thus the doctrine of _unconscious cerebration_ has been carried much further than the facts warrant. It need hardly be said that it is utterly inapplicable as a theory to many of the facts adduced by the Society for Psychic Research.

In the year 1869 the London Dialectical Society, an association of cultured liberals, embracing many well-known personages, appointed a committee to examine "the asserted phenomena of Spiritualism." The committee divided itself into six sub-committees, each of which submitted a report, and according to a general report, published in 1871, "these reports substantially corroborated each other." We may therefore quote the more interesting points from the report of one of the sub-committees:

"All of these meetings were held at the private residences of members of the committee, purposely to preclude the possibility of prearranged mechanism or contrivance. The furniture of the room in which the experiments were conducted was on every occasion its accustomed furniture. The tables were in all cases heavy dining-tables, and required a strong effort to move them. The smallest of them was five feet nine inches long and four feet wide, and the largest nine feet three inches long and four and a half feet wide, and of proportionate weight. The rooms, tables, and furniture generally were repeatedly subjected to careful examination, before, during, and after the experiments, to ascertain that no concealed machinery, instrument, or other contrivance existed, by means of which the sounds or movements hereinafter mentioned could be caused. The experiments were conducted in the light of gas, except on the few occasions specially noted in the minutes.

"Of the members of your sub-committee about four-fifths entered upon the investigation wholly sceptical as to the reality of the alleged phenomena, firmly believing them to be the result either of _imposture_, or of _delusion_, or of _involuntary muscular action_. It was only by irresistible evidence, under conditions that precluded the possibility of either of these solutions, and after trials and tests many times repeated, that the most sceptical of your sub-committee were slowly and reluctantly convinced that the phenomena exhibited in the course of their protracted inquiry were _veritable facts_. The result of their long-continued and carefully-conducted experiments, after trial by every delicate test they could devise, has been to establish _conclusively_,--

"First. That under certain _bodily_ and _mental_ conditions of one or more of the persons present a force is exhibited sufficient to set in motion heavy substances, without the employment of any muscular force, and without contact or material connection of any kind between such substances and the body of any person present.

"Second. That this force can cause sounds to proceed, distinctly audible to all present, from solid substances not in contact with nor having any visible or material connection with the body of any person present, and which sounds are proved to proceed from such substances by the vibrations which are distinctly felt when they are touched.

"Third. That this force is frequently directed by intelligence."

Of the many experiments described in this report we will quote here but one:

"On one occasion, when eleven members of your sub-committee had been sitting around one of the dining-tables above described for forty minutes, and various sounds and motions had occurred, they, by way of test, turned the backs of their chairs to the table, at about nine inches from it. They all then knelt upon their chairs, placing their arms upon the backs thereof. In this position their feet were of course turned away from the table, and by no possibility could be placed under it or touch the floor. The hands of each person were extended over the table, at about four inches from the surface. Contact, therefore, with any part of the table could not take place without detection. In less than a minute the table, untouched, moved four times,--at first about four inches to one side, then about twelve to the other side, and then, in like manner, four and six inches respectively."

The committee further remarks that after this experiment "the table was carefully examined, turned upside down, and taken to pieces, but nothing was discovered to account for the phenomenon. Delusion was out of the question. The movements were in various directions, and were witnessed simultaneously by all present. They were matters of _measurement_, and not of opinion or fancy. Your sub-committee have not collectively obtained any evidence as to the nature and source of this force, but simply as to the _fact of its existence_."

Mr. Sergeant Cox, a member of this sub-committee and a prominent member of the English bar, relates that he experimented elsewhere in the same manner as that above described, and with similar results, a heavy dining-table being employed. Afterward, when all the party stood in a circle round the table, holding hands, at first two and then three feet distant, the table lurched four times, once more than two feet and with great force, and moved to such an extent as to become completely turned round. After the party had broken up, and were standing in groups about the room, the table, which was about two feet from its original position, swung violently back to its proper place and set itself exactly square with the room, with such force as literally to knock down a lady who was standing in the way putting on her shawl for departure.

Mr. Cox, after a close examination of these phenomena, offered a theory in explanation somewhat differing from that already mentioned. He believes that they are due to the action of some psychic force, originating in the nervous system and analogous in character to magnetic attraction. He relates several instances of heavy bodies moving toward the mediums, as if attracted, and remarks, "In another experiment in my own lighted drawing-room, as the psychic [the medium] was entering the room with myself, _no other person being there_, an easy-chair of great weight that was standing fourteen feet from us was suddenly lifted from the floor and drawn to him with great rapidity, precisely as a heavy magnet will attract a mass of iron."

Another phase of these phenomena, as observed by the committee, was the sudden and considerable change of weight in the table, it becoming light or heavy as desired. To prove this scientifically, a weighing-machine was attached, and the change of weight clearly proved. "One instance will suffice. Weighed by the machine, the normal weight of a table raised from the floor eighteen inches on one side was eight pounds. Desired to be light, the index fell to five pounds; desired to be heavy, it advanced to eighty-two pounds. And these changes were instantaneous and repeated many times."