Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 16

Moreover, when invited to join a committee of investigation into spiritualistic manifestations, he replied:--]

I regret that I am unable to accept the invitation of the Committee of the Dialectical Society to cooperate with a committee for the investigation of "Spiritualism"; and for two reasons. In the first place, I have not time for such an inquiry, which would involve much trouble and (unless it were unlike all inquiries of that kind I have known) much annoyance. In the second place, I take no interest in the subject. The only case of "Spiritualism" I have had the opportunity of examining into for myself, was as gross an imposture as ever came under my notice. But supposing the phenomena to be genuine--they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the nearest cathedral town, I should decline the privilege, having better things to do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance. [(Quoted from a review in the "Daily News," October 17, 1871, of the Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society.)

To the report above-mentioned, Professor G. Darwin, who also was present, added one or two notes and corrections.]

REPORT ON SEANCE.

January 27, 1874.

We met in a small room at the top of the house with a window capable of being completely darkened by a shutter and curtains opposite the door. A small light table with two flaps and four legs, unsteady and easily moved, occupied the middle of the room, leaving not much more than enough s.p.a.ce for the chairs at the sides. There was a chair at each end, two chairs on the fireplace side, and one on the other. Mr.

X (the medium) was seated in the chair at the door end, Mr. Y (the host) in the opposite chair, Mr. G. Darwin on the medium's right, Mr.

Huxley on his left, Mr. Z between Mr. Huxley and Mr. (Darwin) Y. The table was small enough to allow these five people to rest their hands on it, linking them together. On the table was a guitar which lay obliquely across it, an accordion on the medium's side of the guitar, a couple of paper horns, a j.a.panese fan, a matchbox, and a candlestick with a candle.

At first the room was slightly darkened (leaving plenty of light from the window, however) and we all sat round for half an hour. My right foot was against the medium's left foot, and two fingers of my right hand had a good grip of the little finger of his left hand. I compared my hand (which is NOT small and IS strong) with his, and was edified by its much greater ma.s.siveness and strength. (No, we didn't link until the darkness. G.D.)

G.D.'s left hand was, as I learn, linked with medium's right hand, and left foot on medium's (left) right foot.]

We sat thus for half an hour as aforesaid and nothing happened.

The room was next thoroughly darkened by shutting the shutters and drawing the curtains. Nevertheless, by great good fortune I espied three points of light, coming from the lighted pa.s.sage outside the door. One of these came beneath the door straight to my eye, the other two were on the wall (or on a press) obliquely opposite. By still greater good fortune, these three points of light had such a position in reference to my eye that they gave me three straight lines traversing and bounding the s.p.a.ce in which the medium sat, and I at once saw that if Medium moved his body forwards or backwards he must occult one of my three rays. While therefore taking care to feel his foot and keep a good grip of his hand, I fixed my eyes intently on rays A and B. For I felt sure that I could trust to G.D. keeping a sharp look-out on the right hand and foot; and so no instrument of motion was left to the medium but his body and head, the movements of which could not have been discernible in absolute darkness. Nothing happened for some time. At length a very well executed muscular twitching of the arm on my side began, and I amused myself by comparing it with the convulsions of a galvanised frog's leg, but at the same time kept a very bright look-out on my two rays A and B.

The twitchings ceased, and then after a little time A was shut out. B then became obscure, and A became visible. "Hoho!" thought I, "Medium's head is well over the table. Now we are going to have some manifestations." Immediately followed a noise obviously produced by the tumbling over of the accordion and some shifting of the position of the guitar. Next came a tw.a.n.ging--very slight, but of course very audible--of some of the strings, during which B was invisible. By and by B and A became visible again, and Medium's voice likewise showed that he had got back to his first position. But after he had returned to this position there was a noise of the guitar and other things on the table being stirred, and creeping noises like something light moving over the table. But no more actual tw.a.n.ging.

To my great disgust, G.D. now began to remark that he saw two spots of light, which I suppose must have had the same origin as my rays A and B, and, moreover, that something occasionally occulted one or other of them. [Note: no, not till we changed places. G.H.D.] I blessed him for spoiling my game, but the effect was excellent. Nothing more happened.

By and by, after some talk about these points of light, the medium suggested that this light was distracting, and that we had better shut it out. The suggestion was very dexterously and indirectly made, and was caught up more strongly [I think by Mr. Z). Anyhow, we agreed to stop out all light. The circle was broken, and the candle was lighted for this purpose. I then took occasion to observe that the guitar was turned round into the position noted in the margin, the end being near my left hand. On examining it I found a longish end of one of the catgut strings loose, and I found that by sweeping this end over the strings I could make quite as good tw.a.n.gs as we heard. I could have done this just as well with my mouth as with my hand--and I could have pulled the guitar about by the end of the catgut in my mouth and so have disturbed the other things--as they were disturbed.

Before the candle was lighted some discussion arose as to why the spirits would not do any better (started by Mr. Y and Mr. Z, I think), in which the medium joined. It appeared that (in the opinion of the spirits as interpreted by the medium) we were not quite rightly placed. When the discussion arose I made a bet with myself that the result would be that either I or G.D. Would have to change places with somebody else. And I won my wager (I have just paid it with the remarkably good cigar I am now smoking). G.D. Had to come round to my side, Mr. Z went to the end, and Mr. Y took G.D.'s place. "Good, Medium," said I to myself. "Now we shall see something." We were in pitch darkness, and all I could do was to bring my sense of touch to bear with extreme tension upon the medium's hand--still well in my grip.

Before long Medium became a good deal convulsed at intervals, and soon a dragging sound was heard, and Mr. Y told us that the arm-chair (mark its position) had moved up against his leg, and was shoving against him. By degrees the arm-chair became importunate, and by the manner of Mr. Y's remarks it was clear that his attention was entirely given to its movements.

Then I felt the fingers of the medium's left hand become tense--in such a manner as to show that the muscles of the left arm were contracting sympathetically with those of the other arm, on which a considerable strain was evidently being put. Mr. Y's observations upon the eccentricities of the arm-chair became louder--a noise was heard as of the arm-chair descending on the table and shoving the guitar before it (while at the same time, or just before, there was a crash of a falling thermometer), and the tension of the left arm ceased. The chair had got on to the table. Says the medium to Mr. Y, "Your hand was against mine all the time." "Well, no," replied Mr. Y, "not quite.

For a moment as the chair was coming up I don't think it was." But it was agreed that this momentary separation made no difference. I said nothing, but, like the parrot, thought the more. After this nothing further happened. But conversation went on, and more than once the medium was careful to point out that the chair came upon the table while his hand was really in contact with Mr. Y's.

G.D. will tell you if this is a fair statement of the facts. I believe it is, for my attention was on the stretch for those mortal two hours and a half, and I did not allow myself to be distracted from the main points in any way. My conclusion is that Mr. X is a cheat and an imposter, and I have no more doubt that he got Mr. Y to sit on his right hand, knowing from the turn of his conversation that it would be easy to distract his attention, and that he then moved the chair against Mr. Y with his leg, and finally coolly lifted it on to the table, than that I am writing these lines.

T.H. Huxley.

As Mr. G. Darwin wrote of the seance, "it has given me a lesson with respect to the worthlessness of evidence which I shall always remember, and besides will make me very diffident in trusting myself.

Unless I had seen it, I could not have believed in the evidence of any one with such perfect bona fides as Mr. Y being so worthless."

[On receiving this report Mr. Darwin wrote ("Life" 2 page 188):--

Though the seance did tire you so much, it was, I think, really worth the exertion, as the same sort of things are done at all the seances...and now to my mind an enormous weight of evidence would be requisite to make me believe in anything beyond mere trickery.

The following letter to Mr. Morley, then editor of the "Fortnightly Review," shows that my father was already thinking of writing upon Hume, though he did not carry out this intention till 1878.

The article referred to in the second letter is that on Animals as Automata.]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., June 4, 1874.

My dear Mr. Morley,

I a.s.sure you that it was a great disappointment to me not to be able to visit you, but we had an engagement of some standing for Oxford.

Hume is frightfully tempting--I thought so only the other day when I saw the new edition advertised--and now I would gladly write about him in the "Fortnightly" if I were only sure of being able to keep any engagement to that effect I might make.

But I have yet a course of lectures before me, and an evening discourse to deliver at the British a.s.sociation--to say nothing of opening the Manchester Medical School in October--and polishing off a lot of scientific work. So you see I have not a chance of writing about Hume for months to come, and you had much better not trust to such a very questionable reed as I am.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., November 15, 1874.

My dear Morley,

Many thanks for your abundantly sufficient cheque--rather too much, I think, for an article which had been gutted by the newspapers.

I am always very glad to have anything of mine in the "Fortnightly,"

as it is sure to be in good company; but I am becoming as spoiled as a maiden with many wooers. However, as far as the "Fortnightly" which is my old love, and the "Contemporary" which is my new, are concerned, I hope to remain as constant as a persistent bigamist can be said to be.

It will give me great pleasure to dine with you, and December 1 will suit me excellently well.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The year winds up with a New Year's greeting to Professor Haeckel.]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., December 28, 1874.

My dear Haeckel,

This must reach you in time to wish you and yours a happy New Year in English fashion. May your shadow never be less, and may all your enemies, unbelieving dogs who resist the Prophet of Evolution, be defiled by the sitting of jacka.s.ses upon their grandmothers' graves!

an oriental wish appropriate to an ex-traveller in Egypt.

I have written a notice of the "Anthropogenie" for the Academy, but I am so busy that I am afraid I should never have done it--but for being put into a great pa.s.sion--by an article in the "Quarterly Review" for last July, which I read only a few days ago. My friend Mr. --, to whom I had to administer a gentle punishment some time ago, has been at the same tricks again, but much worse than his former performance--you will see that I have dealt with him as you deal with a "Pfaffe."

[Parson.] There are "halb-Pfaffen" as well as "halb-Affen." [Lit.

Half-apes; the Prosimiae and Lemurs.] So if what I say about "Anthropogenie" seems very little--to what I say about the "Quarterly Review"--do not be offended. It will all serve the good cause.

I have been working very hard lately at the lower vertebrata, and getting out results which will interest you greatly. Your suggestion that Rathke's ca.n.a.ls in Amphioxus [The Lancelet.] are the Wolffian ducts was a capital shot, but it just missed the mark because Rathke's ca.n.a.ls do not exist. Nevertheless there are two half ca.n.a.ls, the dorsal walls of which meet in the raphe described by Stieda, and the plaited lining of this wall (a) is, I believe, the renal organ.

Moreover, I have found the skull and brain of Amphioxus, both of which are very large (like a vertebrate embryo's) instead of being rudimentary as we all have thought, and exhibit the primitive segmentation of the "Urwirbelthier" skull. [Primitive vertebrate.]

Thus the skull of Petromyzon answers to about fourteen segments of the body of Amphioxus, fused together and indistinguishable in even the earliest embryonic state of the higher vertebrata.

Does this take your breath away? Well, in due time you shall be convinced. I sent in a brief notice to the last meeting of the Royal Society, which will soon be in your hands.

I need not tell you of the importance of all this. It is unlucky for Semper that he has just put Amphioxus out of the Vertebrata altogether--because it is demonstratable that Amphioxus is nearer than could have been hoped to the condition of the primitive vertebrate--a far more regular and respectable sort of ancestor than even you suspected. For you see "Acrania" will have to go.