Mysterious Psychic Forces Part 25

"Is there a spirit there?"

"Yes" (indicated by three raps.)

"Does it wish to communicate?"

"Yes."

I p.r.o.nounce slowly and in their proper order the letters of the alphabet.

Reply, "_Tua matre_," ("thy mother.")

This certainly means "Tua madre." (note once more that Eusapia does not know how to read or write.)

Eusapia noticed that I was in mourning and I had told her that my mother had died on the first of last July. I then asked to be told her name. (Eusapia does not know it.)

No reply.

The movements of the table which were next asked for gave no results of any particular value.

However, a stuffed arm-chair near by was several times shifted out of its place without contact, advancing of itself toward Eusapia. Since the chandelier was lighted, and there was no possibility of any string being used, and since I had my foot upon that one of Eusapia's which was nearest the arm-chair, the movement must evidently have been due to a force emanating from the medium.

I pushed the easy chair back three times. Three times it returned. The same phenomenon was reproduced several days afterward.

It is observable that if she had been able to detach her foot from mine, she would have been able to reach the chair (by some little twisting,) and the production of the phenomenon must have been within the range of her circle of activity (and of possible trickery). But, as the case was, deception was impossible.

Since we could not obtain any levitation of the table, and since the psychical force of the four of us (Eusapia, myself, my wife, and Eusapia's companion, who had joined us for a moment, but, who at other times, always remained apart) was clearly insufficient, I went and secured a lighter round table. Then, with her hands placed _upon_ it in contact with mine, three of its feet were raised to a height of ten or twelve inches from the floor. We repeated the experiment three times, with gratifying success. Eusapia squeezed my hands violently in one of hers (the right hand) which rested on the table.

The whole seance is thus seen to have been a web of intermingled truth and falsehood.

These notes remind us once more that there is almost always a mingling of veritable fact and of fraudulent performance.

It is easy to admit that the medium, wishing to produce an effect, and having at her disposal for this purpose two means,--the one easy and demanding only skill and cunning, the other distressing, costly, and painful,--is tempted to choose, consciously or _even unconsciously_, that which costs her the least.

The following is her method of procedure for obtaining the subst.i.tution of hands. The figures shown in Plate XI represent four successive positions of the medium's hands and those of the sitters. They show how, owing to the darkness and to a skilful combined series of movements, she can induce the sitter on the right to believe that he still feels the right hand of the medium on his own, while he really feels her left hand, which is firmly held by the sitter on the left. This right hand of hers, being then free, is able to produce such effects as are within its reach.

The subst.i.tution may be obtained in different ways. But, whichever method is used, it is evident that the freed hand can only operate in a s.p.a.ce within its reach.

Who of us is always master of his impressions and of his faculties?

writes Dr. Dariex in this connection.[43] Who of us can at will put himself into such and such a physical condition and such and such a moral state? Is the composer of music master of his inspiration? Does a poet always write verses of equal worth? Is a man of genius always a man of genius? Now, what is there less normal, more impressionable, and more capricious than a sensitive, a medium, especially when she is away from home, thrown out of the routine of her daily life, and staying with those with whom she is unacquainted or knows very slightly, who are to be her judges and who expect from her the rare and abnormal phenomenon the production of which is not under the constant and complete control of her will?

A sensitive placed in such a situation, will have a fatal propensity to feign the phenomenon which does not spontaneously materialize or to heighten by deceit the intensity of a partially successful experiment.

This feigning is of course a very vexatious and regrettable thing. It throws suspicion upon the experiments, renders them much more difficult and less within the reach of the investigator. But this is only an impediment, and ought not to fetch us up short and lead us to give a premature decision. All of us who have experimented with and handled these sensitives know that at every step we run foul of fraud, conscious or unconscious, and that all mediums--or almost all--are used to the thing. We know that we must, unfortunately, take our share, for the moment, of this regrettable weakness, and be perspicacious enough to hinder, or at least to unearth the trickery, and to disentangle the true from the false.

More than one of those who have engaged perseveringly in psychic experiments, can say that he has been sometimes enervated and irritated while waiting for a phenomenon which does not take place, and that he has felt something like a desire to put an end to this waiting by himself giving the extra twist or decisive touch.[44]

Such experimenters can understand that if, in place of being conscientious workers, always masters of themselves, incapable of deceiving, and engaged solely in the search for scientific truth, they were, on the contrary, somewhat dreamy and impulsive persons who were susceptible to suggestion and whose _amour propre_ was active, and in whose minds scientific probity did not hold the first and pre-eminent place, they would undoubtedly engage, more or less involuntarily, in the artificial production of phenomena which refused to take place in smooth and natural order.

As to Eusapia, if she does sometimes counterfeit, she does it only by eluding the watchful inspection of the experimenters and by escaping for a moment from their control; but she does it without any other artifice. Her experiments are not planned, and, contrary to the habit of prestidigitators, she does not carry any apparatus upon her person.

It is easy to a.s.sure one's self of this, for she is very willing to completely undress before a lady charged with keeping watch of her.

Furthermore, she exhibits her powers _ad libitum_ with the same persons, and repeats indefinitely the same experiments before them.

Prestidigitators do not act in this way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE X. SCALES USED IN PROFESSOR FLAMMARION'S EXPERIMENT.]

It is infinitely to be regretted that we cannot trust the loyalty of the mediums. They almost all cheat. This is extremely discouraging to the investigator, and the constant perplexity of mind we feel during our investigations renders them altogether painful. When we have pa.s.sed several days in these inexplicable researches and then return to scientific work,--to an observation or to an astromical calculation, for example, or to the examination of a problem in pure science,--we experience a sensation of freshness, calmness, relief, and serenity which give us, by contrast, the most lively satisfaction. We feel that we are walking on solid ground and that we have not got to distrust anybody.

Indeed, all the intrinsic interest of psychic problems is needed, sometimes, to give us the courage to renounce the pleasure of scientific study in order to give ourselves to investigations so laborious and perplexed.

I believe that there is only one way to a.s.sure ourselves of the reality of the phenomena, and that is to put the medium under conditions in which trickery is impossible. To catch her in the very act of deceit would be extremely easy. It would only be necessary to give her free rein. And then one can very easily aid her to cheat and to get caught. All that is necessary is that we be convinced of her dishonesty. Eusapia, especially, very easily takes suggestion. While going one day in an open carriage to dine at his residence, Colonel de Rochas said to her, in my presence, "You can't lift your right hand any more. Try it!" She did try, but in vain. "Non posso, non posso!" ("I can't do it, I can't do it!"). The mere suggestion had been sufficient.

In the phenomena concerned with the movements of objects without contact she always makes a gesture corresponding to the phenomenon. A force darts forth from her and performs the deed. Thus, for example, she strikes with her fist three or four strokes in the air at a distance of ten or twelve inches from the table: the same strokes are heard in the table. And it is positively in the wood of the table. It is not beneath it, nor upon the floor. Her legs are held and she does not move them. She strikes five strokes with the middle finger upon my hand in the air: the five strokes are rapped upon the table (November 19).

Nay more, this force can be transmitted by another. I hold her legs with my left hand spread out upon them; M. Sardou holds her left hand; she takes my right wrist in her right hand and says to me, "Strike in the direction of M. Sardou." I do so three or four times. M. Sardou feels upon his body my blows tallying my gesture, with the difference of about a second between my motion and his sensation. The experiment is tried again with the same success.

That same evening, not only did we not let go for a single instant of Eusapia's hands, separated from each other by the width of her body and placed near our own, but we did not allow them to be moved from the side of the objects to be displaced. It took considerable time to obtain results. But, all the same, they were wholly successful.

She has a tendency to go and take hold of the objects; she must be stopped in a good time. However, she herself does take hold of them, in fact, through the prolongation of her muscular force, and she says so: "I am grasping it, I have hold of it." It is our part to carefully retain her normal hands in ours.

We sometimes have good reason to suspect that Eusapia seizes the objects to be moved (such as musical instruments) with one of her hands which she has freed. But there is plenty of proof that she does not always do so.

Here is a case, for example. The scene is Naples, 1902, at a seance with Professor von Schrenck-Notzing:

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.]

The seance took place in a little room, by a feeble light, but one sufficient for us to distinguish the personages and their movements.

Behind the medium, upon a chair, there was a harmonica, at the distance of about a yard.

Now, at a certain moment, Eusapia took between her hands a hand of the professor and commenced to separate his fingers one from another and bring them together again, as may be seen in the accompanying cut. The harmonica was at that moment playing at a distance in tones that perfectly synchronized the movements made by Eusapia. The instrument was isolated in the room. We made sure that there were no threads connecting it with the medium. Still less could anybody fear accomplices, for the light would easily have betrayed their intervention. This performance was a.n.a.logous to that which occurred in my presence on the 27th of July, 1897. (see above p. 72.)

The following is a typical example of "sympathetic" movements, taken from a report by Dr. Dariex. The matter in hand was to make a key spring out from a lock.

The light was strong enough for us to perfectly distinguish Eusapia's every movement. All at once, the key of the chest is heard to rattle in its lock; but, caught in some unknown way, it refuses to budge.

Eusapia grasps with her right hand the left of M. Sabatier, and, at the same time, curls the fingers of her other hand around his index finger. Then she begins to make alternate movements of rotation back and forth around his finger. We at once hear synchronous rattlings of the key which turns in its lock just as the fingers of the medium are doing.[45]

Let us suppose that the chest, instead of being at a distance from the medium, had been within her reach; let us still further suppose that the light, instead of being abundant, had been feeble and uncertain: the sitters would not have failed to confound this kind of synchronous automatism with conscious and impudent fraud on the part of Eusapia. And they would have been deceived.

Without excusing fraud, which is abominable, shameful, and despicable in each and every case, it can undoubtedly be explained in a very human way by admitting the reality of the phenomena. In the first place the real phenomena exhaust the medium, and only take place at the cost of an enormous expenditure of vital force. She is frequently ill on the following day, sometimes even on the second day following, and is incapable of taking any nourishment without immediately vomiting. One can readily conceive, then, that when she is able to perform certain wonders without any expenditure of force and merely by a more or less skilful piece of deception, she prefers the second procedure to the first. It does not exhaust her at all, and may even amuse her.

Let me remark, in the next place, that, during these experiments, she is generally in a half-awake condition which is somewhat similar to the hypnotic or somnambulistic sleep. Her fixed idea is to produce phenomena; and she produces them, no matter how.

It is, then, urgent, indispensable, to be constantly on the alert and to control all her actions and gestures with the greatest care.

I could cite hundreds of a.n.a.logous examples observed by myself in the years gone by. Here is one taken from my notes.

On the second of October, 1889, a spiritualistic seance had brought together certain investigators in the hospitable mansion of the Countess of Mouzay, at Rambouillet. We were told that we had the rare good fortune to have with us a veritable and excellent medium,--Mme.

X., the wife of a very distinguished Paris physician, herself well educated and inspiring by her character the greatest confidence.

We arranged ourselves, four in all, around a little table of light wood. Scarcely a minute has pa.s.sed when the little table seems to be taken with trembling, and almost immediately it rises and then falls back. This vertical movement is repeated several times in the full light of the lamps of the salon.