Occultism and Common Sense Part 10

"HENRY HARDEN."

It is sometimes urged that only springs yielding a limited supply of water are found by dowsers, who fix on spots where more or less surface water can be got from shallow wells rather than run the risk of sinking a deep well. Many of the cases already cited refute this notion, and the following bears on the same point. It is from Messrs Beamish & Crawford, the well-known brewers, of Cork.

"Cork Porter Brewery, Cork,

"December 30th, 1896.

"In reply to your letter of 26th inst., we beg to state:

"1. We had an old well yielding a small supply of water. It was about 30 feet deep.

"2. No new well was fixed on by Mullins. He bored down to a depth of about 60 feet below the bottom of the old well, and therefore about 90 feet below the surface of the ground.

"3. The supply of water now obtained from the new pipes sunk by Mullins is, as nearly as we can estimate, about 10,000 gallons per hour.

"BEAMISH & CRAWFORD LTD."

It goes without saying that professional dowsers are not always successful in their quests. "I am inclined," states Professor Barrett, "to think we may take from ten to fifteen per cent. as the average percentage of failures which occur with most English dowsers of to-day, allowing a larger percentage for partial failures, meaning by this that the quant.i.ty of water estimated and the depth at which it is found have not realised the estimate formed by the dowser."

What then is the secret of the dowser's often remarkable success? The question is whether, after making every allowance for shrewdness of eye, chance, coincidence, and local geological knowledge, the dowser has any instinctive or supernormal power of discovering the presence of underground water. Professor Barrett, who has perhaps devoted more time to the subject than any other man living, is inclined to answer in the affirmative.

"There appears to be evidence," he writes, "that a more profound stratum of our personality, glimpses of which we get elsewhere in our 'Proceedings,' is a.s.sociated with the dowser's art; and the latter seems to afford a further striking instance of information obtained through automatic means being more remarkable than, and beyond the reach of, that derived from conscious observation and inference."

In another pa.s.sage he adds:

"For my own part, I have been driven to believe that some dowsers--

"Whose exterior semblance doth belie The soul's immensity"

nevertheless give us a glimpse of

"The eternal deep Haunted for ever by the eternal mind."

CHAPTER IX

MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA

In my inquiry so far the reader will note that I have taken one thing for granted--the fact of telepathy. In order to convince him to the extent to which this great scientific truth has convinced me, it would be necessary for me to lead him through a thousand pages of evidence for telepathic phenomena, attested by some of the leading physicists of the day. I am aware that there are still sceptics on the subject of telepathy, but the testimony is overwhelming, and every year sees the ranks of scepticism growing thinner.

Not many years ago a very learned man, the late Professor von Helmholtz, although confronted with _prima-facie_ evidence of thought transference or telepathy, declared: "I cannot believe it. Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own senses, would lead me to believe in the transmission of them from one person to another. It is clearly impossible." An opinion in these terms is very rare to-day. We are apt to express our incredulity in language far more guarded and less emphatic.

About hallucinations, however, there is no scepticism. We have remarked sensory hallucinations of an occasional nature; we now come to regard them as a cult, for I suppose there is no manifestation in the world, no gift, no prodigy even, that is not p.r.o.ne to the fate of being exploited for particular ends.

A poet, we will say, by some rare "subliminal uprush," produces a beautiful poem. He is at once chained to his desk by publishers and compelled to go on producing poetry for the rest of his life. It is inevitable that many of his manifestations will be false; and for that reason, in spite of an occasional jewel of truth, he runs serious risks of being denounced in the end as no poet.

I have no doubt it is the same with the producers or the agents of occult phenomena. Sensory hallucinations may be stimulated. They may be stimulated by intoxication and disease, or they may be stimulated by the morbid conditions of a spiritualistic _seance_. Everything in these conditions--the prolonged darkness, the emotional expectancy--promotes the peculiar frame of mind apparently requisite. Constant exercise--perpetual aspiration develops the power of seeing visions.

After a time, in well-known cases, they appear to need no inducement to come spontaneously.

One well-known medium, Mr Hill Tout, confesses that building and peopling _chateaux en Espagne_ was a favourite occupation of his in his earlier days. This long-practised faculty is doubtless a potent factor in all his characterisations, and probably also in those of many another full-fledged medium.

Hallucinations need not be visual only; they are frequently auditory.

Miss Freer gives an account of one induced by merely holding a sh.e.l.l to the ear. There is another case of a young woman in whom auditory hallucinations would be excited on hearing the sound of water running through a tap. Given the basis of actual sound, the hallucinable person quickly causes it to become articulate and intelligible. Thus, is it unreasonable to suppose that the vague, nebulous lights seen at dark _seances_ would furnish the raw material, so to speak, for sense deception?

Thus, we have the basis and beginning, from one point of view, of modern spiritualism. But before we examine the question of clairvoyance or trance utterances of spiritualistic mediums we must first of all go into the subject of physical phenomena.

So-called physical phenomena are a comparatively modern excrescence on the main growth. It is only within the last half-century that they have attained any considerable development. The faith in the communion and intervention of spirits originated before their appearance and will probably outlast their final discredit. At the best, whatever effect they may have had in advertising the movement with the vulgar, they seem to have exerted only a subsidiary influence in inducing belief with more thoughtful men and women.

These physical phenomena consist chiefly of table rapping, table moving, ringing of bells, and various other manifestations for which a normal cause is not apparent. For a long time, in the early days of modern spiritualism, the cult was chiefly confined to "miracles" of this sort.

One of its most notable props was the manifestations, long continued and observed by many thousands, of the famous Daniel Dunglas Home. It is fifty years ago now since Home came to England and began his _seances_, which were attended by Lord Dunraven, Lord Brougham, Sir D. Brewster, Robert Owen, Bulwer Lytton, T. A. Trollope, Garth Wilkinson, and others.

For thirty years Home was brought before the public as a medium, dying in 1886. He seems to have been an amiable, highly emotional man, full of generous impulses, and of considerable personal charm. His frankness and sincerity impressed all those who came in touch with the man. Mr Andrew Lang has called him "a Harold Skimpole, with the gift of divination."

Home dealt with both clairvoyance and physical manifestations.

Ostensibly through him came an enormous number of messages purporting to proceed from the dead friends of certain of those attending the _seances_. In the records of these _seances_ will be found the signed statements of Dr Garth Wilkinson, Dr Gully, Mr and Mrs S. C. Hall, the present Earl of Dunraven, Earl of Crawford, Dr Hawksley, Mrs Na.s.sau Senior, Mr P. P. Alexander, Mr Perdicaris, and others, that they had received messages giving details of a private nature that it seemed in the last degree probable could be known to the medium. Home's manifestations were for the most part those which any attendant at a spiritualistic _seance_ can witness for himself to-day. The room he used was, compared with those used by other mediums who insisted on complete darkness, well lighted, as he had a shaded lamp, a gas-burner, or one or two candles lighted. The manifestations generally began with raps; then followed a quivering movement of the table, which one present described as like "the vibration on a small steamer when the engines begin to work"; by another as "a ship in distress, with its timbers straining in a heavy sea." Then, suspended in the air, the table would float, and in its shelter musical instruments performing could be heard; the sitters could feel their knees being clasped and their dresses pulled; many things would be handed about the circle, such as handkerchiefs, flowers, and even heavy bells. During the performance messages were rapped out by the spirits, or delivered through the mouth of the medium. In this respect, where intelligence is shown, they would partake of the nature of trance utterance, a thing to be a.n.a.lysed later.

Robert Bell, a dramatist and critic, having been present at one of these _seances_, acknowledged that he had seen things which he was satisfied were "beyond the pale of material experiences." After describing various manifestations, hands felt under the table, touching the knees, and pulling the clothes, bells rung by invisible agency, and various articles thrown about the room, he proceeds to describe "levitation":

"Mr Home was seated next the window. Through the semi-darkness his head was dimly visible against the curtains, and his hands might be seen in a faint white heap before him. Presently he said, in a quiet voice, 'My chair is moving--I am off the ground--don't notice me--talk of something else,' or words to that effect. It was very difficult to restrain the curiosity, not unmixed with a more serious feeling, which these few words awakened; but we talked, incoherently enough, upon some different topic. I was sitting nearly opposite Mr Home, and I saw his hands disappear from the table, and his head vanish into the deep shadow beyond. In a moment or two more he spoke again. This time his voice was in the air above our heads. He had risen from his chair to a height of four or five feet from the ground. As he ascended higher he described his position, which at first was perpendicular, and afterwards became horizontal. He said he felt as if he had been turned in the gentlest manner, as a child is turned in the arms of a nurse.

In a moment or two more he told us that he was going to pa.s.s across the window, against the grey, silvery light of which he would be visible. We watched in profound stillness, and saw his figure pa.s.s from one side of the window to the other, feet foremost, lying horizontally in the air. He spoke to us as he pa.s.sed, and told us that he would turn the reverse way and recross the window, which he did. His own tranquil confidence in the safety of what seemed from below a situation of the most novel peril gave confidence to everybody else; but with the strongest nerves it was impossible not to be conscious of a certain sensation of fear or awe. He hovered round the circle for several minutes, and pa.s.sed, this time perpendicularly, over our heads. I heard his voice behind me in the air, and felt something lightly brush my chair. It was his foot, which he gave me leave to touch. Turning to the spot where it was on the top of the chair, I placed my hand gently upon it, when he uttered a cry of pain, and the foot was withdrawn quickly, with a palpable shudder. It was evidently not resting on the chair, but floating; and it sprang from the touch as a bird would. He now pa.s.sed over to the farthest extremity of the room, and we could judge by his voice of the alt.i.tude and distance he had attained. He had reached the ceiling, upon which he made a slight mark, and soon afterwards descended and resumed his place at the table. An incident which occurred during this aerial pa.s.sage, and imparted a strange solemnity to it, was that the accordion, which we supposed to be on the ground under the window close to us, played a strain of wild pathos in the air from the distant corner of the room."

A well-known physician, Dr Gully, who was present at this _seance_, wrote confirming the account in _The Cornhill Magazine_ given by the above writer.

During the ensuing forty years mediumistic performances became of common and almost daily occurrence in this country. Two or three forms of so-called spirit manifestation--such as materialisation, spirit photography, and slate-writing--afterwards became connected with many of the _seances_. But first the manifestations in daylight consisted of raps and tiltings of a table; afterwards, when the lights were turned out or turned very low, spirit voices, touches of spirit hands, spirit lights, spirit-born flowers, floating musical instruments, and moving about or levitation of the furniture.

Until Sir William Crookes began to investigate the alleged spiritualistic phenomena, all investigation had been undertaken by persons without scientific training. After a year of experiments he issued a detailed description of those conducted in his own laboratory in the presence of four other persons, two of whom, Sir William Huggins and Sergeant Fox, confirmed the accuracy of his report. The result was that he was able to demonstrate, he said, the existence of a hitherto unknown force, and had measured the effect produced. At all events, these inquirers were convinced of the genuineness of Home's powers.

Suppose we glance at the possible alternative--viz. that Home was a conjurer of consummate skill and ingenuity. For one of the physical phenomena, that of tilting a table at a precarious angle without displacing various small objects resting on its polished surface, Mr Podmore suggests an explanation. He thinks that the articles were probably held in position on the table when it was tilted by means of hairs and fine threads attached to Home's dress. He has various explanations for other of the phenomena, but he confesses that there remain a few manifestations which the hypothesis of simple trickery does not seem to fit. In going over a ma.s.s of evidence relating to Home, the hypothesis of conjuring seems to be rather incredible; when one bears in mind Home's long career as a medium, how his private life was watched by the lynx-eyed sceptics, eager to pounce upon the evidence of trickery, and that he was never detected, it certainly seems to me, at all events, that Home's immunity from exposure is strong evidence against the a.s.sumption of fraud. Home was merely the type of a large cla.s.s of mediums purporting to be controlled by spirit power, whose _seances_ are a feature of modern life.

Certain experiments of Sir William Crookes with Home came very near to satisfying the most stringent scientific conditions, especially those in the alteration in the weight of a board. In these experiments one end of the board was on a spring balance and the other rested on a table. The board became heavier or lighter as Home placed his fingers on the end resting on the table and "willed" it, and the different weights were recorded by an automatic register. This effect might have been produced, says Mr Podmore, by using a dark thread with a loop attached to some part of the apparatus--possibly the hook of the spring balance--and the ends fastened to Home's trousers. But this particular trick does not seem to have occurred to those experimenting, and the description of the _seances_ does not exclude it.

Suggesting an explanation of an event does not prove that it so occurred, and Mr Podmore adds: "It is not easy to see how the investigators ... could have been deceived, and repeatedly deceived, by any device of the kind suggested."

One of the most remarkable of Daniel Dunglas Home's manifestations occurred on 16th December 1868, at 5 Buckingham Gate, London. There were present the Master of Lindsay (now the Earl of Crawford), Viscount Adare (the present Earl of Dunraven), and Captain Wynne. The Master of Lindsay has recorded the circ.u.mstances, as follows:--

"I was sitting with Mr Home and Lord Adare and a cousin of his.

During the sitting Mr Home went into a trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window. The distance between the windows was about seven feet six inches, and there was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a twelve-inch projection to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers on. We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in air outside our window. The moon was shining full into the room; my back was to the light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the window-sill, and Home's feet about six inches above it. He remained in this position for a few seconds, then raised the window and glided into the room feet foremost and sat down."

Here is Lord Adare's account of the central incident:

"We heard Home go into the next room, heard the window thrown up, and presently Home appeared standing upright outside our window; he opened the window and walked in quite coolly."

Captain Wynne, writing to Home in 1877, refers to this occasion in the following words: