Occultism and Common Sense Part 11

"The fact of your having gone out of the one window and in at the other I can swear to."

It is surely not a little remarkable that an occurrence of so extraordinary a nature should be testified to by three such clear-headed men as Captain Wynne and Lords Lindsay and Adare. To cross from one window to another by ordinary means was clearly impossible, and it would be a brave conjurer indeed who would essay such a feat at a distance of eighty-five feet from the ground. What then is the explanation? Mr Podmore suggests that the three witnesses were the victims of a collective hallucination; but this theory is not easy to accept, and Mr Andrew Lang has heaped it with ridicule. "There are," he writes, "two other points to be urged against Mr Podmore's theory that observers of Home were hallucinated. The Society's records contain plenty of 'collective, so-called telepathic hallucinations.' But surely these hallucinations offered visionary figures of persons and things not present in fact. Has Mr Podmore one case, except Home's, of a collective hallucination in which a person actually present is the hallucination; floats in the air, holds red-hot coals and so forth--appears outside of the window, for instance, when he is inside the room? Of course, where conjuring is barred. Again, Home's marvels are attested by witnesses violently prejudiced against him, and (far from being attentively expectant) most anxious to detect and expose him."

If the case of Home presents difficulties to the rational sceptic, that of William Stainton Moses, who died in 1892, presents an even harder problem. I will refer to Moses later when we come to discuss clairvoyance, but at first his mediumistic powers were manifested in physical phenomena. He was a clergyman and a scholar, an M.A. of Oxford, and for nearly eighteen years English master in University College School. He was held in esteem and even affection by all who were most intimately a.s.sociated with him. Yet Moses was responsible for table rapping, levitation of furniture, playing of musical instruments and "apports"--the latter term expressing the movement or introduction of various articles either by the request of the sitters or spontaneously, such as books, stones, sh.e.l.ls, opera-gla.s.ses, candle-sticks, and so forth. All this began in 1872, and the phenomena observed at the various _seances_ were carefully recorded by the medium's friends, Dr and Mrs Speer, C. T. Speer, and F. W. Percival. It must be borne in mind that Moses was in his thirty-third year before he suspected mediumistic powers. There have been any number of hypotheses to account for the physical phenomena furnished at these _seances_. Jewels, cameos, seed pearls, and other precious things were brought and given to the sitters.

Scent was introduced; familiar perfumes--such as sandalwood, jasmine, heliotrope, not always recognised--were a frequent occurrence at these _seances_. Occasionally it would be sprayed in the air, sometimes poured into the hands of the sitters, and often it was found oozing from the medium's head and even running down.

In Mrs Speer's diary for 30th August there is the following record:--

"Many things were brought from different parts of the house through the locked door this evening. Mr S. M. was levitated, and when he felt for his feet they were hanging in mid-air, while his head must have almost touched the ceiling."

Dr Speer also records a "levitation" on 3rd December:

"Mr M. was floated about, and a large dining-room chair was placed on the table."

Mrs Speer tells us that they sat in the fire-light, and that the _seances_ were held in more or less complete darkness. Moses' own account of the levitation is much fuller. He says that he was fully conscious that he was floating about the room, and that he marked a place on the wall with a pencil, which was afterwards found to be more than six feet from the floor. Subsequently musical sounds became a feature of the manifestations. In September 1874 Mrs Speer gives a list of them, mentioning ten or more different kinds, including the tambourine, harp, fairy-bells, and many stringed instruments, and ascribes their production to eight different spirits.

In the early materialisations of Stainton Moses we find that hands, and occasionally the fore arm, were seen holding lights. These spirit lights are described as hard, round, and cold to the touch. In his description of one incident at a _seance_ Moses himself pens a significant pa.s.sage, which seems to confirm the suspicion that the spirit lights were really bottles of phosphorised oil:

"Suddenly there arose from below me, apparently under the table, or near the floor, right under my nose, a cloud of luminous smoke, just like phosphorus. It fumed up in great clouds, until I seemed to be on fire, and rushed from the room in a panic. I was fairly frightened, and could not tell what was happening. I rushed to the door and opened it, and so to the front door. My hands seemed to be ablaze, and left their impress on the door and handles. It blazed for a while after I had touched it, but soon went out, and no smell or trace remained.... There seemed to be no end of smoke. It smelt distinctly phosphoric, but the smell evaporated as soon as I got out of the room into the air."

Such candour disarms us: can there be any ground for the theory that here was a case of self-deception on a large scale? Or is there yet an alternative explanation? Perhaps we shall discover one.

CHAPTER X

MORE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA

What we have to remember is that by far the greater part of the physical phenomena which is said to occur at a _seance_ is really nothing extraordinary. All physical occurrences are normal that are capable of being produced by a clever conjurer; and there is no doubt that with due preparation such a one could achieve table rapping, introduce flowers and move furniture. But the problem is, how, under the stringent conditions imposed, and in the face of the close scrutiny, to which these manifestations are subjected, they can be done. As Sir Oliver Lodge says: "I am disposed to maintain that I have myself witnessed, in a dim light, occasional abnormal instances of movement of untouched objects." He goes on to say that "suppose an untouched object comes sailing or hurtling through the air, or suppose an object is raised or floated from the ground, how are we to regard it? This is just what a live animal could do, and so the first natural hypothesis is that some living thing is doing it: (_a_) the medium himself, acting by tricks or concealed mechanism; (_b_) a confederate--an unconscious confederate perhaps, among the sitters; (_c_) an unknown and invisible live ent.i.ty, other than the people present. If in any such action the extraordinary laws of nature were superseded, if the weight of a piece of matter could be shown to have _disappeared_, or if fresh energy were introduced beyond the recognised categories of energy, then there would be no additional difficulties; but hitherto there has been no attempt to establish either of these things. Indeed, it must be admitted that insufficient attention is usually paid to this aspect of ordinary, commonplace, abnormal physical phenomena. If a heavy body is raised under good conditions, we should always try to ascertain" (he does not say that it is easy to ascertain) "where its weight has gone to--that is to say, what supports it--what ultimately supports it. For instance, if experiments were conducted in a suspended room, would the whole weight of that room, as ascertained by outside balance, remain unaltered when a table or person was levitated inside it? Or, could the agencies operating inside affect the bodies outside?--questions, these, which appear capable of answer, with sufficient trouble, in an organised physical laboratory; such a laboratory as does not, he supposes, yet exist, but which might exist and which will exist in the future, if the physical aspect of experimental psychology is ever to become recognised as a branch of orthodox physics."

Recently, Dr Maxwell, of Paris, published his researches and observations on physical phenomena, and he states that under "material and physical phenomena" are comprised (1) raps; (2) movements of objects (_a_) without contact, or (_b_) only with such contact as is insufficient to effect the particular movement in question; (3) "apports"--_i.e._ the production of objects by some supernormal agency; (4) visual phenomena--_i.e._ the appearance of lights and of forms, luminous or otherwise, including among the latter the cla.s.s of alleged phenomena known as materialisations, and (5) phenomena leaving some permanent trace, such as imprints or "direct" writings or drawings, etc.

Under the cla.s.s of "intellectual phenomena" may be included such occurrences as automatic writing, table tilting, etc.

As regards raps Dr Maxwell hazards certain conclusions, of which he says the most certain is the close connection of the raps with the muscular movements on the part of the sitters. Every muscular movement, even a slight one, appears to be followed by a rap. Thus if, without anyone necessarily touching the table, one of the sitters frees his hand from the chain made round the table by others, moves it about in a circle over the surface of the table, then raises it in the centre and brings it down towards the table, stopping suddenly within a few inches of it, a rap will be produced on the table corresponding with the sudden stoppage of the hand. Similarly, a rap will be produced by a pressure of the foot on the floor, by speaking, by blowing slightly, or by touching the medium or one of the sitters. Raps produced in this way by the sitters are often stronger than those produced by the medium himself. Dr Maxwell suggests as a working hypothesis that there is a certain acc.u.mulated force, and that if its equilibrium be suddenly disturbed by the addition of the excess of energy required for the movement, a discharge takes place producing the effect.

Dr Maxwell has made a series of experiments with Eusapia Paladino.

"It was about five o'clock in the evening," he writes, "and there was broad daylight in the drawing-room at l'Aguelas. We were standing around the table. Eusapia took the hand of one of our number and rested it on the right-hand corner of the table.

The table was raised to the level of our foreheads--that is, the top reached a height of at least four and three-quarter feet from the floor.... It was impossible for Eusapia to have lifted the table by normal means. One has but to consider that she touched but the corner of the table to realise what the weight must have been had she accomplished the feat by muscular effort. Further, she never had sufficient hold of it.

It was clearly impossible for her, under the conditions of the experiment, to have used any of the means suggested by her critics--straps, or hooks of some kind."

Most of the phenomena discussed by Dr Maxwell were obtained through the mediumship of Eusapia Paladino. He was a member of the committee which met in 1896 to investigate this medium, who had just concluded the series of performances held under the auspices of the society at Cambridge, which were entirely unfavourable to her claims. The French committee was made aware of the fraudulent devices which the Cambridge investigators claimed to have discovered. He recommends all who believe that Dr Hodgson and his Cambridge colleagues have had the last word in the controversy to read the report which will be found in the _Annales des Psychiques_, for 1896. The English sitters arrive at conclusions in direct conflict with those of the French, who claim that they had long known of the tricks "discovered" at Cambridge, and in consequence took means to guard against them. Dr Maxwell indicts the Cambridge way of controlling the medium, which he says consisted, for a time at least, in affording the medium opportunities to cheat to see if she would avail herself of them. Opportunities of which she took the fullest advantage.

Nevertheless, Dr Maxwell offers but little encouragement for the theory of spiritualistic agency. "I believe," he says, "in the reality of certain phenomena, of which I have repeatedly been a witness. I do not consider it necessary to attribute them to a supernatural intervention of any kind, but am disposed to think that they are produced by some force existing within ourselves."

In the same way as certain psychical phenomena, such as automatic writing, trance, "controls," crystal vision, and so forth, in which an intelligence seems to be present independent of the intelligence of the medium, can be shown beyond dispute to be merely manifestations of his subliminal intelligence, frequently taking the form of a dramatic personification; so may the agency, revealing itself in raps, movements of objects, and other phenomena of a physical character, perhaps be traceable, not to any power external to the medium and the sitters, but merely to a force latent within themselves, and may be an exteriorisation in a dynamic form, in a way not yet ascertained, of their collective subliminal capacities.

However strange new and unknown facts may be, we need not fear they are going to destroy the truth of the old ones. Would the science of physics be overthrown if, for example, we admit the phenomenon of "raps"--_i.e._ audible vibrations in wood and other substances--is a real phenomenon, and that in certain cases there may be blows which cannot be explained by any mechanical force known to us? It would be a new force exercised on matter, but none the less would the old forces preserve their activity. Pressure, temperature, and the density of air or of wood might still exercise their usual influence, and it is even likely that the transmission of vibrations by this new force would follow the same laws as other vibrations.

In the opinion of the leading members of this society, some of the physical phenomena which have been adduced as among those proclaimed to have occurred, such as "apports," scent, movement of objects, pa.s.sage of matter through matter, bear a perilous resemblance to conjuring tricks, of a kind fairly well known; which tricks if well done can be very deceptive. Hence extreme caution is necessary, and full control must be allowed to the observers--a thing which conjurers never really allow.

Sir Oliver Lodge says that he has never seen a silent and genuinely controlled conjurer; and in so far as mediums find it necessary to insist on their own conditions, so far they must be content to be treated as conjurers. For instance, no self-registering thermometer has ever recorded the "intense cold" felt at a _seance_. Flowers and fruit have made their appearance in closed rooms, but no a.r.s.enic has penetrated the walls of the hermetically sealed tube. Various investigators have smelt, seen, and handled curious objects, but no trace has been preserved. We have to depend on the recollection of the observer's pa.s.sing glimpse of spirit lights, of the hearing of the rustle of spirit garments, the touch, in the dark, of unknown bodies.

Exquisite scents, strange draperies, human forms have appeared seemingly out of nothing, and have returned whence they came unrecorded by photography, unweighed, una.n.a.lysed.

Briefly, then, the result of my carefully formed judgment is that a large part of the physical phenomena heard, seen, felt at the average spiritualistic _seance_ must be placed on a level with ordinary conjuring. To return to the recent case of Eusapia Paladino. A number of English scientists, interested in the reports of her _seances_, induced her to come to England and repeat them at Cambridge. Every effort was made to make the experiments as satisfactory as possible. They used netting for confining the medium or separating her from objects which they hoped would move without contact; different ways of tying her were tried; also sufficient light was used in the _seance_ room. She refused to submit to any of these conditions. The investigators pressed her at each sitting to allow some light in the room, and they long persevered in making the control in every case as complete as she would allow it to be. She permitted a very faint light usually at the beginning, but before long she insisted on complete darkness, and until the lights were extinguished the touches were never felt. The sitters then held the medium, the only method of control allowed, as firmly and continuously as possible. This she resisted, and then every form of persuasion was used, short of physical force, to induce her to submit. But she was allowed to take her own way without remonstrance when the sitters were convinced of the constant fraud practised.

It is only fair to state that recent experiments on the Continent have convinced a number of leading scientists of the genuineness of Eusapia Paladino's powers, and the conclusions arrived at by the Cambridge investigators are condemned as hasty and premature.

But, even of the other cla.s.s, those who have lent themselves to the conditions of the investigator, while admitting the bona-fides of the medium, we are by no means prepared to regard them as necessarily the result of the action of disembodied spirits. Nor do many leading spiritualists themselves.

For, as we have just seen, there is still another explanation for supernormal physical movements. May there not be an unknown, or at least an unrecognised, extension of human muscular faculty? Such a hypothesis is no more extravagant than would have been the hypothesis of the Hertzian waves or a prediction of wireless telegraphy a few short years ago.

This is not all. We must remember that there is a ma.s.s of phenomena which cannot lightly be explained away by glib references to unknown extensions of muscular faculty. Of such is the fire ordeal, one of the most inexplicable and best attested of the manifestations presented by Daniel Dunglas Home. The evidence is abundant and of high quality, the witnesses of undoubted integrity, and, from the nature of the experiment, the illuminations of the room were generally more adequate than in the case of the levitations and elongations. On one occasion, Home thrust his hand into the fire, and bringing out a red-hot cinder laid it upon a pocket-handkerchief. When at the end of half-a-minute it was removed, the handkerchief was quite free from any traces of burning.

Not content with handling glowing embers himself, Home would hand them on to others present at the _seance_, who were generally able to receive them with impunity. This effectually disposes of the theory formulated by an ingenious critic that Home was in the custom of covering his hands with some fire-proof preparation as yet unknown to science! Even if Home possessed and used such a preparation he would find considerable difficulty in transferring it to the hands of his spectators.

Here is an account of a _seance_ which took place on the 9th May 1871.

After various manifestations, two out of the four candles in the room were extinguished. Home went to the fire, took out a piece of red-hot charcoal, and placed it on a folded cambric pocket-handkerchief which he borrowed for the purpose from one of the guests. He fanned the charcoal to white heat with his breath, but the handkerchief was only burnt in one small hole. Mr Crookes, who was present at the _seance_, tested the handkerchief afterwards in his laboratory and found that it had not been chemically prepared to resist the action of fire.

After this exhibition--

"Mr Home again went to the fire, and, after stirring the hot coal about with his hand, took out a red-hot piece nearly as big as an orange, and putting it on his right hand, so as almost completely to enclose it, and then blew into the small furnace thus extemporised until the lump of charcoal was nearly white hot, and then drew my attention to the lambent flame which was flickering over the coal and licking round his fingers; he fell on his knees, looked up in a reverent manner, held up the coal in front, and said, 'Is not G.o.d good? Are not his laws wonderful?'"

Among those who have left on record their testimony to this manifestation are Lord Lindsay, Lord Adare, H. D. Jencken, W. M.

Wilkinson, S. C. Hall, etc. etc.

As the great mathematician Professor de Morgan once wittily and wisely wrote:

"If I were bound to choose among things which I can conceive, I should say that there is some sort of action of some combination of will, intellect, and physical power, which is not that of any of the human beings present. But, thinking it very likely that the universe may contain a few agencies--say, half-a-million--about which no man knows anything, I cannot but suspect that a small proportion of these agencies--say, five thousand--may be severally competent to the production of all the phenomena, or may be quite up to the task among them. The physical explanations which I have seen are easy, but miserably insufficient; the spiritual hypothesis is sufficient, but ponderously difficult. Time and thought will decide, the second asking the first for more results of trial."

It is inconceivable that such a man as Stainton Moses--a hard-working parish priest and a respected schoolmaster--should deliberately have entered upon a course of trickery for the mere pleasure of mystifying a small circle of acquaintances. The whole course of his previous life, his apparently sincere religious feeling, all combine to contradict such a supposition. Neither is it credible that such a petty swindler would have carried out his deceptions to the end, and have left behind fresh problems, the elucidation of which his eyes could never behold.

CHAPTER XI

THE MATERIALISATION OF "GHOSTS"

If much of the physical phenomena just described be well within the scope of natural possibility, it is somewhat otherwise with the cla.s.s of manifestations I shall now touch upon. It is one thing to exert consciously or unconsciously, as Home, Cook, Paladino, Moses and other mediums have done, in the presence of scientifically trained witnesses, unknown and supernormal muscular power. Table rapping, levitation, "apports," may all be genuine enough and accounted for in a manner which, if not wholly satisfying, is at least not unreasonable. But when those a.s.sisting at a _seance_ actually behold with their eyes and touch with their hands, and even photograph with a camera, the materialised objects of the spirits with whom the medium is in communion, the pulse of the inquirer quickens. He is now indeed approaching the crucial problem, the crowning achievement of spiritualism. For although in a former chapter we have the testimony of people who saw "ghosts," these ghosts might, to my mind, clearly be the result of telepathy. They appear on special occasions at important and significant crises, but the claim of the spiritualistic medium is that he can casually, and on the demand of one of the circle, produce a visible, tangible figure of a deceased husband, wife, parent, or friend.

This materialisation is wholly a recent species of manifestation. One of the first to testify to having seen a materialised figure at a _seance_ was the well-known S. C. Hall, who recognised during one of Home's _seances_ the figure of his deceased sister. Other mediums repeated the feat, and shadowy forms and faces began to appear and move about during their dark _seances_. It is a suspicious fact that in some cases these forms, made visible by a faintly luminous vapour, were accompanied by an odour of phosphorus. Sceptics naturally took great advantage of the alleged circ.u.mstance. Soon, however, a new medium, Florence Cook, was rumoured to have produced materialised forms in a good light which baffled all the sceptics. Miss Cook claimed to be "controlled" by a spirit known under the name of "Katie."

We have this account from a writer who early attended to examine the mystery fairly:

"In a short time, however, Katie--as the familiar of Miss B.