Mysterious Psychic Forces Part 23

No. 5, as well as other gentlemen, perceived, in a manner that admitted of no doubt, a vague, indistinct figure thrown upon the air in the doorway of an antechamber which was feebly illuminated. The figure consisted of changing and fugitive silhouettes, sometimes with the outline of a human head and body, sometimes like hands reaching out from the curtains. Their objective character was demonstrated by the agreement of impressions, which were controlled in their turn by means of continual inquiries. There was no possibility of their being shadows voluntarily or involuntarily projected by the bodies of the experimenters, since we were mutually watching each other.

The tenth seance (the last) was one of the best-attended, and was perhaps the most interesting of all.

Scarcely has the electric light been extinguished when we remark an automatic movement of the chair upon which a lump of plaster has been placed, while the hands and feet of Eusapia are watchfully controlled by me and by No. 3. However, as we wish to forestall the objection of critics that the phenomena take place in the dark, the table typtologically (that is, by taps) asks for light, and the experimenters light the electric lamp.

Presently, _all the company see the chair_ on which the lump of plaster lies (not at all a light chair) _moving between myself and the medium_, without our being able to understand the determining cause of the movement.

Mme. Paladino puts her outspread hand upon the back of the chair and her left above it. When our hands rise up, the chair rises also without contact, reaching a height of about six inches. This performance is several times repeated, with the addition of the intervention of the hand of No. 5, under conditions of light and of control which leave nothing to be desired.

The room is again almost completely darkened.... A current of cold air upon the table precedes the arrival of a little branch with two green leaves. We know that there are no plants in the neighborhood of the company: it appears then that we have here a case of _bringing-in_ from the outside.

No. 3 is greatly exhausted with the heat. And, lo! a hand, which takes his handkerchief from his neck and with it dries the perspiration on his face. He tries to seize the handkerchief with his teeth, but it is s.n.a.t.c.hed from him. A big hand lifts his left hand and makes him rap several strokes with it on the table.

Gleams of light begin to appear, at first on the right hand of No. 5, then in different parts of the hall. They are perceived by everybody.

The curtain is inflated, as if it were pushed against by a strong wind, and touches No. 11, who is seated in a small easy-chair a yard and a half from the medium. The same person is touched by a hand, while another hand pulls a fan from the inside pocket of his jacket, carries it to No. 5 and then to No. 11. The fan is soon returned to its owner, and is moved to and fro above our heads, to the great satisfaction of all of us. A tobacco pouch is taken from the pocket of No. 3: the Invisible empties it on the table, and then gives it to No.

10. Various stems of plants drop upon the table.

Transfers of the fan from one hand to another begin again. Then No. 11 believes that he ought to announce that the fan had been offered to him by a young girl who had expressed the wish that it be transferred to No. 11, then given back to No. 5. n.o.body knew about this except No.

11.

No. 5, who at present occupies the small arm-chair where formerly No.

11 was seated, a yard and a half from the medium, feels the edge of the curtain touching him and then perceives the presence of the body of a woman whose hair rests on his head.

The seance is adjourned about one o'clock.

At the moment of parting, Eusapia sees a bell on the piano; she extends her hand; the bell glides along on the piano, turns over, and falls on the floor. The experiment is renewed, in full light as before, the hand of the medium remaining several inches from the bell....

It is evident that these exploits are still more extraordinary than the preceding ones, in certain respects. The following are the _conclusions_ of the report of Professor Porro.

The phenomena are real. They cannot be explained either by fraud or by hallucination. Do they find their explanation in certain strata of the unconscious (the subliminal), in some latent faculty of the human soul, or indeed do they reveal the existence of other ent.i.ties living under conditions wholly different from ours and normally inaccessible to our senses? In other words, will the _animistic_ hypothesis suffice to solve the problem and to do away with the _Spiritualistic_ hypothesis? Or, rather, do not the phenomena serve here, as in the psychology of dreams, to complicate the problem by hiding the Spiritualistic solution within them? It is to this formidable query that I am going to attempt a reply.

When, eleven years ago, Alexander Aksakof stated the dilemma between Animism and Spiritism, and in a masterly work clearly proved that purely animistic manifestations were inseparable from those which direct our thoughts to a belief in the existence of independent, intelligent, and active ent.i.ties, no one could have expected that the first term of the dilemma would be disputed and criticised in a thousand ways, under a thousand varying forms, by persons who would be dismayed at the second term.

In fact, what are all the hypotheses which for ten years now have been invented in order to reduce mediumistic phenomena to the simple manifestation of qualities latent in the human _psyche_ (or soul), if not different forms of the animistic hypothesis, so jeered at when it appeared in the work of Aksakof?

From the idea of the unconscious muscular action of the spectators (put forth half a century ago by Faraday) to the projection of protoplasmic activity or to the temporary emanation from the body of the medium imagined by Lodge; from the psychiatric doctrine of Lombroso to the psycho-physiology of Ochorowicz; from the externalization admitted by Rochas to the eso-psychism of Morselli; from the automatism of Pierre Janet to the _duplication of personality_ of Alfred Binet,--there was a perfect flood of explanations, having for their end the elimination of an exterior personality.

The process was logical and in agreement with the principles of scientific philosophy, which instructs us to exhaust the possibilities of what is already known before having recourse to the unknown.

But this principle, una.s.sailable in theory, may lead to erroneous results when it is wilfully stretched too far into a given field of research. Vallati has cited, in this connection, a curious marginal note of Galileo, recently published in the third volume of the national edition of his works:

"If we heat amber, the diamond, and certain other very dense substances by chafing them, they attract small light bodies, because, in cooling off, they attract the air, which draws these corpuscles along with it." Thus the desire to bring still unexplained material facts under the known physical laws of his day led an observer and thinker so prudent and practical as Galileo to formulate a false proposition. If anybody had said to him that in the attraction exercised by amber there was the germ of a new branch of science and the rudimentary manifestation of an energy (electricity) then unknown, he would have replied that it was useless to "have recourse to the aid of the unknown."

But the a.n.a.logy between the error committed by the great physicist and that which modern scholars commit can be pushed still farther.

Galileo was familiar with a form of energy which the natural philosophy of our times investigates simultaneously with electric energy, with which it has close relations confirmed by all recent discoveries. If it had been perceived that the explanation which he gave of the phenomenon of amber had no foundation, he would have been able to give his attention to the a.n.a.logies which the attraction exercised by amber rubbed over light bodies presents with the attraction exercised by the loadstone upon iron filings. When he had got so far, he would very probably have discarded his first hypothesis and would have admitted that the attractive power of amber is a _magnetic phenomenon_. He would have been deceived, however, for it is an _electric phenomenon_.

In the same way might not those persons deceive themselves who, in order to escape at any cost the necessity of the hypothesis of spiritistic ent.i.ties, should insist with a too persistent predilection upon the animistic hypothesis, even when this would be found insufficient to explain all mediumistic manifestations? Might it not be true that, like electric and magnetic phenomena, which are in close interchangeable connection, and frequently appear to us inseparable, animistic and spiritistic phenomena have a common bond? And let us well note that a single fact, inexplicable by the animistic hypothesis and explicable by the spiritistic hypothesis, would suffice to confer upon the latter that degree of scientific value which up to the present time has been so energetically denied to it, just as the discovery of a secondary phenomenon, that of the polarization of light, sufficed to make Fresnel reject the Newtonian theory of emission and admit that of undulation.

Did we obtain, during the course of our ten seances with Eusapia, the one fact which is enough to make the spiritistic hypothesis necessarily take precedence of all others?

It is impossible to reply categorically to this question because it is not possible, and never will be, to have a scientific proof of the ident.i.ty of the beings who manifest themselves.

The fact that I hear, that I see, that I touch a phantom; that I recognize in it the form and the att.i.tude of persons whom I have known and whom the medium has neither known nor of whom she has even heard the names; that I have the most lively and affecting testimony to the presence of this ephemeral apparition,--all that will not be sufficient to const.i.tute the scientific fact which none can refute, and which shall be worthy to remain in the annals of science along with the experiments of Torricelli, Archimedes and Galvani. It will always be possible to imagine an unknown mechanism by the aid of which elemental substance and power may be drawn from the medium and the sitters and combined in such a way as to produce the indicated effects. It will always be possible to find in the special apt.i.tudes of the medium, in the thought of the sitters, and even in their att.i.tude of expectant attention, the cause of the _human_ origin of the phenomena. It will always be possible to unearth from the a.r.s.enal of the attacks made upon these studies during the last fifty years, some generic or specific argument, either _ad rem_ or _ad hominem_, while ignoring or feigning to ignore the refutation of the argument which has already been made.

The question, then, reduces itself at once to an individual study of cases either directly observed or obtained from some sure hand, in order on the one hand, to create a personal conviction capable of resisting the scathing ridicule of the sceptics, and, on the other hand, to prepare public opinion to admit the truth of cases observed by persons worthy of credence.

With regard to the first of these, the ill.u.s.trious experimenter Sidgwick, has already said that no fact or case exists capable of convincing everybody, but that each one, by patiently and calmly observing, may find such fact or case as will suffice to establish his own conviction. I may say that for myself such a case exists. I need only refer to the phenomena in which I have personally partic.i.p.ated in the seances with Eusapia.

With regard to the second point I could say much, but that would lead me beyond the subject matter and the limits of this study.

On the one hand, we have the universal belief in the objective existence of a world unknown to us in our normal state; that faith (the basis of all religions) in a future life where the injustices of this one will be atoned for and where we shall be confronted with the good or evil deeds that we have done on earth; that uninterrupted tradition of systematic or spontaneous observances and rituals, thanks to which man is constantly kept in relation more or less with that unknown world.

On the other hand, we have the sceptical and disheartening negation of systems of pessimistic philosophy and of atheism, a negation which takes its rise in the absence of positive proofs of the survival of the soul; the ever more and more marked tendency of science toward a monistic interpretation of the enigma of human life; and the belief that all the known phenomena of life appear only in connection with special organs.

In order to decide in so abstruse a matter as this, mediumistic experiments do not suffice; everyone may draw from these as much of credence or of incredulity as he may need in order to resolve his doubts in one way or another; but he will never divest himself of the substratum of temperamental tendencies which the more or less scientific education of his mind or the more or less mystical inclinations of his nature shall have developed in him.

One word more and I have done.

While admitting it as the most probable hypothesis that the intelligent beings to whom we owe these psychical phenomena are pre-existing, independent ent.i.ties, and that they only derive from us the conditions necessary for their manifestation in a physical plane accessible to our senses, ought we to admit also that they are really the spirits of the dead?

To this question I will reply that I do not feel that I am as yet capable of giving a decisive answer.

Still I should be inclined to admit it, if I did not see the possibility that these phenomena might form part of a scheme of things still more vast. In fact, nothing hinders us from believing in the existence of forms of life wholly different from those which we know, and of which the life of human beings before birth and after death forms only a special case, just as the organic life of man is a special case of animal life in general.

But I am leaving the solid ground of facts to explore that of the most hazardous hypotheses. I have already spoken at too great length, and will therefore close the discussion of this particular topic.

I have considered the above subjects in several of my own works.[41]

We are surrounded by unknown forces and there is no proof that we are not also surrounded by invisible beings. Our senses teach us nothing about reality. But logically the discussion of theories ought to be reserved as a complement to the ensemble or summary of our observations and experiments; that is to say, for the last chapter. It behooves us before everything else positively to ascertain that mediumistic phenomena exist.

It seems to me, that _this has been done_ for every impartial reader. This will be overwhelmingly confirmed by the following chapters. But there is one point on which we ought to dwell a moment. I mean the question of fraud, conscious or unconscious, which it would be natural, but unfair, to here ignore and cover up. Our judicial review would not be complete did we not consecrate a special chapter to these mystifications, which unhappily are too frequently employed by mediums.

CHAPTER V

FRAUDS, TRICKS, DECEPTIONS, IMPOSTURES, FEATS OF LEGERDEMAIN, MYSTIFICATIONS, IMPEDIMENTS

Several times in the preceding chapters the question has come up of fraud in the mediums. I am sorry to say that experimenters must be constantly on their guard against them. It is this which has discouraged certain eminent men and prevented them from continuing their researches, for their time is too precious to waste. This may be especially noticed in the letter of M.

Schiaparelli above (p. 64) whom Spiritualists keep citing (wrongly) as among the number of their partisans. But he absolutely refuses to be identified with them. He accepts no theory; he is not even sure of the actual existence of the facts, and has declined to give the time needed for their authentication.

I shall take occasion in the second volume of _The Unknown_ to treat of Spiritualism (properly so called), of the doctrine of the plurality of worlds, of the plurality of existences, of re-incarnation, of pre-existence, and of communications with the departed,--subjects independent of the material phenomena to a discussion of which the present work is devoted. To these subjects the physical manifestations only contribute in an indirect manner. As we have already several times said in the preceding pages, we are only concerned here to _prove the actual existence of these extraordinary phenomena_. The establis.h.i.+ng of the proof depends above all upon the elimination of fraud.

In the case of Eusapia (the medium most thoroughly examined in the present volume) fraud, unhappily, has been only too well established in more than one instance.