But a very important remark must here be made. All physiologists know that hysterical persons have a tendency to falsehood and simulation. They lie, apparently without reason, and solely for the pleasure of lying. There are hysterics among the women and young girls of the higher cla.s.ses.
Does this characteristic defect prove that hysteria does not exist? It proves just the contrary.
Consequently, those who think that the frauds of the mediums give the death blow to mediumship are deceived. Mediumship exists, as well as hysteria, as well as hypnotism, as well as somnambulism. Trickery also exists.
I will not say, with certain theologians, "There are _false_ prophets, _therefore_ there are _true_ ones," for that is a sophism of the worst kind. The existence of the false does not hinder the existence of the true.
I knew a kleptomaniac, who got herself arrested more than once in the great shops of Paris for stealing various articles. That does not prove that she never bought anything, and only obtained by theft all the articles she needed. On the contrary, the objects stolen must have represented but a small part of the materials of her toilet. But the fact that she stole is incontestable. In the experiments which we are considering in these pages, deception is a co-efficient which cannot be neglected.
It is my duty to point out here some examples of this failing. Before doing so, I ought to recall the fact that for a period of forty years I have examined all the mediums whose achievements have had the widest celebrity,--including Daniel D. Home, gifted with the most astounding powers, who gave at the Tuileries, before the Emperor Napoleon III, his family, and his friends, such extraordinary seances, and who was later employed by William Crookes in the accurate scientific researches made by that gentleman; Mme. Rodiere, a remarkable typtologic medium; C. Bredif, who produced strange apparitions; Eglington, with the enchanted slates; Henry Slade, who made with the astronomer Zollner those incredible experiments from which geometry only saved itself by admitting the possibility of a fourth dimension of s.p.a.ce; Buguet whose photographic plates caught and held the shadows of the dead, and who, having allowed me to experiment with him, let me conduct my researches for five weeks before I detected his fraudulent methods and mechanisms; Lacroix, to whom spirits of all ages seemed to troop in crowds; and many others who inspire deep interest in Spiritualists and scientific investigators by manifestations more or less strange and marvelous.
I have quite often been absolutely deceived. When I took the precautions that were necessary to put the medium beyond the possibility of trickery, I obtained no result; if I pretended not to see anything I would perceive out of the corner of my eye attempts at deceit. And, in general, the phenomena which took place happened only in the moments of distraction in which my attention was for an instant relaxed. While I was pushing my investigation a little farther, I saw with my own eyes Buguet"s prepared negatives; saw with my own eyes Slade writing under the table upon a concealed slate, and so forth. Apropos of this famous medium Slade, I may recall the fact that after his experiments with Zollner, director of the observatory at Leipzig, he came to Paris, and for the purpose of experimentation, placed himself at my disposal (and that of all the astronomers at the Observatory to whom I should introduce him). He said he got direct writings from the spirits by a bit of pencil placed between two slates tied together, by oscillations of the magnetic needle, displacements of furniture, the automatic throwing about of objects, and the like. He was very willing to give me one seance a week, for six weeks (on Monday at 11 o"clock A. M., at 21 Beaujon Street). But I obtained nothing certain. In the cases that did succeed, there was a possible subst.i.tution of slates. Tired of so much loss of time, I agreed with Admiral Mouchez, director of the Observatory of Paris, to confide to Slade a double slate prepared by ourselves, with the precautions which were necessary in order that we should not be entrapped. The two slates were sealed in such a way with paper of the Observatory that if he took them apart he could not conceal the fraud. He accepted the conditions of the experiment. I carried the slates to his apartment. They remained under the influence of the medium, in this apartment, not a quarter of an hour, not a half-hour or an hour, but ten consecutive days, and when he sent them back to us there was not the least trace of writing inside; and yet specimens of this were always furnished by him when he had the opportunity of transposing slates prepared in advance.[42]
Without entering into other details, let it suffice me to say, that, too frequently deceived by dishonest and mendacious mediums, I brought to my experiments with Eusapia a mental reserve of scepticism, of doubt, and of suspicion.
The conditions of experimenting are in general so crooked that it is easy to be duped. And scientists and scholars are perhaps most easily duped of all men, because scientific observation of experiments is always honest, since we are not obliged to distrust nature,--when the question is of a star or of a molecule,--and since we have the habit of describing facts as they present themselves to our intelligence.
That granted, we may now look at certain curious doings of Eusapia.
We considered a little farther back (p. 173) Col. de Rochas"s strange experiment with the letter-weigher. This was considered by the experimenters as absolutely conclusive. I was curious to verify it. Here are my notes on the matter.
I.
November 12, 1898.--This afternoon we took a drive in a landau (Eusapia and I) in company with M. and Mme. Pallotti of Cairo, and, among other things, we visited the exhibition of chrysanthemums at the Tuileries. Eusapia is enchanted. We return about 6 o"clock. My wife seats herself at the piano, and Eusapia sings some Neapolitan airs and some little fragments of Italian operas. Afterwards we all three chat confidentially with each other.
She is in a very happy state of mind, tells us how sometimes on stormy days she experiences electric cracklings and sparkling in her hair, especially on an old wound that she once received on the head. She also tells us that when she has been a long time without holding a seance she is in a state of irritation, and feels the need of freeing herself of the psychic fluid which saturates her. This avowal astonishes me, for, at the end of every seance, she seems rather to be listless and melancholy and seems to hold a sitting rather unwillingly than otherwise. She adds that she frequently has fluidic prolongations of the ends of her fingers, and, putting her two hands on my knees, the inside of the hand turned upward, at the same time spreading out the fingers and placing them opposite each other face to face, at a distance of several inches, and alternately bringing the hands together and withdrawing them, she tells us to observe from time to time the radiations which prolong the fingers by forming a sort of luminous aureole at their extremities. My wife thinks she perceives some of them. I am unable to see anything at all, in spite of all my efforts, although I change the light and shade in all sorts of ways.
The salon is lighted at this time by two intense Auer burners. We go into the bedroom, lighted only by candles, and I cannot see them any better. I snuff out the candles, on the supposition that this is perhaps a case of phosph.o.r.escence; but I never perceive anything. We return to the salon. Eusapia spreads a black woollen shawl over her silk skirt and shows me the luminous effluence. But all the time I can see nothing, unless it be for a moment a kind of pale ray at the end of the index finger of her right-hand.
The dinner hour approaches. It is seven o"clock. A letter-weigher (Pl.
X), which I had bought to renew the curious experiment of M. de Rochas, is upon the table. I ask Eusapia if she remembers having made a piece of mechanism like this move downward on its spring by placing her hands on each side of it, at a distance, and making something like magnetic pa.s.ses. She doesn"t seem to remember anything about it and hums a little stanza from _Santa Lucia_. I beg that she will try it.
She does so. Nothing moves. She asks me to place my hands on hers. We make the same pa.s.ses, and, to my amazement (for I really was not expecting it at all) the little tray sinks down to the point where it touches the lever and produces the sharp sound of contact. This point is beyond the graduation of the scale, which stops at fifty grams, and may go to sixty, and represents seventy grams at the lowest. The tray immediately rises again. We begin a second time. Nothing. A third time: the same lowering and the same return to equilibrium. Then I beg her to try the experiment alone. She rubs her hands together and makes the same pa.s.ses. The letter weigher goes down to the same maximum point. We are all standing close by her, in the full light of the Auer burners. The same performance is repeated, the tray remaining down for an interval of about five minutes. The movement does not take place at once; there are sometimes three or four trials without success, as if the force were exhausted by the result. The tray had already sunk down four times before our eyes, always as far as the maximum point, when the valet de chambre, pa.s.sing by upon some matter of service, I tell him to stop and look. Eusapia begins again and does not succeed. She waits a moment, rubs her hands, begins again, and the same movement without contact is produced for the seventh time, before the three witnesses, each as much astonished as the other. Her hands are sensibly chilled. I think of the trick of the hair, pa.s.s my hands between both of hers and find nothing there; I did not see anything.
Besides, she does not seem to have touched her head, and her hands have remained before us since the commencement of the experiment, free and untouched.
On the supposition that there may be here some electric force in operation, I beg her to place her fingers upon an extremely sensitive compa.s.s. In whatever way she grasps this, it refuses to move.
We sit down to the dinner-table. I ask her to lift a fork as she had done at Montfort. At the third trial she succeeds--and without the use of a hair, at least any that was apparent.
II.
November 16.--In order to entertain Eusapia, Adolphe Brisson yesterday evening offered her a box at the Folies-Bergere, where Loie Fuller was giving her magnificent spectacular exhibitions. We went there with her. She returned enchanted, is to-day very gay and very animated, speaks of her candid and loyal character and blames the comedies of fashionable life. During dinner she tells us a part of the story of her life.
Nine o"clock.--M. and Mme. Levy and M. G. Mathieu have just arrived.
We are conversing. Placing her hands on a leg of M. Mathieu in the darkness she shows him the radiations emanating from her fingers, which are however scarcely apparent to us.
It was after having shown me these radiations, the other day, that the experiment of the letter-weigher took place. She a.s.sociates the two phenomena, and undertakes to try the latter again.
She asks me to give her a little water. I go to the dining-room in search of a carafe and a gla.s.s. During my absence, M. Mathieu remarks that, while my wife is talking with M. and Mme. Levy, Eusapia reaches her hand to her head and makes a little gesture as if she were pulling out a hair.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XI
METHOD USED BY EUSAPIA TO SURREPt.i.tIOUSLY FREE HER HAND.]
I return with a gla.s.s and a carafe and pour out for her as much as she wishes. She drinks a quarter of a gla.s.s of water. At my request, she moves her hands downward on each side of the letter-weigher in the same way as day before yesterday, and after two or three pa.s.ses the tray sinks, not to its full length as day before yesterday, but to the mark of thirty-five or forty grams.
The experiment was tried a second time and succeeded in the same way.
Under pretext of going in search of a photographic camera M. Mathieu draws me into another room and shows me a long, very fine hair which fell into his hand after the experiment, at the moment when Eusapia was making a gesture as if she were going to shake his hand.
This hair is of a rich chestnut tint (the color of Eusapia"s hair) and measures fourteen inches in length. _I have preserved it._
This took place at quarter past nine. The sitting begins at 9:30 and finishes at 11:30. After the sitting, Eusapia asks me for another gla.s.s of water, and shows me a little hair between her fingers.
Just as she is going, at midnight, half laughingly, half seriously, she pulls a hair from the front part of her head and, taking the hand of my wife, puts this hair in it and closes the hand while looking her in the eye. She certainly noticed that we had perceived fraud.
III.
November 19.--Eusapia is a sly one. She is gifted with great sharpness of sight and has unusually sensitive ears. She is very intelligent and is a person of rare delicacy of feeling. She perceives and divines everything which concerns herself. Never reading, since she doesn"t know how to read; never writing, since she doesn"t know how to write; speaking little when here, since she rarely finds persons who understand and speak Italian, she remains always concentrated in herself and nothing turns her from permanent thought about her own personality. It would undoubtedly be impossible to discover a similar state of mind in the case of other persons; for we, as they, are generally occupied with a thousand things which scatter our attention over many different objects.
I arrive, at 11:30, at the rooms of Dr. Richet in order to escort Eusapia to Mme. Fourton"s, where we are to take luncheon. She is cold and constrained. I pretend not to notice it, and keep talking with the doctor. She goes to put on her hat and we descend the stairs. At the foot of the staircase she says, "What did M. Richet say to you? What were you speaking of?" A moment after, returning in thought to our last seance, she says, "Were you completely satisfied?" In the carriage I take her hand and converse with her in a friendly way.
"Everything is going very well," I say to her "but some experiments will still be necessary in order to leave no room for doubt." Then I speak to her of other things.
She becomes gradually sociable and her clouded brow seems to clear up.
However, she evidently feels that in spite of my rather superficial amiability, I am not absolutely the same to her. During the luncheon she holds out her champagne gla.s.s to me and drinks my health. Mme.
Fourton is convinced of Eusapia"s genuineness, beyond all manner of doubt. During conversation, a little later, Eusapia says to her, "I am sure of you, I am sure of Mme. Blech, of M. Richet, of M. de Rochas; but I am not sure of M. Flammarion."
"You are sure of Mme. Fourton," I replied. "Very well. But think for a moment of the several thousand persons who are waiting for my opinion in order to fix their own. M. Chiaia told you this at Naples, M. de Rochas repeated it to you in Paris. You see I have a very great responsibility and you yourself certainly see that I cannot affirm that of which I am not absolutely certain. You ought yourself loyally to aid me in obtaining that certainty."
"Yes," she replied, "I understand the difference very well. However, if it had not been for you I should not have made the journey from Naples, for the climate of Paris does not agree with me very well. Oh, certainly; we must have you convinced beyond the possibility of doubt."
She has now returned to her habitual intimacy. We took her to the Museum at the Louvre, which she had not visited, then to a meeting with M. Jules Bois who was making suggestion-experiments with Mme.
Lina. Eusapia is very much interested in these. We speak of the jests and mimickings of the comedians.
In the evening, at dinner, the brilliant conversation of Victorien Sardou, the repartees of Col. de Rochas, the questions (a little insidious) of Brisson, all interest her but it is evident that she never forgets herself. Thus, before dinner, she tells me that she has the headache, especially in the neighborhood of her wound, pa.s.ses her hand through her hair ("which hurts her"), and asks me for a brush.
"In order," she says, that "in case of a seance experiment, a stray hair shall not be found in the wrong place." And she carefully brushes her shoulders. I do not always appear to understand her. But there is no doubt that she understands that we have--found a hair!
IV.
(MORE RECENT NOTE,--MARCH, 1906.)
On Thursday, March 29, Eusapia, being in Paris, came to see me. I had not seen her since her seances at my house in November, 1898. We kept her to dinner, and after dinner I asked her to take part with me in some experiments.
I first asked her to place her hands upon the piano, thinking that perhaps some of its strings would vibrate. But nothing happened.
I then induced her to place her hands on the covered keyboard. She asked that it be slightly opened by means of a little block. I placed my hands upon it, by the side of hers. My object was, by keeping up contact, to keep her from slipping a finger over the keys. She kept trying to subst.i.tute one hand for the two that I held, in such a way as to leave one of them free, and a few notes sounded. Result of the experiment, _nil_. We left the piano and went over to a white-wood table. We got some insignificant balancings.