All these authenticated experiments tend to show that the agent which determines movements without contact has some connection with our organism, and probably with our nervous system.
_Conditions of the Experiments._--We must never lose out of our sight the relative importance of the moral and intellectual status of the group of experimenters. That is one of the most difficult things to seize and comprehend. But when the force is abundant, the simple manifestation of the will is sometimes able to determine the movement.
For example, upon a desire to that affect being expressed by the sitters, the table moves in the way it is requested to do. The phenomena occur as if this force were guided by an Intelligence distinct from that of the experimenters. I hasten to say that I regard that only as a probability, and that I think I have observed a certain resemblance between these personifications and the secondary personalities of somnambulists.
In this apparent bond between the _indirect_ will of the sitters and the phenomena there is a problem the solution of which has so far completely escaped me. I suspect that this bond has nothing supernatural about it and I realize that the Spiritualistic hypothesis is a poorer explanation and inadequate to meet the facts; but I cannot formulate any satisfactory explanation.
Close observations of the relations existing between the phenomena and the will of the sitters brings out other discoveries also. I mean, in the first place, the bad affect which disagreement among the experimenters produces. It sometimes happens that one of them expresses the desire to perceive a certain phenomenon. If the thing is slow in taking place, the same experimenter, or another one, will ask for a different spectacle. Sometimes different sitters will ask for several contradictory things at the same time. The confusion which reigns in the collective thought manifests itself in the phenomena, which themselves become confused and vague.[71]
However, things do not happen absolutely as if the phenomena were directed by a will which is only the shadow or the reflex of that of the sitters. It sometimes happens that they show great independence, and flatly refuse to yield to the desires expressed.
_Forms and Phantoms._--At Bordeaux, in 1897, the room where we held our sittings was lighted by a very large window. The outside Venetian blinds of this window were closed; but when the gas was lighted in a little building which formed an adjunct to the kitchen, in the corner of the court near the garden, a feeble light penetrated the room and dimly illuminated the window panes. The window itself formed in this way a bright background upon which certain dark forms were perceived by a part of the experimenters. We all saw these forms, or rather this form, for it was always the same one that appeared,--a long bearded profile, with a very high arched nose. This apparition said it was head of John, a personification who always appears with Eusapia.[72]
This is a very extraordinary phenomenon. The first idea which presents itself to the mind is that this is a case of collective hallucination.
But the care with which we observed this curious phenomenon--and, it seems needless for me to add, the calmness with which we experimented--renders this hypothesis very unlikely.
The supposition of fraud is still less admissible. The head, which we saw was of life size, measuring say sixteen inches from the forehead to the end of the beard. It is impossible to understand how Eusapia could have hidden in her pockets or under her clothes any kind of a cardboard profile. Nor can one understand any better how, unknown to us, she could have taken out this paper figure, mounted it upon a stick, or upon a wire, and so operated with it. Eusapia had not gone into a trance: she herself sometimes saw the profile which appeared, and, thoroughly awake and conscious, took pleasure in a.s.sisting in the phenomena which she was producing. The feeble light which the illumined window shed was sufficient to enable us to see her hands being carefully held by the controllers on the right and on the left.
It would have been impossible for her to manipulate these objects. In fact, however, the profile observed seemed to form at the top of the cabinet, at the height of about three and a half feet above Eusapia"s head. It descended rather slowly and so took its place above and in front of her. Then at the end of some seconds it disappeared, only to reappear some time afterwards in the same circ.u.mstances. Every time, we carefully a.s.sured ourselves of the relative immobility of the hand and arms of the medium. Hence I regard the prodigy which I am relating as one of the most certain I ever verified, so incompatible was the hypothesis of fraud with the conditions under which we observed.
I am persuaded that these facts will one day (soon perhaps) receive the stamp of scientific approval as subjects of study. They will do this in spite of the obstacles which obstinate infatuation and the fear of ridicule pile in the way.
The intolerance of certain beings matches that of certain dogmas.
Catholicism, for example, considers psychic phenomena as the work of the Devil. Is it worth while at the present time to combat such a theory? I do not think it is.
But this question is foreign to the psychic facts themselves. So far as my experience permits me to judge, these phenomena are entirely natural. The Devil does not show his claws in them. If the tables should announce that they were Satan himself, there would be nothing on the face of things which would lead us to believe they were speaking the truth. If called on to prove his power, this grandiloquent Satan would turn out, I fear, to be a sorry thaumaturgist. The religious prejudice which proscribes these experiments as supernatural is as little justified as the scientific prejudice which only sees in them fraud and imposture. Here again the old adage of Aristotle finds its application: Equity lies between the two extremes of opinion.
It is evident that these experiments of Dr. Maxwell are in accord with all the preceding ones. The results ascertained mutually confirm each other.
Apropos of mediums who produce physical or material effects, I should also like to mention here the one who was very specially examined at Paris, in 1902, by a group of men composed in large part of former pupils of the Polytechnic School. They held a dozen seances in July and August. This group was composed of MM. A. de Rochas, Taton, Lemerle, Bacle, de Fontenay, and Dariex. The medium was Auguste Politi, of Rome. He was forty-seven years old.
Several very remarkable table-levitations were observed and photographed by these gentlemen during their sittings. I reproduce here (Pl. XIII) one of these photographs, taken by M. de Fontenay which he kindly allows me to use. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful that has been obtained, and one of the most striking. All the hands that form the chain are carefully held away from the table. It seems to me that not to recognize the value of this photograph as a record would be to deny the evidence itself. It was taken instantaneously by a flash of magnesium light. The eyes of the medium had been bandaged, that the light might not give him a nervous shock.
This same medium was studied at Rome, in February, 1904, by a group composed of Professor Milesi, of the University of Rome, M. Joseph Squanquarillo, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Simmons (American travellers pa.s.sing through Rome), and M. and Mme. Cartoni.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XIII. INSTANTANEOUS PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY M. DE FONTENAY OF TABLE LEVITATION PRODUCED BY THE MEDIUM AUGUSTE POLITI.]
They declare that they heard scales very well executed upon the piano (which was an upright one), at quite a distance from the sitters; yet none of the sitters knew how to play on the piano, while Professor Milesi"s deceased sister, who was called upon to manifest herself, was a very good pianist.
Another musical phenomenon was produced: A mandolin placed on the lid of the piano, began of its own accord to play, balancing itself in the air until it went and fell down (playing all the while) between the hands of the experimenters who formed the chain.
Later, at intervals, the piano was lifted in its turn, falling back noisily. It must be remarked that two men scarcely sufficed to lift this piano, even by one of its sides. After the sitting, it was ascertained that the instrument had been displaced about a foot and a half.
But here follows a resume of the phenomena observed with this medium.
In every seance, very vigorous raps were obtained in the table around which were grouped the experimenters and the medium (they together forming the chain), while the lamp with red light was on the table itself. "If we wished to produce raps so sharp and strong (says M. C.
Caccia, the reporter of these seances), we had to rap with all our might on the table with some solid object, while the kind of raps which were produced in the seances with Politi seemed to issue from the interior of the table with loud sounds like explosions."
But now the table begins to be shaken. The white curtain of the cabinet which was behind the medium, at a distance of twenty inches, swelled out and floated in every direction, as if a violent wind had inflated it from the other side. We heard a chair moving with a gliding motion over the floor. It had been placed there before the beginning of the sitting and was now thrown violently over. During the course of the fifth sitting it came clear out of the cabinet, in the presence of everybody, and did not stop until it got near the medium.
These phenomena took place by the red light of a photographic lamp. In the complete darkness which attended the third seance an extraordinary thing occurred,--so much the more extraordinary because we had taken special measures to forestall any attempt at fraud. The medium was held by two sitters who, being very sceptical, had taken their places on his right and on his left, and were holding his hands and his feet.
At a certain moment the medium ordered the operators to lift their hands from the table and not to hinder its movements; above all, not to break the chain. Whereupon a great uproar was heard in the cabinet.
The medium calls for light, and, to the great amazement of all of us, we discover that the table, which was rectangular in form and did not weigh less than thirty-nine pounds, was found turned upside down upon the floor of the cabinet. The controllers declared that the medium had not stirred. It is to be remarked:
1. That the table must have been lifted high enough to pa.s.s over the heads of the sitters.
2. That it must have pa.s.sed above the group forming the chain.
3. That as the opening in the curtains of the cabinet only measured thirty-seven inches across, and the table, on its shortest side, thirty inches, there only remained free seven inches for pa.s.sing through this opening.
4. That the table must have come forward endwise, then moved around lengthwise (it was three feet long), and turned upside down, resting on the floor; that the whole of this difficult manoeuvre was executed in a few seconds in complete darkness and without any of the sitters having touched the table in the slightest degree.[73]
Luminous phenomena were also obtained. Lights appeared and disappeared in the air. Some of them gave the outline of a curve. They did not show any radiation. In the fifth seance, everybody was able to testify to the appearance of two luminous crosses, about four inches in height.
At the last seance, the tambourine fringed with bells, which had been rubbed with phosphorous, went circling around the whole room, and in such a way that all its movements could be followed.
During almost all the sittings, mysterious touchings were noticed,--among others, those produced by an enormous hairy hand!
In the first, fourth and fifth seances there were "materializations."
Prof. Italo Palmarini believed that he recognized his daughter, who had been dead three years. He felt himself embraced; everybody heard the sound of a kiss. The same manifestation took place in the fifth seance. Professor Palmarini believed that he still recognized the person of his daughter.
At the opening of each seance the medium was searched, and was then placed _in a kind of big sack_, made to order for this purpose, _and fastened at the neck, the wrists, and the feet_.
Another medium, the Russian Sambor, was the object of numerous experiments at St. Petersburg during a period of six years. (1897-1902.) It will be interesting also to give a summing up in this place of the report about this man published by M. Petrovo Solovovo.[74]
In the first seances a large folding screen placed behind the medium was observed to be vigorously shaken. The medium"s feet and hands were carefully held. A table in a neighboring chamber moved of its own accord. In a metal cone placed on the table, enclosing a bit of paper and a lead-pencil, and then riveted up, there was found, when it was unriveted, a ribbon, and a phrase written on the paper in script that had to be read in a looking-gla.s.s (_ecriture en miroir_). Other cases of the pa.s.sage of matter through matter were tried, none of which succeeded. But further on the reports relate the following experiments:
In the month of February, 1901, one of Sambor"s seances took place at my house, in my study, against the windows of which I had hung curtains of black calico in such a way that the room was plunged in the deepest darkness. The medium occupied a place in the chain. Next to the medium were M. J. Lomatzsch, on his right, myself on his left.
Sambor"s hands and feet were faithfully held the whole time in a way that gave perfect satisfaction.
The phenomena soon began to develop. I do not intend to take the time here to describe them, but I wish to mention a remarkable case of the pa.s.sage of matter through matter.
M. Lomatzsch, controller on the right, declares that someone is pulling his chair from under him. So, redoubling our attention, we continue to hold the medium. M. Lomatzsch"s chair is soon positively lifted up, so that he is obliged to stand. Sometime after, he declares that someone is trying to hang the chair on the hand with which he is holding Sambor. Then the chair suddenly disappears from the arm of M.
Lomatzsch, and at the same moment I feel a light pressure upon my left arm (I do not mean the one which was in contact with the medium, but with my neighbor on the left M. A. Weber); after which I feel that something heavy is hanging from my arm. When the candle was lighted, we all saw that _my left arm had been pa.s.sed through the back of the chair_. In this way the chair was nicely balanced upon that one of my arms which was not in contact with Sambor, but with my neighbor on the left. I had not let go of the hands of my neighbors.
Such an observation as this needs no commentary (says the reporter of this occurrence, M. Petrovo Solovovo). The fact is simply incomprehensible. I give here some other phenomena which were observed in May, 1902:
1. A cedar apple, an old copper coin which was found to be a Persian coin of 1723, and an amateur photographic portrait of a young woman in mourning unknown to anybody present were found (coming from n.o.body knew where, nor in what way), upon the table about which we were seated.
2. Several different objects in the room were transported to the table by the mysterious force; such, for example, as a thermometer, which had been hung on the wall behind the piano at a distance of from one-half to seven feet from the medium; a large lantern placed upon the piano somewhere between two and four feet behind the medium; several piles of music-books which had rested on the same piano; a framed portrait; and, finally, the candlesconce, the candle, and the different parts of a candlestick belonging to the piano.
3. Several times a bronze bell placed on the table was lifted into the air by the mysterious force and noisily rung. On the request of the sitters it was once carried over to the piano (against which it struck a sounding blow), and from there again over to the table.
4. Unoccupied chairs had been placed behind the medium. One of them was several times lifted and placed noisily on the table in the midst of the sitters, and without having run against any of them. When upon the table, this chair several times moved about, fell over, and picked itself up.
5. One of these same chairs was found to be hung by the back upon the joined hands of the medium and M. de Poggenpohl. Before the beginning of that part of the seance which witnessed this phenomenon, a strip of cloth, slipped over the sleeves of the medium, had been several times tightly twisted around the wrists of M. de Poggenpohl.
6. At the request of the sitters, the mysterious force several times stopped the playing of the music-box (it stood on the table around which we were seated), after which it began to play again.
7. A sheet of paper and a lead pencil, placed on the table, were thrown on the floor, and everybody distinctly heard the pencil moving over the paper with a heavy pressure and, with a sharp tap, putting a period at the end of what had been written. After this the pencil was laid on the table.