9. AUGMENTATION OF THE WEIGHT OF A TABLE OR OTHER OBJECTS.--PRESSURES EXERTED.
The dynamometric experiments that we have just recalled themselves go to show this augmentation.
I have more than once seen, in other circ.u.mstances, a table become so heavy that it was absolutely impossible for two men to lift it from the floor. When they succeeded in doing so, in a measure, by means of quick jerks, it still seemed to stick to the floor as if held by glue or india rubber, which immediately pulled it back to the floor after it had been slightly displaced.
In all these experiments, there is proof of the action of an unknown natural force emanating from the chief experimenter or from the collective powers of the group, an organic force under the influence of the will. It is not necessary to suppose the presence of superhuman spirits.
10. THE COMPLETE LIFTING UP, OR LEVITATION OF THE TABLE.
As there may be confusion in applying the word "lifting" to a table which only rises on one side at a certain angle, while still touching the floor, it is expedient to apply the word "levitation" to the case in which it is completely separated from the floor.
Generally, in levitation, it rises from six to eight inches from the floor, for some seconds only, and then falls back. It moves up in a balancing, undulating, hesitating way, with effort, and then falls straight down. While resting our hands upon it, we have the sensation of a fluid resistance, as of it were in water,--the kind of fluid sensation we experience when we bring a piece of iron into the field of force of a magnet.
A table, a chair or other movable article sometimes rises, not merely a foot or so, but almost to the height of one"s head, and even as high as the ceiling.
The force brought into play is considerable.
11. LEVITATION OF HUMAN BODIES.
This case is of the same order as the preceding. The medium may be raised with his chair and placed upon the table, sometimes in unstable equilibrium. He may also be lifted alone (without the chair).[83]
In this case the Unknown Force does not seem to be simply mechanical: intention is mingled with the act, and ideas of precaution, which, however may proceed from the mentality of the medium himself, aided perhaps by that of the sitters. This fact seems to us to contravene known scientific laws. It is the same case as that of the cat which knows how to turn of itself, without any outside support or leverage, when it falls from a roof, and always falls on its feet, a fact contrary to the principles of mechanics taught in every university in the world.
12. LIFTING OF VERY HEAVY PIECES OF FURNITURE.
A piano weighing more than 750 pounds rises up off of its two front legs, and it is ascertained that its weight varies. The force with which it is animated arises from the proximity of a child eleven years old, but it is not the conscious will of this child which acts.--A heavy oak dining-table may rise so high that its under side can be inspected during the levitation.
13. DISPLACEMENT OF OBJECTS WITHOUT CONTACT.
A heavy easy-chair moves about of its own accord in the room. Heavy curtains reaching from the ceiling to the floor are forcibly swelled out as if by a gust of wind, and envelop as with a hood the heads of persons seated at a table, at a distance of three feet and more. A centre table persists in _the endeavor_ to climb upon the experiment-table--and gets there. While a sceptical spectator is bantering the "spirits," the table about which the experiments are taking place makes a move towards the incredulous person, drawing the sitters along with it, and pins him to the wall until he begs for mercy.
As in the preceding cases, these movements may represent the expression of the will of the medium, and may not necessarily indicate the presence of a mind external to his own. Nevertheless--?
14. RAPS AND TYPTOLOGY.
In tables, in pianos, and other pieces of furniture, in the walls, in the air, raps are heard, and their vibrations perceived by the touch.
They somewhat resemble the sounds obtainable by tapping against a piece of wood with the joint of the bent finger. The question arises, Whence come these noises? The question is asked aloud. They are repeated. The request is made that a certain number of strokes be rapped. The raps are heard. Well-known airs are accompanied by raps beaten in perfect time with them and identifiable as the counterpart of the airs. When bits of music are played, the accompaniment is rapped out. Things take place as if an invisible being were listening and acting. But how could a being without acoustic nerve and without a tympanum hear? The sonorous waves must strike something in order to be interpreted. Is this a mental transmission?
These raps are made. Who makes them? And how? The mysterious force emits radiations of wave-lengths inaccessible to our retina, but powerful and rapid, without doubt more rapid than those of light, and situated beyond the ultraviolet. Besides, light impedes their action.
In proportion as we advance in the examination of the phenomena, the psychic, intellectual, mental element is more and more mingled with the physical and mechanical element. In the case we are considering we are forced to admit the presence, the action, of a thought. Is this thought simply that of the medium, of the chief experimenter, or the resultant of the thoughts of all the sitters united?
Since these raps or those made by the legs of the table, on being interrogated, dictate words and phrases and express ideas, there is something more in the matter than a simple mechanical action. The unknown force, the existence of which we have been obliged to admit in the preceding observations, is in this case at the service of an intelligence. The mystery grows complicated.
It is owing to this intellectual element that I proposed (before 1865; see p. xix) to give the name "_psychic_" to this force, a name proposed anew by Crookes in 1871. We saw also that, as early as the year 1855, Thury had proposed the name "_psychode_" and "_ecteneic_"
force. From this on, it would be impossible for us in our examination not to take into consideration this psychic force.
Up to this point, Gasparin"s fluid might suffice, just as unconscious muscular action sufficed for the first three cla.s.ses of facts. But starting from this fourteenth cla.s.s, the psychic order plainly manifests itself (and even in the preceding cla.s.s we begin already to divine its presence).
15. MALLET-BLOWS.
I have heard--as have all other experimenters--not only sharp light raps upon a table, like those of which I have just been speaking, but mallet-blows, or blows of the fist upon a door, capable of knocking down a man if he had received them. Generally, these tremendous blows are a protestation against a denial on the part of one of the sitters.
There is in them an intention, a will, an intelligence. They may also be due to the medium, who is indignant, or who is amusing himself or herself. The action is not muscular; for the hands and feet of the medium are held, and the rapping may occur some distance away from him or her.
16. TOUCHINGS.
Fraud can explain those which take place within the reach of the medium"s hands, for they only occur in the darkness. But they have been felt at a certain distance beyond this reach as if the hands of the medium were prolonged.
17. ACTION OF INVISIBLE HANDS.
An accordion in an open-work case, or cage, which keeps any other hand from touching it, is held in one hand by the end opposite the keys.
Presently the instrument begins to lengthen and shorten of itself and plays various melodies. An invisible hand with fingers (or something like them), must therefore be acting. (Experiment of Crookes with Home.) As the reader has seen I repeated this experiment with Eusapia.
Another time, a music-box, the handle of which was turned by an invisible hand, played in perfect time with the music movements that Eusapia was making upon my cheek.
An invisible hand forcibly s.n.a.t.c.hed from my hand a block of paper which I was holding out with extended arm at the height of my head.
Invisible hands removed from M. Schiaparelli"s head his spectacles (furnished with a spring), which were firmly fastened behind his ears, and that so nimbly and with such light touch that he did not perceive it until afterwards.
18. APPARITIONS OF HANDS.
The hands are not always invisible. Sometimes semi-luminous ones are seen to appear in the dim light,--hands of men, hands of women, hands of children. Sometimes they have clear-cut outlines. They are generally firm and moist to the touch, sometimes icy cold. At times they melt away in the hand. For my part I was never able to grasp one.
It was always the mysterious hand that took mine,--often feeling through a curtain, or sometimes by nude contact, or pinching my ear, or running its fingers through my hair with great rapidity.
19. APPARITIONS OF HEADS.
For my part, I have only seen two: the bearded silhouette at Monfort-l"Amaury, and the head of a young girl with high-arched forehead, in my drawing-room. In the case of the first I had believed that there was a mask held at the end of a rod. But at my own home, there was no possibility of an accomplice, and at present I am not less sure of the first instance than of the other. Moreover, the testimony of other observers is so precise and so often given that it is imperative that it be cla.s.sed with my own.
20. PHANTOMS.
I have never seen any of these nor photographed them, but it seems to me impossible to be sceptical about that of Katie King, observed for three consecutive years by Crookes and others who experimented with the medium Florence Cook. One can scarcely doubt, also, the reality of the phantoms seen by the committee of the Dialectical Society of London. We have seen that trickery plays a frequent role in this sort of apparitions; but, in the experiments just mentioned, the observations were really conducted with such perspicacity that they are safe from all objection, and have on them the stamp of a purely scientific character.
These phantoms, like the heads and the hands mentioned, seem to be condensations of fluids produced by the powers of the medium, and do not prove the existence of independent spirits.
When the hand is stretched out, the rubbing of a beard can be felt upon it. This happened to me, as well as to others. Did the beard really exist, or was it only a case of tactual and visual sensations?
The case here immediately following pleads in favor of its reality.