"True, but nothing like her courage has ever been known. The crowning wonder of her career came when she consented to enter the special laboratories of the universities of Genoa and Naples. It is in the writings of Morselli, Professor of Psychology at Genoa, and in the reports of Bottazzi, head of the Department of Physics at Naples, that scepticism, such as my own, is met and conquered. I defy Miller or any man of open mind to read the detailed story of these marvellous experiments and deny the existence of the basic phenomena produced by Eusapia Paladino."
"You speak with warmth," said Harris.
"I do. I am at this moment fresh from a reading of the reports of Bottazzi"s up-to-date experiments, and I am compelled to grant that he has not only sustained Crookes at every point, but has gone beyond him in his ingenuity of test and thoroughness of control. He adds the touch of certainty that we all needed to complete our own experience. He has given me courage to say what I believe Mrs. Smiley did for us."
"Won"t you tell us all about it?" pleaded Mrs. Cameron. "Please do."
"It is too long and complicated. You must read it for yourself. It is too incredible to be told."
"Never mind, Garland; we"ll take it as part of your fiction. Go ahead."
As I looked about me, I could detect in the faces of some of my friends an expression of apprehension. The coffee had grown cold. Our ice-cream had melted with neglect. Every eye was fixed upon me. It was plain that Harris and Miller considered me "on the high-road to spiritualism."
Quite willing to gratify their wish to be startled, I proceeded:
"You will find the latest word on all these matters in a small but valuable review, published simultaneously in London and in Paris, called _The Annals of Psychic Science_. It is edited by Cesar de Vesme in France, and by Laura I. Finch in England, and is a mine of reliable psychic science. Its directors are Dr. Dariex and Professor Charles Richet. Its "committee" is made up of Sir William Crookes, Camille Flammarion, Professor Lombroso, Marcel Mangin, Dr. Joseph Maxwell, Professor Enrico Morselli, of Genoa; Dr. Julien Ochorowicz, head of the General Psychologic Inst.i.tute of Paris; Professor Porro, the astronomer; Colonel Albert de Rochas, author of _The Externalization of Motivity_, and others of like character."
"We don"t want the review, we want your account," said Harris. "Don"t spare us. Give us detail--lots of it."
"Thank you; you shall have it hot-shot, but I"ll have to generalize the story for you. The most decisive of all the tests have been made during the last eighteen months, and the final and most convincing of all within the year, under the direction of Lombroso, Morselli, and Bottazzi. It is safe to say that with these experiments (and the reports which accompany them) a new era has dawned in biology. The facts of mediumship are in process of being scientifically observed by a score of the best-qualified men in Europe, and at last we are about to study mediumship apart from any question of religious tenets."
Fowler took issue with me here: "It is absurd to say that no one but these physicists has ever properly studied spiritualistic phenomena; spiritists themselves have put the screws on quite as effectively as ever Crookes or Richet has done. Some of the best investigators ever known have been spiritists."
"Even if that were true, their testimony would lack the convincing power that flames from Morselli"s book or Bottazzi"s report. The essential weakness of the spiritist"s testimony lies in the fact that for the most part he a.s.sumes that the facts of mediumship are somehow, and necessarily, in opposition to somebody"s religion. He finds it sustained (or opposed) by the Bible, or he fancies it mixed with deviltry or the black art. He trembles for fear it will affect the scheme of redemption or a.s.sist some theosophical system. Whereas, a man like Bottazzi is engaged merely with the facts; he lets the inferences fall where they may. He is not concerned with whether Eusapia"s manifestations oppose Christian theology or not; he wants the phenomena. He is alert to note their effect on biologic science, but he does not shrink from any report of them. So far as I am concerned, my lot is cast with these men who put the clamps on the fact and wait for larger knowledge before constructing a system of religion on the half-discovered."
"I"m with you there," said Miller. "And if our university officials took the same view, we Americans would hold higher rank in the world"s thought."
"Bottazzi himself says, with reference to his experiments: "In spite of all the hundreds of those who have observed Eusapia, it still remained true to say that hitherto she had been free to throw things about as she pleased." But all this took a sharp turn when she came into Bottazzi"s laboratory."
"Just who is Bottazzi?" Harris asked.
"He"s the head of the Physiological Inst.i.tute of the University of Naples; of his age and general character I am not precisely informed, but he writes delightfully of his experiments. Morselli, who preceded him in his study of Eusapia, is the Professor of Psychology in the University of Genoa. Foa and Herlitzka are of the same university.
Within the last two years Eusapia has also been rigorously studied in Lombroso"s clinical laboratory at Turin. All honor to her for breaking away from the traditions of mediumship!"
Mrs. Quigg caught me up on this: "What do you mean by "traditions of mediumship"?"
"I mean that for the most part investigators have nearly always been kept at arm"s-length by the fiction that the "guide" should control everything, that the seance is a religious rite, that the medium must not be touched nor exposed to the light, and so on, till the scientist was reduced to the feeble rank of an on-looker in the dark, so that no real test was possible. These Italians did not grant any of these traditions. They were scientists, not devotees at a new shrine."
"However, I am ready to grant that some of the good old rules were justified. As you have seen in my own experiments, I have proceeded cautiously, for if you suppose mediumship to be a psycho-dynamic adjustment of the organisms in the circle--a subtle physical relationship--there is all the more reason to be careful. I did not find it necessary to mistreat Mrs. Smiley in order to test her powers. But _Eusapia has set a new pace for mediums_. She has gone into the lion"s den alone and unarmed--not once, but a hundred times. She entered Lombroso"s study, a room previously unexplored by her, and there placed herself before a cabinet that she was not permitted to examine--a cabinet filled with machines for dividing the true from the false. In Morselli"s presence she submitted to tests the like of which not even Crookes was permitted to apply, and all sacred rules and regulations, all ideas of religion or questions of morality, vanished when she entered the cold, clear air of Bottazzi"s physiological laboratory."
"This begins to sound like the grapple of a cuttlefish and a mermaid.
Was the woman crushed?"
"No; she more than sustained her great reputation. She conquered the remorseless scientist and performed the impossible."
I had the strained attention of my audience now. Time was forgotten, and cries of "Tell us!" "Tell us all!" arose.
"It is an exciting story, an incredible story--"
"So much the better!" exclaimed Miss Brush.
"I am full of enthusiasm for Bottazzi," I resumed. "His was the kind of investigation I should like to put through myself. It appeals to me as no spiritualistic performance has ever done. In a sense the facts he has demonstrated make all material tests inoperative. Matter is all we have to cling to when it comes to physical tests. A nail driven down through the sleeve of the medium"s dress _seems_ to increase our control of her, and a metronome or a Morse telegraphic sounder does add value to our testimony, and yet Zollner seems nearer right than Miller: matter seems only a condition of force, and subject to change at the will of the psychic.
"Up to the beginning of last year Bottazzi confesses that he had read little or nothing on the subject, and, like our friend Miller here, considered it beneath the dignity of a scientist to be present at spiritualist circles. It is highly instructive to note that Paladino, the most renowned medium of her time, was in Naples at his very door; but that doesn"t matter--a scientist is blind to what he does not wish to see. In this case Bottazzi"s eyes were opened by a young friend, Professor Charles Foa, of Turin, who sent him an account of what he and Dr. Herlitzka had witnessed in Eusapia"s presence."
"They really seem to be taking the phenomena seriously over there," said Harris.
"These particular sittings at Turin made a great sensation in Italy.
They were under the direction of Drs. Herlitzka, Foa, and Aggazzotti, a.s.sistants to Professor Mosso, of the University of Turin. Dr. Pio Foa, Professor of Pathologic Anatomy, was also present during one seance. The conditions were all of the experimenters" own contriving. They were young men and had been companion workers in science for many years, and were accustomed to laboratory work. They all came to this experiment perfectly sure that no mediumistic phenomena could endure the light of science. At the end of their three sittings they manfully said: "_Now that we are persuaded of the authenticity of the phenomena_, we feel it our duty to state the fact publicly in our turn, and to proclaim that the few pioneers in this branch of biology (destined to become one of the most important) generally saw and observed correctly.... We hope that our words may serve to stimulate some of these colleagues to study personally and attentively this group of interesting and obscure phenomena." You will note they relate their tests, not to theology, but to unexplored biology."
"I like the ring of that declaration of theirs," said Harris. "Go on!
Come to Hecuba!"
"Bottazzi was enormously impressed by this account, which detailed coldly, critically, the most amazing experiments. With ingenuity that would have seemed satanic to Paladino (had she known of it), Foa and Aggazzotti had laid their pipes and provided for every trick. They were confident that nothing genuine could occur, but, as a matter of record, weird performances began at once. Bells were rung, tables shifted, columns of mercury lifted, mandolins played, and small objects were transported quite in the same fashion as the books were handled during our own sittings at your house, Miller--in fact, the doings were much the same in character. A small stand was broken to pieces under the very eyes of the learned doctors, _and hands. .h.i.t and teeth bit those whom the medium did not like_. Each of the machines for registering movement, though utterly out of reach of Paladino, was operated, and some of these movements were systematically recorded.
"It was this care, these scrupulous and cold-blooded tests, that so profoundly affected Bottazzi. These men were his friends. He knew their level-headed and remorseless accuracy. The fact that they considered the whole investigation biologic in character, and that the results of their experiments strengthened their theory of the physiological determinism of the phenomena, added to his eagerness to try for himself."
"Wait a moment," said Cameron. "What do you mean by "physiological determinism"?"
"He means that the phenomena began and ended in the psychic"s organism."
"Do you intend to convey that they considered the medium dishonest?"
"Oh no. Merely that they did not relate the phenomena to the intervention of the spirits of the dead."
"Oh!" gasped Mrs. Cameron.
"Merely!" exclaimed Harris. ""Merely" is good in that case."
""After reading these articles with avidity," Bottazzi"s report begins: "Professor Galeotti, my a.s.sociate, and I looked at each other astounded, and the same thoughts in the same words came simultaneously to our lips: "We, too, must see, must touch with our hands--and at once--here in this laboratory where experiments of the phenomena of life are daily carried on, with the impartiality of men whose object is the discovery of scientific truth, here in this quiet place where sealed doors will be superfluous. Everything must be registered. Will the medium be able to impress a photographic plate? Will she be able to illuminate a screen treated with platino-cyanide of barium? Will she be able to discharge a gold-leaf electroscope without touching it?" And so we travelled on the wings of imagination, always having before us the plummet of the strictest scientific methods.""
"Now you"re getting into my horizon," said Miller. "That is the way I wished to proceed in Mrs. Smiley"s case. Did Bottazzi get these things done?"
"You"re as impatient as Miss Brush," I replied, highly amused at his eagerness. "First you must catch your medium. Bottazzi succeeded at last in getting Paladino"s consent, but only through the good offices of Professor Richet, whom she deeply loves and reverences. Submissively she entered into this most crucial series of tests. She was no longer afraid of any scientist, but it was not precisely a joy to her. Bottazzi invited his friend Galeotti, Professor of General Pathology in the University of Naples; Dr. de Amicis, Professor of Dermatology; Dr. Oscar Scarpa, Professor of Electro-chemistry at the Polytechnic High School of Naples; Luigi Lombardi, Professor of Electro-technology at the same school; and Dr. Pansini, Professor Extraordinary of Medical Semiotics; and these gentlemen certainly made up a formidable platoon of investigation. The room in which the experiments took place was an isolated one, connected with the laboratory of experimental physiology, and belonged to that part of the university set aside for Bottazzi"s exclusive use. Nothing could have been further from the ordinary stuffy back parlor of the "materializing medium." No women were present, and no outsider; as you see, conditions were as nearly perfect as the ingenuity of Bottazzi and his a.s.sistants could make them."
The members present nestled into their chairs with looks of satisfaction, and Mrs. Cameron said: "Don"t leave anything out. Tell it all."
"It is hardly necessary to say that every precaution was taken.
Photographs of the cabinet were made before the sittings and afterward, in order that all displacements might be recorded. Provision was made for registering the action of "John King"s" spectral hands. Some of these devices were concealed in an adjoining room and watched by other attendants. One little touch early in Bottazzi"s account impressed me deeply. A little electric motor was used to furnish power for the lamps and other apparatus, and Bottazzi, in speaking of it, says: "At the moment when the phenomena to be registered began to manifest, the circuit was closed, _and suddenly in the complete silence of the night the feeble murmur of the motor was heard_." I thrill to the action of that faithful little material watch-dog. Ghosts and hobgoblins could not silence or affright it. After all, matter is both persistent and bold."
"But not sovereign," defiantly called out Brierly; "the psychic dominates it."
"We shall see. Bottazzi declares in italics that Paladino neither put her hand into the cabinet nor knew the contents of it. "Rarely has she been surrounded by such an a.s.sembly of unprejudiced minds, by such strict and attentive intellects," he declares. And when you consider the absence of women, the mystery of the machinery, together with the stern character of the sitters, the medium"s courage becomes marvellous.
Perfect honesty alone can sustain a medium in such an ordeal. I am ready to agree that a new era began for spiritism when Eusapia entered that room, April 17, 1907."
"Poor Paladino!" sighed Mrs. Cameron. "I tremble for her."
"Bottazzi grimly says: "We began by restraining her inexhaustible mediumistic activity. We obliged her to do things she had never done before. We limited the field of her manifestations.... I was convinced that it was much easier for her to drag out of the cabinet a heavy table than to press an electric k.n.o.b or displace the rod of a metronome." And this theory he set himself to prove. It was beautiful to see the way he went about it."