I have thus passed in review a series of facts and considerations
in pursuance of the general inquiry as to why the manifestations
produced in evidence of spirit agency deceive, and as to the origin
of the vast testimony in favor of spiritualistic marvels. It is
not necessary for the purposes of the psychological discussion to
demonstrate that all such manifestations are fraudulent; it is not
even necessary--although with limitless time and energy it might be
desirable--to examine all of the various kinds of manifestations
which the ingenuity of mediums has devised, or which have been
presented through mediumistic agency.[8] All that is necessary is
to examine a sufficient number of manifestations of acknowledged
standing and repute among spiritualists,--manifestations, be it
clearly understood, which have actually brought hundreds and
thousands of converts to its ranks, which have been persistently
brought forward as indisputable evidence of supernatural agency--and
to show that in reference to these, actual and extensive deception
has taken place. It would not be proper to declare that at this point
the psychologist's interest ends; for the centre of interest in such
problems may shift from one point to another. The central point in
the present discussion, however, is not what is the evidence in
favor of the spiritualistic hypothesis logically worth,--although
the considerations here presented have obvious and radical bearings
upon that question. If that were our quest, we should put the
spiritualists upon the defensive; for the burden rests upon them
to show the inadequacy of the natural explanation of the phenomena,
and to present the special facts that point to the correctness
of the spiritualistic as opposed to other explanations. We may
recognize, in passing, to what sorry excuses they are driven in its
defense: writing, they are driven to explain, is best produced in the
dark, because dark is "negative," and light is "positive"; if the
spirit that appears resembles the medium, that is an effect of the
materializing process; if a piece of muslin is found in the medium's
cabinet (and obviously used as drapery in the materializations),
it is supposed to have been brought by the spirits to clothe their
nakedness, or that the spirit which had brought the muslin "had to
vanish so quickly that it had no time to dematerialize the muslin;"
if writing does not appear when the slates are looked at, that is
because the "magnetism" of the eye interferes with this spiritual
process of writing; and did not Slade receive an express command
from the spirits forbidding him, on penalty of cutting off all
communication, to attempt to write on sealed slates? Some even claim
that fraud and genuine manifestations go hand in hand, or that
the former are the work of evil spirits counterfeiting conjuring
tricks. A prominent spiritualist openly announces that Slade "now
often cheats with an almost infantile audacity and naïveté, while at
the same or the next séance, with the same investigators," genuine
spiritualistic phenomena occur; while another disciple holds that the
true spirit in which to approach the study is an "entire willingness
to be deceived." Surely there is no duty resting upon scientific
men to consider the claims of a system that resorts to such idle and
extravagant hypotheses, and that fosters and prospers in such a moral
atmosphere.
We may therefore profitably confine our attention to the
psychological lessons to be drawn from the record of fraud and
deception which the exploitation of Spiritualism has produced.[9]
When the day comes when the manifestations above considered shall be
definitely conceded to have a natural explanation along the general
lines here presented, and the spiritualists shall have taken refuge
in other and distinctively different manifestations, then it may
become advisable to prepare a revised account of the psychology of
Spiritualism.
There remains an important series of considerations that form an
essential factor in the psychological comprehension of the phenomena
of Spiritualism; this is the effect of bias and prepossession.
When by one means or another a strong faith in the reality of
spiritualistic manifestations has been induced; when the critical
attitude gives place to a state of extreme emotional tension; when,
perhaps, special griefs and trials give undue fervor to the desire
for a material proof of life after death, of communion with the
dear departed; when the convert becomes a defendant of the faith,
anxious to strengthen the proofs of his own conviction,--then we have
no longer mere unintentional lapses of observation and memory to
deal with, but actual mental blindness to obvious fraud and natural
explanations; then caution is thrown to the winds and marvels are
reported that are the result of expectant attention and imagination,
or of real illusion and hallucination. The blamelessness that may be
conceded for one's mystification by conjuring performances cannot
be extended to the present class of experiences; here it is not
unusualness of external arrangements that forms the main factor in
the deception, but the abnormal condition of the observer's mind.
The materialization séances offer a sufficient example of this form
of manifestation. To recognize a departed friend in the thinly
disguised form of the medium is most naturally interpreted as a mark
of weak insight or of strong prejudice. "Again and again," writes Dr.
Furness, "men have led round the circles the materialized spirits of
their wives and introduced them to each visitor in turn; fathers have
taken round their daughters, and I have seen widows sob in the arms
of their dead husbands. Testimony such as this staggers me. Have I
been smitten with color-blindness? Before me, as far as I can detect,
stands the very medium herself, in shape, size, form, and feature
true to a line, and yet, one after another, honest men and women at
my side, within ten minutes of each other, assert that she is the
absolute counterpart of their nearest and dearest friend; nay, that
she is that friend. It is as incomprehensible to me as the assertion
that the heavens are green, and the leaves of the trees deep blue.
Can it be that the faculty of observation and comparison is rare, and
that our features are really vague and misty to our best friends? Is
it that the medium exercises some mesmeric influence on her visitors,
who are thus made to accept the faces which she wills them to see?
Or is it, after all, only the dim light and a fresh illustration
of _la nuit tous les chats sont gris_?" In the confessions of an
exposed medium we read: "The first séance I held, after it became
known to the Rochester people that I was a medium, a gentleman from
Chicago recognized his daughter Lizzie in me after I had covered my
small mustache with a piece of flesh-colored cloth, and reduced the
size of my face with a shawl I had purposely hung up in the back of
the cabinet." With such powerful magicians as an expectant interest
and a strong prepossession, the realm of the marvelous is easily
entered; but the evidence thus accumulated may be said to have about
the same scientific value as the far more interesting entertainments
of the "Thousand and One Nights." "Sergeant Cox," Mr. Podmore tells
us, "adduced the hallucinatory feeling of a missing limb in proof
of a spiritual body; and a writer in the 'Spiritualist,' 'not yet
convinced of the spiritualistic theory,' could even pronounce the
after-images produced by gazing at a straw hat to be 'independent
of any known human agency.' From all of which it may be gathered
that the conscientious spiritualist, when on marvels bent, did not
display a frugal mind." Such opinions certainly justify Mr. Podmore's
remark that there are spiritualists, "not a few, who would be capable
of testifying, if their prepossessions happened to point that way,
that they had seen the cow jump over the moon; and would refer for
corroborative evidence to the archives of the nursery."
It is natural to suppose that prepossession of such intensity could
occur only amongst the less intelligent and less discerning portions
of mankind; but to a considerable extent, and certainly in sporadic
instances, this is not the case. The distinguished naturalist who
shares with Darwin the honor of contributing to modern thought the
conceptions of evolution, in his ardent advocacy of Spiritualism,
has recorded his assent to the belief that professional conjurers,
performing at the Crystal Palace in London, could not accomplish
their tricks without supernatural aid. With peculiar obliviousness
to the double-edgedness of his remark, he writes: "If you think
it all juggling, point out where the difference lies between it
and mediumistic phenomena." The same prepossession renders him so
impervious to the actual status of the evidence for Spiritualism as
to permit him to record so preposterous a statement as the following:
The physical phenomena of Spiritualism "have all, or nearly all, been
before the world for twenty years; the theories and explanations
of reviewers and critics do not touch them, or in any way satisfy
any sane man who has repeatedly witnessed them; they have been
tested and examined by skeptics of every grade of incredulity, men
in every way qualified to detect imposture or to discover natural
causes,--trained physicists, medical men, lawyers, and men of
business,--but in every case the investigators have either retired
baffled, or become converts." And in the latest utterances of the
same authority the failure to credit the marvels of Spiritualism is
put down along with the equal neglect of phrenology, as among the
signal failures of our "wonderful century." If any further instances
be required of the astounding effects of bias and prepossession in
matters spiritualistic, the vast literature of the subject may be
referred to as a sad but instructive monument of its influence.