THE SOLUTION.—Examination of the genuineness of the
phenomena—Od-motions produced by bodies in their most inert
state—Analysis of the forces which originate them—Od-motions
connected with electrical, magnetic, chemical, crystalline, and vital
influences—Their analysis.
The present letter might be entitled “An account of some motions
recently discovered, to the manifestation of which an influence
proceeding from the living human body is necessary.” The contrivance by
which these motions are elicited I have called an Odometer, from the
conviction that the force which sets it in movement is no other than
the Od-force of Von Reichenbach. For the same reason I have called the
objects with which it is tested Od-subjects, and the motions themselves
Od-motions.
The odometer is a pendulum, formed of a ring, or other small body
attached to a thread, the other end of which is wound round a finger
or the thumb. The odometer employed in the following experiments was
a light gold ring, having a greater mass of metal on the unattached
side, and suspended to the last joint of the right forefinger, the
suspending medium being either silk, or fine cotton, or the hair of
a horse. The experiments were made by myself. In order to avoid the
confusion resulting from a multiplicity of details, I shall state the
results obtained through testing a limited number only of Od-subjects,
so selected as to represent the leading divisions of the provinces of
nature, and of dynamics. With some of the principal the reader will
be already acquainted through Letter XII., the contents of which will
have prepared him for, and probably suggested to him, the following
question, as a desirable subject of preliminary consideration.
I. Are the motions referred to worth examining at all? Are they
more than the simple results of impulses conveyed to the pendulum
by movements of the hand or wrist, or some general sway of the
experimenter’s person, unintentionally going with the expectation or
conception of this or that motion of the ring? Such a solution of the
phenomena is not wanting in probability. It is metaphysically and
physically certain, that when we maintain one and the same bodily
posture or gesture, as in standing, sitting, or holding out the hand,
whatever be the seeming continuousness and unity of the effort, the
posture or gesture is really maintained only by a series of rapidly
succeeding efforts. What is more likely than that, in such a continual
renewing of voluntary actions, our fancy, or the sympathy between our
will and our thoughts, should give a bias to the results, even when we
most try to neutralize its influence? The fact which I propose first
to mention is in complete agreement with this view. I can at will
cause the odometer to move exactly as I please. Although I hold my
hand as steadily as possible by leaning the arm against a table, and
endeavour to keep my person absolutely still, yet I have only to form
a vivid conception of a new path for the odometer, and a motion in
the so-imagined direction is almost immediately substituted for that
which was before going on. In like manner, I have only to conceive
the cessation of motion, and the odometer gradually stops. I must
farther admit that my first trials of the odometer were made under
the full expectation that the results which ensued would follow. And
I cannot say that it is impossible, that when other and new motions
emerged, they were not often either realizations of a previous guess,
or repetitions on the same principle of what occurred at first as an
accident.
On the other hand, I am not unprepared with an array of facts which
seem to me capable not only of neutralizing the force of the preceding
argument, but of making it appear, most likely, that some other
influence than that of the experimenter’s mind is often in operation
in bringing about these results; an influence sufficiently curious,
as I think, to justify me in continuing this investigation and the
present letter. I beg the reader’s candid construction of the following
statements.
If, when trying the odometer, I have caused it, by conceiving a
different motion, to change its path and move in a _wrong_ direction,
I now endeavour to divert my mind from considering its motion at all,
the odometer invariably resumes its previous _right_ movement. It
is, indeed, difficult to observe a strict mental neutrality in this
instance. For the odometer moves imperfectly and uncertainly, unless I
frequently look at its performance. Or, as I interpret the fact, unless
I keep my attention fixed to a certain extent on what I am doing, my
hand loses its steadiness, and communicates all sorts of distracting
impulses to the pendulum. And the uncertainty hence arising admits, it
appears to me, of being obviated by the comparison of numerous careful
repetitions of the experiments.
Many of the motions which I at first thought were genuine Od-results,
I afterwards found out I had been mistaken in. And the correction of
these errors was mostly due to frequent and careful repetitions of
the experiments, unattended by an expectation of finding the results
reversed or otherwise modified, and instituted simply to secure their
genuineness and certainty.
Then there was one result which at one time I confidently anticipated;
but it never came up. I had found the ring make gyrations in the
direction of those of the hands of a watch, when held over the small
end of a living unincubated egg. Opposite gyrations were obtained
over the big end. I thought this might have to do with the sex of the
embryo. And I tried, accordingly, a dozen eggs, expecting that in some
the direction of the gyrations at the two ends would be reversed. But
this event never occurred, much as I laid myself out for it. If my
fancy could have decided the matter in spite of my care to prevent
its interference, I am clear that for a time, at least, I should have
obtained in these experiments upon the egg a double set of results.
I was much delighted two months later at coming upon the explanation
of the question, why gyration like that of the hands of a watch is
manifested at the little end of the egg. I had known from nearly the
first that this direction of the rotatory Od-motion is manifested when
the pendulum is swung over the right side of the human body. Then I
fell upon an old physiological reminiscence, (and found a drawing of
the fact in my outlines of Physiology,) that the embryo chick lies in
the egg transversely upon its face, with its right side towards the
little end.
Then there were two other results, which were directly at variance
with my anticipations, but which never failed to present themselves.
I made a voltaic arrangement by means of two plates, one of zinc, the
other of copper, fixed in contact in a solution of salt in water. Now,
when held opposite the middle of the zinc disc, the odometer always
rotated like the hands of a watch; while over the copper disc the
phenomenon was reversed. These results are constant. But I have had
the satisfaction of lately discovering that, if I present the ring to
any part of the _circumference_ of the two discs, its motion is the
opposite, and in accordance with theory.
One of the tests on which I have much relied in determining whether
the motions I obtained were genuine Od-motions, consisted in producing
their reversal by altering the Od-relations of my hand or of my
person. What gives particular value to this test is, that the versed
or complimentary motion is subject to different laws. One set of
secondary oscillations changes into oscillations in a plane at right
angles to the plane of the primary oscillations. In another series the
motion continues in the same plane; but the excursions, which were
before longest in one direction, are now longest in the opposite, as
if a repellent current had been substituted for an attracting one. The
Od-oscillations, it may be observed, are always dependent upon the
action of a constant rectilinear force counteracted by the gravitation
of the pendulum. The means I usually employ to reverse the primary
Od-motions is, bringing the end of the right thumb into contact with
the odometer-finger, where the thread is wound round it. But the
experimenter cannot be too careful not to bring the thumb even near
to the odometer finger, or to allow his other fingers to close upon
the ball of the thumb, for the phenomena are thus again liable to be
reversed.