THE MYSTERY OF RAPS AND LEVITATIONS
I now pass at once to a class of Spiritualistic manifestations which
would be put forward by any well-educated occultist as the most
authentic of all. Reference was made a few pages back to a large group
of scientific and professional men who believe in what they call
"mediumistic phenomena." They are not Spiritualists, and it is one of
the questionable features of recent Spiritualist literature that they
are often described as such. Thus the astronomers Flammarion and
Schiaparelli are quoted. But Flammarion says repeatedly in his latest
and most important book (_Les forces naturelles inconnues_, 1907) that
he is not and never was a Spiritualist (see p. 581), and he includes a
long letter from Schiaparelli, who disavows all belief even in the
phenomena (p. 93). Professor Richet, who believes in materializations,
is not a Spiritualist. Professor Morselli, who also accepts the facts,
speaks of the Spiritualist interpretation of them as "childish, absurd,
and immoral." The long lists of scientific supporters which the
Spiritualists publish are in part careless or even dishonest.
But such professors as Richet, Ochorowicz, de Vesme, Flournoy, etc., and
men like Flammarion, Carrington, Maxwell, etc., do believe that raps and
other physical phenomena are produced by abnormal powers of the medium.
They believe that when the medium sits in or before the cabinet, in
proper conditions, the floor and table are rapped, the furniture is
lifted or moved about, musical instruments are played, and impressions
are made in plaster, although the medium has not done it with his or her
hands or feet. As I said, these scientific men scorn the idea that
"spirits" from another world play these pranks. They look for unknown
natural forces in the medium. They _think_ that they have excluded
fraud. We shall see. Meantime, the assent of so many scientific men to
the phenomena themselves gives this class of experiences more
plausibility than others.
Most of these men base their opinion upon the remarkable doings of the
Italian medium, Eusapia Palladino, and we shall therefore pay particular
attention to her. But Spiritualists rely for these things on a very
large number of mediums. In fact, some of our leading English
Spiritualists do not believe in Palladino at all, having detected her in
fraud. We must therefore first examine the evidence put before us by
Spiritualists.
We begin with the story of the Fox family in America in 1848, which
admittedly inaugurated modern Spiritualism. Since Spiritualists
commemorate, in 1920, the "seventy-second" anniversary of the foundation
of their religion, I will surely not be accused of wasting time over
trivial or irrelevant matters in going back to 1848. As, however, this
is not a history, I must deal with this matter very briefly.
In March, 1848, a Mr. and Mrs. Fox, of Hydesville, a very small town of
the State of New York, had their domestic peace disturbed by mysterious
and repeated rappings, apparently on their walls and floors.
Swedenborgians and Shakers had by that time familiarized people with the
idea of spirit, and the neighbours were presently informed that the raps
took an intelligent form, and replied "Yes" or "No" (by a given number
of raps) to questions. The Foxes stated that the raps came from the
spirit of a murdered man, and later they said that they had dug and
found human bones. These raps were clearly associated with the two
girls, Margaretta (aged fifteen) and Katie or Cathie (aged twelve). A
third, a married elder sister, named Leah--at that time Mrs. Fish, and
later Mrs. Underhill--came to Hydesville, and, at her return to
Rochester, took Margaretta with her. Leah herself was presently a
"medium." The excitement in rural America was intense. Mediums sprang up
on every side, and the Foxes were in such demand that they could soon
charge a dollar a sitter. The "spirits," having at last discovered a way
of communicating with the living, rapped out all sorts of messages to
the sitters. In a few years table-turning, table-tilting, levitation,
etc., were developed, but the "foundation of the religion" was as I have
described in 1848.
Towards the close of 1850 three professors of Buffalo University formed
the theory that the Fox girls were simple frauds, causing the supposed
raps by cracking their knee joints. At a trial sitting they so placed
the legs and feet of the girls that no raps could be produced. A few
months later a relative, Mrs. Culver, made a public statement, which was
published in the _New York Herald_ (April 17, 1851), that Margaretta Fox
had admitted the fraud to her, and had shown her how it was done.
Neither of these checks had any appreciable effect upon the movement.
From year to year it found new developments, and it is said within three
years of its origin to have won more than a million adherents in the
United States, or more than five times as many as it has to-day.
Our Spiritualists may find it possible, in their solemn commemoration of
1848, to smile at the Buffalo professors and Mrs. Culver, but I have yet
to meet a representative of theirs who can plausibly explain away what
happened in 1888. Margaretta Fox married Captain Kane, the Arctic
explorer, who often urged her to expose the fraud, as he believed it to
be. In 1888 she found courage to do so (_New York Herald_, September 24,
1888). She and Katie, she said, had discovered a power of making raps
with their toe-joints (not knee-joints), and had hoaxed Hydesville.
Their enterprising elder sister had learned their secret, and had
organized the very profitable business of spirit-rapping. The raps and
all other phenomena of the Spiritualist movement were, Mrs. Kane said,
fraud from beginning to end. She gave public demonstrations in New York
of the way it was done; and in October of the same year her younger
sister Cathie confirmed the statement, and said that Spiritualism was
"all humbuggery, every bit of it" (_Herald_, October 10 and 11, 1888).
They agreed that their sister Leah (Mrs. Underhill), the founder of the
Spiritualist movement and the most prosperous medium of its palmiest
days, was a monumental liar and a shameless organizer of every variety
of fraud. That a wealthy Spiritualist afterwards induced Cathie to go
back on this confession need not surprise us.
So much for "St. Leah"--if she is yet canonized--and the foundation of
the Spiritualist religion in 1848. We need say little further about
raps. Dr. Maxwell, the French lawyer and medical student who belongs to
the scientific psychic school which I have noticed, gives six different
fraudulent ways of producing "spirit-raps." He has studied every variety
of medium, including girls about the age of the Fox girls, and found
fraud everywhere. In one case he discovered that the raps were
fraudulently produced by two young men among the sitters; and the normal
character of these men was so high that their conduct is beyond his
power of explanation. He has verified by many experiments that loud raps
may be produced by the knee- and toe-joints, and that even slowly
gliding the finger or boot along the leg of the table (or the cuff,
etc.) will, in a strained and darkened room, produce the noises. In the
dark, of course--Dr. Maxwell roundly says that any sitting in total
darkness is waste of time--cheating is easy. The released foot or hand,
or a concealed stick, will give striking manifestations. Some mediums
have electrical apparatus for the purpose.
If any Spiritualist is still disposed to attach importance to raps, we
may at least ask for these manifestations under proper conditions. Since
spirits can rap on floors, or on the medium's chair, let the table be
abolished. It usually affords a very suspicious shade, especially in red
light, in the region of the medium. Let the medium be plainly isolated,
and bound in limb and joint, and let us then have these mysterious raps.
It has not yet been done.
The same general objection may be premised when we approach the subject
of levitation and the moving of furniture generally. Levitation is a
more impressive word than "lifting," but the inexpert reader may take
it that the meaning is the same. The "spirits" manifest their presence
to the faithful, not by making the table or the medium "light," but by
lifting up it or him. It is unfortunate that here again the spirits seem
compelled by their very limited intelligence to choose a phenomenon
which not only looks rather like the pastime of a slightly deranged
Hottentot, but happens to coincide with just the kind of thing a
fraudulent medium would be disposed to do in a dim light. However, since
quite a number of learned men believe in these things, let us consider
them seriously.
And, with the courage of honest inquirers, let us attack the strongest
manifestations of this power first. Such are the instances in which the
medium himself--spirits respect the proprieties and do not treat
lady-mediums in this way--is lifted from the ground and raised even as
high as the ceiling. When I say that ladies are not treated in this
frivolous way, the informed reader will gather at once that I decline to
take serious notice of the once famous levitation of Mrs. Guppy. Dr.
Russel Wallace was quite convinced that this lady was "levitated" on to
the table, in the dark, and she was no light weight. But we shall be
excused from examining his statement if we recall what the lady claimed
in 1871. Herne and Williams, both impostors, were giving a séance in
Lamb's Conduit Street, and their "spirit-controls" said they would
"apport" the weighty Mrs. Guppy. Three minutes later, although the doors
were locked, and her home was three miles away, she was standing on the
table. She had a wet pen in her hand, and she explained tearfully to the
innocent sitters that she had been snatched by invisible powers from her
books and taken through the solid walls. People like Russel Wallace
still believed in Mrs. Guppy, but I assume that there is no one to-day
who does not see in this case a blatant collusion of three rogues to
cheat the public. I assume that the same contempt will be meted out to
the claim of the Rev. Dr. Monck, who, not to be outdone, stated shortly
afterwards that _he_ had been similarly transported from Bristol to
Swindon.
Probably the modern reader will be disposed to dismiss with equal
contempt the claim that Daniel Dunglas Home was, in the year 1869,
wafted by spirit-hands from one window to another, seventy feet above
the ground, at a house in Victoria Street. But here I must ask him to
pause. This is one of the classical manifestations, one of the
foundations of Spiritualism. Sir A. C. Doyle says that the evidence here
is excellent. Sir William Barrett maintains that the story is
indisputably true. Sir William Crookes says that "to reject the recorded
evidence on this subject is to reject all human testimony whatever." It
is a Spiritualist dogma.
I have shown in the debate with Sir A. C. Doyle that this dogma is based
on evidence that will not stand five minutes' examination. Not one of
these leading Spiritualists can possibly have examined the evidence. No
witness even _claims_ to have seen Home wafted from window to window.
Lord Adare is the only survivor of the three supposed witnesses, and,
when he saw some Press report of my destructive criticism in the Debate,
he sent to the _Weekly Dispatch_ a letter that he had written at the
time. He seemed to think that this letter afforded new evidence. The
interested reader will be amused to find that this letter is precisely
the evidence I had quoted in the Debate, for it was published forty
years ago.
No one professes to have seen Home carried from window to window. Home
told the three men who were present that he was going to be wafted, and
he thus set up a state of very nervous expectation. Sir W. Barrett, who
tells us that "nothing was said beforehand of what they might expect to
see," says precisely the opposite of the truth. Both Lord Crawford and
Lord Adare say that they were warned. Then Lord Crawford says that he
saw the shadow on the wall of Home entering the room horizontally; and
as the moon, by whose light he professes to have seen the shadow, was at
the most only three days old, his testimony is absolutely worthless.
Lord Adare claims only that he saw Home, in the dark, "standing upright
outside our window."[7] In the dark--it was an almost moonless December
night--one could not, as a matter of fact, say very positively whether
Home was outside or inside; but, in any case, he acknowledges that there
was a nineteen-inch window-sill outside the window, and Home could stand
on that.
So there is not only not a shred of evidence that Home went from one
window to another, but the whole story suggests trickery. Home told them
what to expect, and he pretended, in the dark, that he was a "spirit"
whispering this to them. He noisily opened the window in the next room.
He came into their room, from the window-sill, laughing and saying (in
spite of the historic solemnity of the occasion!) that it would be funny
if a policeman had seen him in the air. When Lord Adare went into the
next room, and politely doubted if Home could have gone out by so small
an aperture, Home told him to stand some distance back, and then swung
himself out in a jaunty fashion, as a gymnast would. In fine, it is well
to remember that this was the same D. D. Home who had defrauded a widow
of £33,000, and had been, in the previous year (1868), branded in a
London court as a fraud and an adventurer.
After this we need not linger long over the other "levitations" of Home,
or allow ourselves to be intimidated by the bluster of Sir A. C. Doyle
and Sir W. Barrett. Sir Arthur tells us that "there are altogether on
record some fifty or sixty cases of levitation on the part of Home";
that "Professor Crookes saw Home levitated twice"; and that "as he
floated round the room he wrote his name above the pictures." It is a
pity that Sir A. C. Doyle does not tell people that Home did all these
wonderful things in the dark, and that in most cases the people present
merely had Home's word for it that he was "floating round the room." The
whole evidence for these things has been demolished so effectually by
Mr. Podmore in his _Newer Spiritualism_ (chs. i and ii) that I need say
little here.
No reliable witness, giving us a precise account of the circumstances,
has ever claimed that he saw Home off the ground and clear of all
furniture. Sir W. Crookes says that he saw Home, in poor light, rise six
inches for a space of ten seconds. It is a poor instalment of miracle;
but I am obliged to add that Crookes was at the other side of the room,
and he confesses that he did not see Home's feet leave the ground!
Crookes says that on one occasion he was allowed to pass his hands
under Home's feet; but he tells this wonderful exploit twenty-three
years after the event (in 1894), and he does not give precise
indications where the hands were when he examined the feet. Mr. John
Jones saw Home rise in 1861; but he does not say that he saw Home's
hands, and he admits that his muscles were so taut that he calls them
"cataleptic." It is equally true that Home wrote his name above the
pictures; but no one had examined the spots before the séance, and no
one could see if he stood on anything to reach them during the séance,
as it was pitch dark. The only apparently good case is an occasion when
a sitter says that, in the dark, he saw Home's figure _completely_ cross
the rather lighter space of the window, feet first, and then cross it
again head first. But it happens that on this occasion there are two
witnesses, and the less rhetorical of the two expressly says that the
shadow on the blind was at first only "the feet and part of the legs,"
and then (after Home had _announced_ that the spirits were turning him
round) only "the head and face." Any gymnast could do that. The whole of
these recorded miracles reek with evidence of charlatanry. The lights
were always put out, and Home in nearly all cases _said_ that he was
rising, and then _told_ them that he was floating about various parts of
the room.
Still worse is the evidence for Home's occasional "elongation." The
picture of Sir W. Crookes gravely measuring the height of this brazen
impostor, as he alternately draws himself in and stretches out, is as
pathetic as the picture of him standing with a bottle of phosphorus in a
bedroom at Hackney while two girls make a fool of him. It is just as
pathetic that men like Sir A. C. Doyle and Sir W. Barrett assure the
public that they believe these things, when they have, apparently, not
examined the evidence. To believe that in the course of a few seconds
certain spiritual powers, who cannot unravel for us the smallest
scientific problem, can so alter that marvellous world of cells and
tissues which make up a man's body as to make him even six inches
taller, is to believe in a miracle beside which the dividing of the
waters of the Red Sea is child's play. Yet distinguished men of science
and medical men assure the public that they believe this, and believe it
on evidence that has been riddled over and over again.
It was a still earlier fraud, Gordon, who began this trick of mounting
furniture in the dark and saying that the spirits bore him up; but the
"evidence" is not worth glancing at. One might as well ask us to examine
seriously the evidence for the "elongation" of Herne, Peters, Morse, and
all the other impostors of the time, or for the spiritual transit of
Mrs. Guppy and Dr. Monck. Let us rather see what sort of evidence is
furnished in recent times.
It appears that the spirits no longer levitate the mediums themselves.
Although the power is said to be developing as time goes on, the age of
these impressive floatings round pitch-dark rooms is over. The only
instance I have read in the last twenty years is that of Ofelia
Corralès, of Costa Rica, who unfortunately fell off the stool she was
standing on. We have now to be content with the levitation of tables and
the dragging of furniture towards the medium.
Again let us, in order not to waste time, address ourselves at once to
the classical case of Eusapia Palladino. Your common or garden medium,
with his uncritical audience, has a dozen ways of tilting and lifting
tables and pulling furniture about the room. To press on with the hands
or thumbs (with four fingers "above the table" to edify the audience)
and lift with the knees is easy. The same thing can be done by pressure
against the inside of the legs of the table. The foot is still more
useful, for the table is generally light. A confederate is even more
useful. The more artistic medium wears a ring with a slot in it, and has
a strong pin in the table. While his hands seem to be spread out above
the table, he catches the head of the pin in the slot of his ring,
and--the miracle occurs. Other mediums have leather cuffs inside their
sleeves, with a dark piece of iron or a hook projecting to catch the
edge of the table.
But we will take Palladino, who was examined by scores of scientific
men, many of whom to this day believe that at least a large part of her
"phenomena" were genuine. The average man hesitates immediately when he
hears that _everybody_ admits that part of her performances were
fraudulent. She was a "grey" medium, Sir A. C. Doyle says. But he, and
so many others, assure you at once that this is quite natural. She had
real mediumistic powers; but these decay after a time, while the public
still clamours for miracles, and the poor medium is strongly tempted to
cheat. I have already said that Sir Arthur is here even more inaccurate
than he usually is. He says that she was "quite honest" for the first
fifteen years, as any person who studies her record will admit. Let us
briefly study it.
Eusapia Palladino was an Italian working girl, an orphan, who married a
small shopkeeper of Naples. She remained throughout life almost entirely
illiterate, but she came in time to earn "exorbitant fees" (Lombroso's
daughter says) by her séances. She had begun to dabble in Spiritualism,
and lift tables, at the age of thirteen, but she did little and was
quite obscure until 1888, when Professor Chiaia, of Naples, took her up.
He challenged Lombroso to study her, and in 1892 a group of Italian
professors investigated her powers at Naples. That is the beginning of
her public career, and her performances varied little. She sat with her
back to the cabinet--unlike other mediums, she sat outside it--and her
chief trick was to lift off the ground the light table in front of her
while the professors controlled her hands and feet. It was the ghost of
"John King" who did these things, she said; and we remember "John King"
as a classic ghost of the early fraudulent mediums. He rapped on the
table and raised it off the floor; he dragged furniture towards the
medium, especially out of the cabinet behind her; he flung musical
instruments on the table, and prodded and pulled the hair of the
sitters; he made impressions of hands and faces in plaster; and he even
brought very faint ghosts into the room at times.
Lombroso and other professors regarded these things as genuine or due to
an abnormal power of the medium (not to ghosts). In the end of his life,
in fact, Lombroso announced that he had come to believe in the
immortality of the mind, though he still regarded this as material. His
daughter, Gina Ferrero, tells us that at this time he was a physical
wreck, and his mental vitality was very low.[8] However, the professors
of 1892 said that they did not detect fraud. The reader of their report
may think otherwise. They put Eusapia, for instance, on a scale, and
"John King" took seventeen pounds off her weight. Any person can perform
that miracle by getting his toe to the floor while he is on the weighing
machine; and the professors gravely note that, whenever they prevented
Eusapia's dress from touching the floor, she could not reduce her
weight! They note also that she cannot raise the table unless her dress
is allowed to touch it.
In the same year, 1892, Flammarion invited her to Paris. He says frankly
that he caught her cheating more than once. One of her miracles was to
depress the scale of a letter-balance by placing her hands on either
side of it, at some distance from it. Flammarion found that she used a
hair, stretched from hand to hand. His colleague, the astronomer
Antoniadi, who was called in, said that it was "fraud from beginning to
end."
In 1894 Professor Richet, assisted by Mr. Myers and Sir O. Lodge,
examined her at Richet's house, and found no fraud. But Dr. Hodgson
insisted that she released her hands and feet from control and used
them, and Myers invited her to Cambridge in 1895. The result is well
known. In great disgust they reported that she cheated throughout, and
that not a single phenomenon could be regarded as genuine. This was, on
the most generous estimate, seven years after the beginning of her
public career; and Myers, the most conscientious and respected of
English Spiritualists, reported that she must have had "long practice"
in fraud. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle tells the public that she was "quite
honest" for the first fifteen years.
Her admirers were angry, and they continued to guarantee her
genuineness. She became the most famous and most prosperous medium in
the world. In 1897 and 1898 she was again in France, and Flammarion
detected her in fraud after fraud. She released her hands and feet
constantly from control. From 1905 to 1907 she was rigorously examined
by the General Psychological Institute of Paris. They reported constant
trickery and evasion of tests. Sitters were not allowed to put a foot
_on_ her right foot because she had a painful corn on it. One of her
hands must not be _clasped_ by the control because she was acutely
sensitive to pain in that hand. She will not allow a man to stand near
and do nothing but watch her. She wriggles and squirms all the time, and
releases her hands and feet. She learns that, in a photograph they have
taken of one high "levitation" of a stool, it is plainly seen to be
resting on her head, so she allows no more photographs of this. And so
on. Professor G. le Bon got her at his house for a private sitting in
1906. He was able to instal an illumination behind her of which she knew
nothing, and he plainly caught her releasing and using her hand.
In 1910 the Americans tried her. At one sitting Professor Münsterberg
was carefully controlling her left foot, as he thought, when the table
in the cabinet behind her began to move. But one man had stealthily
crept into the cabinet under cover of the dark, and he seized something.
Eusapia shrieked--it was her left foot![9] Then the professors of
Columbia University took Eusapia in hand, and finished her. They had
special apparatus ready for use, but they never used it. In a few
sittings they discovered that she was an habitual cheat, and they
abandoned the inquiry in disgust.
These are the main points in Eusapia's official record. They suffice to
damn her. She cheated from the start to the finish. Her moans and groans
and wriggles habitually enabled her to release her hands and feet from
the men who were supposed to control them. Nothing is more notorious in
her career than that. She pretended that "John King" did everything, yet
she used constantly to announce that "some very fine phenomena would be
seen to-night." She pretended to be in a trance, yet she habitually
called out "E fatto" ("It's done") when something had been accomplished,
in the dark, two feet away from her. She was alive to every suspicious
movement of the sitters, and controlled the light and the photographers.
The impressions of faces which she got in wax or putty were always _her_
face. I have seen many of them. The strong bones of her face impress
deep. Her nose is relatively flattened by the pressure. The hair on the
temples is plain. It is outrageous for scientific men to think that
either "John King" or an abnormal power of the medium _made_ a human
face (in a few minutes) with bones and muscles and hair, and precisely
the same bones and muscles and hair as those of Eusapia. I have seen
dozens of photographs of her levitating a table. On not a single one are
her person and dress entirely clear of the table. In fine, at every
single sitting, from beginning to end, the observers were distracted by
the "ghost." They were prodded and pinched and pushed, and their hair
and whiskers were pulled. It seems a pity that they did not refuse to
continue unless "John King" desisted from this frivolity. It was Eusapia
spoiling their vigilance.
Believers in Eusapia would point to some dozens of things in her record
that these professors, and even conjurers like Carrington, could not
explain. I am quite content to leave them unexplained. We are under no
obligation to explain them or else accept Spiritualism. There is, as
Schiaparelli said, a third alternative: agnosticism. If the majority of
Eusapia's tricks were at one time or other seen to be done by fraud, the
presumption is that the rest were fraud. There are scientific men who
seem to lose their common sense in these inquiries. You might put a
conjurer before them in broad daylight, and they will not see how he
does a single one of his tricks. But when, in a bad light, a lady
conjurer or medium does something which they cannot explain they appeal
to abnormal powers or ghosts. It is neither science nor common sense.
Towards the close of Eusapia's career another powerful Italian
peasant-woman, Lucia Sordi, began to interest the professors. She outdid
Eusapia in some matters. While she sat bound with cords in the cabinet,
a decanter of wine was lifted from the table, and a glass put to the
lips of each sitter. She was eventually exposed, and I will not linger
on her. She could get out of any bonds; and she had two confederates
always, in the shape of her young daughters.
Most recent of all are the phenomena of the "Goligher circle" of
Belfast. A teacher of mechanics, Mr. Crawford, has greatly strengthened
the faith by recording their wonderful exploits in his _Reality of
Psychic Phenomena_ (1916) and _Experiments in Psychical Science_ (1919).
Sir A. C. Doyle is enthusiastic about them, as is his wont. Even Sir W.
Barrett tells us that "it is difficult to believe how the cleverest
conjurer, with elaborate apparatus, could have performed" what he
witnessed. Decidedly, here is something serious. Yet I intend to dismiss
it very briefly. The "circle" consists of seven members of the Goligher
family, and they are all mediums. In other words, there were fourteen
hands and fourteen feet to be watched, in a red light (the worst in the
world for the eye), and this young teacher of science flatters himself
that he controlled them all, and meantime attended to a lot of scales
and other apparatus. We are asked to believe this after four or five
professors repeatedly failed to control the hands and feet of one woman
(Eusapia). Moreover, they were permitted to _hold_ Eusapia's hands and
feet, but Crawford was not permitted to touch the feet of his medium. He
gives no photographs, except of his superfluous scales and tables. The
Goligher family, he says, were most anxious to have photographs taken,
but the "spirits" said it would injure the medium.
When Sir W. Barrett tells the public that "the cleverest conjurer, with
elaborate apparatus," could not do these things, he talks nonsense of
which he ought to be ashamed. There is nothing in the two books that
requires any apparatus at all, or anything more than practice. Raps were
common. They have been since 1848. Mr. Crawford talks of "sledgehammer
blows" and "thunderous noises." As the mediums were never searched, the
raps may have been exceptionally loud, but Mr. Crawford naïvely gives
one detail which puts us on our guard. He one night brought a
particularly sensitive phonograph. The noises that night were
"terrific," he says. He took the record to the offices of _Light_, and
the editor of that journal can do no more than say that the noises were
"clearly audible" (p. 32). So, when Mr. Crawford tells us of strong men
being unable to press down the levitated table, we will take a pinch of
salt.
The "table" (really a light stool) usually lifted weighed two pounds.
Sir A. C. Doyle assured his audience that this was lifted as high as the
ceiling. On the contrary, Mr. Crawford expressly says that it never rose
more than four feet; which is, I find by "scientific" experiment, the
height to which a young lady, sitting on a chair, could raise such a
stool on her foot. A most remarkable coincidence. It is a further
remarkable coincidence that the young lady's weight increased, when an
object was levitated, by just the weight of that object, less about two
ounces which some other person took over (a steadying finger, for
instance). It is an even more remarkable coincidence that, when Mr.
Crawford asked for an impression of the ghostly machinery which made the
raps, the mark he got on paper was "something of an oval shape, about
two square inches in area" (p. 192); which is singularly like a young
lady's heel. Similarly, when he asked for an impression in a saucer of
putty, the mark he describes--and carefully omits to photograph for
us--is precisely the mark of a young lady's big toe with a threaded
material on it. It is further curious that this remarkable psychic
power, which can lift a ten-pound table, could not lift a _white_
handkerchief a fraction of an inch; which prompts the painful reflection
that a dark foot might be visible if it touched a white handkerchief.
Mr. Crawford's books are really too naive. He asked Kathleen, by way of
control experiment, to show him if she _could_ raise the stool on her
foot; and he asks us to believe that her very obvious wriggles and
straining prove that this was not the usual lifting force. He puts her
on a scale, and asks the "ghosts" to take a large amount of matter out
of her body. He is profoundly impressed when her weight decreases by 54½
pounds; and he asks us to believe that ghosts have taken 54½ pounds of
flesh and fat out of the fair Kathleen and "laid it on the floor." A
simpler hypothesis is that she got her toe to the floor, as Eusapia did.
Mr. Crawford ought to leave ghosts for a while, and take a course of
human anatomy and physiology. His mechanical knowledge enables him to
sketch a diagram of a "cantilever," constructed out of the medium's
body, and reaching from it to the centre of the table, a distance of
eighteen inches, or the length of Kathleen's leg from knee to foot. But
how in the name of all that is reasonable this cantilever is worked from
the body end, without wrenching the young lady's "innards" out of joint,
passes the subtlest imagination. The "spirits" were consulted as to the
way they did it. By a final peculiar coincidence it transpired that they
knew just as much about science as Kathleen Goligher; and that was
nothing.
This is a very long chapter, but the phenomena it had to discuss are the
most serious in Spiritualist literature, and I was eager to omit
nothing which is deemed important. Let me close it with a short account
of an historical occurrence, which is at the same time a parable. We are
often told that the medium was "physically incapable" of doing this or
the other. Here is an interesting illustration of human possibilities.
In 1846 all Paris was busy discussing "the electric girl." Little
Angélique Cottin, a village child of thirteen summers, a very quiet and
guileless-looking maid, exuded the "electric fluid" (ghosts were not yet
in fashion) in such abundance that the furniture almost danced about the
room. When she rose from her chair it flew back, even if a man held it,
and was often smashed. A heavy dining-table went over at a touch from
her dress. A chair held by "several strong men" was pushed back when she
sat on it. The Paris Academy of Sciences examined her, and could make
nothing of her. The chairs she rose from were sent crashing against the
wall, and broken. But one night, when the crowd gathered about her to
see the marvels, a wicked old sceptic watched her closely from a
distance. Only that afternoon a heavy dining-table, with its load of
dishes, had gone over. The child saw the sceptic's eye, yet wanted to
entertain the crowd. There was a struggle of patience between sceptic
and child for _two hours_, and at last age won. He saw her move, and
demanded an examination; and they found the bruise on her leg caused by
knocking over the heavy table. It was all over. She had developed a
marvellous way of using the muscles of her legs and buttocks
instantaneously and imperceptibly. This was, says Flammarion, "the end
of this sad story in which so many people had been duped by a poor
idiot." He is wrong on two points. The child was by no means an idiot;
and this was only the beginning, not the end. We do well to remember
what this child of thirteen could do.[10]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The account which he gives in the _Dispatch_ (March 21, 1920) is
precisely the same as his account (which I quoted verbatim in the
Debate) in his _Experience of Spiritualism with D. D. Home_, pp. 82-3.
[8] _Cesare Lombroso_ (1915), p. 416. Much is suppressed in the English
translation of his book.
[9] Mr. Hereward Carrington, who believes in the genuineness of
Eusapia's powers, makes light of this. He misses the main point. In the
minutes of the sitting, which he gives, it is expressly stated by the
controllers at this point that they have both Eusapia's hands and feet
secure. So we cannot trust such minutes when they say that the control
was perfect.
[10] Flammarion, _Les forces naturelles inconnues_, pp. 299-310.