PEED OMINAET DEL USIONS. 



477 



aiices in the fond hope of seeing incomprehensi- 

 ble marvels by " mediums " and table-rappers, and 

 come away believing that all has been real, in- 

 stead of being only tricks worthy or unworthy of 

 a conjurer. Certainly, at no seance of spiritual- 

 ists have the performances excelled the wonders 

 effected by those adepts in conjuring, Maskelyne 

 and Cooke. 



Although exploded and discredited, table- 

 turning has latterly come up in the new form of 

 planehette, a fashionable toy alleged to be en- 

 dowed with singularly mystic qualities. Con- 

 sisting of a small and easily-moved board, in 

 which a pencil is stuck with the point downward 

 on paper or slate laid on a table, the machine is 

 said to be capable of answering questions put to 

 the operator who presses on the board with his 

 hands. No doubt, the pencil will write answers 

 as required, but it does so only by the conscious 

 or unconscious muscular action of the hands on 

 the board. This weak device of pretending to 

 get answers to questions by the agency of an in- 

 animate piece of wood and a pencil, has been re- 

 sorted to by real or sham believers in spiritual- 

 ism ; and we are presented with the melancholy 

 spectacle of decent-looking ladies and gentle- 

 men sitting gravely round a table, affecting 

 to hold a conversation with beings in the unseen 

 world. 



Just as mesmerism lost its reputation as a 

 branch of psychology, so has spiritualism begun 

 to be estimated at its true value. It was always 

 very much against it, that its professors held their 

 seances in darkened apartments, and that for the 

 most part they took money for the display of their 

 wonders. The thing became a trade, and so it 

 would have continued but for the prosecution and 

 conviction of persons who stood guilty of impost- 

 ure, and of taking money under false pretenses. 

 To add to the discomfiture of trading spiritualists, 

 their tricks have been exposed in the book, 

 " Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism," by D. D. 

 Home, who, however, lets it be known that he is 

 among the few genuine professors of the art whose 

 operations are alleged to be beyond suspicion ! 

 As shown by Dr. Carpenter, deception is not con- 



fined to those who practise for gain. He speaks 

 of young ladies who take pleasure in imposing on 

 elderly persons by tricks of an ingenious kind. 

 "I could tell," says he, "the particulars, in my 

 possession, of the detection of the imposture 

 practised by one of the most noteworthy of these 

 lady-mediuins, in the distribution of flowers which 

 she averred to be brought in by the ' spirits' in a 

 dark seance, fresh from the garden and wet with 

 the dew of heaven ; these flowers having really 

 been previously collected in a basin up-stairs, and 

 watered out of a decanter standing by — as was 

 proved by the fact that an inquisitive skeptic 

 having furtively introduced into the water of the 

 decanter a small quantity of a nearly colorless salt 

 (ferrocyanide of potassium), its presence in the 

 dew of the flowers was afterward recognized by 

 the appropriate chemical test (a per-salt of iron), 

 which brought out 'Prussian-blue.' " 



Other instances are presented of deceptions 

 practised in private seances; but for these and 

 much that illustrates the whole tenor of the de- 

 lusion, we must refer to the work itself. We re- 

 strict ourselves to quoting only one, but a very 

 pertinent remark : " It is affirmed, such exposures 

 prove nothing against the genuineness of any new 

 manifestation. But I affirm that to any one ac- 

 customed to weigh the value of evidence, the fact 

 that the testimony in favor of a whole series of 

 antecedent claims has been completely upset, 

 seriously invalidates (as I have shown in regard 

 to mesmeric clairvoyance) the trustworthiness of 

 the testimony in favor of any new claimant to 

 ' occult ' powers. Why should I believe the tes- 

 timony of any believer in the genuineness of D's 

 performances, when he has been obliged to admit 

 that he has been egregiously deceived in the cases 

 of A, B, and C ? " 



Tor this instructive and admirably written 

 work, offering a lucid philosophical explanation 

 of the source of predominant delusions, which 

 are apt to be turned to a bad account by the de- 

 signing, and are in every sense mischievous, as 

 conveying erroneous notions of natural phenom- 

 ena, the learned author deserves the hearty thanks 

 of the community. — Chambers's Journal. 



