PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. 



233 



moments said he saw a sort of light on the floor ; 

 and to prove it led Lord Lindsay straight to the 

 spot, and placed his hand upon the magnet. The 

 experiment was not very remarkable, but still, so 

 far as it went, it confirmed the observations of 

 Reichenbach and others. This Dr. Carpenter 

 cannot bear; so he not only proceeds to point 

 out Lord Lindsay's complete ignorance of the 

 whole subject, but makes him morally culpable 

 for not having used Dr. Carpenter's pet test of an 

 electro-magnet ; and he concludes thus : " If, then, 

 Lord Lindsay cannot be trusted as a ' faithful ' 

 witness in ' that which is least,' how can we feel 

 assured that he is ' faithful also in much ? ' " By 

 what mental jugglery Dr. Carpenter can have 

 convinced himself that he had shown that Lord 

 Lindsay " cannot be trusted as a faithful witness," 

 I am at a loss to understand. But the animus 

 against the friend of and believer in Mr. Home is 

 palpable. Now that Lord Lindsay has achieved 

 a scientific reputation, we presume there must be 

 two Lord Lindsays as well as two Mr. Crookeses : 

 one the enthusiastic astronomer and careful ob- 

 server, the other the deluded spiritualist and 

 " psychological curiosity." As these double peo- 

 ple increase it will become rather puzzling, and 

 we shall have to adopt Mr. Crookes's prefixes of 

 "Ortlio" and "Pseudo," to know which we are 

 talking about. 1 It will be well, also, to note the 

 Scriptural language employed by Dr. Carpenter 

 in making this solemn and ridiculously unfounded 

 charge. It reminds one of the " I speak advised- 

 ly" (in the celebrated Quarterly Review article 

 now acknowledged by Dr. Carpenter) which Mr. 

 Crookes has shown to be in every case the prefix 

 of a wholly incorrect statement. 2 



Dr. Carpenter heads a section of his article in 

 last month's issue of this periodical, " What Mr. 

 Wallace means by Demonstration ; " and endeav- 

 ors to show that I have misapplied the term 

 when I stated that in certain cases flowers had 

 appeared at seances, " demonstrably not brought 

 by the medium." His long quotations from Mr. 

 Home, giving purely imaginary and burlesque 

 accounts of such seances, totally unauthenticated 

 by names or dates, may be set aside, as not only 

 irrelevant, but as insulting to the readers who 

 are asked to accept them as evidence. Dr. Car- 

 penter begins by confounding the proof of a fact 

 and that of a proposition, and, against the view 

 of the best modern philosophers, maintains that 

 the latter alone can be truly said to be " demon- 



1 See Nature, November 1, 1877, p. 8. 

 8 Quarterly Journal of Science, January, 1872: "A 

 Reply to the Quarterly Review." 



strated." But this is a complete fallacy. The 

 direct testimony of the educated senses, guided 

 by reason, is of higher validity than any complex 

 result of reason alone. If I am sitting with two 

 friends, and a servant brings me a letter, I am 

 justified in saying that that letter was " demon- 

 strably not brought by one of my friends." Or 

 if a bullet comes through the window and strikes 

 the wall behind me, I am justified in saying that 

 one of my two "friends, sitting at the table, "de- 

 monstrably did not fire the pistol " — always sup- 

 posing that I am proved to be in the full posses- 

 sion of my ordinary senses by the general agree- 

 ment of my friends with me as to what happened. 

 Of course, if I am in a state of delusion or insani- 

 ty, and my senses and reasoning powers do not 

 record events in agreement with others who wit- 

 ness them, neither shall I be able to perceive the 

 force of a mathematical demonstration. If my 

 senses play me false, squares may seem to me 

 triangles and circles ellipses, and no geometrical 

 reasoning will be possible. Dr. Carpenter next 

 asserts that I "complain" of his "not accepting 

 the flowers and fruits produced in my own draw- 

 ing-room, and those which made their appearance 

 in the house of Mr. T. A. Trollope, at Florence." 

 This is simply not the case. I never asked him 

 to accept them, or complained of his not accept- 

 ing them ; but I pointed out that he did accept 

 the evidence of a prejudiced witness to support a 

 theory of imposture which was entirely negatived 

 in the two cases I referred to. 1 I implied that he 

 should either leave the subject alone, or deal with 

 the best evidence of the alleged facts. To do 

 otherwise was not "scientific," and to put anony- 

 mous and unsupported evidence before the public 

 as conclusive of the whole question was both un- 

 scientific and disingenuous. Now that he does 

 attempt to deal with these cases, he makes them 

 explicable on his own theory of imposture only 

 by leaving out the most essential facts. 



He first says that " in Mr. Wallace's own case 

 no precautions whatever had been employed ! " 

 and he introduces this with the remark, " Now it 

 will scarcely be believed," to which I will add 

 that it must not be believed, because it is untrue. 

 I have never published a detailed account of this 

 seance, but I have stated the main facts with suf- 

 ficient care 5 to show that the phenomenon itself 

 was a test surpassing anything that could have 

 been prearranged. The general precautions used 

 by me were as follows : five personal friends were 



1 See Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1877, pp. 

 41IM12. 



s " Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," p. 164. 



