252 SCIENCE UST SHORT CHAPTERS. 



experts being utterly and repeatedly deceived by the mechanical 

 action of experimental test apparatus carefully constructed and used 

 by themselves. 



As the interest in the subject is rapidly growing, my readers will 

 probably welcome a somewhat longer gossip on this than I usually 

 devote to a single subject. 



Such an extension is the more demanded as the newspaper and 

 magazine articles which have hitherto appeared have, for the most 

 part, by following the lead of the Quarterly .Review, strangely muddled 

 the whole subject, and misstated the position of Mr. Crookes and 

 others. In the first place, all the writers who follow the Quarterly 

 omit any mention or allusion to Mr. Crookes's preliminary paper 

 published in July, 1870, which has a most important bearing on the 

 whole subject, as it expounds the object of all the subsequent re- 

 searches. 



Mr. Crookes there states that ' ' Some weeks ago the fact that I was 

 engaged in investigating Spiritualism, so-called, was announced in a 

 contemporary (the Athenceum), and in consequence of the many com- 

 munications I have since received, I think it desirable to say a little 

 concerning the investigations which I have commenced. Views or 

 opinions I cannot be said to possess on a subject which I do not pro- 

 fess to understand. I consider it the duty of scientific men, who 

 have learned exact modes of working, to examine phenomena which 

 attract the attention of the public, in order to confirm their genuine- 

 ness, or to explain, if possible, the delusions of the honest, and to 

 expose the tricks of deceivers." 



He then proceeds to state the case of Science versus Spiritualism 

 thus : " The Spiritualist tells of bodies weighing 50 or 100 Ibs. be- 

 ing lifted up into the air without the intervention of any known 

 force ; but the scientific chemist is accustomed to use a balance 

 which will render sensible a weight so small that it would take ten 

 thousand of them to weigh one grain ; he is, therefore, justified in 

 asking that a power, professing to be guided by intelligence, which 

 will toss a heavy body to the ceiling, shall also cause his delicately- 

 poised balance to move under test conditions." " The Spiritualist 

 tells of rooms and houses being shaken, even to injury, by superhu- 

 man power. The man of science merely asks for a pendulum to be 

 sent vibrating when it is in a glass-case, and supported on solid 

 masonry. " t " The Spiritualist tells of heavy articles of furniture 

 moving from one room to another without human agency. But the 

 man of science has made instruments which will divide an inch into 

 a million parts, and he is justified in doubting the accuracy of the 

 former observations, if the same force is powerless to move the index 

 of his instrument one poor degree." <; The Spiritualist tells of 

 flowers with the fresh dew on them, of fruit, and living objects being 

 carried through closed windows, and even solid brick walls. The 

 scientific investigator nattirally asks that an additional weight (if it 

 be only the 1000th part of a grain) be deposited on one pan of his 

 balance when the case is locked. And the chemist asks for the 

 1000th part of a grain of arsenic to be carried through the sides of a 

 gas tube in which pure water is hermetically sealed. ' ' 



These and other requirements are stated by Mr. Crookes, together 

 with further exposition of the principles of strict inductive investiga- 

 tion, as it should be applied to such an inquiry. A year after this he 



