228 



di.sc,ovi:hy 



and replacing it, closing the letter and putting 

 back the seal — doing it very quickly and cleverly, of 

 course. Rapping on a table was found to be due to 

 the medium, or rather to the medium's toes, which, 

 when everybody in the circle took hands, were free 

 to strike the underside of the table. The great stunt 

 in the eighties was writing on slates. Two slates were 

 fastened together by a hinge on one side and a screw 

 on the other. Between them was placed a small piece 

 of slate-pencil — for the spirit. At a seance the medium 

 started his invocation and the spirit wrote. It was 

 apparently a daily, almost an hourly occurrence. The 

 commission found, however, that, in every case it 

 examined, the results were brought about by legerde- 

 main on the medium's part, almost puerile in its 

 simplicity. 



***** 

 This kind of thing is still being practised and believed 

 in at the present time, but new tricks have, of course, 

 been added to the medium's repertoire. In particular 

 the wireless telephone has been a brilliant addition to 

 his stock-in-trade. It is such a very useful thing. 

 You require a complete telephone and an accomplice 

 (a lady is best), and with a little practice and without a 

 system, you may equal the Zancigs as mind-readers, 

 and do many of the spiritualistic tricks such as the 

 disclosure of the contents of a box by one who has never 

 been near it. The lady accomplice puts the receivers 

 of the telephone over her ears, and covers these either 

 by wearing her hair like Geo de Merode, or by wearing 

 a suitable head-dress. The audience does not know 

 she has the receivers on, and as there are no tele- 

 phone wires noticeable, there is no reason why it 

 should. You, the base deceiver, get possession of the 

 information which your accomplice does not and can- 

 not know, but which, the audience has been promised, 

 will be forthcoming from her. It comes forth from 

 her in due course, and without a mistake. How ? 

 wonders the audience. You have merely to talk to 

 her by wireless from an adjacent room. Your audience 

 will say it is wonderful, uncanny. Somebody, no 

 doubt, will suggest that you have a system. But you 

 haven't. It is merely common sense and the latest 

 kind of telephone. 



***** 

 The fact that a conjurtr, by means of legerdemain 

 and apparatus, can imitate the phenomena that occur 

 at a seance does not disprove their genuineness. The 

 manifestations of the medium may be due to entirely 

 different agencies. A clever conjunr can produce a 

 spirit out of his side or from a box, so may a charlatan 

 at a seance ; it does not follow that spirits made mani- 

 fest at seances and elsewhere are not genuine. The 

 same clever conjurer can produce a rabbit out of his 

 trousers pocket or from a hat, yet we know from 



experience that this does not prove that other ways of 

 bringing rabbits into being are fraudulent. Our 

 judgment on spiritualistic phenomena must depend 

 upon our total experience — at seances and elsewhere. 

 If everything that happens at every seance of which we 

 have experience can be explained away on materialistic 

 lines, the presumption is that the phenomena which 

 occur at other seances of the same class can be similarly 

 accounted for. 



***** 



The two things that strike one most on reading this 

 book are the gullibility of human beings (including our- 

 selves) and the untrustworthiness of witnesses. People 

 think they see things which do not occur, and fail to 

 notice much that does. There is a great deal of 

 belief in third- and fourth-hemd information, and belief 

 in things because certain authorities (who may turn 

 out not to be authorities) believe in them. An amusing 

 example of this is given by the Seybert Commissioners. 

 In the late seventies, four German professors of science 

 and philosophy, men of eminence in their respective 

 lines of scholarship, were reported to be perfectly con- 

 vinced of the reaUty of the observed facts of spiritualism, 

 and that they were not due to imposture or legerdemain. 

 This report exerted quite an appreciable influence upon 

 the public mind in America. In getting down to the 

 facts, the Seybert Commission found that, at the time 

 these investigations were carried out, the four professors 

 were completely at the mercy of the mediums. One 

 of them was very bhnd, the second was suffering from 

 cataract, the third was decidedly of unsound mind, and 

 the fourth was so advanced in age that he did not even 

 recognise the disabilities of his colleagues ! 

 ***** 



We may conclude this short account by quoting, from 

 the appendix of the report, an account of a seance 

 attended by Dr. Knerr, the only member of the com- 

 mission who is now alive : 



" It was my good fortune to meet with an unprofes- 

 sio7ial medium, a young gentleman of reputed honour 

 and veracity, to whom 1 was introduced by a friend 

 who had known him from childhood, and \ouched for 

 his honesty. This young man's mediumistic abihties 

 had begun to develop with the planchette, and had 

 reached the stage in which a drum and sundry musical 

 instruments were played behind a curtain where he 

 sat entranced, with his hands tied, tightly bound 

 together by a handkerchief or cord. These seances 

 were continued with regularity on certain nights in the 

 week, and were confined strictly to the family circle 

 and to a few privileged friends. There was, therefore, 

 no temptation to deceive for gain. I came into the 

 circle as an observer, not as believer, but was impressed 

 bj- the phenomena witnessed at the first seance, in 

 which the medium wiis under Indian control. There 



