84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lished this marvelous circumstance ? You will hardly deem it pos- 

 sible, when I tell you he did it simply by noticing, in the presence of 

 certain people, that a spring-balance, of the same kind as one uses to 

 weigh letters, gave movements the causes of which were not apparent. 

 I will here show you a small drawing, so that you may understand 



it better, which illustrates the principle of an apparatus used by 

 Crookes. J3 is the strong mahogany board, several feet long, one end 

 of which rests on the table, 1\ by means of a sharp point placed in the 

 under side, while the other end is fastened to the balance, W, which 

 hangs suspended from a rest, 6r. The index of the balance shows how 

 great the weight is which it has to bear. Every movement backward 

 or forward, any shaking or pushing which is communicated to the 

 board, must be made perceptible through a rising or falling of the in- 

 dex. And now, Crookes assures us that he has perceived such mo- 

 tions of the index, in the presence of others, when Mr. Home, the prin- 

 cipal medium, did not move the apparatus at all, but was held firmly 

 by the hands and feet, some distance from it ! And that is all ! 

 Crookes ventures his monstrous assertion on the ground that the bal- 

 ance made motions which appeared to have no cause whatever ! 

 Whoever is satisfied with the general assertions of Crookes, in this 

 respect, manifests such incapability of judgment concerning science, 

 that he has simply no right to speak about such things. 



That a balance makes motions is a circumstance very easy to estab- 

 lish. We can accept it, as an actual event in Crookes's evidence, that 

 the balance has really made some motions in the presence of the so-called 

 mediums ; but when Crookes represents as an actual event that it was 

 the " psychic force " of the medium which caused this motion, and 

 altered considerably the weight of the body, it is, in spite of all 

 persuasion, no real circumstance, but a well-meant assertion of an 

 " event viewed unequally ; " a statement which does not deserve the 



