CHAPTER XXII.
BOSTON AND THE HARVARD PROFESSORS (Continued).
Disinterested Judgments upon the Sham Investigation—Our Part in the Proceedings—More Fair Investigation by the Collective Representatives of the New England Press—Investigation by a Body of Unitarian Clergymen—Our Triumphant Return Home—Theodore Parker.
Not only would Prof. Agassiz not sit in circle with us, saying that he had vowed never again to sit in a circle, but he would not even consent to go into a private room with the medium, Mr. Redman, who invited him to do so when he found that the powerfully adverse influence of hostile wills and feelings strained against him, in the room in which sat the professors and the representative of The Courier, paralyzed his ability to exhibit the phenomena which, under normal circumstances, were familiar and invariable with him.
It is evident that all this was a mere sham “investigation.” The Boston Traveller said after it, that “It is the unanimous opinion of those who witnessed the whole proceedings, with the exception of the representative of The Courier, that the whole affair was in no sense of the word an investigation, and that nothing was proved or disproved by it.” And without quoting from other (non-Spiritualist) papers, I will only add from The Cambridge Chronicle of July 11th, issued under the shadow of old Harvard’s edifices, and circulated through its halls and dormitories, the following comments by a correspondent: “It is patent to observation that the committee approached the subject with preconceived views. They seem to have taken for granted that they knew more on the subject, even without investigation, than the unscientific Spiritualists with all their long experience and heart interest in it; and they erroneously judged that the public would take their ipse dixit with unreasoning deference. Because a man knows a rock, does it follow that he knows a star? or if he knows a star, does he know a Spirit? Their professors have shown their ignorance in this ‘investigation,’ nothing more,” etc.
I may say, with specific reference to the part of the “two Fox sisters,” that in spite of the bad influences upon us of the bitterly hostile spirit which ruled the so-called “investigation,” and the contemptuous ill-temper often manifested by some of the committee, I had no reason to be dissatisfied with the part played by our Spirit friends. Our rappings came, if not as profusely as usual, yet abundantly, both low and loud, in spite of our being moved to different parts of the room, of our being placed standing on cushions and on the stuffed spring seat of a sofa, etc. Their demonstrative effect was broken by Agassiz’s assurances that he could show how these could be produced by natural physiological means, and his pledge that he would do so, a pledge given in the collective form of “we,” and therefore binding on the body whose silence was assent to them. And yet on the last day, after he had in haste left the room, and when Dr. Gardner called for the fulfilment of this engagement, Prof. Pierce, who had presided, wriggled out of it by the plea that that was only an individual promise by Prof. Agassiz, and not one by the committee. Of course it would have been easy to recall Agassiz, or to hold another meeting for the purpose. Nor was that pledge ever after redeemed, in spite of the calls of the Spiritualist press. Nor could the great Agassiz have more eloquently admitted the impossibility of its fulfilment, than he did by such silence under such circumstances.
On the 10th of July, 1857, Mr. Allan Putnam, of Roxbury, published a statement from which I extract the following:
“Mrs. Brown and her sister, Miss C. Fox, were present as mediums. A conversation was started which was carried on mostly, but not entirely, by Mr. Lunt, the representative of The Courier, and Major Rains, of Newburg, N. Y., a graduate of West Point, once assistant professor there, and who, in connection with Judge Edmonds and others, made a long-continued investigation of Spiritual powers scientifically. This conversation related to the instrumentality and processes by which Spirits work, and Major Rains expressed some of his views as to the proper processes for a scientific investigation of this particular subject.
“Also, there was conversation, mostly between Professor Agassiz and Mrs. Brown, as to when and how the Fox family first learned that they possessed this mediumistic susceptibility. The substance of this harmonized with what has often been published.