As regards raps Dr Maxwell hazards certain conclusions, of which he says the most certain is the close connection of the raps with the muscular movements on the part of the sitters. Every muscular movement, even a slight one, appears to be followed by a rap. Thus if, without anyone necessarily touching the table, one of the sitters frees his hand from the chain made round the table by others, moves it about in a circle over the surface of the table, then raises it in the centre and brings it down towards the table, stopping suddenly within a few inches of it, a rap will be produced on the table corresponding with the sudden stoppage of the hand. Similarly, a rap will be produced by a pressure of the foot on the floor, by speaking, by blowing slightly, or by touching the medium or one of the sitters. Raps produced in this way by the sitters are often stronger than those produced by the medium himself. Dr Maxwell suggests as a working hypothesis that there is a certain accumulated force, and that if its equilibrium be suddenly disturbed by the addition of the excess of energy required for the movement, a discharge takes place producing the effect.
Dr Maxwell has made a series of experiments with Eusapia Paladino.
"It was about five o'clock in the evening," he writes, "and there was broad daylight in the drawing-room at l'Aguélas. We were standing around the table. Eusapia took the hand of one of our number and rested it on the right-hand corner of the table. The table was raised to the level of our foreheads—that is, the top reached a height of at least four and three-quarter feet from the floor.... It was impossible for Eusapia to have lifted the table by normal means. One has but to consider that she touched but the corner of the table to realise what the weight must have been had she accomplished the feat by muscular effort. Further, she never had sufficient hold of it. It was clearly impossible for her, under the conditions of the experiment, to have used any of the means suggested by her critics—straps, or hooks of some kind."
Most of the phenomena discussed by Dr Maxwell were obtained through the mediumship of Eusapia Paladino. He was a member of the committee which met in 1896 to investigate this medium, who had just concluded the series of performances held under the auspices of the society at Cambridge, which were entirely unfavourable to her claims. The French committee was made aware of the fraudulent devices which the Cambridge investigators claimed to have discovered. He recommends all who believe that Dr Hodgson and his Cambridge colleagues have had the last word in the controversy to read the report which will be found in the Annales des Psychiques, for 1896. The English sitters arrive at conclusions in direct conflict with those of the French, who claim that they had long known of the tricks "discovered" at Cambridge, and in consequence took means to guard against them. Dr Maxwell indicts the Cambridge way of controlling the medium, which he says consisted, for a time at least, in affording the medium opportunities to cheat to see if she would avail herself of them. Opportunities of which she took the fullest advantage.
Nevertheless, Dr Maxwell offers but little encouragement for the theory of spiritualistic agency. "I believe," he says, "in the reality of certain phenomena, of which I have repeatedly been a witness. I do not consider it necessary to attribute them to a supernatural intervention of any kind, but am disposed to think that they are produced by some force existing within ourselves."
In the same way as certain psychical phenomena, such as automatic writing, trance, "controls," crystal vision, and so forth, in which an intelligence seems to be present independent of the intelligence of the medium, can be shown beyond dispute to be merely manifestations of his subliminal intelligence, frequently taking the form of a dramatic personification; so may the agency, revealing itself in raps, movements of objects, and other phenomena of a physical character, perhaps be traceable, not to any power external to the medium and the sitters, but merely to a force latent within themselves, and may be an exteriorisation in a dynamic form, in a way not yet ascertained, of their collective subliminal capacities.
However strange new and unknown facts may be, we need not fear they are going to destroy the truth of the old ones. Would the science of physics be overthrown if, for example, we admit the phenomenon of "raps"—i.e. audible vibrations in wood and other substances—is a real phenomenon, and that in certain cases there may be blows which cannot be explained by any mechanical force known to us? It would be a new force exercised on matter, but none the less would the old forces preserve their activity. Pressure, temperature, and the density of air or of wood might still exercise their usual influence, and it is even likely that the transmission of vibrations by this new force would follow the same laws as other vibrations.
In the opinion of the leading members of this society, some of the physical phenomena which have been adduced as among those proclaimed to have occurred, such as "apports," scent, movement of objects, passage of matter through matter, bear a perilous resemblance to conjuring tricks, of a kind fairly well known; which tricks if well done can be very deceptive. Hence extreme caution is necessary, and full control must be allowed to the observers—a thing which conjurers never really allow. Sir Oliver Lodge says that he has never seen a silent and genuinely controlled conjurer; and in so far as mediums find it necessary to insist on their own conditions, so far they must be content to be treated as conjurers. For instance, no self-registering thermometer has ever recorded the "intense cold" felt at a séance. Flowers and fruit have made their appearance in closed rooms, but no arsenic has penetrated the walls of the hermetically sealed tube. Various investigators have smelt, seen, and handled curious objects, but no trace has been preserved. We have to depend on the recollection of the observer's passing glimpse of spirit lights, of the hearing of the rustle of spirit garments, the touch, in the dark, of unknown bodies. Exquisite scents, strange draperies, human forms have appeared seemingly out of nothing, and have returned whence they came unrecorded by photography, unweighed, unanalysed.
Briefly, then, the result of my carefully formed judgment is that a large part of the physical phenomena heard, seen, felt at the average spiritualistic séance must be placed on a level with ordinary conjuring. To return to the recent case of Eusapia Paladino. A number of English scientists, interested in the reports of her séances, induced her to come to England and repeat them at Cambridge. Every effort was made to make the experiments as satisfactory as possible. They used netting for confining the medium or separating her from objects which they hoped would move without contact; different ways of tying her were tried; also sufficient light was used in the séance room. She refused to submit to any of these conditions. The investigators pressed her at each sitting to allow some light in the room, and they long persevered in making the control in every case as complete as she would allow it to be. She permitted a very faint light usually at the beginning, but before long she insisted on complete darkness, and until the lights were extinguished the touches were never felt. The sitters then held the medium, the only method of control allowed, as firmly and continuously as possible. This she resisted, and then every form of persuasion was used, short of physical force, to induce her to submit. But she was allowed to take her own way without remonstrance when the sitters were convinced of the constant fraud practised.
It is only fair to state that recent experiments on the Continent have convinced a number of leading scientists of the genuineness of Eusapia Paladino's powers, and the conclusions arrived at by the Cambridge investigators are condemned as hasty and premature.