But, even of the other class, those who have lent themselves to the conditions of the investigator, while admitting the bona-fides of the medium, we are by no means prepared to regard them as necessarily the result of the action of disembodied spirits. Nor do many leading spiritualists themselves.
For, as we have just seen, there is still another explanation for supernormal physical movements. May there not be an unknown, or at least an unrecognised, extension of human muscular faculty? Such a hypothesis is no more extravagant than would have been the hypothesis of the Hertzian waves or a prediction of wireless telegraphy a few short years ago.
This is not all. We must remember that there is a mass of phenomena which cannot lightly be explained away by glib references to unknown extensions of muscular faculty. Of such is the fire ordeal, one of the most inexplicable and best attested of the manifestations presented by Daniel Dunglas Home. The evidence is abundant and of high quality, the witnesses of undoubted integrity, and, from the nature of the experiment, the illuminations of the room were generally more adequate than in the case of the levitations and elongations. On one occasion, Home thrust his hand into the fire, and bringing out a red-hot cinder laid it upon a pocket-handkerchief. When at the end of half-a-minute it was removed, the handkerchief was quite free from any traces of burning.
Not content with handling glowing embers himself, Home would hand them on to others present at the séance, who were generally able to receive them with impunity. This effectually disposes of the theory formulated by an ingenious critic that Home was in the custom of covering his hands with some fire-proof preparation as yet unknown to science! Even if Home possessed and used such a preparation he would find considerable difficulty in transferring it to the hands of his spectators.
Here is an account of a séance which took place on the 9th May 1871. After various manifestations, two out of the four candles in the room were extinguished. Home went to the fire, took out a piece of red-hot charcoal, and placed it on a folded cambric pocket-handkerchief which he borrowed for the purpose from one of the guests. He fanned the charcoal to white heat with his breath, but the handkerchief was only burnt in one small hole. Mr Crookes, who was present at the séance, tested the handkerchief afterwards in his laboratory and found that it had not been chemically prepared to resist the action of fire.
After this exhibition—
"Mr Home again went to the fire, and, after stirring the hot coal about with his hand, took out a red-hot piece nearly as big as an orange, and putting it on his right hand, so as almost completely to enclose it, and then blew into the small furnace thus extemporised until the lump of charcoal was nearly white hot, and then drew my attention to the lambent flame which was flickering over the coal and licking round his fingers; he fell on his knees, looked up in a reverent manner, held up the coal in front, and said, 'Is not God good? Are not his laws wonderful?'"
Among those who have left on record their testimony to this manifestation are Lord Lindsay, Lord Adare, H. D. Jencken, W. M. Wilkinson, S. C. Hall, etc. etc.
As the great mathematician Professor de Morgan once wittily and wisely wrote:
"If I were bound to choose among things which I can conceive, I should say that there is some sort of action of some combination of will, intellect, and physical power, which is not that of any of the human beings present. But, thinking it very likely that the universe may contain a few agencies—say, half-a-million—about which no man knows anything, I cannot but suspect that a small proportion of these agencies—say, five thousand—may be severally competent to the production of all the phenomena, or may be quite up to the task among them. The physical explanations which I have seen are easy, but miserably insufficient; the spiritual hypothesis is sufficient, but ponderously difficult. Time and thought will decide, the second asking the first for more results of trial."