“(d) The fact that it has been found impossible to produce the same results by fraud under the conditions in which these phenomena are obtained.
“(e) The fact that these special phenomena are not only produced in public and by paid mediums, but likewise in a family circle where no strangers are admitted.”
Without writing to prejudice the question, I believe, in my turn, that I can solemnly affirm that this force has intimate connection with the soul, the mind or the ministerial part of our being, as it is called; that it acts on our ideas as well as on our physiological functions, and it is to my mind the destiny of humanity to investigate its essence and study its phenomena, its manifestations and all its sensible effects by all our senses and means of investigation.
It is high time that secular boasting of the materialistic scientists be checked, and that they should recognize the fact that force does not arise from matter alone but exists independent of it and primarily submits to its laws.
Starting, then, with the proposition that an unknown force exists, to whose influence we unconsciously submit, science should investigate this force, isolate, and control it, if it be in our power so to do.
Instead of opposing an ignorant skepticism to modern discoveries in psychic force, our learned Academicians should investigate the acquired facts for inspiration in future work, remembering that good thought of Laplace: “We are so far from knowing all the agents of Nature and their different modes of action, that it is not philosophical to deny the existence of phenomena simply because they cannot be explained in the actual condition of our present knowledge.”[94]
Such are the conclusions I believe I have a right to draw from my historical studies on the Demonomania of the Middle Ages. Let me briefly recapitulate my personal views on the subject:
1. There exists a psychic force, intelligent, inherent to humanity, manifesting itself, under determined conditions, by various phenomena, with an intensity more or less great.
2. Certain human beings, known as mediums, who are very sensitive to the action of magnetism, facilitate the production of these phenomena, considered as supernatural in the actual state of our present scientific knowledge, and in apparent contradiction with all known physical and physiological laws.