Broadly speaking, the phenomena of modern Spiritualism may be divided into two classes: (1) Physical, (2) Subjective. Of the first, the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”, in its brief but able review of the subject, says: “Those which, if correctly observed and due neither to conscious or unconscious trickery nor to hallucination on the part of the observers, exhibit a force hitherto unknown to science, acting in the physical world otherwise than through the brain or muscles of the medium.” The earliest of these phenomena were the mysterious rappings and movements of furniture without apparent physical cause. Following these came the ringing of bells, playing on musical instruments, strange lights seen hovering about the séance-room, materializations of hands, faces and forms, “direct writing and drawing” declared to be done without human intervention, spirit photography, levitation, unfastening of ropes and bandages, elongation of the medium’s body, handling fire with impunity, etc.
Of the second class, or Subjective Phenomena, we have “table-tilting and turning with contact; writing, drawing, etc., by means of the medium’s hand; entrancement, trance-speaking, and impersonation by the medium of deceased persons, seeing spirits and visions and hearing phantom voices.”
From a general scientific point of view there are three ways of accounting for the physical phenomena of spiritualism: (1) Hallucination on the part of the observers; (2) Conjuring; (3) A force latent in the human personality capable of moving heavy objects without muscular contact, and of causing “Percussive Sounds” on table-tops, and raps upon walls and floors.
Hallucination has unquestionably played a part in the séance-room, but here again the statement of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” is worthy of consideration: “Sensory hallucination of several persons together who are not in a hypnotic state is a rare phenomenon, and therefore not a probable explanation.” In my opinion, conjuring will account for seven-eighths of the so-called phenomena of professional mediums. For the balance of one-eighth, neither hallucination nor legerdemain are satisfactory explanation. Hundreds of credible witnesses have borne testimony to the fact of table-turning and tilting and the movements of heavy objects without muscular contact. That such a force exists is now beyond cavil, call it what you will, magnetic, nervous, or psychic. Count Agenor de Gasparin, in 1854, conducted a series of elaborate experiments in table-turning and tilting, in the presence of his family and a number of skeptical witnesses, and was highly successful. The experiments were made in the full light of day. The members of the circle joined hands and concentrated their minds upon the object to be moved. The Count published a work on the subject “Des Tables Tournantes,” in which he stated that the movements of the table were due to a mental or nervous force emanating from the human personality. This psychic energy has been investigated by Professor Crookes and Professor Lodge, of London, and by Doctor Elliott Coues, of Washington, D. C., who calls it “Telekinesis.” The existence of this force sufficiently explains such phenomena of the séance-room as are not attributable to hallucination and conjuring, thus removing the necessity for the hypothesis of spirit intervention. In explanation of table-turning by “contact,” I quote what J. N. Maskelyne says in “The Supernatural”:
“Faraday proved to a demonstration that table-turning was simply the result of an unconscious muscular action on the part of the sitters. He constructed a little apparatus to be placed beneath the hands of those pressing upon the table, which had a pointer to indicate any pressure to one side or the other. After a time, of course, the arms of the sitters become tired and they unconsciously press more or less to the right or left. In Faraday’s experiments, it always proved that this pressure was exerted in the direction in which the table was expected to move, and the tell-tale pointer showed it at once. There, then, we have the explanation: expectancy and unconscious muscular action.”
II. SUBJECTIVE PHENOMENA.
1. Telepathy.
The subjective phenomena of Spiritualism—trance speaking, automatic writing, etc.,—have engaged the attention of some of the best scientific minds of Europe and America, as studies of abnormal or supernormal psychological conditions.