The reader now has the facts before him. I have no theory to offer as to the nature of these photographs, save that they appear to me to be genuine and supernormal from all the evidence and testimony that I have been enabled to obtain. In my Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism I have explained a number of ways in which fraudulent "spirit" photographs can be obtained; and in Modern Psychical Phenomena I reproduced a number of photographs which seemed to me to be supported by excellent testimony, and which were, so far as I could see, genuine psychic photographs. In that volume I also discussed the various theories which have been advanced in the past to explain these extraordinary photographs. The present collection is intended merely to supplement the former, and to present a number of photographs the solution for which is, it seems to me, yet to be found.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Regarding the earlier photographs, however (those obtained by Mrs. Dupont Lee), further evidence has caused me to modify my belief in their supernormal value, and I should now attach no "evidential value" to them at all, strictly speaking. In an excellent criticism of the Lee photographs, published in the Proceedings, Amer. S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 529-87, Dr. Walter F. Prince has shown the undoubtedly fraudulent character of the Lee photographs—certainly those with which Keeler had anything to do. The others are still sub judice.
[23] T. C. and E. C. Jack, Edinburgh.
[24] Not reproduced here.
HALLUCINATION AND THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM[25]
The discussion begun by Count Solovovo, and continued by Miss Johnson,[26] is assuredly of supreme importance to psychical research. Whether or no many of the alleged "physical phenomena" are genuine, or whether they are merely hallucinatory in character, is a question which involves—not only the phenomena themselves, but psychology and human life in general, and even influences strongly science and scientific experiments in other fields.... The senses are to be relied upon in every science other than psychic research; that seems to be the dictum of the world, and strange and even absurd as it may seem, it is, as we know, more or less founded upon fact. In no other science is fraud practised as it is in this; in practically no other line of research are the mental and physical powers so strained out of their usual or normal relations and perceptions as they are in this. It is only right, then, that Caution should be the password, and should be most rigidly employed in all such investigations as these.