I venture to think we have no analogies whatever. It is quite possible that a subject in a hypnotic trance might be induced to believe that he was holding a hand while in fact no hand was there, and, further, that this hand melted away in his grasp while he was holding fast on to it. But I can see practically no resemblance whatever between the two cases. For, in the case we have supposed (i) the hand did not move any material object; (ii) no one but the hypnotized subject saw the hand; and (iii) the illusion was only induced by repeated verbal suggestion to a subject already hypnotized. Where is the analogy in the two cases? Home's hands moved objects; they were seen by several people at once; and, so far as the records prove anything, they prove that constant verbal suggestions of the sort necessary were certainly not given, while there is no evidence whatever that the subjects were hypnotized! On this very subject, speaking of Home's séances, Sir William Crookes has said:
"General conversation was going on all the time, and on many occasions something on the table had moved some time before Home was aware of it. We had to draw his attention to such things far oftener than he drew our attention to them. Indeed, he sometimes used to annoy me by his indifference to what was going on...."[32]
Does this look like suggestion? Is there any similarity between the two cases? Their differences are too obvious to dwell upon. And, apart from the performances of the Hindu fakirs (which I have discussed elsewhere,[33] and which Count Solovovo himself thinks too few and too weak evidentially to require serious consideration), there is no similarity between an hallucination induced in a hypnotized subject by constant verbal suggestion, and one supposedly induced instantaneously in a large number of persons, not hypnotized, without any suggestion. The cases cannot be considered similar, or even as resembling one another in the slightest degree; while the improbability is heightened a thousandfold by the fact that these hands apparently performed physical actions and moved physical objects at the same time. The coincidence would have to be explained as well as the hallucination, in that case.
Both Count Solovovo and Miss Johnson lay particular stress upon the fact that the Master of Lindsay seems to have been extremely suggestible. Assuredly, that is an important point in so far as his own experiences are concerned, but the fact in nowise affects the experiences of others. In order to prove that suggestibility played an important part in the phenomena, it would be necessary to show that all witnesses of the phenomena were suggestible—for the phenomena were seen by all in a slightly varying degree. Yet there is no evidence that many of the witnesses were suggestible at all: they did not see things Home suggested they should see, while, on the other hand, they saw things quite on their own account, when Home was busily engaged in conversation with some one else. The whole case must be made to hang together, and if "suggestion" be the key to the puzzle, it certainly fits the lock remarkably ill.[34]
In summing-up his paper and the evidence contained therein, Count Solovovo concludes:
"For my own part I lay it down as a general proposition ... that the testimony of several sane, honest and intelligent eye-witnesses is, broadly speaking, proof of the objectivity of any phenomenon. If there are people who maintain an opposite view, let them make experiments themselves" (p. 477).
That is precisely the position I should assume: I do not believe that collective hallucinations of the kind supposed exist at spiritistic séances, except perhaps very rarely, and to special gatherings of individuals. Let me now adduce the evidence in favour of my position, and the reasons for my taking this stand so strongly.
First, then, let us distinguish between illusions and hallucinations, as this is of the very greatest importance in a discussion such as this. An illusion is a false sensory perception, the basis of which is, nevertheless, real. Thus, if an old coat in a corner of the room be mistaken for a dog, that would be an illusion. A point de repère is there—a peg, upon which the mind hangs its false inferences or perceptions. An hallucination, on the other hand, is entirely a creation of the mind, and there is, in this case, no point de repère, which exists externally, and serves as the basis of the hallucination. Roughly speaking, this may be said to be the difference between the two. Now, let us apply this to Home's séances, and to spiritistic séances in general.
During the course of my twenty years' constant investigation, I have had many score séances with various mediums—slate-writing mediums, materializing mediums, physical mediums, clairvoyant mediums, et hoc genus omne. Speaking now of materialization séances only—of which I have seen many—I may say that in all my investigations I have never seen one single instance of suggested or spontaneous hallucination. Plenty of illusions were observed, but never the trace of a full-blown hallucination.[35] And I venture to think that, if we examine the evidence in the case of D. D. Home, we find very few cases which could have been illusions—the vast majority of them seem to have been "pure hallucinations"—if they were psychological processes (as opposed to physical) at all. So that we should have to suppose that we find in these séances—not mere illusions, commonly seen at spiritualistic séances, but full-blown hallucinations of a type rarely or never seen elsewhere. In other words, these séances present evidences of psychological processes for which we can find no analogy in any other series of séances, or in hypnotic or any other phenomena with which we are familiar. I venture to think that this entirely new order of things cannot be accepted upon such evidence: that the hypothesis of hallucination cannot be said to explain anything whatever, inasmuch as it is entirely unsupported by facts, and finds no analogies whatever in any other psychological processes known to us.
At the very conclusion of his paper, Count Solovovo places his finger upon the vulnerable spot: he there points out the only way to solve the difficulty. It is by the accumulation and study of new facts. Discussions as to the historical phenomena might go on for ever and the question still remain unsolved. The only way out of the difficulty is to establish, if possible, the objective or the hallucinatory character of these newer phenomena—if such are obtained—and from them draw conclusions concerning the older manifestations. If these newer phenomena turn out to be hallucinatory—in spite of all the testimony in favour of their being objective—then it is highly probable that many of the older phenomena were hallucinatory also. If, on the other hand, the newer phenomena turn out to be physical and objective, then the improbability of the older manifestations having been hallucinatory is proportionately increased—until it becomes almost a certainty that they were not so. For, if physical phenomena of a genuine character ever do occur, the a priori improbability is at once removed, and thenceforward there is but little ground for objecting to the phenomena in Home's case; and not only those, but the phenomena in the case of Stainton Moses, and scores of others less well attested. The props would have been knocked from beneath all logical scepticism of the historical phenomena, once newer manifestations of the same type be proved true. The whole case hinges upon the fact of whether or not such new facts as may be forthcoming tend to prove either the one theory or the other. Let us therefore turn to this newer evidence, and see which alternative is rendered more probable by the phenomena in question.