‘After having recognised that the medium is only a mirror, who reflects and directs the ideas and nervous forces of the assistants towards an ideoplastic end, we will not be surprised to see that suggestion plays an important rôle therein. There is no doubt but that the assistants can suggest the desired act to the medium; neither is it doubtful that the manifestations bear the stamp of surrounding beliefs. In a society of materialists I have seen “John” (with Eusapia Paladino) become dissolved into an impersonal force, which the medium simply called “questa forza,” while in intimate spiritistic circles it took the form of deceased persons, more or less clumsily. In the same way, with controllers imbued with the idea of fraud as Messrs. Hodgson and Maskelyne were, the medium will remain under the empire of a suggestion of fraud.’
Without completely sharing Ochorowicz’s conviction, I have reasons for thinking that his theory comes very close to the truth. I have myself indicated how suggestible the personification is.
There is something else. In cases where force is lacking, or is feeble, it is easier for the medium to obtain the phenomenon normally—that is to say, by fraud—rather than by veritable exteriorisation. I have remarked, that often the paranormal movement has to be normally simulated before it is supernormally realised. This is frequently the case with Eusapia. We can conceive how the movement of simulation can end in fraud, when the medium is in a hemisomnambulistic state.
In short, the energy which sets an object in movement appears to me to be of nervous origin, and I believe it to be of the same nature as that which provokes muscular contractions. Therefore, this is what follows: the force only becomes exteriorised if accumulated and wrought up to a sufficient tension. In proportion as its tension increases, so it tends to expend itself in the form of impulsive movements; the medium must resist this tendency to be able to obtain the pure phenomenon. Therefore experimenters ought to keep the medium in this resistance, and not allow him facility for expending the energy which tends to realise itself in muscular movements.
Such are the conclusions to which the observations I have made with several mediums have led me. Unconscious and involuntary fraud is frequent, and in order to avoid it, the conditions likely to favour it should be carefully put aside, especially in the beginning of a series of experiments, and when experimenting with an undeveloped medium. Medianity is powerfully influenced by acquired habits.
There exists, finally, another kind of unconscious and involuntary fraud: that which is due to illusion. It is constantly found in spiritistic seances, where ninety-nine times out of a hundred mediums produce no real phenomena. They are, nevertheless, in earnest, but they do not take into consideration the rôle of memory and imagination. This is particularly the case with intuitive writing mediums and ‘control’ mediums. With this order of phenomenon we rarely obtain verifiable indications; the ‘spirits’ utter plenty of commonplace generalities, but give no precise information.
Fraud is a misnomer in this case: being unconscious and involuntary, it cannot, correctly speaking, be called fraud; therefore it is better to reserve the word ‘illusion’ for it.
I cannot think of analysing the question of fraud in detail. If examined closely it is extremely complicated. But, like Richet, I deem ‘it possible that in states bordering on trance, and in trance itself, the psychology of a medium may be very different from ours.’ I confine myself simply to indicating the result of my reflections, which are the fruit of a long series of observations. Let me renew my oft-repeated recommendation for avoiding fraud: Experiment with light, the greatest possible amount of light, and seek for simple phenomena, difficult, perhaps, to obtain, but easy to observe, such as raps and movements without contact.
II. ERROR
If I insist so much upon the necessity, especially in the beginning, of seeking only for phenomena observation of which is easy, it is because error of observation is facile. We need to be much accustomed to seances to be able to distinguish rapidly between probable phenomena and those which are certainly tricked. It is with this, as with everything else, a question of time and reflection.