‘She fixed this catch—either stooping or bending her legs slightly outward—to one of the sideboards of the table, or to some point in the neighbourhood of the junctures of, for example, sideboards and top of table. She straightened herself out, stiffened her shoulders and her body back, and pushed forward with her foot against the leg of the table, close to which she was standing. The light touch of one of her hands may have helped to steady the table, the edge of which may also have been in contact with her body. Was this hypothesis or any kindred hypothesis tested by Professor Lodge?’ etc.
This long quotation shows how Hodgson reasons. Conscientious savants omitted to indicate, explicitly, in their report, that every hypothesis of fraud had been studied and put to one side; they omitted to analyse each hypothesis, because their implicit affirmation of the reality of the fact appeared sufficient to them, and a detailed examination of each hypothesis would have given exaggerated dimensions to their report. No matter. Analysts like Dr. Hodgson will not spare them, and will not hesitate to indicate hypotheses, even those the least compatible with the conditions of observation.
However, the Cambridge experiments were decided upon, and although Hodgson had taken a decided stand in the matter, he was invited to assist. These experiments gave bad results, and Sidgwick was able to say, in spite of the contrary observations of other experimenters, who were his colleagues in the Society for Psychical Research (Journal S. P. R., vii. 230): ‘It will be seen that at our last meeting a question was asked with regard to “phenomena” obtained by Eusapia Paladino subsequent to the exposure of her frauds at Cambridge. It may be well that I should briefly state why I do not intend to give any account of these phenomena.
‘It has not been the practice of the Society for Psychical Research to direct attention to the performances of any so-called “medium” who has been proved guilty of systematic fraud. Now, the investigation at Cambridge, of which the results are given in the Journal for November 1895, taken in connection with an article by Professor Richet in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, for January-February 1893, placed beyond reasonable doubt the facts that the frauds discovered (sic) by Dr. Hodgson at Cambridge, had been systematically practised by Eusapia Paladino for years. In accordance, therefore, with our established custom, I propose to ignore her performances for the future, as I ignore those of other persons engaged in the same mischievous trade.’
Such a judgment made a considerable and lamentable stir: if it were exact, it was just to pronounce it; if it were not thoroughly exact, Sidgwick should have suspended his verdict. This is what Myers advised—this is what Lodge and Richet advised. But the experimenters who followed Hodgson’s impulse did not do this. They made a mistake, and subsequent events have proved they were wrong.
I have said that their judgment was not quite accurate. Professor Sidgwick said, addressing a general meeting of the Society for Psychical Research on the 11th October 1895 (Journal S. P. R., vii. 131):—
‘I consider it to be proved beyond a doubt that the medium used systematic trickery throughout this series of sittings. Her modus operandi I will leave to Dr. Hodgson to describe, who—though only present during a part of the sittings—has had better opportunities for personally observing the actual process of fraud. When this trickery was discovered, the greater part of the phenomena offered as supernormal at these sittings were at once explained; and, this being so, I think it, in the circumstances, unreasonable to attribute—even hypothetically—to supernormal agency the residuum that was not so easily explicable. And considering the great general resemblance between the performances of the medium at these sittings and those I witnessed last year, I am now disposed to think that my earlier experiences are to be similarly explained; I therefore wish to withdraw altogether the limited and guarded support which I gave last year to the supernormal pretensions of Eusapia Paladino.’
So Sidgwick declares that his former experiments were null and void, as everything could be explained by trickery!
Hodgson, at that same general meeting, explained the means used by Eusapia, the surreptitious freeing of foot and hand, and some simple apparatus such as a handkerchief and a small object, such as a coin or a piece of paper, covered with some phosphorescent preparation. Hodgson—and Myers reminded him of this—forgot to say that he had invented nothing, and that these trick devices had been discovered and previously pointed out by others, notably by Richet, who has often experimented with Eusapia Paladino. Sidgwick remarks that a portion of the phenomena are not easily explicable by fraud. It would have been interesting to know which. I suspect that certain levitations were among the number of these phenomena. But the notes published in the Journal S. P. R., vii. 148, only mention attouchements, and it is advisable to limit the discussion to this fact, though it appears to me the least demonstrative.