6. Professor Scheibner thinks that the mental disturbance under which Zoellner suffered later, might be regarded as, at this time, incipient. He became more and more given to fixing his attention on a few ideas, and incapable of seeing what was against them. Towards the last he was passionate when criticized. Professor Scheibner would not say that Professor Zoellner's mental disturbance was pronounced and full-formed, so to speak, but that it was incipient, and, if Zoellner had lived longer, would have fully developed. Zoellner himself, "whose brothers and sisters frequently[A] suffered from mental disease, often feared lest a similar fate should come upon him."
[Footnote A: "Dessen Geschwister mehrfach" etc.—the words may be taken in two senses.]
7. Professor Scheibner gives no opinion on Spiritism. He can only say that he cannot explain the phenomena that he saw.
8. Professor Weber, said Professor Scheibner, "attended the Zoellner-Slade experiments under the same circumstances as he (Scheibner) himself."
9. Professor Zoellner's book, said Professor Scheibner, would create the impression that Weber and Fechner and he agreed with Zoellner throughout in his opinion of the phenomena "and their interpretation;" but this, he said, is not the case.
HALLE a.S., July 5th, 1886.
So much for the information given by Professor Scheibner. It now remained to see Professor Wilhelm Weber, and on the evening of July 12th I called upon him at his house in Goettingen. Of his statements I took notes during my conversation with him, as in the former instances, and copied and arranged them the same evening at my hotel. Professor Weber is now eighty-three years old, and does not lecture. He is extremely excitable and somewhat incoherent when excited. I found it difficult to induce him to talk slowly enough, and systematically enough, for me to make my notes. Professor Weber said:
1. That he thought the things he saw in the séances with Slade were different from jugglery.
2. That he did not think there was time or opportunity for Slade to prepare deceptions.
3. That he himself knew nothing of jugglery, nor did Professor Zoellner.