Science in Short Chapters

by W. Mattieu Williams

There is one serious defect in the accordion experiment. The cage is represented in the engraving as placed under a table; Mr. Home holds the instrument in his hand, which is concealed by the table, and it does not appear that either Mr. Crookes, Dr. Huggins, or Serjeant Cox placed themselves under the table during the concertina performance, and thus neither of them saw Mr. Home’s hand. Such, at least, appears from the description and the engraving. A story being commonly circulated respecting some of Mr. Home’s experiments in Russia, according to which he failed entirely when a glass table was provided instead of a wooden one, it would be well, if only in justice to Mr. Home, to get rid of the table altogether.

It is very desirable that these experiments should be continued, for two distinct reasons; first, as a matter of ordinary investigation for philosophical purposes, and, secondly, as a means of demolishing the most degrading superstition of this generation.

If Mr. Crookes succeeds in demonstrating the existence of the psychic force and reducing it to law—as it must be reducible if it is a force—then the ground will be cut from under the feet of spiritualism, just as the old superstitions, which attributed thunder and lightning to Divine anger, were finally demolished by Franklin’s kite. If, on the other hand, the arch-medium, Mr. Home, is proved to be a common conjuror, then surely the dupes of the smaller “mediumistic” fry will have their eyes opened, provided the cerebral disturbance which spiritualism so often induces has not gone so far as to render them incurable lunatics.

It is very likely that I shall be accused of gross uncharitableness in thus applying the term lunatic to “those who differ from me,” and therefore state that I have sad and sufficient reasons for doing so.

The first spiritualist I ever knew, and with whom I had many conferences on the subject many years ago, was a lady of most estimable qualities, great intellectual attainments, and distinguished literary reputation. I watched the beginning and the gradual progress of her spiritual “investigations,” as she called them, and witnessed the melancholy end—shocking delusions, intellectual shipwreck, and confirmed, incurable insanity, directly and unmistakably produced by the action of these hideous superstitions upon an active, excitable imagination.

I well remember the growing symptoms of this case, have seen their characteristic features repeated in others, and have now before me some melancholy cases where the same changes, the same decline of intellect and growth of ravenous credulity, is progressing with most painfully visible distinctness.

The necessity for some strong remedy is the more urgent, inasmuch as the diabolical machinery of the spiritual impostors has been so much improved of late. The lady whose case I first referred to had reached the highest stage of spiritualistic development—viz., the lunatic asylum—before “dark séances” had been invented, or, at any rate, before they were introduced into this country. When the conditions of these séances are considered, it is not at all surprising that persons of excitable temperament, especially women, should be morbidly affected by them.

We are endowed with certain faculties, and placed in a world wherein we may exercise them healthfully upon their legitimate objects. Such exercise, properly limited, promotes the growth and vigor of our faculties; but if we pervert them by directing them to illegitimate objects, we gradually become mad. God has created the light, and fitted our eyes to receive it; He has endowed us with the sense of touch, by which we may confirm and verify the impressions of sight. All physical phenomena are objects of sense, and the senses of sight and touch are the masters of all the other senses.

Can anything, then, be more atrociously perverse, more utterly idiotic, and I may even say impious, than these dark séance investigations? Is it possible to conceive a more melancholy spectacle of intellectual degradation than that presented by a group of human victims assembled for the purpose of “investigating physical manifestations,” and submitting, as a primary condition, to be blinded and handcuffed, the room in which they sit being made quite dark, and both hands of each investigator being firmly held by those of his neighbors. That is to say, the primary conditions of making these physical investigations is that each investigator shall be deprived of his natural faculties for doing so.

When we couple this with the fact that these meetings are got up—publicly advertised by adventurers who make their livelihood by the fees paid by their hoodwinked and handcuffed customers—is it at all surprising that those who submit to such conditions should finish their researches in a lunatic asylum?