Science in Short Chapters

by W. Mattieu Williams

The gloom, the mystery, the unearthly objects of search, the mysterious noises, and other phenomena so easily manipulated in the presence of those who can see nothing and feel only the sympathetic twitching of another pair of trembling hands, naturally excites very powerfully the poor creatures who pay their half-crowns and half-guineas with any degree of faith; and this unnatural excitement, if frequently repeated, goes on increasing till the brain becomes incurably diseased.

Present space will not permit me to enter upon another branch of this subject, viz.: the moral degradation and the perversion of natural, unsophisticated, and wholesome theology, which these spiritual delusions are generating.

I am no advocate for rectifying moral and intellectual evils by police interference, or I should certainly recommend the bracing air of Dartmoor for the mediums who publicly proclaim that their familiar spirit “Katey” has lately translated a lady through a space of three miles, and through the walls, doors, and ceiling of the house in which a dark séance was being held, and placed her upon the table in the midst of the circle so rapidly that the word “onions” she had just written in her domestic inventory was not yet dried when the lights were brought and she was found there.

This “lady,” which her name is Guppy, is, of course, another professional medium, and yet there are people in London who gravely believe this story, and also the appendix, viz.: that another member of the mediumistic firm, finding that Mrs. G. was very incompletely dressed, and much abashed thereby, was translated by the same spirit, Katey, to her house and back again through the door-panel to fetch proper garments. If I could justify the apprehension and imprisonment of poor gipsy fortune-tellers, I certainly should advocate the close confinement of Mrs. Guppy and her male associates, and thus afford the potent spirit, Katey, an opportunity of further manifestation by translating them through the prison walls and back to Lamb’s Conduit Street.

(The above letter appeared in the “Birmingham Morning News” of July 18, 1871; the following on November 15. It refers to an article in the “Quarterly Review” of October, 1871.)

The interest excited by Mr. Crookes’s investigations on Psychic Force is increasing; the demand for the “Quarterly Review” and the “Quarterly Journal of Science” is so great that Mudie and other proprietors of lending libraries have largely increased their customary supplies, and are still besieged with further excess of demand. Not only borrowers, but purchasers also are supplied with difficulty. I yesterday received a post-card from a bookseller, inscribed as follows: “Cannot get a ‘Quarterly Review’ in the City, so shall be unable to send it to you until to-morrow.” I have waited three days, and am now obliged to go to the reading-room to make my quotations.

There is good and sufficient reason for this, independently of the absence of Parliamentary and war news, and the dearth of political revolutions. Either a new and most extraordinary natural force has been discovered, or some very eminent men specially trained in rigid physical investigation have been the victims of a marvelous, unprecedented, and inexplicable physical delusion. I say unprecedented, because, although we have records of many popular delusions of similar kind and equal magnitude, and speculative delusions among the learned, I can cite no instance of skillful experimental experts being utterly and repeatedly deceived by the mechanical action of experimental test apparatus carefully constructed and used by themselves.

As the interest in the subject is rapidly growing, my readers will probably welcome a somewhat longer gossip on this than I usually devote to a single subject.

Such an extension is the more demanded as the newspaper and magazine articles which have hitherto appeared have, for the most part, by following the lead of the “Quarterly Review,” strangely muddled the whole subject, and misstated the position of Mr. Crookes and others. In the first place, all the writers who follow the “Quarterly” omit any mention or allusion to Mr. Crookes’s preliminary paper published in July, 1870, which has a most important bearing on the whole subject, as it expounds the object of all the subsequent researches.

Mr. Crookes there states that “Some weeks ago the fact that I was engaged in investigating Spiritualism, so-called, was announced in a contemporary (the “Athenæum”), and in consequence of the many communications I have since received, I think it desirable to say a little concerning the investigations which I have commenced. Views or opinions I cannot be said to possess on a subject which I do not profess to understand. I consider it the duty of scientific men, who have learned exact modes of working, to examine phenomena which attract the attention of the public, in order to confirm their genuineness, or to explain, if possible, the delusions of the honest, and to expose the tricks of the deceivers.”