The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BORDERLAND SCIENCE

to refrain from casual participation in these experiments and have consented to the publication of their injudicious and practically worthless condemnations or confirmations. The physical conditions under which these sensitives consent to display their gifts increase the difficulty of the inquirer’s task. Light, it seems, is very inimical to psychic phenomena. It must be shut off more or less completely. Red light is least unfavourable and may be used with discretion. On the other hand some such distracting noise as the tinkle of a musical box is a great help. The inquirer’s sight and hearing must be used with these handicaps. Moreover, the observers have to assist with their hands and often their feet embarrassed. A circle must be formed for the “ influence’ to operate. Hands must touch hands and feet feet. Indefinite periods of waiting ensue under conditions strongly conducive to boredom, fatigue, hypnotism, and sleep. Few dabblers in metapsychics can be at their critical best when “ phenomena ” occur.

Moreover, the investigator is usually obliged to acquiesce in a sort of questionbegging mythology about the facts he sees. The medium, it is commonly alleged, is merely a medium for other minds and wills ; through him or her, ghosts or other bodiless spirits are supposed to operate, either by taking possession of the central nervous system and working the larynx, limbs, and other parts, or by other less direct manifestations possible only in the medium’s presence. Phenomena of various types are produced which are ascribed to some ghost or elemental spirit which is known as the medium’s “ control.” The critical observer must tacitly accept this assumption, or, at any rate, he must walve his objections to it if he assists at a séance. He may assume that the controls are partly dissociated personalities in the medium’s brain, or that they are products of her subconscious mind, analogous to the creations of our dreams. But he will have to put his mind in the posture of recognizing these “‘ controls” as realities.

“Psychic” phenomena are of various types. One group comes under the heading of “ telekinesis *’ and includes all movements of objects due to the presence of the medium and not made by means of any forces known to normal science; tables tilt and are

elevated, objects are thrown about, tambourines are rung. Another set of phenomena includes clairvoyance and clairaudience. The observer is dependent on the word of the medium, who sees and _ hears things unseen or unheard by the observer. In more elaborate manifestations the medium goes into a trance-state and then talks, often in strange voices which ramble on, give advice, answer questions, profess to be the

Fig. 329. Photograph taken during a séance, Showing the medium Kathleen Goligher raising a table.

The table is obviously propped up by a rod coming Srom between her knees, and from which a veil-like object is hanging. These Structures are interpreted as being formed out of teleplasm exuded by the medium.

Circle,” by W. J. Crawford, D.Sc. John M. Watkins.)

(From “* The Psychic Structures at the Goligher

voices of deceased persons, deliver messages from the spirit world. Certain mediums are said to have told people secrets known to no other living person but the hearer and the controls, by the use of intimate names, old memories, and personal turns of thought and speech are frequently able to satisfy those present that they are the spirits of deceased friends and relations.

The successes are more apt to be recorded than the failures. In some recent sittings in London Miss Rebecca West, the writer,

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