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

BORDERLAND SCIENCE

variety of transmission methods. The messages of the planchette, like those of automatic writing, are concrete enough ;_ but

the host of experiments carried out by Janet

and others shows that, far from being evidence of communication with a spirit world, they are normal channels for the outpourings of the operator’s own subconscious mind.

A method of communication, once very popular but now out of fashion with mediums, was slate-writing. In this type of manifestation the slates are tied and locked and sealed together with a piece of chalk or so between them. After suitable incantations the slates are opened and communications, answers to questions and so forth are found written upon them.

This slate work has been successfully imitated by conjurers. The classical case is that of the late Mr. S. J. Davey (set forth with the utmost particularity in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. IV). Davey asserted that he had mediumistic powers, and, under proper observation, produced all the characteristic phenomena. He induced those who were present at the séance to set down, as explicitly as they could, exactly what they had observed. He then gave his own account of the manipulations by which he had deceived them. A comparison of the records showed wide disagreement between the observers, and it was surprising to realize what they had missed and what they had misinterpreted. The brightest incident was the production of a concealed name by the operator. A Persian gentleman known as Mr. Padshah had asked him to ask the spirit for his name, Padshah being merely the name he found convenient to use in America. His proper formal patronymic was Boorzu. Davey had either forgotten this question or,

failing to understand the drift of it, ignored

it, but wanting to perform some wonder.

with books, he wrote the word “ Books ” between the slates. He wrote it indistinctly. When the slates were opened Mr. Padshah immediately read the word as his own name and explained the wonder to the company. It was difficult for Davey to convince him that a miracle of telepathy had not occurred. It was still more difficult for Mr. Davey to persuade many of the believers in mediumistic phenomena that he was not really a medium, basely representing his gifts as mere tricks. This was the attitude taken up by Dr. Alfred Wallace, the great biologist, who was also a spiritualist, towards the celebrated conjurers Maskelyne and Lynn.

8 4 Materialization and Ectoplasm

The word “ materialization”’ first made its appearance in America in 1873 to denote what had been previously called “ spirit forms.” It was at a time when the rage for “occult” pursuits had become almost universal in Europe and America. In the States this development is usually dated from 1848, when the ‘Rochester rappings” first attracted attention. These were assumed to be signals from the dead ; and although they were afterwards explained as sounds produced by snapping the big toe inside the shoe by the very women who had figured as the mediums, this belated confession was powerless to stop the wave of occultism which swept America and Europe, invading the humblest homes as well as the most brilliant Courts, and demanding official recognition from the guardians of science.

Thus we find names of the first magnitude like Faraday, Lubbock, Huggins, and Crookes on the list of persons seriously studying the alleged phenomena and hoping to find something which could be established on a secure basis. ‘They found themselves on unfamiliar ground. Instead of dealing with material bodies and processes under conditions of their own choosing, they found these conditions arbitrarily varied by what claimed to be supernatural authority, an authority not amenable to the ordinary conventions and canons of evidence. It was obviously impossible to obtain anything in the nature of scientific evidence in the circumstances. Crookes alone chose to waive the precautions which would have made his results evidential.

His “ success’? marks the pinnacle of mediumistic achievements. The “ spirits ” gained such confidence in his readiness to observe the prescribed conditions that eventually a complete materialized spirit calling herself Katie King appeared, walked about the room on his arm, submitted to being photographed and even embraced, and finally disappeared by being in some mysterious way absorbed into the body of the medium, Florence Cook, a girl of about the same age.

This episode has led countless investigators to emulate Crookes. It has appealed to many instincts, combining as it did the mystery of Undine with the religious wonder of spirit made flesh. The subsequent history of occultism is largely the story of attempts to reproduce the phenomena related by Sir William Crookes.

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