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

BOOK 8

It seems Walter can materialize a thumb also. When he died, his limbs, his fingers

and thumbs fell into decay. But at the Margery séances fresh thumbmarks in wax are produced, and it is alleged that they are recognizably the same as one he left very conveniently on his razor just before his

THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

CHAPTER 9

summon other spirit thumbs to his aid or else he has become at least quadrumanous on the psychic plane. And Walter, though invisible and unsubstantial, exhales carbonic acid. Our world is richer for these material products of the combustion of refreshment, nectar and ambrosia perhaps, consumed beyond the veil. What sort of being is this invisible creature, which talks distinctly without -a palate, which whistles without lips, which adds its waste products to the volume of plant food in our world and possesses positive, negative and supplementary thumbs? Is it a ghost? Never before was there a ghost after this fashion. It is something as different in its nature from Raymond or Pheneas as a knock on a door is different from a water-colour drawing or a dream about a butterfly.

It is just this variety in essentials which furnishes the strongest argument against the objective reality of these affairs. They differ enormously with the group of observers. One series of “ manifestations *’ does not confirm another. Each series of manifestations contradicts some other in its quality and implications. It is not as if one consistent outer world, a spirit world or what you will, was really communicating with ours. Itis not in the least as if something outside was communicating through different media—remaining itself the same. It is as if one group of mediums had one set of ideas and another another, and as if what they had in their heads found expression in ‘* phenomena.”

We cannot absolutely reject the evidence for these phenomena. The group around Margery has much to lose and little to gain from their

publication. It lays itself open to

Se = irritating sceptical criticisms and

; =, . aah many unpleasant imputations. They Fig. 335. The well-known medium “ Margery”,— are evidently pleasant human people Mrs. L. R. G. Crandon, of Boston, Massachusetts. who can be very indignant with and

(From “* Margery’ the Medium.” by T-

Hamilton, Ltd.)

death. They are not all normal thumbprints such as are made by a real thumb. Some are the prints of thumbprints. And some are neither the one nor the other but mirror-prints, so to speak, of the thumb. They are not all alike ; a few are of a quite different thumb, so that either Walter can

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Malcolm Bird.

disagreeable to an aggressive inquirer like Houdini. To disbelieve this conception of what happened is to risk an appearance of accusation against them. That we would eagerly disavow. Nevertheless, we have a right to incredulity here. Perhaps no individuals are quite so simple as our ordinary law and_ business customs assume. ‘There may be a “ will to believe * and make-believe in people more

John