Chapter XV: Book V (3)

In addition to these freaks played on human credulity by “psychic force,” Mr. Crookes gives another class of phenomena, which he terms “special instances,” which _seem_ (?) to point to the agency of an _exterior_ intelligence.[338]

“I have been,” says Mr. Crookes, “with Miss Fox when she has been writing a message automatically to one person present, whilst a message to another person, on _another_ subject, was being given alphabetically by means of ‘raps,’ and the whole time she was conversing freely with a third person, on a subject totally different from either.... During a seance with Mr. Home, a small lath moved across the table to me, _in the light_, and delivered a message to me by tapping my hand; I repeating the alphabet, and the lath tapping me at the right letters ... being at a distance from Mr. Home’s hands.” The same lath, upon request of Mr. Crookes, gave him “a telegraphic message through the Morse alphabet, by taps on my hand” (the Morse code being quite unknown to any other person present, and but imperfectly to himself), “and,” adds Mr. Crookes, “it convinced me that there was a good Morse operator at the other end of the line, WHEREVER THAT MIGHT BE.”[339] Would it be undignified in the present case to suggest that Mr. Cox should search for the operator in his private principality—Psychic Land? But the same lath does more and better. In full light in Mr. Crookes’ room _it_ is asked to give a message, “ ... a pencil and some sheets of paper had been lying on the centre of the table; presently the _pencil rose on its point_, and after advancing by hesitating jerks to the paper, fell down. It then rose, and again fell.... After three unsuccessful attempts, a small wooden lath” (the Morse operator) “which was lying near upon the table, _slid towards the pencil_, and _rose_ a few inches from the table; the pencil rose again, _and propping itself against the lath_, the two together made an effort to mark the paper. It fell, and then _a joint effort_ was made again. After a third trial the lath gave it up, and _moved back to its place_; the pencil lay as it fell across the paper, and an alphabetic message told us: “We have tried to do as you asked, but _our power_ is exhausted.”[340] The word _our_, as the joint intelligent efforts of the friendly lath and pencil, would make us think that there were _two_ psychic forces present.

In all this, is there any proof that the directing agent was “the intelligence of the medium”? Is there not, on the contrary, every indication that the movements of the lath and pencil were directed by spirits “of the dead,” or at least of those of some other unseen {204} intelligent entities? Most certainly the word magnetism explains in this case as little as the term _psychic force_; howbeit, there is more reason to use the former than the latter, if it were but for the simple fact that the _transcendent_ magnetism or mesmerism produces phenomena identical in effects with those of spiritualism. The phenomenon of the _enchanted_ circle of Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, is as contrary to the accepted laws of physiology as the rising of a table without contact is to the laws of natural philosophy. As strong men have often found it impossible to raise a small table weighing a few pounds, and broken it to pieces in the effort, so a dozen of experimenters, among them sometimes, academicians, were utterly unable to step across a chalk-line drawn on the floor by Du Potet. On one occasion a Russian general, well known for his skepticism, persisted until he fell on the ground in violent convulsions. In this case, the magnetic fluid which opposed such a resistance was Mr. Cox’s psychic force, which endows the tables with an extraordinary and supernatural weight. If they produce the same psychological and physiological effects, there is good reason to believe them more or less identical. We do not think the deduction could be very reasonably objected to. Besides, were the fact even denied, this is no reason why it should not be so. Once upon a time, all the Academies in Christendom had agreed to deny that there were any mountains in the moon; and there was a certain time when, if any one had been so bold as to affirm that there was life in the superior regions of the atmosphere as well as in the fathomless depths of the ocean, he would have been set down as a fool or an ignoramus.

“The Devil affirms—it must be a lie!” the pious Abbé Almiguana used to say, in a discussion with a “spiritualized table.” We will soon be warranted in paraphrasing the sentence and making it read—“Scientists deny—then it must be true.”