Chapter IV: Other Seances with Eusapia Paladino (3)

No. 3 is greatly exhausted with the heat. And, lo! a hand, which takes
his handkerchief from his neck and with it dries the perspiration on
his face. He tries to seize the handkerchief with his teeth, but it is
snatched from him. A big hand lifts his left hand and makes him rap
several strokes with it on the table.

Gleams of light begin to appear, at first on the right hand of No. 5,
then in different parts of the hall. They are perceived by everybody.

The curtain is inflated, as if it were pushed against by a strong
wind, and touches No. 11, who is seated in a small easy-chair a yard
and a half from the medium. The same person is touched by a hand,
while another hand pulls a fan from the inside pocket of his jacket,
carries it to No. 5 and then to No. 11. The fan is soon returned to
its owner, and is moved to and fro above our heads, to the great
satisfaction of all of us. A tobacco pouch is taken from the pocket of
No. 3: the Invisible empties it on the table, and then gives it to No.
10. Various stems of plants drop upon the table.

Transfers of the fan from one hand to another begin again. Then No. 11
believes that he ought to announce that the fan had been offered to
him by a young girl who had expressed the wish that it be transferred
to No. 11, then given back to No. 5. Nobody knew about this except No.
11.

No. 5, who at present occupies the small arm-chair where formerly No.
11 was seated, a yard and a half from the medium, feels the edge of
the curtain touching him and then perceives the presence of the body
of a woman whose hair rests on his head.

The seance is adjourned about one o'clock.

At the moment of parting, Eusapia sees a bell on the piano; she
extends her hand; the bell glides along on the piano, turns over, and
falls on the floor. The experiment is renewed, in full light as
before, the hand of the medium remaining several inches from the
bell....

It is evident that these exploits are still more extraordinary than the preceding ones, in certain respects. The following are the _conclusions_ of the report of Professor Porro.

The phenomena are real. They cannot be explained either by fraud or by
hallucination. Do they find their explanation in certain strata of the
unconscious (the subliminal), in some latent faculty of the human
soul, or indeed do they reveal the existence of other entities living
under conditions wholly different from ours and normally inaccessible
to our senses? In other words, will the _animistic_ hypothesis suffice
to solve the problem and to do away with the _Spiritualistic_
hypothesis? Or, rather, do not the phenomena serve here, as in the
psychology of dreams, to complicate the problem by hiding the
Spiritualistic solution within them? It is to this formidable query
that I am going to attempt a reply.

When, eleven years ago, Alexander Aksakof stated the dilemma between
Animism and Spiritism, and in a masterly work clearly proved that
purely animistic manifestations were inseparable from those which
direct our thoughts to a belief in the existence of independent,
intelligent, and active entities, no one could have expected that the
first term of the dilemma would be disputed and criticised in a
thousand ways, under a thousand varying forms, by persons who would be
dismayed at the second term.

In fact, what are all the hypotheses which for ten years now have been
invented in order to reduce mediumistic phenomena to the simple
manifestation of qualities latent in the human _psyche_ (or soul), if
not different forms of the animistic hypothesis, so jeered at when it
appeared in the work of Aksakof?

From the idea of the unconscious muscular action of the spectators
(put forth half a century ago by Faraday) to the projection of
protoplasmic activity or to the temporary emanation from the body of
the medium imagined by Lodge; from the psychiatric doctrine of
Lombroso to the psycho-physiology of Ochorowicz; from the
externalization admitted by Rochas to the eso-psychism of Morselli;
from the automatism of Pierre Janet to the _duplication of
personality_ of Alfred Binet,--there was a perfect flood of
explanations, having for their end the elimination of an exterior
personality.

The process was logical and in agreement with the principles of
scientific philosophy, which instructs us to exhaust the possibilities
of what is already known before having recourse to the unknown.

But this principle, unassailable in theory, may lead to erroneous
results when it is wilfully stretched too far into a given field of
research. Vallati has cited, in this connection, a curious marginal
note of Galileo, recently published in the third volume of the
national edition of his works:

"If we heat amber, the diamond, and certain other very dense
substances by chafing them, they attract small light bodies, because,
in cooling off, they attract the air, which draws these corpuscles
along with it." Thus the desire to bring still unexplained material
facts under the known physical laws of his day led an observer and
thinker so prudent and practical as Galileo to formulate a false
proposition. If anybody had said to him that in the attraction
exercised by amber there was the germ of a new branch of science and
the rudimentary manifestation of an energy (electricity) then unknown,
he would have replied that it was useless to "have recourse to the aid
of the unknown."

But the analogy between the error committed by the great physicist and
that which modern scholars commit can be pushed still farther.

Galileo was familiar with a form of energy which the natural
philosophy of our times investigates simultaneously with electric
energy, with which it has close relations confirmed by all recent
discoveries. If it had been perceived that the explanation which he
gave of the phenomenon of amber had no foundation, he would have been
able to give his attention to the analogies which the attraction
exercised by amber rubbed over light bodies presents with the
attraction exercised by the loadstone upon iron filings. When he had
got so far, he would very probably have discarded his first hypothesis
and would have admitted that the attractive power of amber is a
_magnetic phenomenon_. He would have been deceived, however, for it is
an _electric phenomenon_.

In the same way might not those persons deceive themselves who, in
order to escape at any cost the necessity of the hypothesis of
spiritistic entities, should insist with a too persistent predilection
upon the animistic hypothesis, even when this would be found
insufficient to explain all mediumistic manifestations? Might it not
be true that, like electric and magnetic phenomena, which are in close
interchangeable connection, and frequently appear to us inseparable,
animistic and spiritistic phenomena have a common bond? And let us
well note that a single fact, inexplicable by the animistic hypothesis
and explicable by the spiritistic hypothesis, would suffice to confer
upon the latter that degree of scientific value which up to the
present time has been so energetically denied to it, just as the
discovery of a secondary phenomenon, that of the polarization of
light, sufficed to make Fresnel reject the Newtonian theory of
emission and admit that of undulation.

Did we obtain, during the course of our ten seances with Eusapia, the
one fact which is enough to make the spiritistic hypothesis
necessarily take precedence of all others?

It is impossible to reply categorically to this question because it is
not possible, and never will be, to have a scientific proof of the
identity of the beings who manifest themselves.

The fact that I hear, that I see, that I touch a phantom; that I
recognize in it the form and the attitude of persons whom I have known
and whom the medium has neither known nor of whom she has even heard
the names; that I have the most lively and affecting testimony to the
presence of this ephemeral apparition,--all that will not be
sufficient to constitute the scientific fact which none can refute,
and which shall be worthy to remain in the annals of science along
with the experiments of Torricelli, Archimedes and Galvani. It will
always be possible to imagine an unknown mechanism by the aid of which
elemental substance and power may be drawn from the medium and the
sitters and combined in such a way as to produce the indicated
effects. It will always be possible to find in the special aptitudes
of the medium, in the thought of the sitters, and even in their
attitude of expectant attention, the cause of the _human_ origin of
the phenomena. It will always be possible to unearth from the arsenal
of the attacks made upon these studies during the last fifty years,
some generic or specific argument, either _ad rem_ or _ad hominem_,
while ignoring or feigning to ignore the refutation of the argument
which has already been made.

The question, then, reduces itself at once to an individual study of
cases either directly observed or obtained from some sure hand, in
order on the one hand, to create a personal conviction capable of
resisting the scathing ridicule of the sceptics, and, on the other
hand, to prepare public opinion to admit the truth of cases observed
by persons worthy of credence.

With regard to the first of these, the illustrious experimenter
Sidgwick, has already said that no fact or case exists capable of
convincing everybody, but that each one, by patiently and calmly
observing, may find such fact or case as will suffice to establish his
own conviction. I may say that for myself such a case exists. I need
only refer to the phenomena in which I have personally participated in
the seances with Eusapia.

With regard to the second point I could say much, but that would lead
me beyond the subject matter and the limits of this study.

On the one hand, we have the universal belief in the objective
existence of a world unknown to us in our normal state; that faith
(the basis of all religions) in a future life where the injustices of
this one will be atoned for and where we shall be confronted with the
good or evil deeds that we have done on earth; that uninterrupted
tradition of systematic or spontaneous observances and rituals, thanks
to which man is constantly kept in relation more or less with that
unknown world.

On the other hand, we have the sceptical and disheartening negation of
systems of pessimistic philosophy and of atheism, a negation which
takes its rise in the absence of positive proofs of the survival of
the soul; the ever more and more marked tendency of science toward a
monistic interpretation of the enigma of human life; and the belief
that all the known phenomena of life appear only in connection with
special organs.

In order to decide in so abstruse a matter as this, mediumistic
experiments do not suffice; everyone may draw from these as much of
credence or of incredulity as he may need in order to resolve his
doubts in one way or another; but he will never divest himself of the
substratum of temperamental tendencies which the more or less
scientific education of his mind or the more or less mystical
inclinations of his nature shall have developed in him.

One word more and I have done.

While admitting it as the most probable hypothesis that the
intelligent beings to whom we owe these psychical phenomena are
pre-existing, independent entities, and that they only derive from us
the conditions necessary for their manifestation in a physical plane
accessible to our senses, ought we to admit also that they are really
the spirits of the dead?

To this question I will reply that I do not feel that I am as yet
capable of giving a decisive answer.

Still I should be inclined to admit it, if I did not see the
possibility that these phenomena might form part of a scheme of things
still more vast. In fact, nothing hinders us from believing in the
existence of forms of life wholly different from those which we know,
and of which the life of human beings before birth and after death
forms only a special case, just as the organic life of man is a
special case of animal life in general.

But I am leaving the solid ground of facts to explore that of the most
hazardous hypotheses. I have already spoken at too great length, and
will therefore close the discussion of this particular topic.

I have considered the above subjects in several of my own works.[41]

We are surrounded by unknown forces and there is no proof that we are not also surrounded by invisible beings. Our senses teach us nothing about reality. But logically the discussion of theories ought to be reserved as a complement to the ensemble or summary of our observations and experiments; that is to say, for the last chapter. It behooves us before everything else positively to ascertain that mediumistic phenomena exist.

It seems to me, that _this has been done_ for every impartial reader. This will be overwhelmingly confirmed by the following chapters. But there is one point on which we ought to dwell a moment. I mean the question of fraud, conscious or unconscious, which it would be natural, but unfair, to here ignore and cover up. Our judicial review would not be complete did we not consecrate a special chapter to these mystifications, which unhappily are too frequently employed by mediums.