Chapter IV · (continued 2)

The blows are now redoubled, and are so terrific that it seems as if they would split the table. We begin to perceive hands lifting and inflating the curtains and advancing so far as to touch first one, then the other, of the company, caressing them, pressing their hands, daintily pulling their ears or clapping hands merrily in the air above their heads.

It seems to me very singular and perhaps intentional,—this contrast between the touches (sometimes nervous and energetic, and again delicate and gentle, but always friendly) and the deafening, violent, brutal blows struck upon the table.

A single one of these fist-blows, planted in the back, would suffice to break the vertebral column.

The hands that perform these feats are the strong and brawny hands of a man, the daintier hands are those of a woman, the very small hands those of children.

The darkness is rendered a little less dense, and at once the chair of No. 5 (Professor Morselli), which had already made a jump to one side, is slipped from under him, while a hand is placed on his back and on his shoulder. The chair gets up on the table, comes down again to the floor, and, after different horizontal and vertical oscillations, soars up and rests upon the head of the professor, who has remained standing. It remains there for some minutes in a state of very unstable equilibrium.

The loud blows and the delicate touches of hands, large and small, succeed each other uninterruptedly in such a way that, without our being able mathematically to prove the simultaneousness of different phenomena, it is yet almost certain in several cases.

While our opportunities for obtaining so valuable a subject of demonstration increase, the simultaneity which we ask for is at last granted; for the table raps, the bell sounds, and the tambourine is carried tinkling over our heads all about the room, rests for a moment on the table, and then resumes its flight in the air....

A bouquet of flowers, placed in a carafe on the larger table, comes over onto ours, preceded by an agreeable perfume. Stems of flowers are placed in the mouth of No. 5; and No. 8 is hit by a rubber ball, which rebounds upon the table. The carafe comes over to join the flowers on our table; it is then immediately lifted and put to the mouth of the medium, and she is made to drink from it twice; between the two times it sinks down to the table and stands there for a moment right side up. We distinctly hear the swallowing of the water, after which Mme. Paladino asks some one to wipe her mouth with a handkerchief. Finally, the carafe returns to the large table.

But a transfer of a totally different character is effected in the following way. I had complained several times that my position in the chain at a distance from the medium had hindered me from being touched during the séance. Suddenly, I hear a noise on the wall of the room, followed by the tinkling of the strings of the guitar, which vibrate as if some one were trying to take down the instrument from the wall on which it hung. At last the effort succeeds, and the guitar comes toward me in an oblique direction. I distinctly saw it come between me and No. 8, with a rapidity which rendered the impact of it rather unpleasant. Not being able at first to account to myself for this dim black object which was driving at me, I slipped to one side (No. 8 was seated at my left). Then the guitar, changing its route, struck forcibly with its handle three blows upon my forehead (which remained a little bruised for two or three days), after which it came to a rest with delicate precision upon the table. It did not remain there very long before it began to circle about the hall, with a rotation to the right, quite high above our heads, and at great speed.

It is proper to remark that, in this rotation of the guitar, the vibration of its own strings was added to the sound of the tambourine struck sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, in the air; and the guitar, bulky as it was, never once struck the central supporting electric-light rod, nor the three gas lamps fixed on the walls of the chamber. When we take into consideration the contracted dimensions of the room, we see that it was very difficult to avoid these obstacles, since the space remaining free was very limited.

The guitar took its flight twice around the room, coming to a stand-still (between the two times) in the middle of the table, where finally it came to a rest. In a final supreme effort, Eusapia turns toward the left, where upon a table is a typewriting machine weighing fifteen pounds. During the effort the medium falls exhausted and nervous upon the floor; but the machine rises from its place and betakes itself to the middle of our table, near the guitar.

In full light, Eusapia calls M. Morselli, and, controlled by the two persons next her, brings him with her toward the table, upon which is placed a mass of modelling-plaster. She takes his open hand and pushes it three times toward the plaster, as if to sink the hand into it and leave upon it an impression. M. Morselli's hand remains at a distance of more than four inches from the mass: nevertheless, at the end of the séance, the experimenters ascertain that the lump of plaster contains the impression of three fingers,—deeper prints than it is possible to obtain directly by means of voluntary pressure.

The medium lifts her two hands, all the time clasped in mine and in those of No. 5 (Morselli), and uttering groans, cries, exhortations, she rises with her chair, so far as to place its two feet and the ends of its two front cross-bars upon the top of the table. It was a moment of great anxiety. The levitation was accomplished rapidly, but without any jarring or jolting or jerking. In other words, if, in an effort of extreme distrust you insisted on supposing that she employed some artifice to obtain the result, you would rather have to think of a pulling up, by means of a cord and pulley, rather than of a pushing from beneath.

But neither of these hypotheses can stand the most elementary examination of the facts....

There is more to follow. Eusapia was lifted up still farther with her chair, from the upper part of the table, in such a way that No. 11 on one side and I on the other were able to pass our hands under her feet and under those of the chair.

Moreover, the fact that the posterior feet of the chair were entirely off of the table, without any visible support makes this levitation still more irreconcilable with the supposition that Eusapia could have made her body and the chair take an upward leap.

M. Porro judges that this phenomenon is one of those which are less easily explained if we decline to have recourse to the Spiritualistic hypothesis. It is a little like the man who fell into the water and thought he could pull himself out by his own hair.

Eusapia [adds M. Porro] descended without any jolting, little by little, No. 5 and I never letting go her hands. The chair, having risen up a little higher, turned over and placed itself on my head, whence it spontaneously returned to the floor.

This thing was tried again. Eusapia and her chair were transported again to the top of the table, only, this time, the result of the fatigue undergone by her was such that the poor woman fell in a faint upon the table. We lifted her down with all due care.

The experimenters desired to know whether these phenomena, the success of which depends in so great measure upon the conditions of light, could not have better success in the white and quiet light of the moon.

They were obliged to admit that there was no appreciable difference between the lunar light and other kinds. But the table around which they had formed the chain quitted the veranda where the sitting was being held, and, in spite of the strongly expressed wishes of the sitters and of the medium herself, betook itself into the neighboring room, where the sitting then continued.

This room was a little salon crowded with elegant furniture and fragile objects, such as crystal chandeliers, porcelain vases, bric-à-brac, etc. The experimenters feared very much that these things would suffer damage in the bustle of the séance; but not the slightest object suffered any damage.

Mme. Paladino, who was now herself again, took the hand of No. 11 and placed it gently upon the back of a chair, at the same time placing her own hand upon his. Then, as she lifted her hand and that of No. 11, the chair followed the same ascending movement several times in succession.

This thing was repeated in full light.

No. 5, as well as other gentlemen, perceived, in a manner that admitted of no doubt, a vague, indistinct figure thrown upon the air in the doorway of an antechamber which was feebly illuminated. The figure consisted of changing and fugitive silhouettes, sometimes with the outline of a human head and body, sometimes like hands reaching out from the curtains. Their objective character was demonstrated by the agreement of impressions, which were controlled in their turn by means of continual inquiries. There was no possibility of their being shadows voluntarily or involuntarily projected by the bodies of the experimenters, since we were mutually watching each other.

The tenth séance (the last) was one of the best-attended, and was perhaps the most interesting of all.

Scarcely has the electric light been extinguished when we remark an automatic movement of the chair upon which a lump of plaster has been placed, while the hands and feet of Eusapia are watchfully controlled by me and by No. 3. However, as we wish to forestall the objection of critics that the phenomena take place in the dark, the table typtologically (that is, by taps) asks for light, and the experimenters light the electric lamp.

Presently, all the company see the chair on which the lump of plaster lies (not at all a light chair) moving between myself and the medium, without our being able to understand the determining cause of the movement.

Mme. Paladino puts her outspread hand upon the back of the chair and her left above it. When our hands rise up, the chair rises also without contact, reaching a height of about six inches. This performance is several times repeated, with the addition of the intervention of the hand of No. 5, under conditions of light and of control which leave nothing to be desired.

The room is again almost completely darkened.... A current of cold air upon the table precedes the arrival of a little branch with two green leaves. We know that there are no plants in the neighborhood of the company: it appears then that we have here a case of bringing-in from the outside.

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 séance 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 séances 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 séances 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.