Dr. Charles Richet  - 1913 Nobel Laureate for Physiology

CHAPTER III ECTOPLASMS (MATERIALIZATIONS)
(a) On Fraud in Ectoplasmic Experiments

In metapsychic experiments the possibility of fraud must never be lost sight of. Other sciences do not suffer from this evil; they evolve peaceably, having only material difficulties to face, whereas scientists who experiment with mediums are always liable to be basely deceived. This makes their task one of great difficulty, demanding careful and vigilant attention.

The difficulties that confront research into objective metapsychics and subjective metapsychics are not of the same kind. We have already noted what precautions must be taken against the trickeries, whether conscious or unconscious, that render the study of cryptesthesia so complex-errors of memory, defects in testimony, and paramnesia. We have shown the risk that the experimenter himself, in spite of all good faith, may involuntarily assist the medium. When studying objective metapsychics the precautions to be taken are different, though they must be equally stringent.

Soon after the Fox sisters had started spiritualism, and had begun to make their mediumistic faculties a source of profit, there arose everywhere, but especially in America, persons who began to traffic in it. Everywhere the credulity of the public aroused the cupidity of swindlers. Public séances were held and money taken for entrance at which "spiritualist" exhibitions were given, like performances at a circus or by a conjurer. Phantoms appeared on the stage, and, profiting by the simplicity of the sitters, came down from the platform to be recognized by some unhappy mother who had lost a child.

Shops were opened by "spirit-photographers," who presented to their clients vague faces on the negative which the credulous sitter always ended by recognizing. The medium who organized these exhibitions would also take engagements to give séances at people's houses for high fees.

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The better to attract the favour and money of the public, these mediums and photographers pretended to be genuinely scientific researchers, and craftily invested their exhibitions with some vague kind of religion, so that the whole thing became an actual trade-the trade of mediumship, sometimes lucrative, but always dangerous and in any case dishonourable.

This ugly trade and the consequent development of spiritualism was made possible by the fact that very frequently these professionals had at first some real powers, and vestiges of genuine phenomena were admixed with their fraudulent practices.

The number of adherents to spiritualist doctrines steadily increased; journals sprang into being to celebrate the exploits of professional mediums.

These insanities, encouraged by the blindness of the public and by the credulity of some honourable scientific men, brought about an inevitable reaction. In England, and especially in America, a whole literature strained every nerve 1 to unmask the strange simplicity of spiritualists and the perverse ingenuity of professional mediums.2

Disgusted by these sham prodigies, and fully informed as to the machinery of fraud employed by these pseudo-mediums, scientific men in America and England obstinately refused to accept the facts of telekinesis and materialization. It became almost an article of faith among them-a faith perhaps as blind as that of the spiritists-that there are no material phenomena.

The affirmations of honourable men, highly placed in public esteem, such as Judge Edmunds, Dale Owen, and even so great a man as Alfred Russel Wallace, were insufficient to outweigh the nauseous impressions produced by the American trade in mediumship.

Even the admirable work of William Crookes (1872) brought no conviction; he, like Zollner, remained isolated. No one would believe what these two eminent men of science asserted;

1 I will cite only a few: Abbott, Behind the scenes with mediums, Chicago, 1907. Fr. Podmore, Modern spiritualism, a History and a criticism, London, Methuen, 1902, 2 vols. Schakleton, Spookland, a record of Research in the much talked realm of mystery. Carrington, The physical phenomena of spiritualism, Boston, Turner, 1907. Rainaly, Procès d'un escamoteur, Paris, 1894 Rémy, Spirites et illusionnistes, Paris, Leclercq, 1911.

2 Morselli quotes the writings of professional conjurers who have unmasked the tricks of spirit-mediums (A. S. P., 1908, xviii, 157, Hopkins, Keller, Snaw, Williams, and others).

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it was said that they had been deceived, illusionized, that they knew nothing of legerdemain and had been humbugged:

The Society for Psychical Research, together with E. Gurney, Myers, H. Sidgwick, and Podmore, started with the axiom and fundamental principle that there are no material phenomena, that everything is subjective. But in the forty years from 1880 to 1920 ideas have evolved. Sidgwick died without admitting either telekinesis or ectoplasms. Myers, at first hostile, ended by fully accepting and resolutely maintaining their objectivity. F. Podmore, it would seem, could never resign himself to believe in them, while Sir Oliver Lodge, who at first only recognized the full reality of subjective phenomena, accepts now the objectivity of material phenomena.

By a singular evolutionary process, R. Hodgson, after having cleverly unmasked in India the frauds of Mme. Blavatsky, was completely converted to subjective spiritualism by his experiments with Mrs. Piper; but if Hodgson admitted the incarnations of George Pelham, he would not admit the telekinesis shown by Eusapia. He it was who, at Cambridge, claimed to have exposed Eusapia, while in fact his experiments were deplorably defective, assisting, facilitating, and even provoking the clumsy, unconscious frauds of that unfortunate medium. Hyslop, who succeeded Hodgson at the American S. P. R., refused, like Hodgson, to admit materializations.

This scepticism is comprehensible when one reads the descriptions of the extraordinary séances given by some mediums. Miller, Bailey, Mrs. Williams, Eldred, Sambor, and A. Roth have all been exposed. Eldred had an armchair in which he had collected a whole arsenal of trick "properties." The photographer Boursnell, although he had the support of W. T. Stead, was convicted of cheating. So likewise was the French photographer Buguet, though simple-minded persons, even after his trickeries had been exposed, persisted in believing in the genuineness of these phantoms. Mrs. Williams was unmasked at a séance in Paris; there were found on her various things used to simulate phantoms, as in Eldred's case. Sambor's case is very strange; one of the friends of Petrovo Solovovo was actually his accomplice, though seemingly an honourable man. According to Grasset, Ebstein made up a phantom with a painted doll.1

1 See Paul Mathiex, Lex faux médiums. Echo du Merveilleux, 1906, 249.

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Bailey, who claimed to make "apports" of living birds, was caught at Grenoble buying the flame-coloured birds that he was supposed to bring from India by magical means. Maddock was condemned for cheating. I was able to show up Anna Roth who brought concealed flowers. Before the séance she weighed one hundred and sixteen pounds, but only one hundred and fourteen afterwards; the weight of the flowers she brought was two pounds. Maxwell 1  cites the very suspicious cases of Mrs. Wood and Lemb.

Haxby cheated impudently. I could heap up cases if need were; and indeed honest spiritualists recognize that these scoundrels are the worst enemies of spiritualism, and all of us who believe in ectoplasms and telekinesis are equally interested in getting rid of these wretches.

But the question is not as simple as it seems: indeed no question is simple when people will condescend to go into it deeply. Along with fraudulent mediums having an outfit prepared in advance, there are true, genuine, and powerful mediums who have recourse to fraud when their powers diminish or they find an experiment fail.

This probably came to pass in some degree even with Florence Cook, with Slade, Eglinton, Eusapia, Linda Gazzera, Marthe Béraud, and Mme. d'Espérance. It is necessary, however, to understand clearly what is meant by the "exposure" of a medium (in French, démasquer; in German, entlarven).

In the first place, simple rustics like Eusapia do not understand that simulation of a phenomenon is a serious crime; they do not recognize the enormity of the fraud. They say, "People want phenomena; well, we'll give them what they want." A lengthy education is needed before they can be made to understand how odious and unpardonable is a lie that brings willful error into our poor efforts at truth, where there are so many involuntary errors.

In the second place, mediums are in a state of semi-unconsciousness which takes away much of their moral responsibility. Trance turns them into automata that have but a very slight control over their muscular movements. When a medium is nearly or quite insensible, his eyes shut, sweating and making convulsive movements, unable to answer questions put to him, I do not think he ought to be reproached for anything he may do. He is not himself; he has not that poised and quiet consciousness which can decide between right and wrong. He has forgotten who he is and what he ought to do.

1 Les phénomènes psychiques, 1903, p. 263.

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Completely criminal are such acts as those of Eldred or Mrs. Williams preparing paraphernalia for deliberate fraud, hidden in a chair or upon their person; this is radically different from the suspicious movements of an entranced medium.

Not only are mediums irresponsible, but telekinetic or ectoplasmic movements are generally beyond their control. Little Stasiathe guide of Stanislawa Tomczyk-often amused herself by playing tricks on Stanislawa herself to mystify Ochorowicz. Similarly in the case of duplicated personality so well studied by Dr. Morton Prince, the personality A., dissevered from the normal personality B., was actively hostile to B., causing her pain and distress. The ectoplasmic arms and hands that emerge from the body of Eusapia do only what they wish, and though Eusapia knows what they do, they are not directed by Eusapia's will; or rather there is for the moment no Eusapia.

It is also quite easy to understand that when exhausted by a long and fruitless séance, and surrounded by a number of sitters eager to see something, a medium whose consciousness is still partly in abeyance may give the push that he hopes will start the phenomena.

At one of the conversaziones at the Paris Psychological Institute, d'Arsonval told an amusing story of the celebrated electrician Ampère. A new electrical demonstration was being given before a scientific committee, and as the galvanometer needle failed to move at the critical moment, he gave it a touch with his finger. Repeating the experiment, successfully this time, he said triumphantly, pointing to the needle, "This time it goes of itself!"

There is a quasi-identity between the medium and the ectoplasm, so that when an attempt is made to seize the latter a limb of the medium may be grasped; though I make a definite and formal protest against this frequent defence of doubtful phenomena by spiritualists. More frequently the ectoplasm is independent of the medium, indeed perhaps it is always so; though I do not mean to imply that the severance or capture of the ectoplasm can be effected without danger to the medium (?). The case of Mme. d'Espérance (though she was open to suspicion) is on record to show that a medium may incur a long illness by reason of such an attempt.

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In view of the known cases of fraud, the question is to decide what confidence can be placed in the more or less marvelous accounts that are given us.

To sum up the conditions which seem necessary: they apply equally to fraudulent and to honest mediums, if there are any who can always be depended upon. The precautions must be as strict in the one case as in the other, and if these precautions have not been taken no scientific inference can be drawn.

Although Boursnell and Buguet found many disciples, and although there have been many frauds that have been accepted as genuine phenomena, it is consoling to know that fraud always fails in the long run; it cannot defeat prolonged and careful experiment. Fraudulent mediums, as soon as they leave the narrow circle of the credulous, soon find careful observers that unmask them. If they refuse just and reasonable conditions of experiment, that is in itself a just ground for suspicion, and a reason for re fusing to make experiments under bad conditions. But even so, under bad conditions, fraud always ends in detection. It is not as difficult as may be supposed to detect trickery; and I do not think that any instance can be quoted of a medium behaving fraudulently for two years without being detected in flagrante delicto.

1. The sitters must be few-three, four, or five at most. Even five seems to me too many. Very good observations can be made by one person only; for the hypothesis that the observer is hallucinated is absurd. If six are present, there will certainly be among them some who are inattentive, unskilful, or practical jokers. Each one will have his own fancies and will exact compliances which will disturb the even course of the phenomena.

The good faith of all persons present must be absolutely unquestionable. Petrovo Solovovo was betrayed by one of his friends, and no one should be admitted to an experiment of whose honesty and good sense one cannot be as assured as of one's own.

Further, a certain competence is essential: it is not by any means every one who is capable of observing well; that is, of observing everything that takes place. To hold the right hand of a medium for a whole hour so as to be quite certain that the hand has not been released for a single second is not so very easy, especially if the hand twists about and struggles. The sitters must be such persons as are not liable to fear, nor to weariness, nor (which is rare) to inattention, and who will also leave the experimenter to follow his own line, merely giving their assistance without pretence of directing the experiment.

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2. Photographs, impressions on blackened paper, on clay, on plaster, or on paraffin wax have no value in themselves: everything depends on the conditions. There are photographs so skilfully counterfeited that I should make no conclusions at all on any such shown to me unless the circumstances under which they were produced were given with such precise detail as to make all trickery impossible.

If the conditions are unsatisfactory, the very best photographs are valueless as evidence, and I do not care to see them. But if the conditions are unexceptionable, even poor photographs are decisive; they reveal details that may escape the sight. Stereoscopic photographs are more instructive than those which do not show the relief they show relative distances. After the admirable photographs by Schrenck-Notzing, Mme. Bisson, and G. de Fontenay, it is not allowable to study materializations without the help of one or two cameras; but it must always be remembered that the value of photographs is strictly dependent on the conditions of the experiment.

3. The experiments should not be made in a very large room; the smaller the room, the greater the facility of close observation. All the furnishings should be most carefully examined, turned over, and searched; the doors must be locked so that no stranger can come in. No appurtenances or objects of any kind soever must be brought by the medium: a conjurer can do anything he likes with his table, his pack of cards, his chair, or his stick; but if he is given my table, my chair, and my pack of cards, and has no other at his disposal and can make no interchange, he is powerless.

4. Hence arises the absolute necessity that the medium be scrupulously searched, dressed only in garments provided, and never let out of sight from that moment. His every movement should be followed till he is seated. He should then be tied (or not, if he declines this). Then only can darkness be allowed. It matters little that he should be behind a curtain, since he has no mask, no appliance, and no stuff of any kind. If under such conditions a form enveloped in a white veil comes out from the curtain, I shall conclude with certainty that there has been a materialization of a white veil, presuming, of course, that the search has been so thorough that it has been impossible for the medium to conceal any such veil.

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The whole point, then, is to know whether one can be certain whether anyone, medium or no medium, has concealed a large white veil. It seems to me not impossible to ascertain this.

If all the prescribed conditions are fulfilled, and they can be and have been fulfilled-the experiment is valid.

In some cases all the precautions enumerated are not indispensable. If, for instance in a locked room which has previously been thoroughly searched, a living form is seen moving by the side of the medium, there is no ground for doubt, since no one could have entered. Obviously, then, we have to be sure that the form is not a dummy, and that the entranced medium is not a dummy. When Crookes saw Katie King by the side of Florence Cook, two living beings were both present.

Again, if I hold the two hands of Eusapia in my two hands, and I feel a hand stroke my face, pull my hair, and strike my shoulder, I can be certain that it is not the hand of Eusapia ; and I am not going to suppose that Myers, Sir Oliver, or Ochorowicz played such a criminal practical joke on me.

There is, however, a point that seems to me highly important, and I therefore insist upon it. Even if all the precautions above named have not been taken, that is not a reason for refusing to experiment; it is, however, a reason for making special observations in each special case and looking very closely into everything before drawing any conclusions. It is necessary to repeat experiments again and yet again. One séance counts for nothing, two count for very little. To carry conviction I could not be satisfied with less than five or six, or more. At each, one learns something fresh and corrects some defect in the preceding ones. No doubt this is troublesome, difficult, and tedious, but science is not served by single observations; they must be repeated. It may be said that the first time one sees nothing; the second time one sees imperfectly; in a third, one sees fairly well; the fourth time one sees accurately.

For telekinesis the matter is simpler; there is no need of so many precautions to be sure that an object is moved without contact. A good light is sufficient, for in the dark the affair becomes much more complicated. If, however, there is a distinct movement of the object in the light that is in itself sufficient, and enough instances have been given to make it unnecessary to refer to them again.

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But for materializations which, with some exceptions, are only produced in the dark, it is necessary to be very exacting as to the conditions.

Among the numerous accounts published, which are those that are worthy of acceptance?

A primary distinction, which is fundamental, must be made between professional and non-professional mediums; that is, between those who give paid séances to which the public are admitted, and those who do not.

1. It is quite obvious that no séances to which all and any persons are admitted on payment count for anything. However astonishing the cabinet of the Davenport brothers may be it is very certain that this cabinet does not differ from the trunk of metal or even of glass in which Robert Houdin or any other conjurer places a person who has been tied up by the audience. The trunk is covered with a rug, and after a little patter to pass the few minutes required for the trick, the rug is removed, the trunk opened, and the bound man is no longer there but is found untied in another box that was previously empty. This is an amusing trick, like the cabinet of the Davenports, the thought-reading by the Zancigs, by Lully, and others, but is no more scientific than the witches' dance in Faust.

Maskelyne and other clever conjurers have taken much pains to show so-called spiritist phenomena on the stage. It is easy for the operators and amusing for the public. By a system of skilfully disposed glasses the magician causes phantoms to appear. He pierces them with a sword and finds empty air: the illusion is complete. But these scenes in no way resemble our experiments: within the four walls of a chamber that has been duly searched a medium who has been undressed and clothed in a black smock can do nothing like that.

Professor Grasset has written a book on occultism,1 very full of detail. Though he does not believe in any metapsychic phenomena, whether subjective or objective, he makes a great effort to be impartial, and his impartiality compares favourably with the scepticism of the official scientists who refuse even to examine the facts. Neverthless Grasset is certainly unjust; he omits the experiments by Gibier, by Home, and by Florence Cook. He thinks,

1 L'occultisme hier et aujourd'huiLe merveilleux préscientifique, Montpellier, Contet,1908

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like the ignorant public, that at the Villa Carmen, the coachman Aresky got into the room, that the experiments with Eusapia were nearly always fraudulent if not invariably so; he thinks Maskelyne right against Archdeacon Colley, though Maskelyne lost his case in a court of law. It is true that the second edition of Grasset's book dates from 1908, and great progress has been made in the last fourteen years and the experiments of the present day in no way resemble conjuring tricks. In some recent cases there seems to me no room at all for fraud.

2. Professional mediums who give private séances, for remuneration, more or less accessible to the public, are not to be trusted much more than those who give public séances. Even if the circle is a limited one, and composed of sincere and honourable persons, it is possible that some of these persons may be childishly credulous. The medium can then do as he likes; the circle believes in him and indeed no one who does not believe in him is allowed to be present. Under plea that the health of the medium must not be imperilled nor the brilliancy of the phenomena impaired, no investigation is permitted. These private séances are not, of course, absolutely of no account, but their results amount to very little, precise conditions being wanting. The best that can be said is that when a paid medium like Mme. Salmon with P. Gibier gives a series of séances before a small number of experimenters, in a room that does not belong to her, and submitting to rigorous conditions, safe conclusions may be drawn, though still under distinct reservations. When Miller came to Paris he would not accept the conditions imposed; nor would Bailey, nor Anna Roth.

For my own part I am inclined to think that the notable professional mediums have some real powers, for if they had not, they would never have chosen this singular profession. They are generally very ordinary men and women who have discovered in themselves strange capabilities which surprise them at first, and then are turned to a source of profit and made into a trade. The Fox sisters did this from the very beginning of their surprising manifestations.

It is therefore a mistake to neglect professional and paid mediums under the pretext that they make a trade of mediumship. They have to live, and it would be very unjust to reproach a medium for not giving time and health gratis. A medium has a right not only to considerate treatment but to payment, and this

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payment is no more to be condemned than that accepted by a physician who cures us or by a musician who teaches us music. Powerful professional mediums are exceedingly few, though there are many who have some moderate powers. In all countries there are now private spiritist séances, to some of which it is exceedingly difficult to gain access, at which some man or woman endowed with certain powers gives regular séances to a small group of initiates. The number of such spiritualist circles is difficult to estimate; there are probably many more than is usually supposed.

The phenomena are sometimes very striking, but the credulity of the circle is such and the imprecision of observation so great, that these phenomena are lost to science. They are talked of here and there inaccurately, imperfectly, and without the needful detail. In order to judge of them fairly we must go to such incomplete accounts as are published, and these ought to be very strictly criticized. If all that is printed were accepted, to what illusions and follies should we not be committed; if all is rejected we may be neglecting important essential facts, useful to the advance of metapsychic science.

Fortunately when a medium is very powerful he soon gets a reputation, perhaps in spite of his own desires and those of his own circle: really striking and dazzling mediumship cannot remain secret. It is then the duty of experimentalists and men of science to make researches. Then experiments can be carried out scientifically like those conducted by Imoda, Schrenck-Notting, and Mme. Bisson, by Crookes and Varley, by General and Mme. Noel, and numerous other observers such as A. de Rochas, Lombroso, Finzi, Morselli, Foa, Oliver Lodge, Dariex, Maxwell, Schiaparelli, Ochorowicz, Bottazzi, who experimented with Eusapia, and Ochorowicz, with Stanislawa Tomczyk.

A true account of materializations is specially difficult because of all experiments it is these that most lend themselves to fraud. Thinking that they have a spirit before them, credulous persons lose their presence of mind; they are inclined to accept everything and to be indignant at precautions to avoid trickery. For my own part, having seen many materializations, I can declare that I have never felt the very slightest awe. My only preoccupation, and one that filled my whole being, was always not to be duped; and I found it hard to understand the emotion of some sitters when they have witnessed a good materialization.

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Since fraud is the great danger in all such experiments, every possible precaution must be taken against it; the medium must be under the closest observation from which nothing distracts the watchers, all his clothes must be searched minutely, as also every object within his reach; no medium who has once been detected in gross fraud should ever be experimented with; photography should be used to show the exact conditions under which the apparition has occurred; the experiment must be often repeated; the control must never be relaxed; and the idea that the medium may be making efforts to deceive never be lost sight of and should dominate the mind of the observers.

The only decisive proof is to be able, after making quite certain that no stranger can have entered the séance room, to see, to touch, and especially to photograph the medium and the apparition on the same plate. Experiments of this kind are very few; it is therefore desirable that there should be more of them. Unfortunately, materialization is a phenomenon that few mediums can present with such perfection that both medium and apparition can be photographed on the same plate.

However, even when for various reasons it is impracticable to have the photographic confirmation which gives certainty, very good proofs can be obtained; and among these I will cite the following, which, after mature consideration, seems to me perfectly valid.

At Ribaud Island, experimenting with Eusapia in company with Sir Oliver Lodge, Frederic Myers, and J. Ochorowicz-three observers whose competence and honesty cannot be called in question—I held one of Eusapia's hands firmly in each of mine. I then felt a third hand touch my shoulder, my head, and my face. This was not in darkness; there was a lighted candle in the room.

All kinds of absurd hypotheses must here be eliminated: first that I was hallucinated-that is, disposed of by the fact that the slap on the shoulder given by "John King" was heard by all present; then that Myers, Lodge, or Ochorowicz should have perpetrated this bad joke; then that I had let go one of Eusapia's hands, which could not be, for my friends could all see her hands held far apart, one in each of mine. Further, the same phenomenon of the materialization of a hand while Eusapia's hands were held separate by one person has been observed by Oliver Lodge, by Myers, and by Ochorowicz.

I will cite, later, other cases of materialization equally decisive; I mention here only this one which seems to me to defy criticism.

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It is interesting to study the conditions under which materializations are produced

Firstly the need of darkness. For one reason or another, none, or scarcely any, are produced in full light. This does not apply to Home who gave astonishing materializations in the light; but in most cases darkness is essential. Sometimes red light, such as is used by photographers, can be used, and when the medium is very powerful flashlight photographs can be taken. Nevertheless, darkness is usually so necessary that the medium must be protected by a curtain, notably at the beginnings of the phenomena. Only behind this curtain, even when the room is darkened, can the preliminary changes take place. This will cause sceptics to smile; but in point of fact what does darkness matter? Can darkness create a living face and produce a white veil?

As for the necessary physiological conditions, these are so inconstant, irregular, and fugitive that they cannot be indicated with any precision. Before the séance it is impossible to know whether the medium is in a satisfactory state to produce the phenomena or not. On one day the results will be excellent, and on the next, under the same conditions, nothing may occur.

Further, a considerable time, often a long time, is needed before anything appears; it may be necessary to wait for an hour, two hours, or even three hours before there is any manifestation. Sometimes, though seldom, the appearances begin as soon as the curtain is drawn. The materialized object is nearly always a shape of something human-a phantom. Sometimes, as with Eusapia, only a hand; sometimes, as with Florence Cook and Marthe Béraud, they are entire figures. Although the appearance of a whole figure is more dramatic than that of a stump taking shape behind a curtain, both phenomena are essentially the same. A warm, supple, resisting, articulated, and apparently living hand identical with a human hand in all points is not more extraordinary than a human personality that looks, walks, and speaks. The difficulty is the same: the abyss between normal and metapsychic science is as great whether there be the big, half-formed hand of John King behind the curtain or Bien Boa rising from the floor in front of it.

I shall not waste time in stating the absurdities, almost the impossibilities, from a psycho-physiological point of view, of this phenomenon. A living being, or living matter, formed under our eyes, which has its proper warmth, apparently a circulation of

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blood, and a physiological respiration (as I proved by causing the form of Bien Boa to breathe into a flask containing baryta water), which has also a kind of psychic personality having a will distinct from the will of the medium, in a word, a new human being! This is surely the climax of marvels! Nevertheless it is a fact.

The criticisms that have been directed against my experiments and those of Crookes and of Stainton Moses are entirely ineffective. All that can be seriously alleged against them is that the phenomena are so exceptional that if they have been thought to be substantiated the experimenters must have been the dupes of an illusion.

I do not think this objection well founded. Crookes observed Katie King for a long time; Eusapia lent herself with admirable goodwill for twenty-five years to scientific investigation, even when it took absurd forms. More than thirty very sceptical scientific men were convinced, after long testing, that there proceeded from her body material forms having the appearances of life, which I shall describe farther on under the name of ectoplasms. Marthe Béraud, as good-natured as Eusapia, has been experimented with by General Noel, by G. Delanne, and myself at Algiers, by Schrenck-Notzing, J. Maxwell, Mme. Bisson, Dr. Geley, Dr. Bourbon, and many others. Home gave extraordinary phenomena of materializations for twenty years, verified by most illustrious personages, without ever having been detected in trickery.

The alternative, then, is that the phenomena are genuine or that they are due to fraud. I am very well aware that they are extraordinary, even so monstrously extraordinary that at first sight the hypothesis of immeasurable, repeated, and continual fraud seems the more probable explanation. But is such fraud possible? I cannot think so. When I recall the precautions that all of us have taken, not once, but twenty, a hundred, or even a thousand times, it is inconceivable that we should have been deceived on all these occasions.

It is true that some scientists say, "I do not want to see or to study these things, for I know beforehand that they are not possible, therefore a priori, you have all been taken in by impostors."

This, however, involves two inadmissible assumptions. In the first place, it is not sufficient to say, "You have been deceived"; it is necessary to show how we have been deceived. When I hold both of Eusapia's hands and a third hand touches my forehead

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and my shoulder, how can this miracle have taken place? Tell me that, and I may revise my opinion; till then it is unshakable. In the second place no one can rightly say a priori "It is impossible." Human knowledge is so uncertain, so limited that the word "impossible" should never be used.

I say that tinder certain exceptional conditions-and I admit that these conditions are extremely exceptional-the semblance of a living hand is formed which has all the properties of a living hand and seems to belong to a being similar to a human being (!!). The new data contradict absolutely nothing that is taught us by science. It is a strange and astounding fact; but it is not absurd, it is only unusual.

Assuredly it is possible that I may be mistaken, even grossly mistaken, along with Crookes, De Rochas, Aksakoff, Myers, William James, Schiaparelli, Zollner, Fechner, and Oliver Lodge. It is possible that all of us have been deceived. It is possible that some day an unexpected experiment may explain our prolonged deception quite simply. So be it! but till it has been explained how we have all been duped by an illusion, I claim that the reality of these materializations must be conceded.

After all, on careful consideration, the absurdity does not seem so portentous as it appears at first sight. When I place my hand before a mirror, its image appears-reflection of light: the thermometer shows a reflection of heat; and a galvanometer, reflection of electricity. It is true that no effect is produced on a balance: but is it so very unreasonable to suppose that the projection of light, heat, and electricity might be associated with a projection of mechanical power? For the problem essentially and definitely works down to that. If the hand can act at a distance on a balance as it does on a thermometer, a mirror, or a galvanometer, it may give the sensation of contact to another person close by. Materialization is a mechanical projection: we already know the projection of light, of heat, and of electricity; it is not a very long step to think that a projection of mechanical energy may be possible. The remarkable demonstrations of Einstein show how close mechanical and luminous energy are to one another.

Many curious facts on the genesis of the materializations are observable, for only very rarely do materializations appear abruptly. They form by a concentration of matter round a central nucleus; much as a planet forms in a nebula, or cells by concentration of protoplasmic material.

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It is probable, or rather it is certain, that the genesis differs with different mediums and according to conditions as yet illunderstood. I will endeavour to give an analytical summary, based on the materializations given by Miss Goligher, Marthe Béraud, and especially by Eusapia in whose case I have frequently and for a long time studied the process.

There first appears a more or less formless mass, which may not be even visible, but which can be felt and seems capable of mechanical action. One can hardly help imagining that movements of the table are due to this mechanical energy, this halfinvisible hand which presses out the curtain and whose resistance can be felt, while it persists in remaining in shadow. When the table is raised off all four legs, there is always one leg that remains in the shadow. These are the formations that I call ectoplasms, for they seem to emanate from Eusapia's actual body.1

This observation, which is a fact and not a hypothesis, has been confirmed at all points by Crawford's excellent work.

Sometimes these ectoplasms can be seen in process of organization; I have seen an almost rectilinear prolongation emerge from Eusapia's body, its termination acting like a living hand. Similarly in the formation of Bien Boa, at first the limbs appeared thin and stiff, like narrow stalks; little by little they thickened, taking the form of more or less solid limbs similar to normal limbs.

I have also, like Geley, Schrenck-Notzing, and Mme. Bisson, been able to see the first lineaments of materializations as they were formed. A kind of liquid or pasty jelly emerges from the mouth or the breast of Marthe which organizes itself by degrees, acquiring the shape of a face or a limb. Under very good conditions of visibility, I have seen this paste spread on my knee, and slowly take form so as to show the rudiment of the radius, the cubitus, or metacarpal bone whose increasing pressure I could feel on my knee.

These materializations are usually gradual, beginning by a rudimentary shape, complete forms and human faces only appearing later on. At first these formations are often very imperfect. Sometimes they show no relief, looking more like flat images than bodies, so that in spite of oneself one is inclined to imagine some fraud, since what appears seems to be the materialization of a semblance and not of a being. But in some cases the materialization is perfect.

1 Sir Oliver Lodge published in Light (April 27, 1921) a very interesting observation formerly made on this fact.

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At the Villa Carmen I saw a fully organized form rise from the floor. At first it was only a white, opaque spot like a handkerchief lying on the ground before the curtain, then this handkerchief quickly assumed the form of a human head level with the floor, and a few moments later it rose up in a straight line and became a small man enveloped in a kind of white burnous, who took two or three halting steps in front of the curtain and then sank to the floor and disappeared as if through a trap-door. But there was no trap-door.1

And now to conclude, and having indicated the conditions necessary to a reliable experiment, to decide formally on an answer to the urgent and disturbing question

Is there such a thing as objective metapsychics?2

Strong arguments can be adduced for the reply, "No, there are no objective metapsychics"; no physical phenomena unknown to normal physics are ever produced. The arguments advanced to maintain this opinion may be stated as follows:

1 I claim here to refute an absurd legend. I was in no way tricked as some little newspapers of Algiers maintained. In the memorandum in which I gave the facts I made some formal reservations, showing some of the more serious objections that I myself made. But no notice was taken either of what I affirmed or of my objections, so that the criticisms that I myself put forward remain. They do not, however, seem decisive to me. As for the objections made by others, they count for nothing.

I conclude, as did my illustrious precursor, Sir William Crookes, I have nothing to withdraw from what I said in 1904; but on the contrary, the excellent experiments subsequently made with the same medium, Marthe, by Mme. Bisson, Schrenck-Notzing, and Geley strikingly confirm our experiences at the Villa Carmen.

As to Eusapia, who has often been suspected of fraud, nothing was ever proved against her. On the contrary, after some doubtful experiments at Cambridge, I asked Myers to come back to see her. He came to my house, and there was then a memorable sitting at which the phenomena were so distinct that I solemnly adjured Myers to declare that there was no trickery, and that the movement of objects at a distance without contact was authentic and undeniable. My lamented friends, Professors Boirac and Flournoy, both of them experienced men of science, were present at that séance and were completely convinced of the reality of movements without contact, i.e., of a materialization, since according to all likelihood, raps and movements of objects are the first stages of materializations in their invisible aspect.

2 See the remarkable study by Petrovo Solovovo, Les phénomènes physiques du spiritisme, quelques dificultés, P S P R., 1911, 413-447, with a reply by Oliver Lodge, "A priori arguments against physical phenomena," ibid., 447454. But it is permissible to think that Petrovo Solovovo was strongly influenced by the deception he had resented when, in his experiments with Sambor, it was proved that one of his own personal friends had deceived him; a thing that is both unpleasant and infrequent. In most cases there are no confederates.

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1. As Laplace said, the more extraordinary the fact, the more rigorous should be the demonstration. In this case the stricter the conditions the fewer the phenomena become.

2. The more latitude there is for fraud (liberated hands, darkness, absence of scrutiny) the more apparent are the phenomena.

3. All mediums have tricked, perhaps even Home. In any case, if they have not consciously deceived, they have done so unconsciously during their trances. Therefore fraud is always possible.

4. Conjurers, even those of quite moderate ability, can produce much more remarkable illusions than the most powerful mediums. Unless very well versed in legerdemain no one can imagine how completely an ordinary trick conjurer can illusionize.

None of the experiments in direct writing carried out with mediums are of value by reason of the many very easy tricks worked every day, which have grossly deceived even distrustful persons.

5. No observers can maintain continuous attention and observation for two or three hours.

6. All the wonders attributed to the Fox sisters, to Mme. d'Espérance, Florence Cook, Eglinton, Slade, Bailey, Eldred, Miller, and A. Roth must be eliminated, for with them there was evident fraud. There then remain only the experiments with Home, Stainton Moses, and Eusapia. Now these with Eusapia were vehemently contested at Cambridge and in America. The facts recorded of Home were observed by Crookes only; and those alleged of Stainton Moses are derived entirely from himself and from Mr. and Mrs. Speer, who were his intimate friends and much prepossessed in his favour.

In the final analysis, nothing at all remains where everything is so strange and unlikely that multiplied and superabundant proofs are necessary. In proportion as the control increases in severity the phenomena diminish.

Conclusion: In the matter of objective metapsychics, the unlikely phenomena of telekinesis, ectoplasms, and apports have so far never been proved. If anything is proved, it is that there are no such things.

Such are the objections that can be alleged against objective metapsychics ; and it will be granted that I have not minimized them. These doubts have occurred to me hundreds of times, and I know, better than anyone else, the full force of these arguments. Nevertheless, I do not think them well founded, and I am firmly convinced that there are real physical metapsychic phenomena.

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(1) Negative evidence can establish nothing. Certain and positive facts, if substantiated, carry formal proof. When Crookes saw, in full light, a pencil rise and write; when Ochorowicz, also in full light, saw a chair come towards him; when a third hand stroked my face while I held both of Eusapia's hands; no doubt is possible, and the demonstrations are valid per se. I quote only these three facts; there are hundreds of others, some of which I shall mention later on.

(2) Mediums are not, unless by some rare exception, skilled in legerdemain. Movements of objects and raps have been verified under unexceptionable conditions so often that even Petrovo Solovovo, despite his scepticism, says (p. 415) "a truly impartial investigator cannot reject them." And if telekinesis and raps are admitted, other physical phenomena are possible.

(3) Even if Home and Eusapia were the only mediums, telekinesis would have to be admitted. Thanks to these two excellent mediums, we have such an assemblage of documents, proofs, and rigorous experiments, conducted by so many different men of science, that no doubt can outweigh them. Myers, Feilding, and Carrington, all sceptical, have accepted them after careful examination. In the whole of physics and physiology, there is no phenomenon that has been more rigidly and repeatedly tested.

There are many other incontestable instances of telekinesis: for instance, if all that Mr. and Mrs. Speer have written concerning Stainton Moses is to be rejected, we must suppose that they were not merely illusionized but were impostors; which is absurd.

(4) There are so many records of collective "hallucinations," collected with such care and attested with such exactitude by persons of unquestionable good faith, that it is not possible to reject them, any more than the non-collective hallucinations. Now from the moment that there is collective perception, there is some degree of objectivity.

(5) The facts of experimental (ectoplasmic) materializations have been observed too often and with too much precision to reject them all.

The question is not properly framed; it is said, "It is for you to prove that a materialization has taken place." I reply, "It is for you to prove in any given case that there was fraud." It is not sufficient to say, "Fraud was possible, therefore there was fraud." The fraud must be proved, and this has hardly ever been done. The onus probandi lies on those who discredit a given experiment.

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(6) It is absurd, because the physical phenomenon occurring in a direct experiment is not understood, to aver that all physical phenomena are false. Taking the example of the attraction of the magnet for iron, Cicero had already said, "Fiat, necne fiat id quaeritur . . . si rationem cur id fiat afferre nequeam, fieri omnino neges." Must a phenomenon be denied because we do not understand its mechanism? This seems to me contrary to all sound scientific method.

(7) That there are doubtful and even fictitious phenomena is no reason for rejecting all. There might be telekinesis without ectoplasms. There may be ectoplasms without apports. There is no need to consider these phenomena indissolubly connected doubt with regard to one of them does not invalidate others. Proofs of telekinesis that seem to me sufficient and even superabundant, exist. Ectoplasms seem to me to be demonstrated with equal rigor, though these phenomena are more dramatic and extraordinary. On the other hand, apports, levitations, and bilocations are doubtful. Slate-writing is almost always produced by skilful legerdemain. Photographs of phantoms and moulded impressions in paraffin still call for more thorough study.

In fine, there are incontestable physical phenomena in metapsychic science.

To deny them at the present time is to ignore phenomena fundamentally new that open up a promising avenue to new discoveries in science; and to remain in the old ruts with which blind official "science" has so long been satisfied.

And a definite conclusion follows. Since the proofs for some phenomena of objective metapsychics (though not for all) are insufficient, experimentation must be started ab ovo, from the very beginning.

Following the example of Descartes, we ought to make a clean sweep of all that has been said and written on the subject. The facts of ectoplasms and telekinesis are certain; but their mechanism is profoundly mysterious; therefore let us experiment again and again. We shall certainly reap the reward.

One of the most characteristic phenomena, which, when well observed by a cool-headed experimenter, brings absolute conviction is that the materialized hand melts in the hand of the observer (Delanne, chapter on phantasmal hands that melt, ii, 695).

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Damiani, holding the hands of Eusapia, has felt the fluidic hands of John melt and dissolve (Delanne, Apparitions matérialisses ii, 163).

"Once," says Crookes, "I held one of Katie's hands in mine, resolved not to let it go. No attempt or effort was made to release it, but little by little the hand seemed to dissolve into vapour, and it thus disengaged itself from my grasp" (Delanne, ibid., 167).

I have unfortunately never been able to verify this decisive phenomenon. With Marthe Béraud and with Eusapia I have several times endeavoured to obtain it, but always in vain; but that is no reason for denying the fact verified by Crookes, Damiani, and others.

Morselli, experimenting with Eusapia, says, "If one grasps the (fluidic) hands one feels the skin, the warmth, the mobile fingers and then the hand seems to dissolve."

Venzano (also with Eusapia) says that the members are in all respects similar to human members, but vanish from the grasp without leaving a trace.

F. Bottazzi, a learned physiologist whose testimony is that of an observer well used to delicate analysis of all experimental conditions, says that a hand (from Eusapia) melted and dissolved in his grasp. A little later, another hand placed on his head vanished from his hold. Again with Eusapia, M. Barzini, the distinguished journalist of the Corriere della Sera, says, "The hands did not escape me, they seemed to melt; they failed from between my fingers, and collapsed, like hands that softened and vanished." M. Falcomer, observing a medium named Rostagno, seized a fluidic hand which collapsed. In an experiment that Crookes was making with Florence Cook, Mr. Tapp took hold of Katie's wrist. He says, "Her wrist gave way under my grasp like a piece of thin card or paper, and my fingers met through her arm as if it were fluid."

In a séance described by De Rochas (A. S. P., 1908, xviii, 280) the circle joined hands round the medium, F. M. Montorgueil, taking hold of a hand that was touching his face with some fabric, called for light. The hand melted in his, and all of us, says De Rochas, "thought we saw a luminous trail from his hand to F.'s body." If one could be rigorously certain of M. Montorgueil's observation, that would be first-rate evidence.

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These phenomena are very remarkable, not only from the theoretical point of view with respect to ectoplasms, but because they furnish decisive proof of their objectivity. No legerdemain can produce a living hand that melts in the hand that holds it. I have seen the form of Bien Boa disappear into the floor under my eyes, but a visual sensation is not nearly so certain as a tactile one.

Many other observers have seen dematerializations ; the best known and best verified is still that of Katie King.

Mr. Oxley, experimenting with a medium named Mrs. Firmin, claims to have seen the apparition of the materialized "Betty" which seemed to dissolve: first the feet, then gradually the whole body and the head disappeared leaving only a small white spot which soon vanished (Delanne, loc. cit., ii, 268).

In a remarkable series of experiments, Dr. P. Gibier saw the form of Lucie, which had grown under his eyes, subside at his feet like a house of cards, disappearing exactly as Bien Boa disappeared before my own eyes. "Lucie disappeared by degrees in two seconds at most as she had come, but this time some twenty inches in front of the curtains beside which I was standing. The curtains did not move. . . . Just as the last white spot was disappearing from the carpet where the figure had been, I stooped down and put my hand upon it, but could feel nothing."

It is absurd to imagine a hallucination; and the only possible normal explanation would be that the figure was an image reflected by a mirror. But this will not hold, for this phantasm of Lucie breathed and spoke; she even caused the light veil that enveloped her like a cloud to touch Dr. Gibier and Dr. L.

Materialized phantoms therefore disappear just like the subjective visions that so often accompany monitions of death. Are they both constituted of similar substance? -if we may speak of "substance" which vanished without leaving a trace.

But the fundamental (not invariable) difference between accidental and experimental ectoplasms is that in these latter there is real matter, capable of exerting mechanical force, whereas in the former (accompanying monitions of death) it would seem that in the vast majority of cases there is nothing but a "shade" in the popular sense of the word, a reflection, or simulacrum. The experimental ectoplasms are in no sense shadows.

It has been asked how there can be materializations of clothes? This objection is somewhat naïve, for the materialization of a hand is no easier to understand than of the glove that covers it. It is, however, clear that materialization may be of inanimate objects and not of the human body only. The garments are usually veils or draperies, usually white, like muslin, produced by the

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gradual transformation of the whitish and more or less luminous cloud with which the apparition begins. The striking experiments of Mme. Bisson and Schrenck-Notzing give us valuable information on these ectoplasmic forms: there seems to be a genesis from an embryo.

It would seem that the materialization of garments discredits somewhat the hypothesis that a deceased human being should materialize. Prima facie it was unlikely that a body dissolved by putrefaction or disintegrated by cremation should be reconstructed, though the wild hypothesis of an astral body (!) might be advanced. But what about the astral presentment of a garment, a hat, an eye-glass, or a walking-stick? This is the height of folly. It seems to me much wiser to verify without pretending to understand, and to admit that any explanation we can give can hardly escape being ridiculous.

Instead of claiming that unknown powers pertaining to deceased humanity are capable of producing these phenomena, it is better to admit that we are dealing with facts as yet inexplicable, and await further elucidation.1  But there is no reason to deny a fact because it is inexplicable. Can anyone have the unpardonable presumption to claim to give an adequate explanation of all natural phenomena? In metapsychics we come up against the inexplicable at every turn. True, but is it not much the same in physics, in chemistry, and in physiology? Why, then, always try to put forward a theory which is foredoomed to futility? We must wait till new facts and fresh observations enable us to adopt some new interpretation, which will doubtless be an unexpected one.

As regards the substance of materializations our ignorance is painful. Some facts (too infrequent to allow of definite conclusions) would seem to imply that this substance can outlast a materialization. Katie gave Crookes a lock of her hair. I kept the hair that Phygia permitted me to cut from her head. Mme. d'Espérance allowed sitters to cut off pieces of the drapery surrounding her.

Equally obscure is the question of apports. Either matter can pass through matter, or matter can be created; and both of these two statements are equally extraordinary.

As to the passage of matter through matter the most striking

1 In the childhood of the race lunar eclipses were ascribed to a dragon devouring the moon. Our notion that materializations are produced by supernatural beings is not much more reasonable

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experiment is that made by P. Gibier, who having shut Mme. Salmon in a cage constructed by himself, saw her come out from it. Sundry alleged facts of the same kind are given in the spiritualist journals and in Mme. Frondoni-Lacombe's book. They are all very doubtful; possible, perhaps, but as yet unproven; the accounts by Stainton Moses notwithstanding.

The same or greater uncertainty pertains to apports. Up to the present there is not a single case whose genuineness has been established. On the contrary, as soon as close analysis is brought to bear, fraud is disclosed, as in the cases of Bailey and Anna Roth.

I do not deny apports. It would be rash to deny anything in metapsychics : I only say they are unproven.

The materialization of hands is absolutely certain, and likewise that of faces and whole bodies, though hands alone have been seen much more often; but no satisfactory proof of apports or of the passage of matter through matter has been brought forward and it is wise to reserve judgment.

What does seem to be proved (and it is a relief to find a positive fact in the midst of so much uncertainty), is that the ectoplasms in most cases emerge from the body of the medium; hence the word "ecto-plasm." The experiments of Mme. Bisson and Dr. Schrenck-Notzing establish this important fact. Gelatinous projections come from the mouth or the shoulders of Marthe. I saw the arm of Bien Boa formed in this way. At first it resembled a thin, rigid rod covered with drapery. Little by little this rod thickened under the drapery and became a stretched-out arm. The same phenomenon was very clearly observable with Eusapia. A kind of supplementary arm seemed to come from her body. Once I saw a long, stiff rod proceed from her side, which after great extension had a hand at its extremity-a living hand warm and jointed, absolutely like a human hand.

The ectoplasmic formations with other mediums were doubtless of the same nature.

Russel Wallace, experimenting with Dr. Monck, saw a light, whitish vapour appear on the left side of Monck's coat. Its density increased. White flakes, like snowflakes, moved in the air extending from the floor to the height of his shoulder. Then this cloud separated from the medium sufficiently to take on the semblance of a woman in flowing white draperies. Then all returned into the body of the medium (Delanne, loc. cit., 644).

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Mr. Mitchiner observed a white vapour emerge from Eglinton's side, wreathe itself round his feet, then gradually form a column which took on the aspect of a tall, fine-looking man with a black beard. Eglinton was perfectly visible during the whole time, and a kind of umbilical cord connected him with the nebulous form. After a short time, Eglinton being seated, the form seemed to dissolve into his body at the level of the chest. A. de Rochas, experimenting with Mme. d'Espérance, saw a luminous vapour, like the Milky Way, emerge from her breast.

It is not necessary that the sequence of materializations should always be the same; there may be differences of power in various mediums. With the exceptionally powerful, such as Home and Florence Cook, the materialization is rapid and complete, and the ectoplasm is separate from the first; with others, also very powerful, like Eglinton, Mme. d'Espérance, and Marthe Béraud, separation from the ectoplasm does not take place at once and the reality of the phantom is very transitory. With Eusapia and Stainton Moses the forms are much less defined; only very rarely can an independent apparition, autonomous and separate from the medium, be seen.

Provisionally, the sequence of materialization phenomena, as observed with Eusapia, may be stated as follows: At first, touches and raps produced both easily and frequently; this is the first stage, in which nothing is visible, for the material energy disengaged from her body is formless. In the second stage the hand is formed, but still cannot be seen, though it can execute well-defined mechanical actions, can take hold of a bell or a book, and can touch one's head with fingers that are felt to be warm and jointed. Finally in the third stage, which was rarely reached in my experiments with Eusapia, the hand becomes visible and can be photographed.

In a still rarer, fourth stage, not only a hand but a whole body is formed and detached. Vassallo, Porro, Morselli, and Bottazzi have been able to witness these complete materializations.

Luminous phenomena are relatively frequent. I know that these lend themselves to simulation, at least when they take the form of wandering lights which move like sparks before the sitters and disappear. I know that these can be imitated with little phosphorescent projections, but no one has perceived any odour of phosphorus after these lights, and the trick is not easy when both hands of the medium are held as Eusapia's were, and she continues

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to talk. This excludes the hypothesis of little particles of phosphorus held in her mouth, which has actually been advanced (??).

Such a use of phosphorus is, as a matter of fact, impossible when the medium has been searched, undressed, her hands held, and when, as with Eusapia at Ribaud Island, there was no phosphorus at her disposal. On some occasions (though not very often) Ochorowicz and I have seen small green lights, like eyes, oblique in shape, floating about in the air. In Paris, in Milan, in Rome, and Montfort-l'Amaury, other observers have verified the same. I have myself recently seen it at Warsaw with several mediums under unexceptionable conditions.

Nearly all noted mediums—Eglinton, Mme. d'Espérance, and Florence Cook—have produced luminous phenomena.

Mr. Livermore, experimenting with Kate Fox (a medium open to suspicion), thus describes the phenomenon: 1

"A spherical ovoid of light rises from the floor as high as our foreheads and places itself on the table in front of us. At my request the light immediately became so bright as to light up that part of the room. We saw perfectly the form of a woman holding the light in her outstretched hand." Livermore does not say if Kate Fox was herself also seen at this moment.

With Home, luminous phenomena were very frequently observed.2 Sometimes it was a small luminous ball floating in the air; sometimes small phosphorescent lights, occasionally much brighter effects."a bright beam of sunshine flooding us with light, and a beautiful rainbow appeared in the heavens," sometimes wandering lights touched the sitters and gave the impression of contact with a foreign body. In one remarkable case Lindsay and Charlie saw, as it were, tongues of fire on Home's head.

1 At this point there occurred a singular instance of cryptesthesia. I had broken off my writing at the word "phenomenon" above, on Monday, February 9th, at 4.30 P.m. Leaving the paper on my desk, I went out to make an experiment with Stella, who had never been into my house. She knew in a general way that I was engaged on a treatise on metapsychics, but had, of course, never seen a line of it. That day I interrogated her with the planchette on a lost will (result absolutely nil), and instead of an answer on this subject I received "Helios I make by radiation," a phrase which applies curiously to the last sentence I was writing at my own house.

This may be a coincidence, though I do not think so, but even so it is worth noting. My hands were not on the table and the word "Helios" surprised me greatly. Stella knows no Greek, but knows the meaning of "Helios." The Phrase given by the planchette seems to be the logical sequel to the interrupted sentence in my MS.

2 Experiments on spiritualism by Viscount Adare, s. l. n. d. (London, 1869), PP. 13, 38. 52. 6o, 65, 76, 83, 88, 89, 114, 124.

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With Stainton Moses the lights were frequent, sometimes very bright,1  appearing like reflected lights (from what source?) columns of phosphorescent vapour or diffused light like that of a comet, or like stars; in short, most varied forms. These lights were observed sometimes by S. Moses himself, sometimes by Mr. and Mrs. Speer. The good faith of these observers is not to be impugned; though we may suppose that Stainton Moses, when alone, may have been liable to visual hallucinations.

Hyslop (Am. J. S. P. R., 1912, 190) has reported that Anna Burton produced lights when in a state of trance. Such lights could not have appeared four feet away from her even if she had had lucifer matches of phosphorized oil, for she had been carefully undressed and clothed in special garments before the experiment. It was, however, noticed that in one case her saliva was phosphorescent, which detracts somewhat from the authenticity of the phenomenon, though in view of the very poisonous nature of phosphorus, it is difficult to imagine that she could keep phosphorous matches in her mouth. Besides, even if this were admitted, it is not easy to see how lights of the kind described could appear.

E. Bozzano (A. S. P., 1909, xix, 82) has observed thin whitish fluidic filaments proceeding from each of the joints of Eusapia's fingers.

J. Ochorowicz has insisted on the luminous flashes that proceeded from Stanislawa Tomczyk, with whom he made some very good experiments. He reminds us that MacNab had obtained them also. Wandering lights are often seen with Eusapia, small green lights which I have seen sometimes, but rarely. It is improbable that these lights are akin to the luminous aureole more or less like that of the saints, which emanates from the body of some mediums. Commandant Darget has studied these lights and tried to photograph them, but, as G. de Fontenay has shown, it is likely that there are photographic errors. The same holds good for H. Baraduc's negatives.

1 Consult especially The experiences of W. Stainton Moses, P. S. P. R., x 1895, 24-114.

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Photographic studies of luminous emanations from mediums, resembling clouds, flashes, or bright vapour, are still too uncertain to allow of any definite conclusions. It seems, however, especially since Ochorowicz's able work, that a series of valuable researches might be undertaken on this; but there are two necessary conditions; both difficult to secure-a powerful medium (for it is averred that only mediums have this power) and an experimenter who is at once a good psychologist and a skilled photographer.1

In certain cases, loud and extraordinary sounds, which are assuredly objective, are heard. Near Stainton Moses very loud sounds are described by Dr. and Mrs. Speer. The sounds that Grocyn (the so-called guide of Stainton Moses) drew from his invisible instrument were so powerful as to resemble those that a giant might draw from a huge violoncello . . . they were sometimes such as to produce terror . . . they were like a double bass played on a big drum and plucked like a guitar. Dr. Speer says, "Up to then we had not heard the sound of wind-instruments, when there resounded a loud trumpet-call between Stainton and myself. This sound was repeated several times. . . . One evening we heard the sound of bells in the garden following us about . . . in the room, where there were no

1 To show the extreme difficulty of good photographic experiments, it is sufficient to recall the fruitless and laborious endeavours of G. Le Bon, an experienced photographer, with what he calls "dark light." So also the N-rays, which have not been demonstrated, though studied and described by eminent physicists. In such matters experientia fallax, judicium ductile I shall therefore not consider the photographs received by A de Rochas from one of his relations, a very sincere person, M. de B. (A. S. P., 1905, xv, 582). Is it certain that M. de B.'s brother-in-law has not imagined a spirit-photograph? which is so easy to make. Regarding faked photographs, consult A. de Rochas (A. S. P., "908, viii, 9-15) ; Darget (A. S. P., 1909, xix, 20-26) ; Julia Rosenkrantz (A. S. P., 1909, xix, 361-365). E. Morselli has published an erudite and witty article on this subject, with some amusing photographs (A. S. P., 1908, xviii, 1 159

The genuineness of so-called psychic photographs is still a matter of dispute, for there have been lamentable trickeries. Mr. Allerton S. Cushman obtained "An Evidential Case of Spirit Photography" (published under that title in the J. S. P. R., April, 1922, pp. 132-147). Mr. and Mrs. Cushman of Washington came to England quite unexpectedly without making their intention known to anyone. They went to the British College of Psychic Science at 59 Holland Park, London, and not finding Mr. Hope of Crewe, they had an interview with Mrs. Deane, another psychic photographer. On one of the negatives taken there appears a face very like that of a young daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Cushman who had died eighteen months before. "It cannot be supposed that this portrait is a reproduction of any existing portrait for none such was taken to the College, and the attitudes are different, especially the direction of the eyes. The whole question is the degree of resemblance between the psychic image and the dead girl. It must be admitted that the resemblance to the normal portrait is so close as to be almost identical" (Second edition).

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musical instruments, the carillon continued, giving the effect of a brilliant concerto on the piano.1

Stainton Moses showed many other objective phenomena which must be considered genuine unless we admit the absurd hypothesis of willful deceit on the part of three honourable persons who risked persecution, ridicule, and hostility by publishing them and could get nothing by doing so but abuse and calumnies.

Sometimes perfumes exuded from his head, and the more they were wiped away the more abundant they became.

Direct writing was obtained. Dr. Speer, being alone in the room, took a sheet of music paper, placed it on a bureau with a pencil, and left the room, locking the door after him. He never lost sight of the door, and no one could enter the room; but on his return the paper was covered with writing. "This instance of direct writing," he says, "is one of the most satisfying proofs we have ever received."

There were also lights, weak at first, but gradually becoming very bright, like torches. Mrs. Speer says that one of these luminous nuclei came on to the table, skimmed round the heads of the sitters, struck against the ceiling, and went to the top of the door, giving out a sound whenever it touched anything. Sometimes a hand could be seen holding the light, a hand quite different from that of Stainton Moses. One day one of these lights rose from the floor through the table as if it were no obstacle. Once such a light remained visible for half an hour.

Mr. Podmore, convinced that there are no objective phenomena and that there cannot be any, has tried, without adducing the semblance of proof, to maintain that Stainton Moses was a great neuropath, a hysteric, deceiving for the sake of deceiving, moved by a kind of half-morbid, half-unconscious knavery. These insinuations against the good faith and honesty of Stainton Moses will not hold. F. Myers had a great admiration for him. Dr. Johnson, his medical attendant, states that he was a man of great intellectual capacity, methodical, well balanced, and a steady worker. It would be necessary also to incriminate Dr, and Mrs. Speer and other honourable witnesses.

In fine, it is not to be imagined that these luminous phenomena are explicable as hallucination or as fraud. Hallucination is one of those ridiculous hypotheses which are as inadmissible in meta

1 Bozzano, Pour la défense de Stainton Moses, A. S. P., 1905, xv, 76-129

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psychics as in any other science. An observer is never hallucinated. When he reads 38.55 on a thermometer it is because that is the temperature indicated. If he sees a light or hears a sound, or perceives an odour, it is because there is an objective fact that produces these sensations.

Fraud, of course, is always possible; but phosphorescent balls which give no odour of phosphorus, luminous appearances round the head, or luminous hands are phenomena that no medium can produce by trickery after he has been carefully searched.

Nevertheless, luminosity is so strange a fact that further proofs must be required; methodical research is necessary. We must wait till we have mediums capable of producing luminous phenomena, like Home, Eusapia, Stainton Moses, and Eglinton, and then endeavour to scrutinize the conditions yet more closely than our illustrious predecessors did.

The production of sounds and scents belongs to the same group of physical phenomena as ectoplasms. Again it is from Home and Moses that most of the data are drawn, and again new experiments to verify and intensify the effects produced by these celebrated and powerful mediums are desirable.

It would have been valuable that these luminosities should have been established by photography, but up to the present, apart from the experiments by Crookes, Mme. Bisson, Schrenck-Notzing, Imoda, and Ochorowicz, the results in this direction are but poor.

The painful imperfection of the old spiritist photographs may be seen from the book published by Dr. Foveau de Courmelles at the instigation of M. Emmanuel Vauchez. Despite all my goodwill I cannot consider most of these faces as authentic.

Only very simple-minded persons could accept the photographs by Dr. Th. Haumann of Washington. Almost all the photographs which show doubles result either from photographic errors or from a very easy trick. Double exposure, easily done by the least skilful, gives a very good imitation of a phantom or a materialized face.

Photographs of a form that is visible to the experimenters is totally different from these. Unless there is gross trickery (as in the case of Ofélia Corralès at Costa Rica), photography has the great merit that it defines the phenomenon and registers details that a rapid glance may have passed over. However, in certain

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cases, methodical, prolonged, and conscientious observation is nearly as valid as photography. The shock of the flashlight often arrests the phenomena and then the successive stages of their production cannot be followed, as I was able to do with Marthe Béraud.

But as to doubles, effluvia, portraits of the deceased, of phantoms invisible to the sitters and perceptible only on the photographic plate, I do not think that anything decisive has yet been produced. What the eye does not see the plate rarely registers. The whole question of human effluvia, thought forms (as Commandant Darget has endeavoured to demonstrate them) must be studied anew from the very beginning. Whatever Sir A. Conan Doyle may claim, it must be stated that, despite many attempts, nothing reliable has been proved.1

Photographic evidence of this kind is always to be received with caution, unless the exact conditions under which the negative was taken are known. Mr. Arthur Hill, in the Occult Review of March, 1910, gives a remarkable case, though he raises some doubts and with some reason. A photographer at S in Lincolnshire, named Binns, not a spiritualist and making no pretensions to anything of the kind, when developing the photograph of a client-a farmer named Warren-saw the superimposed face of a certain Mr. Ground, a cousin of Warren's, of whose existence Binns did not know. This man Ground was dying in a hospital about fifteen miles away. The plate was taken from a fresh packet. Mr. Ground had never been photographed since his childhood. Everything seems to point to an authentic fact. But we can scarcely draw this conclusion without further proof.

After a detailed study which is a model of methodical argument, Mr. Walter F. Prince concludes that the number of so-called spirit photographs representing Mr. Bocock are due to fraud: and he adds, very justly, that there is not as yet any completely satisfactory proof of "spirit photography" (Am. S. P. R., March, 1920, 585).

It is difficult to contest that pronouncement, but it applies only to the cases when the head or the form is invisible to the sitters; in these latter cases criticism should be directed to the control of the medium and not to the photographic process.

1 To judge of the extreme difficulty of transcendental photography, the book by Gde Fontenay, La Photographie et l'étude des phénomènes psychiques, Paris (Gauthier Villars. 1912) may profitably be read.

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After treating of ectoplasms, some other peculiar facts should be mentioned that find no place among ordinary ectoplasmic phenomena. These are mostly due to Home.

The most astounding experiments with Home, prior to those by Crookes, are described in a very rare book 1 of which only fifty copies were printed. I owe my knowledge of it to J. Maxwell.

It deals with private experiments made by Viscount Adare in 1867 and 1868, when Home was at his house. Viscount Adare did not intend these reports, which were letters addressed to his father, for general circulation. In his introduction he says, "I have omitted mention of the precautions taken against trickery, collusion, and other fraudulent acts; for I have been convinced that precautions were needless, having invariably found that the phenomena were such as could only be produced by an intelligence invisible indeed but active and acting from reason."

The absence of such indications of the precautions taken against conscious or unconscious fraud by Home causes some misgivings, but as all the details have been very carefully noted by Viscount Adare these wonderful séances can be reconstructed and we can suppose that deceptions difficult, and by the nature of the phenomena, almost impossible, were not practised. We may admit that Viscount Adare, Lord Dunraven, Mr. Jencken, Major Blackburn, and the other honourable and educated sitters would have needed to be terribly blinded by credulity to have failed in unmasking gross and palpable frauds continued for two years. And it must be remembered that when Crookes took many and rigorous precautions nearly the same phenomena were produced.

To adhere strictly to the plan of the present book as a treatise on metapsychics, the telekinesis, raps, levitations, and other singular phenomena reported by Viscount Adare should be treated in separate chapters ; but it is perhaps better, at the risk of departing from the logical order, to summarize in one place the extraordinary facts that he narrates.

Movements without contact were frequent; an accordion, of which Home only held one side, played a melody singularly well. This was in the light. Raps were heard over the whole room at the same time (pp. 2-4).

In a room completely darkened (p. 13) Home sat at the piano,

1 Experiences in spiritualism with Mr. D. D. Home, by Viscount Adare, with introductory remarks by the Earl of Dunraven. London. Thomas Scott, 1869 (?).

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and this piano rose from the ground, first about an inch, and then about fifteen inches. That day Home's body was elongated (??), Viscount Adare says that no error was possible. His ordinary height is five feet eight inches; he elongated to six feet five and one-half inches.

The table rose into the air seventeen times, as stated in the index to the chief phenomena at the beginning of the book (xxivxxv). Once it rose seventeen inches and remained at that height for a considerable time (p 109). In the experiment of March 12, 1869, a table with four legs placed twenty-one inches from Home's chair rose in the air while no one was touching it and settled gently on another table on which were a number of objects, without touching any of them. During all that time strange noises were heard, like voices, and the table was shaken by strong vibrations. On the 29th of March, in the light, the table rose to a height of twenty-three inches, swaying in the air, and after remaining at that height for a few seconds rose farther to at least five feet and then came down with a noise like a railway train.

Levitations were frequent, and still more frequent the elongations, this latter a singular phenomenon very susceptible of mistake, for which we have no parallel. Home was placed against the wall, Adare being in front of him; then his arms seemed to lengthen and his breast to swell. "Home said to me, 'Adare, you see the extension is from the chest.' He again placed himself against the wall and extended his arms to their ordinary stretch. I made a pencil mark on the wall at the ends of his fingers. He then lengthened his left arm and I made a fresh mark; then his right arm, which I also marked. The total elongation, measured in this way, was nine and one-half inches."

This experiment is much less conclusive than would appear at first sight; for the voluntary power of extension of the arms is variable so that this elongation is far from being an authentic fact, and it is better not to make much of it.

Apparitions of hands, touches, and lights round the head were frequent.

I will give only a few details of a levitation and a fire test, from Adare's book, slightly abridged.

On the 16th of December, at Buckingham Gate (p. 82) in presence of Viscount Adare, Captain Charlie Wynne, and the Master of Lindsay, Home elongated and rose into the air. Then he said, "Do not be frightened, and on no account leave your

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chairs." Then Lindsay said, "It is too horrible. He has passed through the window to the next room, and is coming in at that window." Then, says Viscount Adare, we heard Home in the next room; he came back through the window, sat down, and began to laugh. "I laugh," said he, "to think that if a policeman had seen me how surprised he would have been to see a man come through the window and float along the wall. Adare, come with me." We went into the adjoining room. I opened the window which he went through headfirst, his body being nearly horizontal and apparently rigid. Then he returned and we went into the next room. The rooms were on the third floor.

Other strange things were seen-a form like a bird flying and whistling in the room, tongues and jets of fire from Home's head; then as it were the blast of a strong wind, "the most weird thing I ever heard."

The fire test is more astonishing still. At Norwood in the house of Mrs. Hennings (p. 68), Home first gave Adare the power to raise a book by placing his hand flat above it: at one moment there was an interval of more than two inches between the hand and the book. Then he went to the fireplace, took out a burning coal twice as large as an orange, put it on his hand and walked about the room showing it. He then gave us his hands to smell, which instead of having any odour of burning were scented; he replaced the coal in the fire, and kneeling down "placed his face right among the burning coals, moving it about as though bathing it in water!!" Then he held his hands some time over the flame of a candle. He took the lighted coal again into his hands and blew on it to quicken it. "He asked me to touch it: I did so and took it into my two hands, he put his hands over it, and we held the lighted coal in our four hands; I hardly felt any heat."

The same astounding experiment was repeated on April 3d at Astley House (p. 147). This séance was remarkable; it is corroborated by Mr. S. C. Hall. A lighted coal was placed on Mr. Hall's head, and his white hair was combed over the coal, and left four or five minutes (p. 178) : the hair was not burned: a few moments later this coal was so hot that one could not bear one's face near it.

We must hold in suspense belief in these unheard-of facts till new proofs have been given; but there have been so many rash denials already in metapsychic matters that we ought to be cautious in our negations. These experiences are not comparable to

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the celebrated ordeal by fire that certain fakirs provide for the delectation of the public, for to them all verification is wanting, and the precise conditions are not revealed. Possibly abundant perspiration after quick walking might suffice to prevent burning (??).

In any case, if the narrative of Lord Adare, corroborated by Mrs. Hennings, Mr. and Mrs. Jencken, Mr. Saal and Mr. Hart, is correct, no natural explanation seems possible

It is beyond doubt powerful mediums produce peculiar and nearly unique phenomena which can hardly be classified. For instance: In a séance at Paris in the house of C. Flammarion, I was holding Eusapia's right hand, and Flammarion her left. I repeatedly felt with my right hand John's large hand through the curtain. I said to Eusapia, "I am going to prick that hand to see whether it is really a living hand." The room was in half-light, and a pin was given me. Taking the pin in my right hand I pricked John's hand through the curtain. I then felt a prick on my left shoulder through my clothes, as if a pin were thrust in, without hurting me much, but enough to stop me, and I ceased to prick the hypothetical fluidic hand. The prick I felt on my shoulder was no hypothesis. Obviously no explanation can be attempted.

Another strange phenomenon, unique up to the present, is the case of the letter announcing a serious event, which when placed on the mantelpiece gave raps loud enough to call attention (p. 447).

The verification of such unique and isolated phenomena must depend on a knowledge in minute detail of the lives of powerful mediums. All hagiographies are certainly not illusions or impostures; but it is impossible to distinguish what is true from what is false. It would be folly to accept all that is said in the lives of the saints; but it would be equally rash to deny everything. As there really are rare and well-nigh unique phenomena of which verification is always more or less defective, it is well to wait before forming a decided opinion. There are more surprises in reserve in metapsychics than in any other science.

Meanwhile we must base our conclusions, not on exceptional phenomena, but on the ectoplasmic facts that are, so to say, commonplaces of metapsychics.

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Telekinesis and ectoplasms are degrees of the same thing-the objectification or projection of an intelligent mechanical energy. This mechanical energy is sometimes invisible, as when an accordion moves without apparently being touched: sometimes visible when the energy takes the form of a living moving hand. But both are exteriorizations of motive power-extériorisations de la motricité—to borrow the excellent term devised by DeRochas.

The fact that intelligent forces are projected from an organism, that can act mechanically, can move objects and make sounds, is a phenomenon as certainly established as any fact in physics. The only difference between this telekinesis (revealed by movements and raps) and ordinary commonplace mechanical effects is that the former is exceptional, only producible by a very small number of persons, and even by them only occasionally and with difficulty.

All the same it is an assured fact-the experiments with HomeEusapia, Stainton Moses, and Miss Goligher prove it definitely It is doubtless grievous to a scientific man to have to admit that there are exceptional phenomena; yet the magnet attracts iron. That is exceptional, but no one denies it.

The materialization of a hand, of a body having all the semblance of life, of a face, or of a phantom, is a fact as assured as telekinesis; and this makes it all the more difficult to understand, for these forms seem to have all the attributes of life. Materialized forms are intelligent, and have, at any rate in appearance, a personality: the hand is warm and living, the eyes move in their orbits and look, the voice speaks, the respiration disengages carbon dioxide, the legs move, and the hands take hold of objects.

The genesis of seemingly living forms has been observed; they begin like a nebula, they consolidate in the same way as a nebula condenses into a planet. Garments, veils, and accessories are formed simultaneously, and all have usually but a transitory existence, vanishing as they came-ceu fumus in auras.

To affirm all this is to affirm a great deal. Is it possible to go farther? It may be possible in the future, but today it would be imprudent to go beyond. Let us pause before the Beyond!

Photographs, direct writing, apports, the production of musical sounds and of lights cannot be held to be established, fraud being easy and frequent. Metapsychics presents so many strange facts, that these also may be possible, and even for the most part admissible. No one would have thought of simulating them if they

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had never really occurred. I do not hesitate to think them fairly probable, but they are not proven. We must stop short, being in the domain of strict science, and on the threshold of a mystery, and we can affirm telekinesis and materializations, but nothing more.

In speaking of lucidity it was said that experiences of lucidity were of themselves insufficient to prove survival scientifically; for cognition of things inaccessible to our senses is a simpler hypothesis than the survival of a dead person. We will now consider whether materializations give the proof of survival that lucidity alone cannot give.

In the first place the affirmation of a phantom that he is such and such a person counts for little or nothing. When the phantom of Bien Boa appears and claims to be an Indian prince, although the objective reality of the apparition is certain in the given conditions, there is nothing to prove that this phantom is animated by the mind of a deceased Indian prince who remembers all his past. Helen Smith says she is Marie Antoinette, but that does not convince me that Marie Antoinette has returned to earth and speaks by Helen's vocal organs: the affirmations of Bien Boa and John King have no more value. Up to the present the ideas, gestures, and words of materialized forms do not entitle us to say that their personality differs from that of the medium more than the personalities evoked by Alice, when hypnotized, differ from Alice in her normal state. It is therefore very rash to assume that the consciousness of Bien Boa, Marie Antoinette, or John King returns to us.

Unfortunately for the spiritualist doctrine no proof can be given, or at any rate it has not yet been given. The case of George Pelham, though there was no materialization, is vastly more evidential for survival than all the materializations yet known. I do not even see how decisive proof could be given. Even if (which is not the case) a form identical with that of a deceased person could be photographed, I should not understand how an individual two hundred years dead, whose body has become a skeleton, could live again with this vanished body any more than with any other material form.

Materializations, however perfect, cannot prove survival; the evidence that they sometimes seem to give is much less striking than that given by subjective metapsychics.

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We must not be appalled at the idea of the materialization of complete form. The problem is the same in the case of a hand or of a whole body; it is as difficult to understand the materialization of a living hand, warm, articulated, and mobile, or even of a single finger, as to understand the materialization of an entire personality which comes and goes, speaks, and moves the veil that covers him. The improbability is the same.

Have these forms a personal psychological existence? If we had only experimental materializations on which to answer this question, we should be inclined to reply in the negative; for the personalities that appear in the course of experiment do not seem more conscious of themselves than those which manifest by automatic writing. They seem to pertain more or less to the conscious or unconscious fancy of the medium.

But experimental materializations cannot be separated from accidental materializations. There are "haunted houses" in which a form appears that seems independent of the will or imagination of persons there present. There are monitions that are not entirely subjective, since they are perceived collectively, so that if the existence of beings independently of human beings cannot be proved, neither can it be disproved.

It is extremely disappointing to find that our reasoning always ends in uncertainty. But at least the uncertainty extends only to the explanation and not to the facts of telekinesis and materialization.

In any case we can, thanks to the experiments of Crawford, Ochorowicz, Mme. Bisson, and Schrenck-Notzing, form some idea on the genesis of these phenomena, and sketch out a kind of embryology. This embryogenesis may not be identical in all cases, but in some that have been very exactly observed and illustrated by photography, a kind of nebulous, gelatinous substance exudes from the medium's body and gradually is organized into a living, moving form. The ectoplasmic cloud would seem to become living substance while at the same time veils develop around it that conceal the mechanism of its condensation into living tissues.

M. P. Lecour has compared the process to the condensation of a nebula (A. S. P., June, 1913, 162). There is at first a condensation of cosmic matter into a more or less compact mass, in spirals, sometimes in rings; it then condenses further into sans, or, in the larger nebulae and under central forces, into planets. Ectoplasmic formations are very similar to this; and M. Lecour reproduces

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photographs by Ochorowicz and Aksakoff. Similar clouds appeared at the Villa Carmen, and condensed; and likewise with Linda, Eusapia, Mme. d'Espérance, and at experiments by Florence Marryat, Dr. Gibier, and Stainton Moses. The identity of process in the condensation of whitish clouds and luminous vapours is striking. Venzano describes a mass of vapour at the side of Eusapia, in rapid swirling movement. One of the observers at Algiers saw white flakes of vapour of differing brightness that gradually condensed. Imoda describes a white cloud floating round Linda. Courtier at the Psychological Institute saw phosphorescent lights moving in the cabinet round Eusapia, which came to the opening between the curtains and seemed to rise vertically as they condensed. M. Lecour observed round an unnamed medium, luminous masses which gradually assumed ill-defined corporeal forms, appearing and disappearing.

Further scientific knowledge will take us farther, and doubtless metapsychic science has great surprises in store.

(b) Leading Ectoplasmic Experiments

Under this head we shall consider various cases of materialization.1

Experimenting with Home, Crookes saw materializations. Mere touches were frequent, but visible materializations were rarer. His experiments are most decisive and it seems impossible to doubt them. In a fair number of cases hands were seen in full light. Home wished that all phenomena should take place in the light. "His powers were sufficient," says Crookes, "to overcome this adverse influence. With two exceptions, everything that I witnessed with him took place in the light.

"A little hand, very beautifully formed, rose from the table in the dining-room and gave me a flower. It appeared and disappeared three times, giving me every opportunity to convince myself that it was as real as my own; this took place in the light, in my own room, while I was holding the medium's hands and feet.

1 When an experiment is described with too few details to allow anyone who did not see it to form a decided opinion, I am careful to say so; and a fortiori, when an experiment seems to me defective I do not hesitate to indicate this. If, on the contrary, the experiment seems to me evidential, I make this clear; but I shall usually cite the facts with their bibliographical references and leave the reader to judge of them.

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"Many times I and other persons have seen a hand pressing the keys of an accordion while we could see the hands of the medium, or when they were held.

"A finger and a form were seen plucking the petals from a flower in Mr. Home's button-hole.

"The hands and fingers did not always seem solid and as though alive. Sometimes they rather resembled a condensed vapour; a luminous cloud seemed to form round an object; it then condensed and took the form of a beautifully shaped hand, the flesh of which seemed as human as that of any person present. At the wrist or the arms it became vaporous and ended in a luminous cloud.1

"I have held one of these hands in mine, resolved not to let it go; no effort or attempt was made to make me release it; but the hand seemed to dissolve into vapour and so disengaged itself from my grasp.2

"Another time in my own house I saw the window curtains some eight feet distant from Home shaking, and a semi-transparent dark shape resembling a human form was seen by all the sitters standing up by the casement holding the curtain in its hand. While we were looking at it, it vanished and the curtains ceased to move. "On another occasion a phantom form advanced from one corner of the room, and, taking an accordion, moved forward into the room playing the instrument. This form was visible for several minutes by all present. We could see Mr. Home also. The phantom approached a lady who was sitting near; she gave a little cry and the shade vanished."

In a memorable letter (March, 1874) Crookes says: "I have at last obtained the absolute proof I have been seeking. On March 2d during a séance at my house, Katie (the apparition), having moved among us, retired behind the curtain and a moment later called me, saying, Come into the cabinet and raise my medium's head. Katie stood before me in her usual white robe and wearing her turban. I went towards the bookcase to raise Miss Cook, and Katie moved aside to let me pass. Miss Cook had slipped

1This is exactly what I observed in the materializations at the Villa Carmen -a luminous cloud whose outlines became more defined and took on human substance and form. In certain photographs taken by Aksakoff (perhaps the only ones which have some value among the old spiritist photographs), a luminous cloud is seen which finally organizes itself and develops into a nude human shape.

2 'This truly crucial experiment did not succeed with me. Contrary to what Crookes found with Home, the fluidic hands from Eusapia and Marthe made great efforts to release themselves.

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down, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that she was not dressed like Katie but was wearing her usual dress of black velvet . . , Not more than three seconds had elapsed between the time when I saw Katie before me till I raised Miss Cook again on the sofa. . . . The gas was then turned out, and Katie asked for the phosphorus lamp; and after having shown herself by its light for several seconds, she put it back in my hands, saying, Now come in and see my medium. I went in and saw Miss Cook on the sofa.

Another day Katie said that she would show herself at the same time as Miss Cook. . . . I saw Miss Cook, dressed in black velvet, apparently asleep; she did not move when I took her hand. Raising the lamp I looked round and saw Katie standing close behind Miss Cook. She was clothed in flowing white draperies. Holding one of Miss Cook's hands and kneeling down by her I raised and lowered the lamp so as to see Katie's whole figure and to convince myself that it was really Katie. She did not speak

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but moved her head. Three times I examined Miss Cook carefully to be sure that the hand I was holding was really the hand of a living woman, and three times I turned the light on Katie and regarded her attentively. At last Katie signed to me to leave. I went to another part of the cabinet and ceased to see her, but did not leave the room till Miss Cook had waked up and two of the sitters had brought in a light.

"Katie is six inches taller than Miss Cook; yesterday, with bare feet, she was four and one-half inches taller. Her neck was bare and did not show the cicatrice that is on Miss Cook's neck. Her ears are not pierced, her complexion is very fair, and her fingers much longer than those of Miss Cook."

Later, Crookes says (p 193) : "I have often raised one side of the curtain and then the seven or eight persons in the laboratory could see both Katie and Miss Cook in the full light of the electric lamps. We could not see the medium's face because of the shawl covering it, but we could see her feet and her hands: we could see her moving as if in pain and could bear her moans."

Katie King had long before announced that she would be able to remain with her medium only for a short time, and that she must soon bid her farewell. The last séance was on May 21, 1874. There was then a dramatic scene at which Sir William Crookes was present. Katie gave her last instructions, and went to Miss Cook who was lying insensible on the floor. Katie touched her and said, Wake up, Florence, I must now leave you. Miss Cook awoke and with tears besought Katie to remain with her, but in vain; Katie of the white robe disappeared. Crookes held up the fainting medium and Katie was seen no more.

Other interesting experiments were made with Miss Cook by various persons. Florence Marryat (quoted by Erny, p 145) says: "Katie King stood by the wall of the room, with both arms extended as if crucified. Three gas-jets threw a bright light upon her. The effect was stupefying. She remained so for about one second, then began to disintegrate; her features became nebulous, the eyes retreated into their orbits, the nose disappeared, and then the brows, then the limbs seemed to drop apart to the floor; at last only part of the head and some white garments remained, then all vanished."

In a séance at Mr. Luxmore's house, a Mr. Volkmann seized Katie by the waist, crying, "It is the medium." Henry Dunphy remarked that Katie lost her arms and legs; she escaped from Mr.

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Volkmann, slipping from his grasp and leaving no trace. Immediately after, Miss Cook was found, tied, with the knots intact. Mr. Varley attached a galvanometer to Miss Cook, so that any movement made by her would be shown by a deflection of the instrument; but there was no indication when Katie appeared, showing only the upper part of her body, though Mr. Varley was able to grasp her hand.

Eusapia's materializations have been fully observed by many competent experimentalists. I will speak of them at some length, for I have been present at close on two hundred séances with Eusapia.

Visible materializations are rare with her and in all my long experience I have seen none; I cannot remember having ever seen in these séances any human form, in whole or in part. Once I saw a kind of prolongation from her body, a kind of rod that touched my side, but this was in half-light and very fugitive. Per contra, I have been touched more than two hundred times when the control was excellent, by a seemingly human hand on my hands, my face, forehead, neck, and shoulders.

One such case, which seems to me perfect at all points, is the following-it took place at the Psychological Institute at Paris. There were present only Mme. Curie, Mme. X., a Polish friend of hers, and P. Courtier, the secretary of the Institute. Mme. Curie was on Eusapia's left, myself on her right, Mme. X. a little farther off, taking notes, and M. Courtier still farther, at the end of the table. Courtier had arranged a double curtain behind Eusapia ; the light was weak but sufficient. On the table Mme. Curie's hand holding Eusapia's could be distinctly seen, likewise mine also holding the right hand. Long practice had taught me to hold the hand firmly, and I could also see both of Eusapia's white cuffs.

We saw the curtain swell out as if pushed by some large object behind it. It was said to be John's hand. I asked to touch it, and with my right hand, which was free, I touched this hand projecting through the curtain, high above Eusapia's head. I felt the resistance and seized a real hand which I took in mine. Even through the curtain I could feel the fingers, which seemed to me (though I cannot positively say so) much larger than Eusapia's little hand. I held it firmly and counted twenty-nine seconds, during all which time I had leisure to observe both of Eusapia's hands

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on the table, to ask Mme. Curie if she was sure of her control, to call Courtier's attention, and also to feel, press, and identify a real hand through the curtain. After the twenty-nine seconds I said, "I want something more, I want uno anello (a ring) on this hand.," At once the hand made me feel a ring: I said "adesso uno braceletto," and on the wrist I felt the two ends as of a woman's bracelet that closes by a hinge. I then asked that this hand should melt in mine, but the hand disengaged itself by a strong effort, and I felt nothing further (the above is a combination of two separate experiments).

It seems hard to imagine a more convincing experiment, for in twenty-nine seconds the element of surprise is eliminated. In this case there was not only the materialization of a hand, but also of a ring. As all experiments demonstrate, materializations of objects, garments, and woven stuffs are simultaneous with human forms, these latter never appearing naked, but covered by veils which are at first white semi-luminous clouds which end by taking the consistence of real woven fabrics.

Having already described at full length the movements of objects without contact, there is no need to return to them, but it should be noted that the movements and materializations occur together. Everything takes place as though these movements were due to invisible materializations, paradoxical as that term seems. In the course of a séance one is touched ten or twenty times without being able to see anything, even though darkness is not total.

At Milan, two hands were heard in the air, clapping against one another. Raising one's hand very high one could feel what seemed to be a human figure, and on three different occasions one of the observers stated that he could see its hair and beard; the hair being stiff and short, the beard delicate, and the skin like that of a man. A piece of smoked paper was laid on the table, and on restoring the light, finger-marks were found on the paper, Eusapia's hands being quite clean. This was repeated three times, the third impression being that of a whole left hand.

The notes of one of my experiments at Milan read: "Eusapia says, 'Hold me firmly'; Schiaparelli on the right and Finzi on the left grip her hands well. I say to Finzi, 'You have hold of the left hand?' 'Yes.' To Schiaparelli, 'You have the right?' 'Yes.' To Finzi, 'You have hold of both feet?' 'Yes.' Then turning my

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head slightly to the left I see the curtain swell, and am touched on the shoulder by a hand that seems to be a right hand, presuming that it came from the medium. Nearly at the same moment two fingers pulled my hair at the back of my neck, without hurting me, so that I am certain that a hand touched me on the shoulder and the neck."

At Agnelas, J Maxwell saw a silhouette like that of a head with curly hair outlined against the wall of the room; and also, in the same manner, a hand and arm above the head of M. Sabatier, who felt himself touched at the same moment. The fore-arm was long and thin, coming out of the dark.

At the séances on Ribaud Island and in Paris, visible phenomena were few, the attention of the observers being devoted to observations on movements of objects. They were frequent at Genoa.

Morselli says (vol. i, 255), "I sat in a small armchair about two yards away on Eusapia's right. 'The invisible' arrived! Twice I was touched and clearly felt a hand in all respects like a living hand. My senses were fully awake. I can affirm that the thing that touched me was solid, resisting, impenetrable, and, in short, material."

In the eighteenth séance at Genoa, the best of them all, in presence of Morselli, Porro, L. Ramorino, L Vassallo, and Dr. Venzano, of the Minerva Circle, on December 23, 1901, in the dark, two invisible forms manifested which were afterwards seen by weak light. The first was a little deceased daughter of Porro who felt a child under a veil. We heard the child speak in a baby voice; she kissed Porro. This form could not be seen. Then another came, the son of Vassallo who died aged sixteen. This entity became visible; an almost phosphorescent ovoid appeared on Eusapia's right, moved slowly to the left about twelve inches and vanished. By red light an arm and hand were seen to proceed from the cabinet towards Vassallo. A third and a fourth entity appeared. The third was distinctly seen, but identification was doubtful. "In a room lit by five candles we all saw the two black curtains of the window near Eusapia stretch and swell out, "e avanzarsi verso me e verso Porro come se dietro vi fossero due persone vive agenti con intelligenza e con volonta propria e distinta." These two forms did not come beyond the curtains, but only showed hands and well-formed limbs. Morselli distinguished a right hand visible as far as the second finger: it was short, fat, and grey in colour, opening and shutting.

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In another séance, the twenty-third, which was also a very important one, held in M Avellino's house, Eusapia was fastened down on a bed placed behind the curtain. Then an apparition was seen of a young girl; the head, shoulders, and part of the bust being visible and perhaps slightly phosphorescent. A turban hid her ears, chin, and hair; she remained still for some twenty seconds. A second apparition then showed a tall man, with an abundant short beard, large head with prominent bones, and a thick neck. Four more appeared, first the head of a young woman in an oriental garb; the fourth was not completely formed, it seemed imperfect on the right side. Says Morselli, "I saw the eyes looking at me; although bright enough for me to see the reflection of the lights on the cornea, they seemed veiled. When I approached her, she made no attempt to retreat, but made a salutation with her arm and went. The fifth and sixth were of a woman of about fifty and a young child; these appeared together."

Previous experiments made with Eusapia at the house of Mme. Peretti should be mentioned, but these showed only imperfect forms, dark silhouettes, with heads hardly formed.

Although these experiments were under perfect control by very well-informed observers, they would be insufficient if they stood alone, but the innumerable instances of movements of objects without contact can be explained in no other way than by invisible materializations, and thus, following the scheme already outlined, we can assign three phases to these exteriorized phenomena, a first stage in which they are invisible, a second in which they begin to be visible but are still more or less amorphous, and a third stage in which they take on the semblances of a living organism surrounded by veils which at first mask the imperfections of form, but become thinner as the underlying form becomes more dense.

The experiments of F Bottazzi, professor of physiology in the University of Naples, are most evidential, and would give, if they were wanting, decisive proofs of materializations and movements without contact. These took place in the presence of Professors de Amicis, Scarpa, Pansini, and Bottazzi himself, provided with all modern instruments as for an experiment in physiology.

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"There were seen (p 684) splendid levitations of the table to a height of two feet from the floor, swaying in the air, untouched by Eusapia." Unknown to all present, Bottazzi had provided an electric button, which if touched would light a lamp. Eusapia, with her hands well held, repeatedly pressed the button with a fluidic hand and lit the lamp.Similar electric pushes placed in a cabinet behind the curtain were put into action while Eusapia struck blows with her hand on the table.

In another séance, Eusapia's hands and arms were tied with strong cords fastened to iron rings in the floor and secured with leaden seals. The fluidic hand then gave various objects-a trumpet and a vase of flowers-to Bottazzi.

In these séances numerous and striking materializations took place. While Eusapia was bound with strong cords M. Galotti saw two left arms (one natural and one fluidic) proceeding from her shoulder. Bottazzi experienced the crucial test of an ectoplasmic hand melting away in his grasp. He says, "I saw and felt at one and the same time a human hand natural in colour, I felt with mine the fingers and the back of a strong, warm, rough hand. I gripped it and it vanished from my grasp, not becoming smaller but melting, dematerializing and dissolving."

Under unexceptionable test conditions not only were there numerous touches, but fingers and hands, some frail and diaphanous, some thick and strong, and diverse figures and shades outlined behind the curtain.1

Bottazzi, who entered on these experiments with a sceptical mind, concludes: "The certitude we have acquired is of the same order as that which we attain from the study of chemical, physical, or physiological facts." That the professor of physiology in the University of Naples should express himself so strongly means that he must be absolutely certain.

Mme. Bloch also describes fluidic hands proceeding from Eusapia (A. S. P., vii, 1897, 2-6). She says Eusapia's hands were held and were also in full view, and we saw a hand emerge from the white cloth behind her; an arm without a shoulder touched her head. Then the phenomenon increased, the hand came from below and threw on the table some pieces of music taken from the piano. The hand was not luminous, but was a hand of flesh similar to our own. There would have been plenty of time to photo

1 "I saw the apparition," says Bottazzi (p. 691), "and shuddered." For my own part, though I have very often. experimented with Eusapia, I have never seen a distinct form. C. R.

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graph it. The fore-arm was in a close-fitting sleeve of grey stuff Eusapia had wide sleeves. This hand came from her skirt and not from her shoulder. Her hands were both seen and held the whole time.

M Venzano thus describes the formation of these phantoms (A. S. P., 1907, xvii, 514) : "Some eight inches from my face there formed a vaporous, globular, whitish mass which condensed into an oval and gradually took definite shape as a head. The nose, the eyes, the moustache, and a pointed beard could be clearly seen. It came nearer to my face, I felt a warm and living forehead against mine; the pressure of a caress, and a kiss; then the whole dissolved in vapour towards the curtain. The other sitters saw only a vague, luminous appearance, but heard the sound of the kiss."

A. de Rochas narrates the experiments at Choisy, in presence of General Thomassin, J. Maxwell, De Watteville, and A. de Gramont. M de Gramont saw a dark shadow like a hand outlined against the window; and the holding of the medium's hands was then verified. A moment later he felt his hand stroked by warm fingers that he could not take hold of.

These fluidic hands have been photographed under satisfactory conditions. G. de Fontenay, a skilful photographer and experienced man of science, was able to obtain striking photographs, one of which is reproduced here. The two hands are seen above Eusapia's head, her own hands being firmly held at the time. M. Cartier, one of the experimenters, says, "I did not for a single moment let go Eusapia's right hand." The other, M. Drubay, says, "I can affirm in the most positive fashion that during the whole of the sitting I never let go the left hand." It is therefore quite impossible that Eusapia should have been able to free both her hands just at the moment when control was necessarily strictest. An attentive study of the photograph shows that the hands are notably larger than Eusapia's hands.

Besides these photographs of hands there are others of the luminous mass usually seen in metapsychic photographs. Without insisting on the impossibility of Eusapia's contriving to put a handkerchief on her head and to take it away again while her hands were held, it may be remarked that the contours of this luminous hand are soft and indeterminate, while its brightness is much greater, as De Fontenay observes, than could be given by the handkerchief that it resembles.

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502 picture

Eusapia's materializations have been demonstrated not only by photography, but also by metapsychic moulds.1

Morselli reports one case of a mould of the face (very faint) under test conditions; 2 and he gives a reproduction of a much clearer impression of hands 3, though in this latter case he thinks there may have been unconscious fraud.

Per contra, the plaster impressions obtained by De Fontenay are excellent. In an experiment during which Flammarion continuously controlled Eusapia's head and bust, the impression of a face was taken on plaster. It is manifestly Eusapia's face.

At Naples, E. Chiaja obtained numerous impressions on clay. Nevertheless these experiments are still open to discussion: those made at the Metapsychic Institute with Franek Kluski seem more conclusive, and we shall return to them later.

Traces of light gauze tissue protecting the face or the fingers from direct contact with the plaster or the clay may often be observed. This does not detract from the genuineness of the impress, for materialization of inert tissues always accompanies the materialization of living tissue. Moreover, how could actual gauze be handled and caused to disappear under the rigorous control that is exercised?

The materializations given by Marthe Béraud are of the highest importance. They have presented numerous facts illustrating the general processes of materializations and have supplied metapsychic science with entirely new and unforeseen data.4

After these strange facts had been verified by General and Mme. Noel in a series of experiments lasting nearly two years, M. Delanne, the editor of the Revue du Spiritisme, and myself were invited to Algiers by him. The first experiments 5 at which I was present impressed me greatly, but I always distrust first impressions.

1 Voy. A. de Rochas, A propos d'Eusapia Paladino, Les séances de Montfortl'Amaury, A. S. P., 1898, viii, 148G. de Fontenay, Les séances de Montfort-l'Amaury, Soc. des édit. scientifiques, Paris, 1897.

2 Loc cit., i, 430 3 Loc. cit., ii, 348-349.

4 'Their bibliography is already voluminous, for they have provoked much controversy. The pros and cons will be found in Grasset's L'occultisme hier et aujourd'hui, ad edit., Montpellier, 370-374. After sixteen years the objections put forward seem very poor, and deserve only disdain

5 A naval officer, Captain Démadrille, and a physician, Dr. Decréquy, witnessed these experiments and corroborated them. Their narratives have been Published in part in the A. S. P. These notes and sketches confirm our later experiments in a very interesting manner.

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In the following year I returned to Algiers resolved to repeat the experiments under more rigorous conditions.

The medium was Marthe Béraud, the daughter of an officer, betrothed to General Noel's son, who died in the Congo before the marriage. She is a very intelligent and lively young lady, wears her hair short, and is a bright-eyed brunette. Subsequently to the Algiers experiments she has given proofs of strong mediumistic powers. She was the subject observed by Mme. Bisson and Dr. Schrenck-Notzing under the pseudonym of Eva.

The experiments at Algiers were held in a small, isolated building over a stable. The window was blocked up and remained shut at all times. The only door was locked at the beginning of every séance. It is the only room in the building, and before every séance everything was minutely inspected by Delanne and myself. Two curtains were stretched across one corner of the room as shown in Fig. 20, the curtain being about two and a half yards long, so as to make a kind of dark cabinet. We sat about half a yard, or even sometimes nearer, in front of these curtains. Those present were General and Mme. Noel, Mlle. X., Delanne, and myself, also Marthe Béraud's two younger sisters, Marie and Paule, who sat far from the curtain. Light was given by a photographer's red lamp. Within the curtains were two chairs, minutely inspected, one for Marthe and one for a negress, Aischa. The part played by Aischa seems absolutely nil. Mme. Noel made a point of her being present, but our best results occurred in Aischa's absence.

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Everything that took place in the room could be seen perfectly well, and I am absolutely certain that no stranger could enter during the séances.1

As Marthe was not tied, nor her hands held, the conditions of control were less severe than in Eusapia's case; they were, howeve