Legend
Experimental Spiritualism
I Presume that every one present is more or less a Spiritualist, that is to say that he believes that sensation, on certain occasions, may take place without the ordinary channels of perception. I presume, also, that some feel an interest in the manner in which the scientific examination of form-manifestations, or what are called materialisations, may take place. If there be such inquirers, and the fact of our assemblage here to-night is a sufficient raison d’etre for my theory that there is a numerous body of them, it behoves us to inquire what are the forms which have been so often seen, and so much more often described by various observers.
I may, in the first place, for all convenience of argument, presuppose that some of the forms which have appeared on so many occasions are genuine. All the numerous cases of fraud which have existed will be passed over by me. That such cases have been more or less frequent is within the scope of our experience; but the probability that their number is on the decrease is a fact on which every one may now congratulate himself. I have not, therefore, to give you any descriptions of the future life (if such there be for all souls), but rather to give you a description of a spring-balance; I have no messages from any brighter land, past, present, or future, to give you, but rather information (I trust exact) respecting the management of a weighing machine; and while I disclaim any idea that the facts which I shall bring to your notice have any moral bearing whatever, I merely claim that they are apparently exact. Experiment in Spiritualism has often been passed over in favour of the emotional part of the subject. If I have nothing particularly sensational or remarkable to bring before you—
“Non de vi, neque caede, nec veneno (Martial, Ep. vi. 19.)—
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I trust that the precision of some of the facts may be an excuse for their common and simple nature. What has been termed by one of the most eloquent masters of the science, “a central dogma of our faith,” is perfectly unaffected by the purely dynamical results which I shall notice. The “egotism of the affections” has little to do with these experiments, and they have small relation with the “demand that our dead should be given back to us, not that we should go to them, but that they should come to us.” We have not, therefore, to consider such results; and any interest which any person may feel in his own dead, or if his sympathies extend over humanity, any one else’s dead, may be gratified according to his own volition. No desire to communicate with, or honour the memory of our ancestors appears to have the slightest appreciable effect on a pencil attached to a spring balance. Still less can any person who watches the experiments I am about to describe in detail derive any conceptions of the state of the soul after death from what appears to me to be a very elaborate weighing machine. No less “fear of death,” which appears to be a condition through which all mankind must and will pass, can be possessed by the person who pursues the weighing machine experiment with care, than by he who may be the follower of any creed as to the destination of the soul whose body may be weighed at the price of one penny at the adjacent railway station. Yet, as the man who has ascertained his weight takes his ticket away with the consciousness that one (at least) physical fact is true, to the extent of the veracity of the scales, so the preservation of records like the present may tend to serve as factors on which some future person may make a probable theory as to the trans corporeal action of the human body. I will now, as briefly as I can, describe the machines which have been used by the committee of the British National Association of Spiritualists. I make especial reference to the columns of the Spiritualist for May 3rd, June 7th, and September 6th for the present year.
[The lecturer here described the apparatus in detail.]
Such, therefore, was the apparatus on which a number of successful experiments have been worked out, and of such nature will be the improved apparatus with which the liberality of Mr. Charles Blackburn, of Parksfield, Didsbury, Manchester, has provided the Research Committee. The psychic who has been employed in all cases is Mr. C. E. Williams, and I am (at this time especially) bound to record the honesty with which he aided the members of the committee in their search after facts, and to place also in evidence the proofs that even if he had been in any way inclined to deception, it would have been physically impossible for him to have produced some of the results which have been recorded. Experiments were, prior to the great experiment with Mr. C. E. Williams on the 5th April last, made by Mr. W. H. Harrison, to see what records were produced by making various sprawling and violent motions on the machine; also by moving about with one leg off the machine and another on it. Mr. Harrison “did not find it practicable to artificially produce Mr. Williams’s manifestation of April 5th, 1878, at 8.52½ p.m., when the spirit gave a heavy musical box to an observer, who was seated 12 ft. Sin. from the front of the cabinet; while this was done there was a quivering weight on the machine of never less than 28 lbs.” The fact that when this experiment took place there was a weight at all in the cabinet is sufficient to dispel the theory that it was possible for Mr. Williams, in the guise of “Peter,” to be lifting bells and moving boxes of some weight at a distance of 12 ft. 3 in. from the spot where his body recorded a weight of 28 lbs., which weight is greater than that which could have been produced by any portable article which the “psychic” could have secreted and placed in the cabinet whilst he himself was capering about the room. This theory, therefore, involves that of a creation of weight to the extent of 28 lbs., quod erat absurdum. Further, on the assumption that Mr. Williams’s normal height is somewhat less than six feet, it would be impossible for him to elongate his person to a length of 12 ft. 3 in. With a view, however, that we shall be able precisely to estimate the value of this experiment, I shall read you Mr. Harrison’s notes of the seance, from the Spiritualist of May 3rd last:—
Mr. Williams took his seat on the weighing machine at 8.7½ p.m., the self-registering apparatus gave the diagram shown in Fig 5, and the following is from my record:—
8.7½—Medium entered cabinet.
8.9½—Strong shudderings of medium.
8.10—Light put out.
8.15—Peter’s voice heard.
8.17—Medium sighing and moaning.
8.17½—Peter entered into conversation.
8.18½—Thread holding cabinet doors broken.
8.19—Peter said he didn’t do it.
8.19½—Peter talked till 8.221½.
8.23— Medium made shivering noise.
8.24— Peter asked for remnants of fire in the grate to be raked out. Done by Dr. Carter Blake.
8.24½—Peter talking till 8.25.
8.28—Medium shuddered. Peter talked.
8.29½—Medium shuddered.
8.30½—Peter drew open curtains of his cabinet.
8.32— Peter Said he was outside.
8.33— Medium shuddered.
8.33½—Peter: “Can you see me?” Answer: “No.”
8.34— Peter talking.
8.35½—Musical box set going by Peter’s order.
8.37—Mr. Barrett: “Peter says he is outside the cabinet.”
8.37½—Peter: “Does any one intimate Pm not outside!” Mr. Harrison: “No. Only known facts are stated.” Peter: “That’s right. Be scientific.”
[8.38—Light seen, and a head eighteen inches from cabinet.
8.39— Peter outside cabinet, touching Mr. Barrett.
8.40— Peter said he was still outside.
8.41— Peter talking. Light seen.
8.42— Illuminated head three feet from cabinet.
8.44—Peter talking, and gave a bell to Mr. Newbould near the other cabinet. Gave it into his hand in the dark.
8.45½—Light one foot from cabinet.
8.46—Illuminated face seen one foot from cabinet. Peter talked till
8.49—Peter said that he was out of the cabinet, and that he had put the musical box on the floor of the cabinet. [Immediately before this he had seized the musical box with both hands and had carried it away. The box had previously rested on Mr. Barrett’s knees.]
8.51 —Peter said that the box was outside the cabinet.
8.52—Musical box floating outside cabinet, as usual in a dark seance.
8.52½—The sitters said that Peter was “right outside.” He gave the musical box to Miss Kislingbury.]
8.54—A light seen one foot from cabinet. A face seen twice by Dr. Carter Blake and others.
8.56—Peter talking.
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* Read at the meeting of the Marylebone Society of Inquirers into Spiritualism, Sept. 24th, 1878.
Editor's notes
- ↑ Experimental Spiritualism by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 319, October 4, 1878, pp. 163-5
Sources
-
London Spiritualist, No. 319, October 4, 1878, pp. 163-5