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“I’VE HAD A DEAL OF TROUBLE BUT THIS REPAYS ME FOR IT!"
<hr>
THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION.
Another disgrace for science.—the st. Petersburg
PROFESSORS IMITATE THOSE OF HARVARD AND LONDON.
A. AKSAKOFF’S NOBLE PROTEST.<hr>
To the Editor of The Spiritual Scientist:
Dear Sir.—In advices just received from St. Petersburg, lam requested to
translate and forward to the Scientist for publication, the protest of the Honora-
ble Alexander Aksakoff, Imperial Counsellor of State, against the course of the
professors of the university respecting the spiritualistic investigation. The docu-
ment appears, in Russian, in the “Vedomostji,” the official journal of St. Peters-
burgh.- This generous, high-minded, courageous gentleman has done the possible,
and even the impossible, in order to open the spiritual eyes of those incurable
moles who fear the daylight of truth as the burglar fears the policeman’ “bull’s
eye.”
The heart felt thanks and gratitude of every Spiritualist ought to be forwarded
to this noble defender of the cause, who regretted neither his time, trouble or
money to help the propagation of the truth. H. P. Blavatsky.
New York, April 19, 1876.
<hr>
TO THE COMMISSION APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY OF PHYSI-
CAL SCIENCES OF THE ST. PETERSBURG UNIVERSITY, FOR
TliE INVESTIGATION OF MEDIUMISTIC MANIFESTATIONS.
According to my promise to the Commission to help them
in extending their invitations to mediums, I have neglected
no effort to the accomplishment of the said purpose. Nev-
ertheless but few mediums have shown any desire to come to
Russia, and those who did were unsuitable for a preliminary
examination, as their mediumistical powers were not of a
nature to afford any chance to investigate physical phenom-
ena. Finally, and for reasons previously detailed to the
commission, I concluded to bring with rhe from England the
P*o Petty boys. The mediumistic powers of these boys
pjpved too weak, not only for them to be tested by a com-
OVittee but even at private seances in my own house. Having
obtained no manifestations worthy of any attention at all—as
already published by me—at the committee’s investigation,
filer four seances 1 declined to waste any more of its time in
investigating the Petty boys.
Immediately after that, on the 15th of December last,
Professor Mendeleyeff delivered his lecture on Spiritism.
The haste exhibited by him on this occasion, the precipitancy
with which the failures of the four seances were reviewed,
when the Scientific Commission had lust adopted a resolution
to make not less than forty experimental examinations, did
not agree, in my opinion, with'the impartial and serious char-
acter which we have the right to expect in a truly scientific
investigation. This lecture did not appear in print, ar\d it was
therefore impossible to either reply to its errors cr to point
<hr>
out its one-sidedness. But in what was declared by M. Men-
deleyeff the attitude of the commission toward the object of
their examination was very clearly defined. Prof. Mendel-
eveff—at whose suggestion the commission was organized,
and under whose direction it acted—openly avowed himself
an enemy of Spiritualism. The commission, acting in unity
with M. Mendeleyeff, was evidently anxious that the results
of its further investigations should prove as fruitless as the
results of the first four seances with the Petty boys. The
difficulties in the way of obtaining an impartial examination
multiplied ten-fold ; and for my part I felt fully that it would
be useless for me to attempt any further assistance to the
commission. But as I had already taken steps to invite here
othei mediums, and had succeeded in inducing a lady to-
come—who is possessed of remarkable mediumistic powers,
and perfectly answers the requirements of the commission’s
investigation—I decided upon proceeding further. I hoped
that I might be mistaken as to the predispositions of the
commission. Furthermore, I desired to ascertain how it
would conduct its investigations when it had to do with a true
medium in the full acceptation of this word, and one more-
over who was not professional. This lady was totally inde-
pendent as to her social and financial position, and had con-
sented to take part in such an unpopular position merely for
the sake of promoting the scientific object ostensibly in view.
I had the honor of introducing this medium to the commis-
sion in the person of Mrs. C. From the very beginning of
the seances, the physical manifestations which characterize
this lady’s mediumship,—namely, loud raps, movements and
levitations of the table,—occurred with great strength. Of
the experimental seances, we had in this second series four—
on the nth, 25th, 27th and 29th of January; The seance at
which the medium, by reason of sickness, could not attend
was, although the commission had been notified twenty-four
hours beforehand, counted by its members as one of the forty
which it had bound itself to hold.
During the experiments of this second member series, we
learned the following :—
1. The commission failed to act up to its resolution of May
the 9th, 1875, that immediately after each seance a report
should be written out and signed by the witnesses on both
sides. Instead of that, the reports were filed several days
later, and not in the presence of witnesses, but were present-
ed to them for signature when already prepared by the com-
mission, and when they could not be altered in any particular.
2. The plan itself of these reports underwent a thorough
change. The commission saw fit to accept the private tes-
timony of persons not belonging to the commission, but who
may be said to have been present at the seances, since they
had been eve-dropping and peeping through the key-holes.
Such uncalled-for and personal testimony, based on subjec-
tive impressions, either amounts to nothing at a scientific
investigation and therefore is inadmissible, or if the contrary
then the commission itself was useless, for it was organized,
we must suppose, for the very reason of replacing such per-
sonal and subjective evidence with unanimous and impersonal
experiment.
3. Having found room for personal evidence of its own
choosing, the commission nevertheless rejected my offer to
select a lady of their acquaintance for the purpose of examin-
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