This is a very long chapter, but the phenomena it had to discuss are the most serious in Spiritualist literature, and I was eager to omit nothing which is deemed important. Let me close it with a short account of an historical occurrence, which is at the same time a parable. We are often told that the medium was "physically incapable" of doing this or the other. Here is an interesting illustration of human possibilities. In 1846 all Paris was busy discussing "the electric girl." Little Angélique Cottin, a village child of thirteen summers, a very quiet and guileless-looking maid, exuded the "electric fluid" (ghosts were not yet in fashion) in such abundance that the furniture almost danced about the room. When she rose from her chair it flew back, even if a man held it, and was often smashed. A heavy dining-table went over at a touch from her dress. A chair held by "several strong men" was pushed back when she sat on it. The Paris Academy of Sciences examined her, and could make nothing of her. The chairs she rose from were sent crashing against the wall, and broken. But one night, when the crowd gathered about her to see the marvels, a wicked old sceptic watched her closely from a distance. Only that afternoon a heavy dining-table, with its load of dishes, had gone over. The child saw the sceptic's eye, yet wanted to entertain the crowd. There was a struggle of patience between sceptic and child for _two hours_, and at last age won. He saw her move, and demanded an examination; and they found the bruise on her leg caused by knocking over the heavy table. It was all over. She had developed a marvellous way of using the muscles of her legs and buttocks instantaneously and imperceptibly. This was, says Flammarion, "the end of this sad story in which so many people had been duped by a poor idiot." He is wrong on two points. The child was by no means an idiot; and this was only the beginning, not the end. We do well to remember what this child of thirteen could do.[10] FOOTNOTES: [7] The account which he gives in the _Dispatch_ (March 21, 1920) is precisely the same as his account (which I quoted verbatim in the Debate) in his _Experience of Spiritualism with D. D. Home_, pp. 82-3. [8] _Cesare Lombroso_ (1915), p. 416. Much is suppressed in the English translation of his book. [9] Mr. Hereward Carrington, who believes in the genuineness of Eusapia's powers, makes light of this. He misses the main point. In the minutes of the sitting, which he gives, it is expressly stated by the controllers at this point that they have both Eusapia's hands and feet secure. So we cannot trust such minutes when they say that the control was perfect. [10] Flammarion, _Les forces naturelles inconnues_, pp. 299-310. CHAPTER IV SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS AND SPIRIT PICTURES