Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European SavantsFlammarion, Camille
Philosophy
Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
Flammarion, Camille
Parapsychology -- Investigation; Spiritualism
A small centre-table suddenly moved up of its own accord to the table
by the side of the medium, as if it had gradually got within the
sphere of a strong attractive force. Afterwards, at our request, it
was thrown down on the floor without any person touching it, and it
then moved about in a strange life-like manner, as if seeking some
means of getting up again, turning its claws first on one side and
then on the other. On another occasion, a very large leather arm-chair
which stood at least four or five feet from the medium, suddenly
wheeled up to her, after a few slight preliminary movements. It is, of
course, easy to say that what I relate is impossible. I maintain that
it is accurately true; and that no man, whatever be his attainments,
has such an exhaustive knowledge of the powers of nature as to justify
him in using the word "impossible" with regard to facts which I and
many others have repeatedly witnessed.
We evidently have here facts similar to those which I observed in my
experiments with Eusapia and with other mediums.
Alfred Russel Wallace continues his account by the citation of cases
analogous to those which have been described in this work; then sums up
the experiments of Crookes, of Varley, Morgan, and other English
scientists; does me the honor of citing my letter to the Dialectical
Society which I have printed above; passes in review the history of
Spiritualism, and declares that (1) _the facts are incontestable_, and
that (2), in his opinion, the best explanatory hypothesis is that of
_spirits_, or _the souls of the disembodied_--the theory of "the
unconscious" being _evidently inadequate_.
Such is also the opinion of the electrician Cromwell Varley. Neither he
nor Wallace believes that there is anything supernatural in the phenomena.
Discarnate spirits are in nature, as well as the incarnate. "The
triviality of the communications ought not to astonish us, if we consider
the myriads of trivial and fantastic human beings who every day become
ghosts and are the same beings the day after their death that they were
the day before."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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