Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism: In Accordance with the Request of the Late Henry SeybertUniversity of Pennsylvania. Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism
Religion
Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism: In Accordance with the Request of the Late Henry Seybert
University of Pennsylvania. Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism
Parapsychology -- Investigation; Spiritualism
The copy which he corrected and returned to me I place at length in this
Report, merely translating his corrections (very literally), and
inserting them at the points indicated by himself. They are enclosed in
quotation marks. In some instances, my desire for exactitude in the
translations has resulted in very bad English; the shape of my own
paragraphs is due to the time and manner of their framing, and to a
reluctance to making any changes in their form afterwards.
The copy reads as follows:
On July 3d, 1886, I visited Professor W. Scheibner, at his rooms, in
Leipsic, and obtained from him the following information concerning
Professor Zoellner's Spiritistic experiments with Dr. Henry Slade, the
American Medium:
1. Professor Scheibner thinks that he was present at three or four of
the regular séances with Slade. Slade came to Professor Zoellner's
rooms; they sat around a table for perhaps half an hour, and then, after
the séance was over, they spent an hour or two sitting informally in the
same room, or in the next room, and talking. During these informal
conversations surprising things would occur. Raps would now and then be
heard, and objects would unexpectedly be thrown about the room. In these
conversations Professor Scheibner was present perhaps five or six times.
Some of these took place during the day, and some in the evening.
2. Professor Scheibner said that each single thing that he saw might
possibly have been jugglery, "although he perceived nothing that raised
a direct suspicion."
The whole number of incidents taken together, however, surprised him,
and seemed scarcely explicable as jugglery, for there did not seem to be
the necessary time or means for preparing so many tricks, "which often
connected themselves surprisingly with desires casually expressed in
momentary conversations."
Professor Scheibner said, however, that he did not regard himself as
competent to form an opinion which should have scientific weight,
because:
(_a_) He knows nothing about jugglery;
(_b_) He was merely a passive spectator, and could not, properly
speaking, make observations--could not suggest conditions, "or gain the
control which seemed necessary;" and
(_c_) He is short-sighted, "and might easily have left unnoticed
something essential."
He says merely, that to him, _subjectively_, jugglery did not seem a
good "or sufficient" explanation of the phenomena.
3. Professor Scheibner said that he had never seen anything of the kind
before. He had never even, since his childhood, seen any exhibitions of
jugglery; he does not go to see such things, because he is so
short-sighted that if he went he would see nothing. In this connection
he repeated his statement that from this, among other causes, he did not
regard himself as competent to give an opinion. He said that many
persons in Germany had demanded his opinion, but that he had refused it
because he regarded his subjective impression, without objective proofs,
as scientifically valueless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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