Science in Short ChaptersWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
Science in Short Chapters
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
I am no advocate for rectifying moral and intellectual evils by police
interference, or I should certainly recommend the bracing air of
Dartmoor for the mediums who publicly proclaim that their familiar
spirit “Katey” has lately translated a lady through a space of three
miles, and through the walls, doors, and ceiling of the house in which
a dark séance was being held, and placed her upon the table in the
midst of the circle so rapidly that the word “onions” she had just
written in her domestic inventory was not yet dried when the lights
were brought and she was found there.
This “lady,” which her name is Guppy, is, of course, another
professional medium, and yet there are people in London who gravely
believe this story, and also the appendix, viz.: that another member
of the mediumistic firm, finding that Mrs. G. was very incompletely
dressed, and much abashed thereby, was translated by the same spirit,
Katey, to her house and back again through the door-panel to fetch
proper garments. If I could justify the apprehension and imprisonment
of poor gipsy fortune-tellers, I certainly should advocate the close
confinement of Mrs. Guppy and her male associates, and thus afford
the potent spirit, Katey, an opportunity of further manifestation by
translating them through the prison walls and back to Lamb’s Conduit
Street.
(_The above letter appeared in the “Birmingham Morning News” of July
18, 1871; the following on November 15. It refers to an article in the
“Quarterly Review” of October, 1871._)
The interest excited by Mr. Crookes’s investigations on Psychic Force
is increasing; the demand for the “Quarterly Review” and the “Quarterly
Journal of Science” is so great that Mudie and other proprietors of
lending libraries have largely increased their customary supplies, and
are still besieged with further excess of demand. Not only borrowers,
but purchasers also are supplied with difficulty. I yesterday received
a post-card from a bookseller, inscribed as follows: “Cannot get a
‘Quarterly Review’ in the City, so shall be unable to send it to you
until to-morrow.” I have waited three days, and am now obliged to go to
the reading-room to make my quotations.
There is good and sufficient reason for this, independently of the
absence of Parliamentary and war news, and the dearth of political
revolutions. Either a new and most extraordinary natural force has
been discovered, or some very eminent men specially trained in
rigid physical investigation have been the victims of a marvelous,
unprecedented, and inexplicable physical delusion. I say unprecedented,
because, although we have records of many popular delusions of similar
kind and equal magnitude, and speculative delusions among the learned,
I can cite no instance of skillful experimental experts being utterly
and repeatedly deceived by the mechanical action of experimental test
apparatus carefully constructed and used by themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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