Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
John Stuart Mill · en
Professor Morgan, the brilliant author of the _Budget of Paradoxes_ (an
excellent piece of work, and highly complimented by the London _Athenaeum_,
in 1865), expresses the same opinion in his work on _Mind_ (1863). Not
only does he think that the facts are incontestable, but he also believes
that the hypothesis that explains the facts by intelligences exterior to
ourselves is the only satisfying one. He relates, among other things,
that, in one of the seances attended by him, a friend of his (a very
sceptical person), was making a little fun of the spirits, whereupon,
while they were all standing (a dozen experimenters of them) around the
dining room table, and forming the chain above it, _without contact_, the
heavy table began to move of its own accord, and, dragging along the whole
group, made a rush at the sceptic, and pinned him against the back of the
sofa, until he cried "Hold! enough!"
Still, does that constitute proof of an independent spirit? Was it not an
expression of the collective thought of the company? And, likewise, in the
experience which Wallace has just cited, were not the dictated names
latent in the brain of the questioner? And was not the little
centre-table, in its climbings acting under the physical and pyschical
influences of the medium?
Whatever may be the explanatory hypothesis, the FACTS are undeniable.
We have here, before all, a group of substantial English scientists of
the first rank, in whose opinion the denial of the phenomena is a sort of
madness.
French scientists are a little more belated than their neighbors.
Nevertheless, I have already called attention to some of them during the
course of this work. I should have taken pleasure in adding the names of
the lamented Pierre Curie and of Professor d'Arsonval, if they had
published the experiments they made with Eusapia during July, 1905, and
March and April, 1906, at the General Institute of Psychology.
Among the most judicious of experimenters in psychical phenomena I ought
also to mention M. J. Maxwell, a doctor of medicine and (a very different
function) advocate-general at the Court of Appeals in Bordeaux.
The reader may have already noticed (p. 173) the part which this
investigator, at once a magistrate and a scientist, took in the
experiments made at l'Agnelas in 1895. Eusapia is not the only medium with
whom he studied, and his acquaintance with our subject is supported by the
best of documentary evidence.
It is fitting that I present to the reader at this point the most
characteristic facts and the essential conclusions set forth in his
work.[70]
The author has made a special examinations of _raps_.
_Raps (coups frappes)._--The contact of hands is not necessary to
obtain raps. With certain mediums I have very readily obtained them
without contact.