Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
John Stuart Mill · en
I have always thought that the circle of science is not a closed one,
and that there are many things for us still to learn. In the
mediumistic writing experiments it is very easy to deceive ourselves
and to believe that the hand is under the influence of another mind
than our own. The most probable conclusion regarding these experiences
has been that the theory of the action of foreign spirits is not
necessary for the explanation of such phenomena. But this is not the
place to enter into details upon a subject which, up to the present
time, has been only slightly examined by scientific criticism, having
more often been exploited by speculators than studied by scientists.
So I wrote in 1884; and I will indorse every word I then wrote, just as it
stands.
In these first experiences with Spiritualists, of which I have just been
speaking, I soon had the entree of the chief Parisian circles devoted to
these matters, and for a couple of years I even took the position of
honorary secretary of one of them. A natural or necessary result of this
was that I did not miss a single seance.
Three different methods were employed to receive communications: (1)
writing with the hand; (2) the use of the planchette to which a
lead-pencil was attached, and on which the hands were placed; and (3)
table-rapping (or table-moving), operated by the alphabetic code, these
raps or the movements of the table marking the desired letter as the
alphabet was read aloud by one of those present.
The first of these methods was the only one employed at the Society for
Spiritualistic Studies, of which Allan Kardec was president. It was the
one which permitted the margin for the most doubt. In fact, at the end of
two years of investigations of this kind, which I had varied as much as
possible, and which I had entered upon without any preconceived idea for
or against, and with the most ardent desire to arrive at the truth, I came
to the positive conclusion that not only are the signatures of these
papers not authentic, but that the intervention of another mind from the
spirit world is not proved at all, the fact being that we ourselves are
the more or less conscious authors of the communications by some cerebral
process which yet remains to be investigated. The explanation is not so
simple as it seems, and there are certain reservations to be made in the
general statement above.