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
Some folks can move their toes separately and crack the joints. If we
should grant that the dictations, by combinations of letters (quoted
above), were arranged in advance, learned by heart, and thus rapped, the
matter would be simple enough. But this particular faculty is very rare,
and it does not explain the noises in the table, the vibrations of which
are felt by the hands. Again, one could fancy the medium tapping the
table-legs with his foot, and thus constructing such sentences as he
pleases. But it would require a wonderful memory in the medium to enable
him to remember the precise arrangement of letters (for he has no
memorandum before him), and, further, these curious dictations have been
secured just the same in select companies where no one would cheat.
As to the theory that the spirits of eminent men are in communication with
the experimenters the mere statement of the hypothesis shows its
absurdity. Imagine a table-rapper calling up from the vasty deep the
spirits of Paul or Saint Augustine, Archimedes or Newton, Pythagoras or
Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci or William Herschel, and receiving their
dictations from the interior of a table!
We were speaking, a few pages back, of the seance drawings and
descriptions of Jupiter made by Victorien Sardou. This is the proper place
to insert a letter written by him to M. Jules Claretie, and published by
the latter in _Le Temps_ at the date when that learned Academician was
putting on the boards his drama _Spiritisme_. The letter is here appended:
... As to Spiritualism, I could better tell you verbally in three
words what I think of it than I could write here in three pages. You
are half right and half wrong. Pardon my freedom of speech. There are
two things in Spiritualism,--(1) curious facts, inexplicable in the
present state of our knowledge, and yet authenticated; and (2) the
folks who explain them.
The facts are real. Those who explain them belong to three categories:
there are, first, Spiritualists who are imbecile, ignorant, or mad,
the chaps who call up Epaminondas and whom you justly make fun of, or
who believe in the intervention of the devil; those, in short, who end
in the lunatic asylum in Charenton.
_Secundo_, there are the charlatans, commencing with D.; impostors of
all sorts, prophets, consulting mediums, such as A. K., and _tutti
quanti_.