Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/165

Rh can not be exaggerated. It is this that makes all the difference between the séance swarming with miracles, any one of which completely revolutionizes the principles of science, and the tedious dreariness of a blank sitting varied only by childish utterances and amateurish sleight of hand. Scientific observers often report that the very same phenomena that were utterly beyond suspicion in the eyes of believers, are to unprejudiced eyes so apparent "that there was really no need of any elaborate method of investigation"; close observation was all that was required. Again, Mr. Davies, of the English Society for Psychical Research, has experimentally shown that, of equally good observers, the one who is informed of the general modus operandi by which such a phenomenon as "slate-writing" is produced, will make much less of a marvel of it than one who is left in doubt in this regard.

With these all-powerful magicians, an expected result, and the willingness to credit a marvel clearly in mind, let us proceed from those instances in which they have least effect up to the point where they form the chief factor. First come a host of conjuring tricks performed on the stage in slightly modified forms, but which are presented as spiritualistic. So simple a trick as scratching a name on one's hand with a clean pen dipped in water, and then rubbing the part with the ashes of a bit of paper containing the name, thus causing the ashes to cling to the letters formed on the hand and reveal the mystic name, has been offered as a proof of spirit agency. Whenever an article disappears or rapidly changes its place, the spiritualist is apt to see the workings of hidden spirits; and over and over again have the performances of professional conjurers been declared to be spiritual in origin in spite of all protest from the conjurers themselves. Here everything depends upon the possession of certain technical knowledge; judging without such knowledge is apt to be mere prejudice. Another very large class of phenomena consists of those in which the performer is placed in a position apparently inconsistent with his taking any active part in the production of the phenomena—rope-tying tests, cabinet séances, the appearance of a "spirit-hand" from behind a screen, locking the performer in a cage, sewing him in a bag, and so on. The psychologist has very little interest in these; their solution depends upon the skill with which knots can be picked, locks unfastened, and the other devices by which security can be simulated. The chief interest in such performances is the historical one, for these have done perhaps more than anything else to convince believers of the truth of spiritualism. Here, where everything depends upon the security of the fastenings (for once free, the medium can produce messages from the spirit-land limited only by his ingenuity and boldness), it might be supposed that all possible precautions had been taken against undoing