Primary Sources COPY

Question 1

Edward Cox, 1871

Answer 1

Spiritualism Answered by Science

characteristic of this scientizing approach. Launched the influential concept of ‘psychic force’ which was conceptualized as a scientifically acceptable alternative to the Spiritualist hypothesis that mediumistic phenomena were caused by the activity of the disembodied spirits of the dead. Psychic force wsa ‘natural’, connected to the biological organism

Question 2

Gurney (with Myers and Podmore), 1886

Answer 2

Phantasms of the Living:

• Mainly Gurney’s work
• Attempted to examine all classes of cases where there is reason to suppose that the mind of one human being has affected the mind of another, without speech utered, or word written, or sign made
• Thousands of case stories of paranormal events, mostly apparitions of the dead, impossible communications between minds over large distances, strange meaningful coincidences, and eerie premonitions of impending crises
• Sheer magnitude of the survey suggested experiences SPR was interested in were v common
• Editors made attempt to apply probability analyses of likelihood that these cases were due to chance. These analyses deeply flawed even for the period, amounting to absurd figures
• Launched hypothesis that crisis-induced experiences of seeing the newly departed loved ones or learning of an accident far away just before or as it happens, were result of spontaneous ‘thought-transference’
• Apparitions were phantasms of the living rather than dead
• Theory of mental action across vast distances became major heuristic for early work of the SPR
• ‘the odds against the occurrence, by accident, of as many coincidences of the type in question … are about a thousand billion trillion trillion trillions to 1’.
• ‘[t]he argument for thought-transference … cannot be expressed here in figures, as it requires 167 nines – that is, the probability is far more than the ninth power of a trillion to 1’.

Question 3

Myers, 1903

Answer 3

Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death:

• Subliminal self = source of genius.
• Curious work of romantic, ‘gothic psychology’ (James)
• When hypnotised, subject typically lost the power to choose his own actions freely. His central, controlling will became subject to commands. Memory proved to be fragmented. Phenomena of alternating memory characterized not just severely disturbed mental patients but presumably normal ppl as well
• Multiple lvls of consciousness not pathological (dissociation). They equipped individual for life as much as fingers and toes, tho more difficult to investigate.
• Never reduced subliminal strata to anything like precision. Beneath waking consciousness, hypnotic stratum and stratum of dream and confusion. Beneath these, Stratum of coherent mentation. No clear lines of demarcation
• The subliminal consciousness cld receive info through channels, e.g. telepathy and clairvoyance, that were inaccessible to the supraliminal, which was restricted to sensory modes of perception
• Subliminal and supraliminal cld exchange info, however. This helped him explain range of psychical phenomena.
• ‘Nunciative’ - message-bearing - automatisms. Mrs Piper and Mrs Thompson - w these he confirmed that spirit survives death of physical body. Satisfied himself that spirit presence controlled their automatisms
• Believed subliminal consciousness cld travel considerable distances
• Spirit contact = part of the normal in human behaviour bc spirit exists in man (he wrote in connection w Mrs Thomas)

Not well received by Spiritualists - review in Light - They wanted a whole series of personal testimonies to survival, not the carefully graded and analyzed examples of abnormal psychology that Myers provided

Question 4

William James, 1902

Answer 4

Varieties of Religious Experience:

draws considerably on Myers’ theory of genius, and rests, as James himself pointed out at the end of the book, on Myers’ notion of the subliminal self

In particular this discovery of a consciousness existing beyond the field, or subliminally as Mr. Myers terms it, casts light on many phenomena of religious biography. That is why I have to advert to it now, although it is naturally impossible for me in this place to give you any account of the evidence on which the admission of such a consciousness is based. You will find it set forth in many recent books, Binet’s Alterations of Personality122 being perhaps as good a one as any to recommend.

The most important consequence of having a strongly developed ultra-marginal life of this sort is that one’s ordinary fields of consciousness are liable to incursions from it of which the subject does not guess the source, and which, therefore, take for him the form of unaccountable impulses to act, or inhibitions of action, of obsessive ideas, or even of hallucinations of sight or hearing. The impulses may take the direction of automatic speech or writing, the meaning of which the subject himself may not understand even while he utters it; and generalizing this phenomenon, Mr. Myers has given the name of automatism, sensory or motor, emotional or intellectual, to this whole sphere of effects, due to “uprushes” into the ordinary consciousness of energies originating in the subliminal parts of the mind.

Question 5

Myers on the SPR’s mission (Human Personality, 1903)

Answer 5

‘It is my object’, Myers wrote, ‘as it has from the first been the object of the Society for Psychical Research’, to do what can be done to break down that artificial wall of demarcation which has thus far excluded from scientific treatment precisely the problems which stand in most need of all the aids to discovery which such treatment can afford’

Question 6

Myers on supernatural/ supernormal (Human Pers, 1903)

Answer 6

The word supernatural is open to grave objections; it assumes that there is something outside nature, and it has become associated with arbitrary interference with law. Now there is no reason to suppose that the psychical phenomena with which we deal are less a part of nature, or less subject to fixed and definite law, than any other phenomena

Question 7

McDougall, 1927

Answer 7

‘Psychical Research as a University Study’:

Any opposition to psychical research, McDougall argued, must arise from narrow dogmatic ignorance, that higher kind of ignorance which so often goes with a wealth of scientific knowledge, the ignorance which permits a man to lay down dogmatically the boundaries of our knowledge and to exclaim “ignorabimus.” This cry – “we shall not, cannot know!” – is apt to masquerade as scientific humility, while, in reality, it expresses an unscientific arrogance and philosophic incompetence

What McDougall attacks is the kind of agnosticism that withdraws “the supernatural” from the “natural”, and states dogmatically (or by recourse to the a priori) that the former is by definition unreachable, ineffable, and transcendent

clear that McDougall was employing a “more scientific than thou”-tactic against his academic opponents. ‘Dogmatic agnosticism’, on his reading, already assumed a conclusion to the very questions which psychical research wanted to ask (Asprem)

Question 8

Alfred Russell Walace, 1866

Answer 8

Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural:

• miracles had no place in modern science
• argued for ‘an experimental enquiry by men of science into the alleged powers of clairvoyants and mediums’
• there should be no objections in principle against the postulation of intelligences beyond the ordinary knowledge sphere of humanity.
• discovery of Foraminifera, ‘those structureless gelantinous organisms which exhibit so many of the higher phenomena of animal life without any of that differentiation of parts’ deemed essential for life, made possible the existence of ‘sentient beings unrecognisable by our senses’

Question 9

Oliver Lodge, 1925

Answer 9

Ether & Reality: A Series of Discourses on the Many Functions of the Ether of
Space:

Lodge’s concept of “ether bodies” was especially designed to create a space within the natural world where spiritual activity could take place without being contrary to natural law. His system suggested that all mental activity and all animation of life in fact happens through the ether, and that one might therefore expect to find disembodied mental and vital activity on the etheric plane – sometimes interacting with ordinary tangible matter

Question 10

James, 1909

Answer 10

“Confidences of a Psychical Researcher”, American Magazine:

These men [the founders of the SPR] hoped that if the material were treated rigorously, and,
as far as possible, experimentally, objective truth would be elicited, and the subject rescued
from sentimentalism on the one side and dogmatizing ignorance on the other. Like all
founders, Sidgwick hoped for a certain promptitude of result; and I heard him say, the year before his death, that if anyone had told him at the outset that after twenty years he would
be in the same identical state of doubt and balance that he started with, he would have
deemed the prophecy incredible. It appeared impossible that that amount of handling
evidence should bring so little finality of decision.

My own experience has been similar to Sidgwick’s. For twenty-five years I have been in
touch with the literature of psychical research, and have had acquaintance with numerous
“researchers”. I have also spent a good many hours (though far fewer than I ought to have
spent) in witnessing (or trying to witness) phenomena. Yet I am theoretically no “further”
than I was at the beginning

there is a continuum of
cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into
which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir. Our “normal”
consciousness is circumscribed for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the
fence is weak in spots

Assuming this common reservoir of consciousness to exist, this bank upon which we all draw, and in which so many of earth’s memories must in some way be stored, or mediums would not get at them as they do, the question is, What is its own structure? What is its inner topography? This question, first squarely formulated by Myers, deserves to be called “Myers’
problem” by scientific men hereafter

Question 11

James, 1901

Answer 11

‘Frederic Myers’ Service to Psychology’, SPR Journal

he found it very probable ‘that Frederic Myers will always be remembered in psychology as the pioneer who staked out a vast tract of mental wilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon it.’

Question 12

Driesch, 1926

Answer 12

‘Psychical Research and Philosophy’

observed the fragmentation of psychical research

there is not one Parapsychology but there are several Parapsychologies, which may one day unite into one, there being several groups of psychic phenomena which, at first in any case, are as different from one another as, e.g., chemistry is from optics.

Question 13

1927, The Case For and Against Psychical Belief (in Asprem)

Answer 13

fourteen essays distributed in four categories.

the “convinced” group was dominated by those who advocated qualitative methodologies, based largely on the observation of mediums during séances, or at best the testing against external evidence of “psychic” information that could only be obtained in such situations

middle category of those who were convinced of the rarity of genuine phenomena. This category is important, for here we find a class of researchers who claimed to value the scientific method just as much as the unconvinced experimentalist, yet still thought that some phenomena were genuine, while others were not. It is notable, though, that the men in this class – McDougall, Driesch, Prince, and Schiller

professionalization of parapsychology emerged precisely from this class

Question 14

Rhine, Extra-Sensory Perception, 1934

Answer 14

introduced yet another new set of scientific nomenclature, made a new taxonomy of effects, described methodological protocols, provided fresh interpretation of earlier research, and, above all, presented the results of years of quantitative experiments that seemed to yield an overwhelmingly positive verdict. Furthermore, the research it presented had been funded through a university budget, carried out in the psychology department of the newly established Duke University in North Carolina.

Question 15

Stanton and Anthony, 1880s (began to be published, in volumes, in 1881)

Answer 15

History of Woman Suffrage

‘The only religious sect in this world… that has recognized the equality of woman is the Spirtiualists’

Question 16

Medium historian Emma Hardinge Britten

Answer 16

wondered whether the movement benefitted more from the zealous enthusiasm of its admirers of the bitter persecution of its antagonists, as the latter sometimes generated more publicity

The Civil War added 2 million new believers to Spiritualism

Question 17

American Booksellers Guide

Answer 17

1871

sale of Spiritualist books is as steady as of books in any other department of the trade, and they should not be overlooked by the bookseller - Spiritualist publications = 50,000 books and 50,000 pamphlets every yr

Question 18

Andrew Jackson Davis, 1851

Answer 18

The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse:

• provided instructions for the formation of circles that became basis for much Spiritualist practice. A
• Anti-Calvinist philosophy. Calvin - predestination, most predestined to Hell

Question 19

The Herald of Progress

Answer 19

• Davis’s newspaper, estab 1860 bc of frustration at neutrality of Banner over issues e.g. abolition
• described fatal outcome of Irish woman’s Catholic beliefs about fate of unbaptized infants - reported the poor victim of superstition committed suicide after giving birth to a stillborn child because she was ‘so afflicted by her conception of its probably destiny because unbaptized’
• Davis condemned the Protestant failure to actively refute this Catholic doctrine.
• claimed Dress reform will eradicate the worst slavery of American women

Question 20

Andrew Jackson Davis, 1845

Answer 20

Lectures on Clairmativeness

• inspired by Swedenborg
• Davis - six celestial spheres of increasing harmony, beauty and wisdom, based on cosmology of Swedenborg (but w/o the Hells). Those who died young wld mature in heaven. Spirits assured bereaved parents that heaven provided ‘suitable arrangements’ for care of infants

Question 21

Equals Rights is my motto

Answer 21

Medium Elizabeth Kingsbury, 1857

Question 22

The Spirit Messenger and Harmonial Guide

Answer 22

announced the 1851 Woman’s Righs Convention, calling it ‘the most important reform issue of the day’

Question 23

Trance Speaker Warren Chase

Answer 23

member of the Wisconsin legislature in early 1850s

slavery of women was deeper and more lasting than that of Negroes in the hearts and prejudices of the people

Question 24

Minutes of a large Spiritualist convention held in Chicago, 1865

Answer 24

First speaker from the floor spoke in favour of the elective frachise for woman, as the foundation of all future guarantees of rights

Question 25

Mrs Luxina Tuttle, 1855

Answer 25

The Clairvoyant Family Physician.

Spiritualist health advice

Question 26

Banner of Light

Answer 26

• Boston Spiritualist newspaper
• sponsored a public free circle at its offices and published the communications received there in its pages each week.
• printed a lively series of articles in which dress reformers advocated Riding Astride as a healthful and appropriate activity for women and discussed what women shld wear when they did it.

Question 27

Mary Eddy, Science and Health

Answer 27

1875

criticised Spiritualism as materialistic

Question 28

Henri Bergson, 1913 presidential address to SPR

Answer 28

‘It is the essence of the things of the mind not to lend themselves to measurement’

Question 29

Allan Kardec, 1857

Answer 29

Le Livre des Esprits:

• launched organised spirit movement in France
• Concept of perispirit - physical fluidic envelope that acted as intermedicate substance between material and spiritual natures of human.
• Spirit progressed through reincarnation, moving closer to moral perfection repd by God
• Another revelation in line w Judeo-Christian tradition. Compatible w Christianity - numerous instances of mediumship and spirit phenomena in Bible
• Supernatural = force of nature yet to be properly understood
• Experimental proof of soul’s survival
• ‘scientific’ - sci knowl cld respond to questions of moral or metaphys importance
• Degrees of materiality.
• Wary of how science threatened to undermine moral concepts rooted in religious belief
• before God created the material universe, there existed an immaterial monde spirite peopled by primitive, disembodied souls. God created the material world to provide these souls with a means of perfecting themselves. In order to reach an ultimate goal of transcendent understanding and moral purity, each soul had to endure a long string of incarnations on various planets. These incarnations served an expiatory function—every life lived entailed a set of tests that, if successfully passed, brought the soul closer to perfection
• Earth was near the bottom of this planetary hierarchy. On more elevated planets, like Jupiter, social organization was more just, individuals were more enlightened
• Kardec and the spirits he quoted used the Golden Rule as the basis for a fundamentally social conception of morality.
• Material inequality in human society, served a cosmic purpose: The poor suffered more because they had more errors from previous lives to atone for.
• soul had no sex, but also asserted that male and female bodies were suited for different social functions
• a man’s “physical organization” rendered him incapable of dispensing the kind of love a mother could, just as a woman’s rendered her incapable of inhabiting the public worlds of science or politics
• ideal society, according to Kardec, acknowledged and accepted this immutable difference, granting women equality “of rights,” but not “of functions.”
• Scientists discovered organisms in a drop of pond water by using a microscope, Kardec wrote; Spiritists discovered the mysteries of the beyond by using mediums to contact the souls of the dead.
• In the living, the périsprit manifested itself as the “vital fluid” that animated the body; in the dead, it served as a physical envelope for the wandering soul. According to Kardec, the périsprit gave disembodied spirits the ability to produce tangible phenomena. By channeling their “vital fluid” through a receiver—the medium—they could act in the material world. In Kardec’s view, therefore, spirit phenomena were not supernatural because they did not involve a divine suspension of the laws of nature. Instead, these manifestations were direct consequences of human physiology
• This book presented as watershed in human history

by 1874, had been through 22 editions. At least 48,000 in circluation

This book = clear, simple, short segments.
Ordinarily, when spirits spoke in books like these, they tended to do so in a florid, oracular style.

Question 30

Chevreul 1854

Answer 30

revisits experiments he had made public in 1833 open letter

Muscular activity observed = effect of faith - long as believed movement of the pendulum in hand was possible, it moved

Prove how easy it is to mistake illusions for reality.

Necessity of studying influence of thoughts on own organs

Question 31

Janet, Pierre, 1889

Answer 31

L’Automatisme psychologique:

• cited Phantasms of the Living (1886), Myers, Gurney, Podmore.
• methods mainly those of natural history
• historical sketch of spiritism, ending around 1882
  this was the moment when the spiritists retreated from their nearly scientific descriptions of the physical and moral conditions of the séance found in the earlier literature into arguments over esoteric doctrine

Question 32

La Revue Philosophique

Answer 32

Ribot = editor

import Psychology publication - dignified articles that took phenomenon of spiritism as matter of serious scientific inquiry. Laid important groundwork for research on mediumism

In absence of French organization comparable to the British SPR, La Revue gave discussion to mediumism and somnambulism in a context that allowed contributors to reinforce claims of its relevance to scientific study

Question 33

Pierre Janet, 1901

Answer 33

Allocution de M Pierre Janet, Bulletin de l’Institut Psychologique International, May 1901:

Institut Psychologique will find itself faced w dilemma. Either will neglect the truly scientific work w long-term payoffs in order to satisfy the publc and draw financial contributions, throwing itself into passionate and irresolvable issues and immediately losing its good reputation among scientists, or it will favour serious physiological, psychological or clinical studies in order to please men of science and incite the great displeasure of the public, quickly alienating its discouraged subscribers. It will be honourable but poor, and since there is significance only by virtue of fortune, it will be once again completely useless

Question 34

Richet, 1922

Answer 34

Traité de métapsychique:

• face of a young woman, extremely pretty, one could say beautiful, with a sort of golden band of a diadem covering her blond hair.” 77 The next day Richet found himself in the bedroom of Mme Noël, who had been taken ill, and thought he saw a vaporous form in the adjacent water closet. When he approached, the form seemed to dissolve, but Richet admitted in his account that “my memory concerning this instance is rather confused.”
• the other sciences do not suffer from the same plague… A single preoccupation, intense and anxiety ridden, invades my every thought - do everything to prevent being duped - I can think of nothing but this. One must always have in one’s mind the dominating, obsessive idea that the medium is trying to trick you

Janet found troubling Richet’s effort to establish the reality of a particular class of phenomena by giving innumerable examples, none of which was described in sufficient detail.

Question 35

Le Bon, 1911

Answer 35

Les Opinions et les croyances:

Taking the hypothetical case of the “very skeptical” scientist who decides to undertake an experimental study of phenomena produced by “occultists,” Le Bon traces the process by which rationality is overturned by belief. Entering into a circle of true believers, the only place where such phenomena are produced, the scientist finds himself waiting attentively in a darkened room for noises, moving furniture, luminescence, and materializations.
Lets guard down. Fraudulence goes unnoticed

Question 36

Flournoy, 1900

Answer 36

From India to the Planet Mars:

had an advantage over other approaches to psychical research in that it emphasized the affective dimensions of the medium’s representations as opposed to the objectivity that was so often at issue in the field (Brower)

left out consideration of his relationship to Smith’s past lives. Reluctance to take into account the intersubjective dimensions of the séances

Question 37

Arthur Conan Doyle, The New Revelation, 1919

Answer 37

• 1899, American medium Leonora Piper delivered message in trance state, recorded by Richard Hodgson of SPR, predicting great war

SPR - will admit that the latter makes
one impatient at times

I read that mon-
umental book, Myers’ Human Personality,
a great root book from which a whole tree
of knowledge will grow.

The lower
cannot ascend, but the higher can descend at
will. The life has a close analogy to that of
this world at its best. It is pre-eminently a
life of the mind, as this is of the body

Question 38

Houdini

Answer 38

Doyle’s efforts for spiritualism helped transform it into ‘beautiful faith’

Question 39

Heuzé, 1924

Answer 39

L’Énigme mètapsychique, La Revue de Paris:

• Heuzé crit lack of detail (e.g. dates) in Flammarion’s Autour de la mort
• Heuzé called his method ‘historical’. Pointed out inconsistencies. Comparing/ corroborating
• H challenged ability of researchers to make phenomena of mediumism transparent

Question 40

Nordmann, 1922

Answer 40

Les Mystères de l’ectoplasme, La Revue des Deux Mondes:

Between the illustrious and respectable scientist and the phenomenon there are others interposed: there is the medium and the other participants. It is not Crookes alone who produces, by experimentation, ectoplasm, it is this collective personality called “Crookes-the medium-the participants”

mediated quality of the experience produced insurmountable conditions of indeterminac

Question 41

Punch, 1926

Answer 41

showing Doyle chained to a chair, his head wreathed by clouds, while Sherlock Holmes stands nearby deep in troubled thought, is a good measure of the public’s reaction (Cadwallader)

Question 42

“Frontispiece.” The Spiritual Magazine, 1866

Answer 42

Spiritualism aims “through a careful reverent
study of facts, at a knowledge of the laws and principles which govern the occult forces of the universe; of the relations of spirit to matter, and of man to God and the Spiritual world”

Question 43

Huxley

Answer 43

“The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of ‘Spiritualism’ is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a ‘medium’ hired at a guinea a seance.”

Question 44

Leigh Hunt, 1928

Answer 44

The Story of the Marylebone Spiritualist Association:

• stated there was less social stigma attached to Spiritualism, partly due to investigations and influence of the SPR

Question 45

Myers, letter to James

Answer 45

probably fewer than 20 workers in the world in this strange field w only James and Hodgson in America

Question 46

Swedenborg, 1758

Answer 46

Heaven and Hell:

begin of movement away from conception of heaven as forbiddingly ascetic, distant from earth. Modern notion of heaven. Realm hardly separate and different - except in perfection - from earth itself

Man after death is as much man as he was before so much so as to be unaware that he is still not in the former world… death is only a crossing.
Hell becomes less and less a subject of worry and dread

Humanized and personalized the spiritual world.
All spirits = at one time inhabitants of some earth in the universe. World of the spirits = midway between heaven and hell

All inhabs = young and beautiful
Angelic humans live lives v much as ppl do. Opportunity to realise their deepest loves - writing, painting, gardening

Destiny in afterlife is chosen by the individual. It is product of life-time.
Every angel is able to progress and devel their love to eternity

Faust - these teachings widely-circulated in 19th C US

Warned against contact with spirits

three heavens, three hells, interim place - world of the spirits

Question 47

Tuttle and Peebles, 1871

Answer 47

The Year-book of Spiritualism:

• among investigators we may number divines, logicians, and teachers, physicians and lawyers, men of note, statesmen

Conceptual roots of Spiritualism:
- Rationalism (philosophically)

• Naturalism (scientifically)
• Love of God and humanity, purity of intention and human heart (Religiously)

Question 48

Oliver Lodge, 1916

Answer 48

Raymond:

pain almost negligible in view of the service which it is legitimate to hope may thus be rendered to mourners, if they can derive comfort by learning that communication across the gulf is possible

main object of a book like this is to help to bring
comfort to bereaved persons, especially to those who have
been bereaved by war

To base so momentous a conclusion as a scientific
demonstration of human survival on any single instance.
if it were not sustained on all sides by a great consensus
of similar evidence, would doubtless be unwise ; for
some other explanation of a merely isolated case would
have to be sought. But we are justified in examining
the evidence for any case of which all the details are
known, and in trying to set forth the truth of it as completely and fairly as we may.

6 editions in just over a month. Two editions a yr for the rest of the war.

Question 49

Flammarion to Abbé Berillo, priest who had been his childhood confessor

Answer 49

Through automatic writing, he had received messages from the spirits of Fénélon and Galileo, who had provided numerous cosmological insights

I study Spiritism as I study mathematics.”

Question 50

Achille Cherreau, May 1853

Answer 50

Le Siècle, the most widely circulated daily newspaper of the period:

Whatever skeptics might think, Cherreau wrote, “this phenomenon exists; it is there, it can be seen, it can be touched, its character leaves no room for serious illusions.” Readers were wrong to consider the tables tournantes to be farfetched, Cherreau argued. The nineteenth century had already proved to be remarkably “fertile in brilliant discoveries”—this new human ability to move objects spontaneously, with negligible physical effort, was merely the latest in the long string of scientific advances that had come to characterize the age. If mankind had been able to create the steam engine and the hot-air balloon, why should it not have the capacity to animate “inert bodies” with the force of will alone?

Question 51

Honoré Daumier, “fluidomanie” lithographs

Answer 51

Le Charivari:

ran the gamut of social-satirical tropes, presenting them with particular effectiveness

ardent young men used experiments with turning tables or hats as opportunities to caress the little fingers of the women they courted

Question 52

Jules Eudes de Mirville, 1853

Answer 52

Pneumatologie, des esprits et de leurs manifestations diverses:

Went through several editions

• attribd phenomena to demonic intervention - such accounts v popular

Question 53

La Table Parlante

Answer 53

devoted entirely to articles describing the new phenomena as products of demonic intervention

Question 54

Séguin, 1853

Answer 54

Cosmos:

“laws are the slaves or the humble followers of facts . . . , nothing but their empirical and scientific expression.” To refuse a fact a priori, purely because it contradicted cherished nostrums, therefore, was an inherently unscientific act.
The moment scientists began to use invented laws to discount inconvenient pieces of empirical evidence, Séguin argued, the process of scientific discovery that had produced such astonishing results throughout the nineteenth century would cease.

Question 55

Guérin, 1853

Answer 55

La Gazette Médicale:

elusiveness of these new phenomena in the laboratory, he argued, did not tell against them

Tables tournantes were not physical phenomena, like chemical reactions; they were physiological ones, like aches that appeared only when the weather was sufficiently cold. Hence, Guérin maintained, these novel manifestations depended on a host of extremely complex biological conditions that no scientist could ever hope to control completely in a laboratory

Question 56

Protestant count and former Second Republic deputy, Gasparin, 1853

Answer 56

Le Journal des débats:

would cure what he saw as the primary intellectual malaise of his time, a reductive materialism caused by the “despotism of the positive sciences.”

fact that a table could rotate under the sole impulsion of the human will, in Gasparin’s view, demonstrated that the soul was as tangible as any other phenomenon in nature, and that “there are other phenomena than those the telescope perceives or the scalpel exposes.”

starting place for a novel approach to metaphysics.

Question 57

Ernest Chevreul, 1854

Answer 57

De la baguette divinatoire:

people of light-hearted temperament,
under the influence of that love of the marvelous so natural to
man, cross the boundaries of the known, the finite; and how, unwilling to
bring a considered assessment to bear on new opinions that have the allure
of the marvelous and supernatural, they precipitously accept what, examined
with a cold eye, would be phenomena of a kind amenable to human
explanation

Babinet and Chevreul shifted their attention from phenomenon to observer in this manner, they changed the terms of the debate. What had previously been a conflict between two different conceptions of objectivity became a conflict between objectivity and its opposite—a subjective, atavistic amour du merveilleux.

Question 58

Littré, 1856

Answer 58

“Des Tables parlantes et des esprits frappeurs,” La Revue des deux mondes:

Over time, civilization inevitably tended toward “a progressive
improvement,” he observed, but nevertheless remained subject to “perturbations
and disorders that slow, block and divert the overall movement.”
The vogue for tables tournantes, like witchcraft scares before it, exemplified
this type of dangerous “perturbation.

Question 59

Kardec, 1864

Answer 59

La Revue Spirite,

Spirit communications, Kardec argued, were objective documents, not
mere bursts of personal insight. Spiritism, therefore, was a science as
positive—as much a matter of empirical induction—as chemistry

Question 60

Allan Kardec, 1861

Answer 60

Livre des médiums:

• established norms for the evaluation of spirit communications and set out rules for proper séance conduct

Two new rules to guarantee uniformity of doctrine:

1. each society was to require its members to make a “categorical declaration of loyalty, and a formal statement of adhesion to the doctrine of the Livre des Esprits.”
2. societies were to reaffirm this initial commitment by starting each meeting with a reading from either the Livre des médiums or the Livre des Esprits

recommended the creation of a “directing group” in every French city with a large Spiritist population.
These groups would serve as coordinating bodies, gathering communications from their regions and corresponding with the Société Parisienne. The Société Parisienne, in turn, would function as the coordinating body for all of France

Kardec emphasized the Société Parisienne’s relative lack of power. It could “establish purely scientific relations” with other societies but exerted no other “control,” leaving them free to “organize as they see fit.”

To make the connection even less formal, the Société Parisienne gave no financial support to allied societies and required no membership dues from them

• Those who attended Spiritist séances, Kardec wrote, needed to “remain serious in every sense of the word.” Superior spirits did not waste their time attempting to communicate eternal wisdom to people in search of mere amusement
• Any hint of humor, lightness, play, or irony in a séance jeopardized its legitimacy as a vehicle for the accumulation of spiritual knowledge
• The medium,” Kardec wrote, “must avoid everything that might turn him into a consultant, which, in the eyes of many people, is synonymous with a fortune teller.
• To ensure the “silence and reverence” that elevated spirits required, Kardec forbade all members to speak during séances unless he granted them permission to do so
• Every communication submitted to the society had to receive the president’s approval before being read to the group.
• Most important, Kardec chose which spirits would be invoked at each meeting and what questions they would be asked.
• good spirits never contradicted one another when addressing points of doctrine. deceptive heterodox communications were the work of an insidious class of inferior disembodied soul—the Esprit faux savant (poseur spirit)

Question 61

La Revue Spirite, 1869

Answer 61

Though Spiritism drew the majority of its believers from the
urban “petite bourgeoisie and the working class”—especially artisans, clerks,
and shopkeepers—its most influential members came from “the enlightened
classes.

[Women’s] predisposition lets them embrace uncritical, blind faith more easily; Spiritism, on the other hand, only permits a reasoned faith based on reflection and philosophical deduction

Question 62

La Revue Spirite, 1862

Answer 62

Spiritism provided a simple proof of the immortality of the soul that “fortifies religious sentiments in general, and applies to all religions.”

Question 63

Police report on Spiritism 1874

Answer 63

in France, Spiritism includes about 3000 groups, each with its own president

Question 64

Pierre Janet, 1892

Answer 64

Revue générale, le spiritisme contemporain:

1892, Pierre Janet noticed that writers in the field had developed a surprising blind spot. Until the late 1870s, Spiritist books and periodicals had been filled with detailed accounts of the séances in which automatic writings were produced, but by the early 1890s, these once-crucial bits of evidence had become rare. Instead, journalists within the movement devoted their attention to other matters, like internecine doctrinal polemics, essays on metaphysical topics, and secondhand descriptions of spectacular physical phenomena, usually taken from English-language periodicals. More strikingly still, this turn away from firsthand empirical observation went along with a total neglect of recent psychological discoveries.

Spiritist journalists, Janet suggested, had “entirely unconsciously” begun to avoid describing exactly what happened in automatic-writing séances because such phenomena had now become scientifically explicable in a way that discredited the assumptions on which Spiritism depended

Question 65

Emma Hardinge Britten, 1870

Answer 65

Modern American Spiritualism:

• during her stay in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1859, she met w much hostility. Lectures interrupted. On one occasion large stone thrown through window of room in which she was lecturing
• 1860, her trip to South Carolina had to be cancelled because of threat of lynching

Question 66

Thackeray, 1860

Answer 66

Cornhill Magazine:

account of the startling phenomena at Home’s seances

This article caused tremendous furore

Question 67

John Jones, non-professional medium, 1862

Answer 67

The Spiritual Magazine:

• pointed out that even if he gave up his profession and devoted his full time to Spiritualism he cld not possibly deal w all enquiries
• He advised enquirers to form their own family circles. TO sit at a certain hour 3 times a week for a month or two and I am sure that in 95 cases of 100 the result wld be the occurrence of spirit action in their own families

Advice reprinted in several early issues of The Spiritualist in 1869 and 1870.

Question 68

Deb 1877 letter in The Spiritualist

Answer 68

There is scarcely a town or village in the district which the Lancashire Comte has not already visited and sown the first seed.

Lanc Comte = the Lanc Assoc for the Promot of Spiritualism

Question 69

Two Worlds article

Answer 69

over 2000 properly constituted Spiritualist Societies in Britain in 1934

Question 70

1853, Illustrated London News

Answer 70

regretted that the ‘matter-of-fact people of the nineteenth century’ were ‘plunged all at once into the bottomless deep of spiritualism’.

‘Railroads, steam, and electricity’, it continued, and the indubitable wonders which they have wrought, have not proved powerful enough to supersede and destroy that strong innate love of the supernatural which seems implanted in the human mind. Thousands of people in Europe and America are turning tables, and obstinately refusing to believe that physical and mechanical means are in any way connected in the process

Question 71

The Saturday Review

Answer 71

1876:
argued that spirit manifestations could not be reduced to a ‘true’ ‘law of nature’ because they were ‘never performed in a straightforward open way, like any honest experiment. They are either done in the dark, or only before known believers and confederates, or within a specially prepared place; and even when they are done in the daylight, the operator is full of tricks to distract attention, and to produce mysterious bewilderment.

Question 72

Henry Dircks, eminent civil engineer and the co-inventor of the popular theatrical illusion, 1872

Answer 72

letters to The Times:

He contrasted science, which ‘always brings its miracles to the light of day’, which concerns reproducible and useful ‘wonders’, and which relates to ‘certain laws of nature’, with spiritualism, which not only ‘shrouds itself in dark chambers, has its special mediums, and shuns the light’, but has not led to any ‘practical results’, contains ‘an amazing amount of childish jugglery’, ‘relates to the supernatural, and is opposed to every known natural law’

Question 73

Owen, radical American politician, 1860

Answer 73

Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World:

lamented the fact that in an age where ‘modern science’ had subsumed most phenomena under general laws of the universe, the tendency was to reject ‘evidence for a modern miracle’ because these alleged occurrences violated natural laws and thus what could be taken as possible

Question 74

William Henry Harrison, founder editor of the Spiritualist, 1st editorial

Answer 74

1869:

Not much observation of the phenomena of spiritualism is necessary to learn that the manifestations are governed by physical and mental laws, though very few of these laws are at present known. Systematic, scientific research applied to Spiritualism would therefore […] be sure to give very valuable results, by clearing away much of the mystery overhanging the border land between this world and the next

Harrison believed that abolishing ‘the words “miracle” and “supernatural” as applied to Spiritualistic phenomema’ would help make such phenomena legitimate subjects for ‘scientific research’, and would also fulfil the crucial goal of preventing ‘the public’ from believing that spiritualism was a baseless superstition

Question 75

1877 public lecture on Spiritualism

Answer 75

Carpenter:

concluded by warning that when assessing the extraordinary phenomena of the séance, ‘we should trust rather to the evidence of our sense rather than to that of our senses’.

Carpenter thus reiterated his belief that common sense, achieved through proper mental education, was the ultimate court of appeal for sensory experience, which was ‘liable to many fallacies’

Question 76

Crookes,

Answer 76

‘Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science’,
Quarterly Journal of Science, 1870:

the ‘pseudo-scientific spiritualist’, with his sloppy séance protocols and vague physical theories of manifestations, could not undertake ‘investigations which so completely baffle the ordinary observer’: rather, this task was for the ‘thorough scientific man’ who was trained in ‘care and accuracy’ and skilled in using the sensitive instruments needed to produce, under test conditions and independently of spiritual or other any theory, decisive evidence of the physical manifestations of the séance

Question 77

editor of the Birmingham Morning News

Answer 77

Crookes’ reports of discovery of Psychic Force in Home séances:

‘set all London on fire, and the Spiritualists rabid with excitement’

Question 78

[James Burns], ‘About Scientific Spiritualism’, Medium and Daybreak, 1870

Answer 78

denied that Crookes had explained ‘the nature of the power which produces the phenomena’ and earlier challenged the very basis of the chemist’s claims to authority in the séance: ‘Could all the paraphernalia of Mr. Crookes’s workshop’, he asked, ‘reveal to him the presence of a spirit?’, and he proceeded to explain that the individuals best able to discern the ‘laws and conditions for the regulation of the phenomena’ and the ultimate psychological cause of spirits were not the victims of ‘a “long line of learning”’ but those who possessed ‘senses and forms of consciousness’ adapted to the psychological ‘plane’. It was these individuals who were building the ‘science of spiritualism’

Question 79

Carpenter, 1871

Answer 79

‘Spiritualism and its latest converts’, Quarterly Review:

Carpenter was clearly annoyed that Crookes had not deferred to the authority of those with greater experience of psychological disorders

The case of Crookes dramatically illustrated how ‘a man may have acquired a high reputation as an investigator in one department of science, and yet be utterly untrustworthy in regard to another’

Question 80

Crookes, 1872

Answer 80

Psychic Force and Modern Spiritualism

explosive defence of his scientific credibility and a fierce denial of Carpenter’s apparently disingenuous claim that he was a spiritualistic convert.

since the production of ‘broad, tangible, and easily demonstrable facts’ about Home’s alleged power turned on the ‘question of apparatus’ used to register such powers then it was precisely ‘one “who is trustworthy in an enquiry requiring technical knowledge”’ who could best undertake this task.

Question 81

Home, 1877

Answer 81

Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism:

• cited Cook and Crookes as proof of poss of genuine spirit materializations.
• unflattering to fellow mediums

Question 82

Emma Hardinge Britten, 1884

Answer 82

Nineteenth Century Miracles:

record of her tours throughout England, partic in north, is peppered with references to working-class spiritualists. Leeds, Halifax, Keighley, Bradford, and nearly all the principal towns and villages of Yorkshire, she found numerous men and women who functioned as ‘resident Mediums’

services in spiritualist communities throughout Britain, concentrated in Yorkshire and Lancashire, strong also in Northumberland and the midlands

Question 83

Stainton Moses, 1883

Answer 83

Spirit Teachings:

• collection of writings published 1883
• became one of most influential texts of British Spiritualism - dubbed the Bible of British Spiritualism
• spiritualism turned articles of Christian faith into logical deductions from experience

Question 84

Henry Sidgewick, first presidential address to SPR

Answer 84

1882:

• marvels of spiritualism might be just what was needed for the wasting sickness of the Anglican church
• the Society planned to pursue its investigations ‘with a single-minded desire to ascertain the facts, and without any foregone conclusion as to their nature’
• died of cancer 1900

Question 85

First issue of the Proceedings of the SPR

Answer 85

Entirely dealt with thought reading, apart from the obligatory Objects of the Society, and First Presidential Address

Question 86

Mrs Sidgewick to Henry, 1886

Answer 86

I really think the spiritualists had better go. It seems to me that if there be truth in spirit their attitude and state of mind distinctly hinder its being found out… Their spirit is theological not scientific, and it is so difficult to run theology and science in harness together’.

Question 87

SPR, Census of Hallucinations

Answer 87

1889-94:

to strengthen statistical foundations of conclusions reached in Phantasms of the Living

Question 88

Podmore, 1897

Answer 88

Studies in Psychical Research

offered a number of natural explanations - fraud, coincidence, poor observation, weak memory - for allegedly supernatural occurrences. Seemed to distrust the observational skills of witnesses as much as the integrity of mediums

Question 89

General Balfour, 1906

Answer 89

no subject which more keenly interests a majority of our members than that of the rational grounds for a belief in immortality.

Question 90

Myers, 1900

Answer 90

Presidential Address:

To prove the preamble of all religions; to be able to say to theologian or to philosopher: Thus and thus we demonstrate that a spiritual world exists - a world of independent and abiding realities, not a mere epiphenomenon or transitory effect of the material world… this would indeed, in my view, be the weightiest service which any research could render to the deep disquiet of our time.’

Question 91

Moses, 1887

Answer 91

address to London Spiritualist Association:

I think I employed in my investigations what is known as the scientific methods - i.e. I endeavoured to be sure of my facts and to
appreciate their significance

Question 92

Major-General Drayson, 1884

Answer 92

‘Science and the Phenomena Termed Spiritual’, address to the London Spiritualist Alliance:

we find that the mental condition of these individuals (sci professionals opposing spiritualism)
Is such as to render them unwilling to collect or examine facts before they theorise, we are naturally disposed to question the competence of such minds to form conclusions on any branch of Science.

Question 93

James on Myers, in Proceedings of the SPR

Answer 93

M’s theory wld figure always as a momentous event in the history of our Science

something akin to Darwin’s genius in Myers’s passion for collecting and classifying, ranking evd.

Question 94

McDougall, 1961

Answer 94

Body and Mind:

Organic processes are in some sense controlled by mind or by teleological principle of which our conscious intelligence is but one mode of manifestation among others.

Oppenheim: Had G and M lived to see it, they wld have delighted in knowledge that one of creators of social psych was building upon foundations furnished by the SPR

Question 95

Darwin, Origin of Species

Answer 95

1859

Question 96

Massey, 1871

Answer 96

Concerning Spiritualism:

accept Darwin, believe ascended physically from lower forms of creation. Needs spiritualism to carry theory through and complete it. Darwin’s theory necessitates it, he simply does not deal w our side of the subject

Question 97

Reverend Hopps, 1888

Answer 97

‘The Ideal Holy Ghost’, address to LSA

Evolution shows man did not begin perfect. No fall from grace

Question 98

Wallace, 1877

Answer 98

Article in Fraser’s:

(in reply to Carpenter article)

‘We persist in accepting the uniform and consistent testimony of our senses’.

Question 99

Wallace, 1870

Answer 99

the Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man:

Pointed out traits that seemed not to fit pattern of natural selection - e.g. man’s hairlessness and fact the brain of primitive man was so much larger than that of anthropoid apes

Not possible to explain certain intellectual capacities in terms of their utility in the natural competition to survive

Question 100

Wallace, 1889

Answer 100

Darwinism:

physical structure changes explained by natural selection. However, outside intervention of higher intelligence required to produce man as thinking, reasoning and ethical creature

Question 101

Balfour Steward, 1871

Answer 101

‘Mr Crookes on the Psychic Force’, Nature:

can’t reject strange testimony based on preconceived ideas, for by this menas we shld never arrive at anything new

Question 102

Crookes, letter to Lodge

Answer 102

said avoided mentioning Cook séances in public bc had been so troubled by hints and rumours.

Question 103

Lodge, 1933

Answer 103

My Philosophy

• argued ether was indispensable - despite fact that during 2nd and 3rd decades of 20th C, ether ceased to be a meaningful concept for modern physics.

Question 104

Lodge, 1919

Answer 104

address to the Royal Institution

Described self as a conservative physicist

Question 105

Fournier D’Albe

Answer 105

The Life of Sir William Crookes, 1923:

Spiritualism as a religion may legitimately be studied in a section of anthropology, but Spiritualism as a science does not exist. To be a Spiritualist, the scientist must surrender his wishes, his methods, his views into the hands of his ‘spirit friends’ on the ‘other side’. If he does that he may achieve a certain peace of mind, but his scientific work will be at an end

Question 106

Wallace, 1875

Answer 106

A Defence of Modern Spiritualism:

mentions Hudson’s photos as objective proof of existence of apparitions said to have occurred during spiritualist séances since the 1860s

Question 107

Freud, 1904

Answer 107

Psychopathology of Everyday Life:

“we must … at least touch upon the question of whether real roots of superstitions should be altogether denied, whether there are really no omens, prophetic dreams, telepathic experiences, manifestations of supernatural forces and the like”

nervous persons afflicted with compulsive thinking … show very plainly that superstition originates from repressed hostile and cruel impulses … and he who has frequently wished evil to others, but because of a good bringing-up has repressed the same into the unconscious, will be particularly apt to expect punishment for such unconscious evil in the form of misfortune threatening him from without

Question 108

Freud, 1933

Answer 108

Dreams and the Occultism:

reported all the peculiar cases of possible telepathy that he had collected and mentioned over the years.

After presenting these cases, he stated, “I must confess that I have a feeling that here too the scale weights in favor of thought-transference”

Question 109

Freud, 1922

Answer 109

Dreams and Telepathy:

Called for more research into telepathy:

“I would like to induce you to collect similar cases” (p. 66). As of today, however, many psychoanalysts remain reticent to devote their research to such topics

Question 110

Dr. Winslow, 1876

Answer 110

London Standard:

Said 10,000 cases of insanity, all directly ascribable to Spiritualism

(Two yrs later, BMJ said one med gentleman (Winslow) had made v wild statements. Emphd the tiny number of Spiritualist lunatics in American asylums)

Question 111

Conan Doyle, 1920

Answer 111

Fairies Photographed, the Strand

Conan Doyle seeks to achieve a cautious, balanced tone, confiding in his concluding remarks, ‘I must confess that after months of thought I am unable to get the true bearings of this event’.

Here Conan Doyle swiftly evokes a judicial, even scientific, tenor: ‘evidence’ will be laid before the public ‘for examination and judgment’. There is talk of a ‘case’, and of ‘proof, and the desirability (despite an acknowledgement of the difficulties involved) of repeating the ‘results’ before a ‘disinterested witness’. Thus the “incidents’ narrated and ‘the photographs attached’ become part of the evidence, the validity of which the public will judge.
The passive construction of Conan Doyle’s opening Strand sentence, ‘Should the incidents here narrated’, disguises for the moment the fact that it is he who is narrating the incidents, indeed, who is partially responsible for some of them. It is symptomatic of a technique by which Conan Doyle appears to offer an impartial account of the Cottingley affair whilst actually presenting a carefully constructed case (Owen)

dward Gardner, Conan Doyle’s middle-aged ‘collaborator’, emerges as a reserved, well-balanced, and industrious partner, whilst Geoffrey Hodson, although disguised by the name ‘Sergeant’, is introduced as a highly reliable expert witness

informs his readers that the clairvoyant served his country during the war, is a gentleman, and thoroughly sound. Conan Doyle thus seeks to reassure those who might have entertained doubts, moral or otherwise, about a man who professes to see fairies

This, then, is a painstaking search for the truth by trustworthy men. (Owen)

Question 112

Conan Doyle, 1922

Answer 112

Coming of the Fairies:

In the book, Conan Doyle utilizes the epistolary device at the outset to document his search for Edward Gardner. He does so via the reproduction of a wide correspondence, most of it with women. Conan Doyle publishes lengthy excerpts from these letters, together with names and full addresses, ostensibly because they give ‘a complete inside view of all that led up to so remarkable an episode’.45 The letters are also used as types of evidence. Conan Doyle’s narration of the Cottingley episode is in detective mode, and the effect of the letters is not only to help build narrative interest via a series of clues and leads, but also to form in the reader’s mind an initial impression of Cottingley as a case and his conduct of it. (Owen)

photographs assume enormous importance. They are presented as documentary evidence of the existence of fairies

Doyle hoped that having discovered this; the world will not find it so difficult to accept that spiritual message supported by physical facts which has already been so convincingly put before it.

Question 113

Münsterberg, 1910

Answer 113

Metropolitan magazine:

• Claimed to have exposed Palladino once and for all
• Neither the medium nor Mr. Carrington had the slightest idea that a man was lying flat on the floor and had succeeded in slipping noiselessly like a snail below the curtain into the cabinet. I had told him that I expected wires stretched out from her body and he looked out for them. What a surprise when he saw that she had simply freed her foot from her shoe and with an athletic backward movement of the leg was reaching out and fishing with her toes for the guitar and the table in the cabinet!
• therefore: ‘Her greatest wonders are absolutely nothing but fraud and humbug; this is no longer a theory but a proven fact’
• ‘unconscious’ mediumistic trickery

Question 114

James, letter to Flournoy 1910

Answer 114

Eusapia’s type of performance is detestable – if it be not fraud simulating reality, it is reality simulating fraud!’

Question 115

EE Lewis, 1848

Answer 115

A Report of the Mysterious Noises Heard in the House of Mr John D Fox:

• collected statements about Hydesville rappings
• witnesses = part of a large, intelligent and candid community

Question 116

Barron Capron, 1850

Answer 116

Singular Revelations:

• pamphlet arguing that Spirit communication should be viewed not as supernatural but as natural phenomenon

Drew from ideas of Davis to explain presence of communicative and humanlike spirits
Seven spheres through which spirits passed.

Question 117

Margaret Fox, mid-1880s

Answer 117

The Curse of Spiritualism, New York Herald:

denounced rise of fake mediums

Between some Spiritualists’ obsession w ever more explosive effects, willingness of unscrupulous mediums to produce the desired pyrotechnicas, and other Spiritualists’ dread of scandal, there was little call, it seemed, for rapping spirits. Pressure to work effectively in such an atmosphere, Maggie intimated, cld drive even an honest, sober medium to drink or to deception

Question 118

The Death-Blow to Spiritualism, 1888

Answer 118

account of Foxes’ confession

Question 119

Conan Doyle, 1923

Answer 119

The Case for Spirit Photography

Price attacked Hope. Society for Psychic Research has assoc itself w this criticism.

Hope not a professional medium - doesn’t like getting money for his gift

his character - honest

I went to Crewe. Took photo. No possibility of changing the plates. but no changing of plates wld account for the effect actually produced. Hazy cloud covering us - ectoplasm. In one corner appears partial materialisation of what seems to be hair and forehead of a young man. Across plate is scrawled ‘Well done Friend Doyle I welcome you to Crewe. Greetings to all T. Colley.
Archdeacon Colley = founder of the Crewe Circle.

Annual mtg of the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures. Hope took a photo. No warning and could have made no preparation.

is an insult to common sense to say that so long an array of honourable witnesses, w their precise detail, actual photographic results and complete exclusion of any poss trickery, should all be explained in any normal fashion

Our enemies take the perverse course of dwelling entirely upon negative results, a line of reasoning which would have killed any science in the world

Took up my pen for purpose of considering the case of the Crewe Circle and urging the folly of discarding the work of 17 yrs on the score of a single case

Mrs Dane obtains best results when there has been no poss of knowing who her sitter will be. Finest result - Dr Cushman and daughter Agnes

A well-known ‘exposer’ assured a friend of mine he wld think nothing of putting muslin in a medium’s pocket at a séance, if he was sure he cld thereby secure a conviction

I fear the most permanent result of this episode will be that the spiritualists will v reasonably refuse the present régime of the Research Soc all access to their mediums

Recovered cover in which the original packet of plates was wrapped, and on it were found unmistakable signs it had been tampered with and opened.

meantime, unfair to blame elements of the SPR who many have themselves been tricked. Nothing can excuse them from charge of culpable negligence.
Evidential and Scientific Aspects of Psychic Photography:

bigoted sceptics

Can be no doubt of genuineness of handwriting of beings proving continued existence after death

obstructionist way that SPR and Occult Comte of the Magic Circle handled SSSP request to submit charges made against Hope to thorough investigation

Walker - well over 20 psychic results received from him on diff occasions, most of them under reasonable test conditions

These worthy and simple ppl

look forward to that day… when psychologist and scientist shall combine the investigation of tis vital problem.

Lots of pics throughout books

‘Conclusive Proof’ section at the end of the book - containing lots of accounts by various individuals of successful instances of spirit photography by the Crewe Circle
e.g. Mrs Pears of Coventry - none of mems had ever seen our little boy of 14, or even photo of him. Successful in obtaining a wonderful photo of our dear boy. No one acquainted w the mems of that Circle wld for a moment doubt their honesty.

Question 120

Rouby, Bien-Boà et Charles Richet, 1907

Answer 120

with “thighs worthy of the chisel of Praxiteles,” appeared and performed barebreasted “warrior dances” for the audience in attendance. In other words, Rouby concluded, “they weren’t bored at the Villa Carmen.”

Rouby suggested that the deceptions engineered by Marthe had a particular effect on the illustrious Richet, one that eroded his better judgment and completely compromised his authority on the subject of spirits

Question 121

SPR mission, phantasms of the living 1886

Answer 121

its general plea is such as he has often noted
in the history of science before. “ To approach these various problems
without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit
of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled Science to
solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated

sometimes [we are told] that no respectable man of science would
condescend to meddle with such a reeking mass of fraud and hysteria.
Sometimes we are pitied as laborious triflers who prove some infinitely
small matter with mighty trouble and pains

show as clearly as we can at what points our
inquiries touch the recent results of science

Biology, the science which on the whole approaches
the closest to our own inquiries. Biology has, during the last half-
century, made an advance which, measured by the hold exercised on
the mass of cultivated minds, has perhaps had no parallel since the
forward stride of astronomy and physics in the days of Newton

glance at the text-books of the last generation, in physical or mental
science — Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, or Mill’s
Logic, — as compared, for instance, with the works of their
immediate successor, Mr. Herbert Spencer, shows something which is
not so much progress as revolution

Biology, which even at the date of Whewell’s
book could barely make good its claim to be regarded as a
coherent science at all, has now acquired a co-ordinating and
continuous principle of unity which renders it in some respects
the best type of a true science which we possess

in the view of
some ardent physiologists, it is becoming more and more probable
that we are in fact physiological automata ; that our consciousness
is a mere superadded phenomenon — a mere concomitant of some
special intensity of cerebral action

this view, as it would seem, depends in a great part upon
something which corresponds in the mental field to a familiar optical
illusion. When we see half of some body strongly illuminated, and
half of it feebly illuminated, it is hard to believe that the brilliant
moiety is not the larger of the two.

the increased
definiteness of our conception of the physical side of our mental
operations which seems to increase its relative importance

Wundt
stands, of course, among the foremost of those who have treated
human thought and sensation as definite and measurable things

nevertheless, Wundt believes himself
able to assert that there is within us a residue — an all-important
residue — of psychical action which is incommensurable with physiological law

my illustration
shows at any rate that the development of physiology is tending not
always to make the old psychical problems seem meaningless or
sterile, but rather to give them actuality and urgency

in our endeavours to establish and to elucidate telepathy,
we look primarily for aid to the most recent group of physiological
inquirers, to the psycho-physicists whose special work — as yet in its
infancy — has only in our own day been rendered possible by the
increased accuracy and grasp of experimental methods in the sciences
which deal with Life.

The list of Corresponding Members of our Society will serve to
show that this confidence on our part is not wholly unfounded

connection of anthropology with psychical research

as the creeds
and customs of savage races become better known, the part played
by sorcery, divination, apparitions becomes increasingly predominant.

Passing on from Anthropology to history in its wider accepta-
tion, we find these psycho-physical problems perpetually recurring, and
forming a disturbing element in any theory of social or religious
evolution. The contagious enthusiasms of the Middle Ages

committee of the
Society for Psychical Research has investigated the claim of the so-
called “ Theosophy,” of which Madame Blavatsky was the prophetess,
to be an incipient world-religion, corroborated by miraculous, or at
least supernormal, phenomena, — and has arrived at the conclusion
that it is merely a rechauffe of ancient philosophies, decked in novel
language, and supported by ingenious fraud. Had this fraud not been
detected and exposed, and had the system of belief supported thereon
thriven and spread, we should have witnessed what the sceptic might
have cited as a typical case of the origin of religions

would be a mere abuse of language to call
Swedenborg mad.

His position must be decided by a much more
difficult analogy. For before we can even begin to criticise his
celestial visions we must be able in some degree to judge of his visions
of things terrestrial ; we must face, that is to say, the whole problem
of so-called clairvoyance

We shrank from taking advantage of men’s hopes or fears, from represent-
ing ourselves as bent on rescuing them from the materialism which
forms so large a factor in modern thought, or from the pessimism
which dogs its steps with unceasing persistency.

held it to be
incumbent on us, in an especial degree, to maintain a neutral and
expectant attitude, and to conduct our inquiries in the “ dry light” of
a dispassionate search for truth.

This book, as will be seen, does
not attempt to deal with the most exciting and popular topics which
are included in our Society’s general scheme

We hold that we have
proved by direct experiment, and corroborated by the narratives
contained in this book, the possibility of communications between
two minds, inexplicable by any recognised physical law

In another case, the choice lay between 4 things, but these were
not suits, but simple colours — red, blue, green, and yellow. The
percipient throughout was Mr. A. J. Shilton, of 40, Paradise Street,
Birmingham ; the agent (except in one small group, when Professor
Poynting, of Mason College, acted) was Mr. G. T Cashmore,
of Albert Poad, Handsworth. Out of 505 trials, 261 were successes.
The probability here afforded of a cause other than chance is con- siderably more than a trillion trillions to 1.

Question 122

Richard Hodgson, 1895

Answer 122

Account of Personal Investigations in India:

- Says he's sympathetic
- Not qualified in straightforward way to do this investigation
- Relatively well-educated
- Blavatsky = fraud
- Hodgson wants to divide ppl into frauds or dupes. Simplistic
- Ties in logical knots. Various ppl - by this point must have known they were tricking ppl. Debunking simplistic. Historicise debunking rying to set up experimental conditions. 
- Saying undoubtedly but at other times saying make up own time, don't have time to  go into details - minutiae 'It is needless for me to enter into all the minutiae of so complicated an investigation. It would in truth be impossible either to reproduce all the palterings and equivocations in the evidence offered to me, or to describe with any approach to adequacy how my personal impressions of many of the witnesses deepened my conviction of the dishonesty woven throughout their testimony. What follows, however, will, I think, be more than enough to convince any impartial inquirer of the justice of the conclusion which I have reached.' 
- Says presenting evd but actually presenting own reliability as a witness - Doesn't take account of self-deception

Material details of situations. All about specifics - laying out how room set up. What objects in, what out.

For someone like Hodgson - all about asserting own authority. Enemies wrong - stupid or evil.

don’t think way he is constructing science is particularly detailed.
A lot is about writing, fake letters.Not much about scientific method. He just says sci is due caution

nothing in report to appeal to scientific method

Not much about scientific method. He just says sci is due caution

Question 123

Doyle, 1920

Answer 123

The Case for Spiritualism, The Graphic

Reply by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Mr. Edward Clodd’s strong attack in last week’s issue of “The Graphic”

There is ample evidence in Mr. Clodd’s article, apart from his own implied confession, that he is in the habit of “cutting the pages and smelling the paper-knife” when he reads a book upholding the truth of spiritualism

other hand, he has the eye of a hawk for a scandalous paragraph written by any unknown or anonymous journalist. These are greedily swallowed, while the considered statements of results obtained by men like Crookes, Lombroso, Crawford, or Richet, under absolute test conditions, sometimes in their own laboratories, are waved aside as worthless.

errors as to fact in Mr. Clodd’s contribution to The Graphic are so numerous that it would take a long article to thrash them out. Here I can only indicate them and ask the reader to consult the authorities and verify my remarks. The date given in the article for the outbreak of psychic phenomena in America is 1818. This is obviously a misprint for 1848, and I only mention it lest the reader should be confused.

Is it not a scandal then to assert now that “Miss Cook had been detected in spurious personification of Katie” ?

Florrie Cook had to face adverse criticism, one of the critics being Professor Crookes.

Miss Cook called upon him, proclaimed her innocence

After two years of observation he entirely endorsed her honesty, and so vindicated her from the original aspersion

. A man who can argue that because a belief has always in one shape or form existed, therefore it must be false, seems to me to exhibit a very perverse mentality.

Question 124

Doyle, The Conan Doyle-McCabe Debate, Light

Answer 124

1920:

Professors who had, as I stated, accepted our views, some limiting the acceptance to the phenomena only. and some going the whole way with us.

Mr. McCabe challenged me to produce ten names. I produced a list which I said contained forty names

Mr. McCabe questioned Lord Lindsay’s account of Home’s levitation, and put forward the supposition that Home stepped from balcony to balcony outside

How does this fit in with Mr. McCabe’s theory of the balcony? As a fact there was no balcony.

Surely, I did not exaggerate when I said that the evidence for this event was clearer than that for many of the historical occurrences which all the world has agreed to accept.

Question 125

Doyle, The Two Worlds, 1922

Answer 125

Financial Statement of American Tour:

The expenses of the expedition were heavy, as we were a party of seven and prices are very high in America. None the less in two months of actual lecturing I was able to show a profit of nearly £1,500.

Question 126

Doyle, Recent Psychic Evidence, The New York Times, 1923

Answer 126

Dr. Schrenck-Notzing’s (Munich) experiments with Willy at Munich, and I told how he had demonstrated that mysterious substance ectoplasm to 100 incredulous men

new demonstration has been carried out by Dr. Geley of the Metapsychique Institute of Paris. He assembled thirty-four men of distinction and in successive sittings demonstrated the usual physical phenomena of spiritualism, using as a medium one Jean Gusik, a Pole.
The results were perfectly conclusive, and all the observers signed their acquiescence. The signatures include those of Dr. Rehm, scientific editor of the Matin; Cinisty, editor of the Petit Parisien: Huc, editor of the Dépeche de Toulouse: a dozen leading doctors from Parisian hospitals; Marcel Prevost of the French Academy; Bayle of the Prefecture of Police; several men of letters, and finally, three great men of science — Richet, Flammarion and Sir Oliver Lodge.