A suspicion of fraud may very easily be aroused in this condition, for the general desire on the part of the audience that something should occur reacts with great force upon the unreasoning mind of the medium. An amateur who had some psychic power has assured the author that it needs considerable inhibition to keep such impulses in check and to await the real power from outside. In this report we read: "The two hands, feet, and knees of Eusapia being controlled, the table is raised suddenly, all four feet leaving the ground. Eusapia closes her fists and holds them towards the table, which is then completely raised from the floor five times in succession, five raps being also given. It is again completely raised whilst each of Eusapia's hands is on the head of a sitter. It is raised to a height of one foot from the floor and suspended in the air for seven seconds, while Eusapia kept her hand on the table, and a lighted candle was placed under the table," and so on, with even more conclusive tests with table and other phenomena.
* "L'Ectoplasmie et la Clairvoyance," 1924, p. 402.
The timidity of the report was satirized by the great French Spiritualist, Gabriel Delanne. He says:
The reporter keeps saying "it seems" and "it appears," like a man who is not sure of what he is relating. Those who held forty-three seances, with good eyes and apparatus for verification, ought to have a settled opinion-or, at least, to be able to say, if they regard a certain phenomenon as fraudulent, that at a given seance they had seen the medium in the act of tricking. But there is nothing of the sort. The reader is left in uncertainty-a vague suspicion hovers over everything, though not supported on any serious grounds.
Commenting on this, LIGHT says: *
* 1909, p. 356.
Delanne shows by extracts from the Report itself that some of the experiments succeeded even when the fullest test precautions were taken, such as using lamp-black to discover whether Eusapia really touched the objects moved. Yet the Report deliberately discounts these direct and positive observations by instancing cases occurring AT OTHER TIMES AND PLACES in which Eusapia was SAID or BELIEVED to have unduly influenced the phenomena.
The Courtier Report will prove more and more plainly to be what we have already called it, a "monument of ineptitude," and the reality of Eusapia's phenomena cannot be seriously called in question by the meaningless phrases with which it is liberally garnished.
What may be called a collective investigation of a medium, Mrs. Crandon, the wife of a doctor in Boston, was undertaken in the years 1923 to 1925 by a committee chosen by the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and afterwards by a small committee of Harvard men with Dr. Shapley, the astronomer, at their head. The controversy over these inquiries is still raging, and the matter has been referred to in the chapter which deals with great modern mediums. It may briefly be stated that of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN inquirers the secretary, Mr. Malcolm Bird, and Dr. Hereward Carrington announced their complete conversion.
The others gave no clear decision which involved the humiliating admission that after numerous sittings under their own conditions and in the presence of constant phenomena, they could not tell whether they were being cheated or not. The defect of the committee was that no experienced Spiritualist who was familiar with psychic conditions was upon it. Dr. Prince was very deaf, while Dr. McDougall was in a position where his whole academic career would obviously be endangered by the acceptance of an unpopular explanation. The same remark applies to Dr. Shapley's committee, which was all composed of budding scientists. Without imputing conscious mental dishonesty, there is a subconscious drag to wards the course of safety. Reading the report of these gentlemen with their signed acquiescence at each sitting with the result, and their final verdict of fraud, one cannot discover any normal way in which they have reached their conclusions.