The Spiritualist > No.31, March 15th 1872

A F(ECOF(D Of THE PROQREfp Of THE fCIEJ^CE ^ND ETHICS OF ^PIF^ITU/iTIfM.
[EEGISTERED FOE TRANSMISSION ABROAD.]
No. 31.—(VOL. IL, No. 3.) LONDON : FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1872. PUMont^ PriceVSeepencT7
POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO SPIRITUALISM,
i The scientific world is admitting the previously denied
facts of mesmerism with great rapidity in order to ex¬
plain away the facts of Spiritualism, the argument of
those who have not investigated, being that spiritual
phenomena are subjective and not objective. This is
the line of argument adopted by Dr. Balfour Stewart,
F.R.S., Mr. E. B. Tylor, E.R.S., the Quarterly Review,
and others. We, therefore, print several articles de¬
monstrating that the objection is not valid, and trust
that well-informed readers will excuse us for giving so
much old information in this number of The Spiritualist,
seeing that it makes it a useful number to present to
persons unacquainted with the subject.. It is also a
complete answer to Mr. Seijeant Cox’s pamphlet, which
all turns upon his assertion (on page 42 of Spiritualism
Answered by Science') that:—“ Nothing is conveyed by
them [the messages] that is not in the mind of the
psychic or some person present.”
THE OBJECTIVE NATURE OF SPIRITUAL
PHENOMENA.*
BY ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE, PRESIDENT OF THE ENTO¬
MOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
“ There is only one point in Mr. Tylor’s communi¬
cation (Nature, Feb. 29, p. 343) on which it seems
desirable that I should say a few words, in order that I
may not be supposed to assent to what I conceive to be
a most erroneous view. Mr. Tylor suggests that the
phenomena that occur in the presence of what are called
mediums, are or may be of the same nature as the sub¬
jective impressions of persons under the influence of a
powerful mesmeriser. Five and twenty years ago I was
myself a practised mesmeriser, and was able to produce
on my own patients almost the whole range of pheno¬
mena which are exhibited in public as illustrative of
f mesmerism ’ or 4 electro-biology.’ I carried on nume¬
rous experiments in private, and paid especial attention
to the conditions under which the phenomena occur.
During the last seven years I have had repeated oppor¬
tunities of examining the phenomena that occur in the
presence of so-called ‘ mediums,’ often under such
favourable conditions as to render trick or imposture
simply impossible. I believe, therefore, I may lay
claim to some qualifications for comparing the mesmeric
with the mediumistic phenomena with especial refer¬
ence to Mr. Tylor’s suggestion, and I find that there
are two great characteristics that broadly distinguish
the one from the other.
‘ “ 1. The mesmerised patient never has doubts of the
reality of what he sees or hears. He is like a dreamer
to whom the most incongruous circumstances suggest
no idea of incongruity, and he never inquires if what he
thinks he perceives harmonises with his actual sur¬
roundings. He has, moreover, lost his memory of what
and where he was a few moments before, and can give
no account, for instance, of how he has managed to get
out of a lecture-room in London to which he came as a
spectator half an hour before, on to an Atlantic steamer
in a hurricane, or into the recesses of a tropical forest.
“ The assistants at the seances of Mr. Home or Mrs.
Guppy are not in this state, as I can personally testify,
and as the almost invariable suspicion with which the
phenomena are at first regarded clearly demonstrates.
They do not lose memory of the immediately preceding
events; they criticise, they examine, they take notes,
they suggest tests—none of which the mesmerised
patient ever does.
“ 2. The mesmeriser has the power of acting on
* certain sensitive individuals ’ (not on ‘ assemblies ’ of
people, as Mr. Tylor suggests), and all experience shows
that those who are thus sensitive to any one operator
are but a small proportion of the population, and these
almost always require previous manipulation with pas¬
sive submission to the operator. The number who can
be acted upon without such previous manipulation is
very small, probably much less than one per cent. But
there is no such limitation to the number of persons
who simultaneously see the mediumistic phenomena.
The visitors to Mr. Home or Mrs. Guppy all see what¬
ever occurs of a physical nature, as the records of hun¬
dreds of sittings demonstrate.
“ The two classes of phenomena, therefore, differ
fundamentally; and it is a most convincing proof of
Mr. Tylor’s very slender acquaintance with either of
them, that he should even suggest their identity. The
real connection between them is quite in an opposite
direction. It is the mediums, not the assistants, who
are ‘ sensitives.’ They are almost always subject to the
mesmeric influence, and they often exhibit all the cha¬
racteristic phenomena of coma, trance, rigidity, and
abnormal sense-power. Conversely, the most sensitive
mesmeric patients are almost invariably mediums. The
idea that it is necessary for me to inform ‘ Spiritualists’
that I believe in the power of mesmerisers to make
their patient believe what they please, and that this
I information ’ might ‘ bring about investigations leading
to valuable results,’ is really amusing, considering that
such investigations took place twenty years ago, and led
to this important result—that almost all the most expe¬
rienced mesmerists (Prof. Gregory, Dr. Elliotson, Dr.
Reichenbach, and many others) became Spiritualists!
If Mr. Tylor’s suggestion had any value, these are the
very men who ought to have demonstrated the subjec¬
tive nature of mediumistic phenomena; but, on the
contrary, as soon as they had the opportunity of per¬
sonally investigating them, they all of them saw and
admitted their objective reality.
“Alfred R. Wallace.”
THE MATERIALISING OF THE BODIES
OF SPIRITS.
BY WILLIAM H. HARRISON.
About a fortnight ago, Mr. Guppy sent me an invita¬
tion from the spirits, endorsed by himself and Mrs.
Guppy, to go there to see what more the spirits could
do in the way of materialising their faces. Accordingly
it was a great pleasure to me to be present last Friday
evening, March 8th, to witness the progress made in
this most important of the physical manifestations of
Spiritualism.
As the daylight began to fade away, Mrs. Guppy
suggested that the light might not be too strong for the
production of spirit faces. We had had to sit for them
by moonlight before, as narrated in the last number of
the Spiritualist, so this was a step in advance. Master
Tommy Guppy, aged two years and-a-half, was taken
out of the room, lest he should be scared by the unex¬
pected appearance of anybody from the other world;
the door was locked to prevent interruption, and I
assisted in moving stands and other things out of the
photographic dark room, which was to serve as a
cabinet. This room, as stated last month, is five or six
feet square; it reaches from the floor to the ceiling,
which is a high one, and Mr. Guppy had sawn three
square openings at different elevations in the front of it,
one being about five feet from the ground, another near
the ceiling, and the third at an intermediate elevation.
There was also another in the side of the cabinet.
After moving the chemicals and things out of the
dark room till nothing was left in it, two light chairs
were placed in it for the mediums, who went in and
shut the door after them. It was scarcely closed when
a long, bare arm of beautiful proportions came out of
the windows in succession, including the upper window
by the ceiling; it was visible to within five or six inches
above the elbow.
Mr. Guppy and myself then took our seats about two
yards in front of the cabinet. The two large windows
of the room were behind us, so that the light from out¬
side the house, lit up the front of the cabinet before us,
the three openings therein, and the door of the cabinet;
all these directly faced us.
All was quiet for a few minutes, with the exception
of our conversation with Mrs. Guppy and her.friend;
the latter lady will not permit her name to be published
as a medium, in order to escape newspaper abuse.
Then raps came and said to the mediums, “ Put your
faces at the window.” They lifted up the curtain of the
lower window, and placed their faces in the opening;
directly after they did so, a hand came out of the open¬
ing two or three feet above their heads, laid hold of the
curtain of that opening, and tore it away altogether
from the tacks which held it. This was done with con¬
siderable force.
Then a head and shoulders, covered with white drapery
of the purest material, appeared at the opening from
which the curtain had been torn away. We had a side
view at first] then the figure turned round so as to
face us ; the face was covered down to the chin with a
light veil, through which the eyes, nose, and mouth
could be dimly seen. After we had looked at it and
criticised it about a minute, Mrs. Guppy said she should
like to see it too, so put her head out of the lower open¬
ing, and looked upwards trying to see the form at the
upper one, but could see nothing, as the face was just
inside the cabinet. The other medium withdrew from
the lower window, and took a look upwards inside the
cabinet. She said she saw the spirit “ Katie ” veiled as
described, looking down at her ; she was slightly lumi¬
nous ; only the bust was materialised, and a little below
the shoulders the form seemed to melt into thin air.
The mediums, who hitherto had been in a somewhat
lively mood, now began to be serious.
After some delay they put both their faces to the
opening again, then a spirit face, unveiled, came
between them. The face was a living one, surrounded
with delicate white drapery, as pure as the driven snow.
The face was equally white. One of the mediums was
elegantly dressed in white, as pure and clean as human
art could make it, but I distinctly noted that it looked
quite dingy by contrast with the spirit drapery with
which it was in immediate contact. Mrs. Guppy said
that the face itself was delicately coloured and of ex¬
treme beauty. In the twilight I could not see this
colour. I did not recognise the spirit, though in answer
to my question whether I had known her in earth life
she nodded three times, and turned about and exhibited
her face in various positions as if trying to aid me to
recognise her. The light was not strong, and as the
face had more than earthly beauty, these two causes
may account for my not recognising the features.
This face then went away; I had had a good look at it
for about two minutes; in fact, I advanced to within a yard
of it. It was quite opaque. The mediums shuddered
a little when they took sidelong glances at it, as it
rested there with its chin almost on their shoulders.
For some little time the mediums then talked to us
with their faces at the opening, when the younger
medium received a push which drove her against Mrs,
Guppy, and the spirit of a young girl looked out at the
side of the opening. She had a small head and face,
much smaller than those of the mediums, and she had
white drapery about her. It was now too dark to re¬
cognise features, but Mrs. Guppy described her as
“ plump and happy looking.; ” she continued a short
time peeping out at the window, and pressing against
the mediums with physical force, just as a human being
in the body would do. After the lapse of a minute or
two she went away, and the spirits said they could do
no more that evening. Katie said—“ We will give you
a better seance soon, Willie.”
This was a better seance than the one described in
the last number of the Spiritualist, as it was in a much
stronger light, except just at the close, and if the mani¬
festations continue to improve at the present rate, in a
month or two “ deceased ” friends will be systematically
making themselves visible to their relatives left on
earth, and will talk to them just as if once more clothed
in flesh and blood. This great result has already been
attained at Mr. Keeler’s circle in America.
I am not a seeing-medium, or a medium of any kind;
these things were seen with normal eyesight, and I was
quite cool and collected, as long experience at spirit
circles strengthens the nerves for scenes of this kind.
A feeling of awe at the grandeur of the manifestations
grad&ally came over all of us, and made us more serious
than usual for a short time afterwards. Once I felt a
spirit head all over, as narrated in a back number of
The Spiritualist. It was warm, and had hard teeth,
and wet lips and tongue; to the touch it differed in no
respect from a human mortal head.
The veiled figure of Katie was evidently the same one
which appears in the spirit photographs Mr. Guppy is
beginning to obtain, and in America, at first, similar
veiled figures sometimes appeared on the plate in spirit
photographs. A photographer can easily produce better
spirit pictures than the real ones, by giving a person
who acts the “ spirit ” only one-third the time of exposure
in the camera, which the rest of the picture receives.
Mr. Guppy’s real pictures are of another kind, but they
could easily be imitated by “masking” or “double
printing,” two operations well-known to photographers.
For a spirit photograph to carry evidence to outsiders,
the spirit should be beyond all mistake that of a deceased
person unknown to the photographer, and it should
have its arms round the neck of the sitter, that the two
forms may overlap each other at places. Such a picture
cannot possibly be imitated without collusion on the
part of the sitter, or knowledge of the deceased person
on the part of the photographer^ Mr. Livermore, the
New York banker, had a portrait of his deceased wife
under these test conditions and he made affidavit as to
* We quote this from last week’s number of Nature.—Ed.