CHAPTER III.

REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS OF PROFESSOR WUNDT.

ALL objections to the scientific investigation of a fact of nature must have ignorance or superstition at their root. Professor Wilhelm Wundt, of Leipzig, eminent as a metaphysical writer, is the author of a work on "The Axioms of Physics and their Relation to the Principle of Causality." The subject is one which could hardly be treated exhaustively without some knowledge of those occult causes of motion which operate in the phenomena of Spiritualism. Of these he seems to be ignorant. It is a great error of specialists in science to suppose that the chief claim of a belief in immortality to their attention is that it rests on the emotions.

Because a man is proficient in one branch of science, it does not follow that his authority is of much value in another, with which his acquaintance is superficial. He may be an excellent geologist, and yet unqualified to decide a question in regard to the habits of bees. He may be a subtile logician like Mill, or an accomplished physiologist like Huxley, and yet a poor authority in musical science, and a mere blunderer when, after a slight examination, he would throw discredit on certain psychical phenomena, to which others, who have given to the subject the study of half a lifetime, may testify. The following reply to the objections raised by Professor Wundt to the prosecution of our investigations as matters of scientific interest, will explain itself:

Your "Open Letter" to Professor Hermann Ulrici, of Halle, on "Spiritualism as a Scientific Question," has been translated and published in the "American Popular Science Monthly" for September, 1879. It appears that Ulrici, from whose views you dissent, had arrived at the conviction that the reality of certain facts, attested by eminent men of science, can no longer be doubted, and that Spiritualism, so called, has thus become a scientific question of the highest importance.

It also appears that there were present at the séances held with Henry Slade at Leipzic in 1877, besides those professors who became convinced of the actuality of the spiritualistic phenomena, certain other members of the university, who did not appear to share this conviction. Of these latter you were one; and Ulrici, it would seem, in his "Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik," called upon the dissenters to state publicly what they saw; why they doubt the objective reality of what they saw; and why they feel compelled to assume jugglery, deceit, or illusion.

On this last point your mind, if I may judge from your language, is still in a state of indecision. There are passages in which you seem to admit frankly the objectivity and inexplicable character of the phenomena; and there are others in which you suggest "jugglery" as the solution, and charge the medium with untruthfulness in claiming to be a passive instrument. The two reasons on which you found this charge so obviously proceed from an ignorance of the facts and theories pertaining to medial development, that they can be very readily confuted.

Meanwhile the proofs of your hesitancy are these: - In Your second paragraph, addressing Ulrici, you say: "For nerely subjective phantasms of the observers, these phenomena, as you justly remark, cannot be held; their objectivity and reality in the ordinary sense of the word will

In fact be questioned by no man who may even have read only your short description."

Again, in paragraph 15, you write: "If you ask me now whether I am in a condition to express a conjecture as to how these experiments were performed, I answer, No. At the same time, however, I must state that phenomena of this sort lie entirely outside the domain of the special training which I have acquired during my scientific career.' And in the same paragraph you remark: "You will certainly find it justifiable, if I do not go into hypotheses as to how the phenomena produced by Mr. Slade were brought about."

After these ingenuous concessions to the truth, I was certainly surprised to find you, in paragraph 16, suddenly breaking through these wise limitations of your candor, and suggesting the old and ten thousand times exploded theory of jugglery; for you say: "As to the experiments which I saw myself, I believe that they will not fail to produce upon every unprejudiced reader who has ever seen skilful prestidigitations the impression of well-managed feats of jugglery." And again: "I cannot find that any one of the experiments which I saw with Mr. Slade was above the powers of a good juggler."

Yet in the paragraph before, you had confessed you were not "in a condition to express a conjecture as to how these experiments were performed." Such inconsistencies are lamentably out of place in what assumes to be a rigorous examination of a scientific question. They suggest the impression that you have not really yet made up your mind or the subject.

There is an obstacle in the way of your theory of jugglery, and you try to remove it in a somewhat off-hand and cavalier manner. The important testimony of Bellachini (see page 65 of this volume) you dismiss in three lines with the evasive remark, that you would acknowledge him

as an authority, if you "could premise in his case that he had a conception of the scientific scope of the question. Under this euphuism, what lies concealed? What but an imputation on the veracity of the affiant? What is inattention to the "scientific scope of a question" addressed to an expert, but inattention to the truth of a question? You intimate that Bellachini was careless as to the truth of what he solemnly asserts in regard to a matter he was employed to investigate. His professional reputation was risked in his being outwitted by a competing juggler; and yet because, with the courage of an honest man, he declares that there was no prestidigitation possible in the inexplicable occurrences at the Slade séances, you, to give countenance to your own vacillating second thoughts on the subject, presume to impugn his truthfulness.

In arguing against the claims of Spiritualism to scientifi: recognition, you put these two questions: (1) What are the characterizing marks of a scientific authority? (2) Wha. influence may we concede to outside authority upon our own knowledge?

You say, with truth: "The highest degree of credibility is not sufficient to make any man a scientific authority; there is requisite to this a special professional, and indeed a technical training, which must have approved itself by superior accomplishments in the province concerned." (Precisely such a training as Bellachini had for detecting a trick, if there was one!) "In order to be able to speak with authority concerning any phenomena, one must possess a thorough, critical knowledge of the same."

Influenced by considerations like these, I might reasonably maintain that investigators, thoroughly acquainted with our phenomena, are more competent to judge of them, than any specialist in some other branch of science. You are here sustained in your views by the very class whose belief you would stamp as unscientific.

You further say: "Authorities in the present case, therefore, are only such persons as either possess mediumistic powers, or, without claiming to be bearers of such properties, are able to produce phenomena of the same nature."

Here you show a profound ignorance of the nature of the medial manifestations. The persons who, without possessing medial power, are "able to produce phenomena of the same nature" in the same way that they are produced in the presence of mediums, are as yet a wholly imaginary class. There have been, ever since the year 1847, charlatans and swindlers, or else renegade mediums, who have pretended to be exposers of medial phenomena; but in no one trifling instance have these impostors been able to explain, outside of the spiritual hypothesis, any one actual phenomenon in such a way that it could be produced by non-medial persons as it is through genuine mediums. I defy any man to prove the contrary. The pretended exposers have at times fooled eminent opponents of Spiritualism, like Huxley and Carpenter, both in England and America; but they have never taken the first step towards enlightening a person, really and practically acquainted with the subject, as to the modus operandi. This shows that you are clearly right in your remark, that "in order to be able to speak with authority concerning any phenomena, one must possess a thorough, critical knowledge of the same."

Your notion that mediums themselves are authorities as to the phenomena, or that they possess a thorough, critical knowledge of the same, is true only in a few remarkable instances, and in those only to a limited extent. The most powerful mediums are almost always, while the phenomena are going on, in a state of trance or nervous exaltation wholly unfitted for critical observation. That they sometimes believe they are under the influence of some