A rather startling paper in the current number of the “Quarterly Journal of Science,” from the pen of William Crookes, F.R.S. (who is well known in the scientific world by his discovery of the metal thallium, his investigations of its properties and those of its compounds, besides many other important researches, and also as the able and spirited editor of the Chemical News), is now the subject of much scientific gossip and discussion.

Mr. Crookes has for some time past been engaged in investigating some of the phenomena which are attributed on one hand to the agency of spiritual visitors, and on the other side to vulgar conjuring. Nobody acquainted with Mr. Crookes can doubt his ability to conduct such an investigation, or will hesitate for a moment in concluding that he has done so with philosophical impartiality, though many think it quite possible that he may have been deceived. None, however, can yet say how.

For my own part, I abstain from any conclusion in the meantime, until I have time and opportunity to witness a repetition of some of these experiments, and submitting them to certain tests which appear to me desirable. Though struggling against a predisposition to prejudge, and to conclude that the phenomena are the results of some very skillful conjuring, I very profoundly respect the moral courage that Mr. Crookes has displayed in thus publicly grappling with a subject which has been soiled by contact with so many dirty fingers. Nothing but a pure love of truth, overpowering every selfish consideration, could have induced Mr. Crookes to imperil his hard-earned scientific reputation by stepping thus boldly on such very perilous ground.

It is only fair, at the outset, to state that Mr. Crookes is not what is called “a spiritualist.” This I infer, both from what he has published and from conversation I have had with him on the subject. He has witnessed some of the “physical manifestations,” and, while admitting that many of these may be produced by the jugglery of impostors, he has concluded that others cannot be thus explained; but, nevertheless, does not accept the spiritual theory which attributes them to the efforts of departed human souls.

He suspects that the living human being may have the power of exerting some degree of force or influence upon bodies external to himself—may, for instance, be able to counteract or increase the gravitation of substances by an effort of the will. He calls this power the “psychic force,” and supposes that some persons are able to manifest it much more powerfully than others, and thus explains the performances of those “mediums” who are not mere impostors.

There is nothing in this hypothesis which the sternest, the most sceptical, and least imaginative of physical philosophers may not unhesitatingly investigate, provided some first-sight evidence of its possibility is presented to him. We know that the Torpedo, the Gymnotus, the Silurus Electricus, and other fishes, can, by an effort of the will, act upon bodies external to themselves. Faraday showed that the electric eel exhibited some years ago at the Adelaide Gallery was able, by an effort of its will, to make a magnetic needle suddenly turn thirty degrees aside from its usual polar position; that this same animal could—still by an effort of will—overpower the gravitation of pieces of gold leaf, cause them to be uplifted and outstretched from their pendent position, could decompose iodide of potassium, and perform many other “physical manifestations,” simply by a voluntary nervous effort, and without calling in the aid of any souls of other departed eels.

Before this gymnotus was publicly exhibited it was deposited at a French hotel in the neighborhood of Leicester Square. A burly fishmonger’s man, named Wren, brought in the daily supply of fish to the establishment, when some of the servants told him they had an eel so large that he would be afraid to pick it up. He laughed at the idea of being afraid of an eel, and when taken to the tub boldly plunged in both hands to seize the fish. A hideous roar followed this attempt. Wren had experienced a demonstration of the “psychic force” of the electrical eel, and his terror so largely exaggerated the actual violence of the shock, that he believed for the remainder of his life that he was permanently injured by it. He had periodical spasms across the chest, which could only be removed by taking a half-quartern of gin. As he was continually narrating his adventure to public-house audiences, and always had a spasm on concluding, which his hearers usually contributed to relieve, the poor fellow’s life was actually shortened by the shock from the gymnotus.

The experiments which Mr. Crookes relates in support of his psychic force hypothesis are as follows:—In the first place he contrived an apparatus for testing Mr. Home’s alleged power of modifying the gravitation of bodies. As Mr. Home requires to lay his hands, or at least his finger-ends, upon the body to be influenced, Mr. Crookes attached one end of a long board to a suspended spring steelyard of delicate construction; the other end of the board rested on a fulcrum in such a manner that one half of the weight of the board was supported by the fulcrum and the other half by the steelyard. The weight of the board thus suspended was carefully noted, and then Mr. Home put his fingers upon that end of the board immediately resting on the fulcrum in such a manner that he could not by simple pressure affect the dependent end of the board.

Dr. Huggins, the eminent astronomer, was present, and also Serjeant Cox, besides Mr. Crookes. They all watched Mr. Home, the board, and the steelyard; they observed first a vibration and fluctuation of the index, and finally that the steelyard indicated an increase of weight amounting to about three pounds. Mr. Crookes tried to produce the same effect by mechanical pressure exerted in a similar manner, but failed to do so. The details of the experiment are fully described and illustrated by an engraving.

Another and still more striking experiment is described. Mr. Crookes purchased a new accordion from Messrs. Wheatstone, and himself constructed a wire cage open at top and bottom, and large enough for the accordion to be suspended within it by holding it over the open top, while the bottom of the cage rested on the floor. The accordion was then handed to Mr. Home, who held it with one hand by the wooden framework of the bottom of the instrument, as shown in an illustrative drawing. The keys were thus hanging downwards and the bellows distended by the weight of the instrument thus pendent. It was then held so that it should be entirely surrounded by the wire-work of the cage, and the results were, as before, watched keenly by Mr. Crookes, Dr. Huggins, and Serjeant Cox. After a while the instrument began to wave about, then the bellows contracted, and the lower part (i.e., the key-board end) rose a little, presently sounds were produced, and finally the instrument played a tune upon itself in obedience, as Mr. Crookes supposes, to the psychic force which Mr. Home exerted upon it.

Before the publication of the paper describing these experiments a proof was sent to both Dr. Huggins and Serjeant Cox, and each has written a letter testifying to its accuracy, which letters are printed with the paper in the “Quarterly Journal of Science.”

Here, then, we have the testimony of an eminent lawyer, accustomed to sifting evidence, that of the most distinguished of experimental astronomers, the man whose discoveries in celestial physics have justly excited the admiration of the whole civilized world; and besides these, of another Fellow of the Royal Society, who has been severely trained in “putting nature to the torture” by means of the most subtle devices of the modern physical and chemical laboratory.

Such testimony must not be treated lightly. It would be simple impertinence for any man dogmatically to assert that these have been deceived merely because he is unconvinced.

Though one of the unconvinced myself, I would not dare to regard the investigations of these gentlemen with any other than the profoundest respect. Still a suggestion occurs to me which may appear very brutal, but I make it nevertheless. It is this:—That the testimony of another witness—of an expert of quite a different school—should have been added. I mean such a man as DÖbler, Houdin, or the Wizard of the North. He might possibly have detected something which escaped the scrutiny of the legitimate scientific experimentalist.

There is one serious defect in the accordion experiment. The cage is represented in the engraving as placed under a table; Mr. Home holds the instrument in his hand, which is concealed by the table, and it does not appear that either Mr. Crookes, Dr. Huggins, or Serjeant Cox placed themselves under the table during the concertina performance, and thus neither of them saw Mr. Home’s hand. Such, at least, appears from the description and the engraving. A story being commonly circulated respecting some of Mr. Home’s experiments in Russia, according to which he failed entirely when a glass table was provided instead of a wooden one, it would be well, if only in justice to Mr. Home, to get rid of the table altogether.

It is very desirable that these experiments should be continued, for two distinct reasons; first, as a matter of ordinary investigation for philosophical purposes, and, secondly, as a means of demolishing the most degrading superstition of this generation.

If Mr. Crookes succeeds in demonstrating the existence of the psychic force and reducing it to law—as it must be reducible if it is a force—then the ground will be cut from under the feet of spiritualism, just as the old superstitions, which attributed thunder and lightning to Divine anger, were finally demolished by Franklin’s kite. If, on the other hand, the arch-medium, Mr. Home, is proved to be a common conjuror, then surely the dupes of the smaller “mediumistic” fry will have their eyes opened, provided the cerebral disturbance which spiritualism so often induces has not gone so far as to render them incurable lunatics.

It is very likely that I shall be accused of gross uncharitableness in thus applying the term lunatic to “those who differ from me,” and therefore state that I have sad and sufficient reasons for doing so.

The first spiritualist I ever knew, and with whom I had many conferences on the subject many years ago, was a lady of most estimable qualities, great intellectual attainments, and distinguished literary reputation. I watched the beginning and the gradual progress of her spiritual “investigations,” as she called them, and witnessed the melancholy end—shocking delusions, intellectual shipwreck, and confirmed, incurable insanity, directly and unmistakably produced by the action of these hideous superstitions upon an active, excitable imagination.

I well remember the growing symptoms of this case, have seen their characteristic features repeated in others, and have now before me some melancholy cases where the same changes, the same decline of intellect and growth of ravenous credulity, is progressing with most painfully visible distinctness.

The necessity for some strong remedy is the more urgent, inasmuch as the diabolical machinery of the spiritual impostors has been so much improved of late. The lady whose case I first referred to had reached the highest stage of spiritualistic development—viz., the lunatic asylum—before “dark sÉances” had been invented, or, at any rate, before they were introduced into this country. When the conditions of these sÉances are considered, it is not at all surprising that persons of excitable temperament, especially women, should be morbidly affected by them.

We are endowed with certain faculties, and placed in a world wherein we may exercise them healthfully upon their legitimate objects. Such exercise, properly limited, promotes the growth and vigor of our faculties; but if we pervert them by directing them to illegitimate objects, we gradually become mad. God has created the light, and fitted our eyes to receive it; He has endowed us with the sense of touch, by which we may confirm and verify the impressions of sight. All physical phenomena are objects of sense, and the senses of sight and touch are the masters of all the other senses.

Can anything, then, be more atrociously perverse, more utterly idiotic, and I may even say impious, than these dark sÉance investigations? Is it possible to conceive a more melancholy spectacle of intellectual degradation than that presented by a group of human victims assembled for the purpose of “investigating physical manifestations,” and submitting, as a primary condition, to be blinded and handcuffed, the room in which they sit being made quite dark, and both hands of each investigator being firmly held by those of his neighbors. That is to say, the primary conditions of making these physical investigations is that each investigator shall be deprived of his natural faculties for doing so.

When we couple this with the fact that these meetings are got up—publicly advertised by adventurers who make their livelihood by the fees paid by their hoodwinked and handcuffed customers—is it at all surprising that those who submit to such conditions should finish their researches in a lunatic asylum?

The gloom, the mystery, the unearthly objects of search, the mysterious noises, and other phenomena so easily manipulated in the presence of those who can see nothing and feel only the sympathetic twitching of another pair of trembling hands, naturally excites very powerfully the poor creatures who pay their half-crowns and half-guineas with any degree of faith; and this unnatural excitement, if frequently repeated, goes on increasing till the brain becomes incurably diseased.

Present space will not permit me to enter upon another branch of this subject, viz.: the moral degradation and the perversion of natural, unsophisticated, and wholesome theology, which these spiritual delusions are generating.

I am no advocate for rectifying moral and intellectual evils by police interference, or I should certainly recommend the bracing air of Dartmoor for the mediums who publicly proclaim that their familiar spirit “Katey” has lately translated a lady through a space of three miles, and through the walls, doors, and ceiling of the house in which a dark sÉance was being held, and placed her upon the table in the midst of the circle so rapidly that the word “onions” she had just written in her domestic inventory was not yet dried when the lights were brought and she was found there.

This “lady,” which her name is Guppy, is, of course, another professional medium, and yet there are people in London who gravely believe this story, and also the appendix, viz.: that another member of the mediumistic firm, finding that Mrs. G. was very incompletely dressed, and much abashed thereby, was translated by the same spirit, Katey, to her house and back again through the door-panel to fetch proper garments. If I could justify the apprehension and imprisonment of poor gipsy fortune-tellers, I certainly should advocate the close confinement of Mrs. Guppy and her male associates, and thus afford the potent spirit, Katey, an opportunity of further manifestation by translating them through the prison walls and back to Lamb’s Conduit Street.

(The above letter appeared in the “Birmingham Morning News” of July 18, 1871; the following on November 15. It refers to an article in the “Quarterly Review” of October, 1871.)

The interest excited by Mr. Crookes’s investigations on Psychic Force is increasing; the demand for the “Quarterly Review” and the “Quarterly Journal of Science” is so great that Mudie and other proprietors of lending libraries have largely increased their customary supplies, and are still besieged with further excess of demand. Not only borrowers, but purchasers also are supplied with difficulty. I yesterday received a post-card from a bookseller, inscribed as follows: “Cannot get a ‘Quarterly Review’ in the City, so shall be unable to send it to you until to-morrow.” I have waited three days, and am now obliged to go to the reading-room to make my quotations.

There is good and sufficient reason for this, independently of the absence of Parliamentary and war news, and the dearth of political revolutions. Either a new and most extraordinary natural force has been discovered, or some very eminent men specially trained in rigid physical investigation have been the victims of a marvelous, unprecedented, and inexplicable physical delusion. I say unprecedented, because, although we have records of many popular delusions of similar kind and equal magnitude, and speculative delusions among the learned, I can cite no instance of skillful experimental experts being utterly and repeatedly deceived by the mechanical action of experimental test apparatus carefully constructed and used by themselves.

As the interest in the subject is rapidly growing, my readers will probably welcome a somewhat longer gossip on this than I usually devote to a single subject.

Such an extension is the more demanded as the newspaper and magazine articles which have hitherto appeared have, for the most part, by following the lead of the “Quarterly Review,” strangely muddled the whole subject, and misstated the position of Mr. Crookes and others. In the first place, all the writers who follow the “Quarterly” omit any mention or allusion to Mr. Crookes’s preliminary paper published in July, 1870, which has a most important bearing on the whole subject, as it expounds the object of all the subsequent researches.

Mr. Crookes there states that “Some weeks ago the fact that I was engaged in investigating Spiritualism, so-called, was announced in a contemporary (the “AthenÆum”), and in consequence of the many communications I have since received, I think it desirable to say a little concerning the investigations which I have commenced. Views or opinions I cannot be said to possess on a subject which I do not profess to understand. I consider it the duty of scientific men, who have learned exact modes of working, to examine phenomena which attract the attention of the public, in order to confirm their genuineness, or to explain, if possible, the delusions of the honest, and to expose the tricks of the deceivers.”

He then proceeds to state the case of Science versus Spiritualism thus:—“The Spiritualist tells of bodies weighing 50 or 100 lbs. being lifted up into the air without the intervention of any known force; but the scientific chemist is accustomed to use a balance which will render sensible a weight so small that it would take ten thousand of them to weigh one grain; he is, therefore, justified in asking that a power, professing to be guided by intelligence, which will toss a heavy body to the ceiling, shall also cause his delicately-poised balance to move under test conditions.” “The Spiritualist tells of rooms and houses being shaken, even to injury, by superhuman power. The man of science merely asks for a pendulum to be sent vibrating when it is in a glass-case, and supported on solid masonry.” “The Spiritualist tells of heavy articles of furniture moving from one room to another without human agency. But the man of science has made instruments which will divide an inch into a million parts, and he is justified in doubting the accuracy of the former observations, if the same force is powerless to move the index of his instrument one poor degree.” “The Spiritualist tells of flowers with the fresh dew on them, of fruit, and living objects being carried through closed windows, and even solid brick walls. The scientific investigator naturally asks that an additional weight (if it be only the 1000th part of a grain) be deposited on one pan of his balance when the case is locked. And the chemist asks for the 1000th part of a grain of arsenic to be carried through the sides of a gas tube in which pure water is hermetically sealed.”

These and other requirements are stated by Mr. Crookes, together with further exposition of the principles of strict inductive investigation, as it should be applied to such an inquiry. A year after this he published an account of the experiments, which I described in a former letter, and added to his own testimony that of the eminent physicist and astronomer, Dr. Huggins and Serjeant Cox. Subsequently, that is, in the last number of the “Quarterly Journal of Science,” he has published the particulars of another series of experiments.

I will not now enter upon the details of these, but merely state that the conclusions of Mr. Crookes are directly opposed to those of the Spiritualists. He positively, distinctly, and repeatedly repudiates all belief in the operations of the supposed spirits, or of any other supernatural agency whatever, and attributes the phenomena he witnessed to an entirely different organ, viz.: to the direct agency of the medium. He supposes that a force analogous to that which the nerves convey from their ganglionic centres to the muscles, in producing muscular contraction, may by an effort of the will be transmitted to external inanimate matter, in such a manner as to influence, in some degree, its gravitating power, and produce vibratory motion. He calls this the psychic force.

Now, this is direct and unequivocal anti-spiritualism. It is a theory set up in opposition to the supernatural hypotheses of the Spiritualists, and Mr. Crookes’s position in reference to Spiritualism is precisely analogous to that of Faraday in reference to table-turning. For the same reasons as those above-quoted, the great master of experimental investigation examined the phenomena called table-turning, and he concluded that they were due to muscular force, just as Mr. Crookes concludes that the more complex phenomena he has examined are due to psychic force.

Speaking of the theories of the Spiritualists, Mr. Crookes, in his first paper (July, 1870), says: “The pseudo-scientific Spiritualist professes to know everything. No calculations trouble his serenity; no hard experiments, no laborious readings; no weary attempts to make clear in words that which has rejoiced the heart and elevated the mind. He talks glibly of all sciences and arts, overwhelming the inquirer with terms like ‘electro-biologise,’ ‘psychologise,’ ‘animal magnetism,’ etc., a mere play upon words, showing ignorance rather than understanding.” And further on he says: “I confess that the reasoning of some Spiritualists would almost seem to justify Faraday’s severe statement—that many dogs have the power of coming to more logical conclusions.”

I have already referred to the muddled misstatement of Mr. Crookes’s position by the newspaper writers, who almost unanimously describe him and Dr. Huggins as two distinguished scientific men who have recently been converted to Spiritualism. The above quotations, to which, if space permitted, I might add a dozen others from either the first, the second, or the third of Mr. Crookes’s papers, in which he as positively and decidedly controverts the dreams of the Spiritualists, will show how egregiously these writers have been deceived. They have relied very naturally on the established respectability of the “Quarterly Review,” and have thus deluded both themselves and their readers. Considering the marvelous range of subjects these writers have to treat, and the acres of paper they daily cover, it is not surprising that they should have been thus misled in reference to a subject carrying them considerably out of their usual track; but the offence of the “Quarterly” is not so venial. It assumes, in fact, a very serious complexion when further investigated.

The title of the article is “Spiritualism and its Recent Converts,” and the “recent converts” most specially and prominently named are Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins. Serjeant Cox is also named, but not as a recent convert; for the reviewer describes him as an old and hopelessly infatuated Spiritualist. Knowing nothing of Serjeant Cox, I am unable to say whether the reviewer’s very strong personal statements respecting him are true or false—whether he really is “one of the most gullible of the gullible,” etc., though I must protest against the bad taste which is displayed in the attack which is made upon this gentleman. The head and front of his offending consists in having certified to the accuracy of certain experiments; and for having simply done this, the reviewer proceeds, in accordance with the lowest tactics of Old Bailey advocacy, to bully the witness, and to publish disparaging personal details of what he did twenty-five years ago.

Dr. Huggins, who has had nothing further to do with the subject than simply to state that he witnessed what Mr. Crookes described, and who has not ventured upon one word of explanation of the phenomena, is similarly treated.

The reviewer goes out of his way to inform the public that Dr. Huggins is, after all, only a brewer, by artfully stating that, “like Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Lassell, and other brewers we could name, Dr. Huggins attached himself in the first place to the study of astronomy.” He then proceeds to sneer at “such scientific amateurs,” by informing the public that they “labor, as a rule, under a grave disadvantage, in the want of that broad basis of scientific culture which alone can keep them from the narrowing and pervertive influence of a limited specialism.”

The reviewer proceeds to say that he has “no reason to believe that Dr. Huggins constitutes an exception” to this rule, and further asserts that he is justified in concluding that Dr. Huggins is ignorant of “every other department of science than the small subdivision of a branch to which he has so meritoriously devoted himself.” Mark the words, “small subdivision of a branch.” Merely a twig of the tree of science is, according to this most unveracious writer, all that Dr. Huggins has ever studied.

If a personal vindication were the business of this letter I could easily show that these statements respecting the avocations, the scientific training, and actual attainments of Dr. Huggins are gross and atrocious misrepresentations; but Dr. Huggins has no need of my championship; his high scientific position, the breadth and depth of his general attainments, and the fact that he is not Huggins the brewer, are sufficiently known to all in the scientific world, with the exception of the “Quarterly” reviewer.

My object is not to discuss the personal question whether book-making and dredging afford better or worse training for experimental inquiry than the marvelously exact and exquisitely delicate manipulations of the modern observatory and laboratory, but to protest against this attempt to stop the progress of investigation, to damage the true interests of science and the cause of truth, by throwing low libellous mud upon any and everybody who steps at all aside from the beaten paths of ordinary investigation.

The true business of science is the discovery of truth; to seek it wherever it may be found, to pursue it through bye-ways as well as highways, and, having found it, to proclaim it plainly and fearlessly, without regard to authority, fashion, or prejudice. If, however, such influential magazines as the “Quarterly Review” are to be converted into the vehicles of artful and elaborate efforts to undermine the scientific reputation of any man who thus does his scientific duty, the time for plain speaking and vigorous protest has arrived.

My readers will be glad to learn that this is the general feeling of the leading scientific men of the metropolis; whatever they may think of the particular investigations of Mr. Crookes, they are unanimous in expressing their denunciations of this article.

The attack upon Mr. Crookes is still more malignant than that upon Dr. Huggins. Speaking of Mr. Crookes’s fellowship of the Royal Society, the reviewer says: “We speak advisedly when we say that this distinction was conferred on him with considerable hesitation;” and further that “We are assured, on the highest authority, that he is regarded among chemists as a specialist of specialists, being totally destitute of any knowledge of chemical philosophy, and utterly untrustworthy as to any inquiry which requires more than technical knowledge for its successful conduct.”

The italics in these quotations are my own, placed there to mark certain statements to which no milder term than that of falsehood is applicable. The history of Mr. Crookes’s admission to the Royal Society will shortly be published, when the impudence of the above statement respecting it will be unmasked; and the other quotations I have emphasized are sufficiently and abundantly refuted by Mr. Crookes’s published works, and his long and able conduct of the Chemical News, which is the only and the recognized British periodical representative of chemical science.

If space permitted, I could go on quoting a long series of misstatements of matters of fact from this singularly unveracious essay. The writer seems conscious of its general character, for, in the midst of one of his narratives, he breaks out into a foot-note, stating that “This is not an invention of our own, but a fact communicated to us by a highly intelligent witness, who was admitted to one of Mr. Crookes’s sÉances.” I have taken the liberty to emphasize the proper word in this very explanatory note.

The full measure of the injustice of prominently thrusting forward Dr. Huggins and Mr. Crookes as “recent converts” to Spiritualism will be seen by comparing the reviewer’s own definition of Spiritualism with Mr. Crookes’s remarks above quoted. The reviewer says that “The fundamental tenet of the Spiritualist is the old doctrine of communication between the spirits of the departed and souls of the living.”

This is the definition of the reviewer, and his logical conclusion is that Mr. Crookes is a Spiritualist because he explicitly denies the fundamental tenet of Spiritualism, and Dr. Huggins is a Spiritualist because he says nothing whatever about it.

If examining the phenomena upon which the Spiritualist builds his “fundamental tenet,” and explaining them in some other manner, constitutes conversion to Spiritualism, then the reviewer is a far more thoroughgoing convert than Mr. Crookes, who only attempts to explain the mild phenomena of his own experiments, while the reviewer goes in for everything, including even the apotheosis of Mrs. Guppy and her translation through the ceiling, a story which is laughed at by Mr. Crookes and everybody else, excepting a few of the utterly crazed disciples of the “Lamb’s Conduit Mediums” and the “Quarterly” reviewer, who actually attempts to explain it by his infallible and ever applicable physiological nostrum of “unconscious cerebration.”

No marvelous story either of ancient or modern date is too strong for this universal solvent, which according to the reviewer, is the sole and glorious invention of Dr. Carpenter. Space will not now permit me to further describe “unconscious cerebration” and its vast achievements, but I hope to find a corner for it hereafter.

I may add that the name of the reviewer is kept a profound secret, and yet is perfectly well-known, as everybody who reads the article finds it out when he reaches those parts which describe Dr. Carpenter’s important physiological researches and discoveries.