What we have to remember is that by far the greater part of the physical phenomena which is said to occur at a sÉance is really nothing extraordinary. All physical occurrences are normal that are capable of being produced by a clever conjurer; and there is no doubt that with due preparation such a one could achieve table rapping, introduce flowers and move furniture. But the problem is, how, under the stringent conditions imposed, and in the face of the close scrutiny, to which these manifestations are subjected, they can be done. As Sir Oliver Lodge says: "I am disposed to maintain that I have myself witnessed, in a dim light, occasional abnormal instances of movement of untouched objects." He goes on to say that "suppose an untouched object comes sailing or hurtling through the air, or suppose an object is raised or floated from the ground, how are we to regard it? This is just what a live animal could do, and so the first natural hypothesis is that some living thing is doing it: (a) the medium himself, acting by tricks or concealed mechanism; (b) a confederate—an unconscious confederate perhaps, among the sitters; (c) an unknown and invisible live entity, other than the people present. If in any such action the extraordinary laws of nature were superseded, if the weight of a piece of matter could be shown to have disappeared, or if fresh energy were introduced beyond the recognised categories of energy, then there would be no additional difficulties; but hitherto there has been no attempt to establish either of these things. Indeed, it must be admitted that insufficient attention is usually paid to this aspect of ordinary, commonplace, abnormal physical phenomena. If a heavy body is raised under good conditions, we should always try to ascertain" (he does not say that it is easy to ascertain) "where its weight has gone to—that is to say, what supports it—what ultimately supports it. For instance, if experiments were conducted in a suspended room, would the whole weight of that room, as ascertained by outside balance, remain unaltered when a table or person was levitated inside it? Or, could the agencies operating inside affect the bodies outside?—questions, these, which appear capable of answer, with sufficient trouble, in an organised physical laboratory; such a laboratory as does not, he supposes, yet exist, but which might exist and which will exist in the future, if the physical aspect of experimental psychology is ever to become recognised as a branch of orthodox physics."

Recently, Dr Maxwell, of Paris, published his researches and observations on physical phenomena, and he states that under "material and physical phenomena" are comprised (1) raps; (2) movements of objects (a) without contact, or (b) only with such contact as is insufficient to effect the particular movement in question; (3) "apports"—i.e. the production of objects by some supernormal agency; (4) visual phenomena—i.e. the appearance of lights and of forms, luminous or otherwise, including among the latter the class of alleged phenomena known as materialisations, and (5) phenomena leaving some permanent trace, such as imprints or "direct" writings or drawings, etc. Under the class of "intellectual phenomena" may be included such occurrences as automatic writing, table tilting, etc.

As regards raps Dr Maxwell hazards certain conclusions, of which he says the most certain is the close connection of the raps with the muscular movements on the part of the sitters. Every muscular movement, even a slight one, appears to be followed by a rap. Thus if, without anyone necessarily touching the table, one of the sitters frees his hand from the chain made round the table by others, moves it about in a circle over the surface of the table, then raises it in the centre and brings it down towards the table, stopping suddenly within a few inches of it, a rap will be produced on the table corresponding with the sudden stoppage of the hand. Similarly, a rap will be produced by a pressure of the foot on the floor, by speaking, by blowing slightly, or by touching the medium or one of the sitters. Raps produced in this way by the sitters are often stronger than those produced by the medium himself. Dr Maxwell suggests as a working hypothesis that there is a certain accumulated force, and that if its equilibrium be suddenly disturbed by the addition of the excess of energy required for the movement, a discharge takes place producing the effect.

Dr Maxwell has made a series of experiments with Eusapia Paladino.

"It was about five o'clock in the evening," he writes, "and there was broad daylight in the drawing-room at l'AguÉlas. We were standing around the table. Eusapia took the hand of one of our number and rested it on the right-hand corner of the table. The table was raised to the level of our foreheads—that is, the top reached a height of at least four and three-quarter feet from the floor.... It was impossible for Eusapia to have lifted the table by normal means. One has but to consider that she touched but the corner of the table to realise what the weight must have been had she accomplished the feat by muscular effort. Further, she never had sufficient hold of it. It was clearly impossible for her, under the conditions of the experiment, to have used any of the means suggested by her critics—straps, or hooks of some kind."

Most of the phenomena discussed by Dr Maxwell were obtained through the mediumship of Eusapia Paladino. He was a member of the committee which met in 1896 to investigate this medium, who had just concluded the series of performances held under the auspices of the society at Cambridge, which were entirely unfavourable to her claims. The French committee was made aware of the fraudulent devices which the Cambridge investigators claimed to have discovered. He recommends all who believe that Dr Hodgson and his Cambridge colleagues have had the last word in the controversy to read the report which will be found in the Annales des Psychiques, for 1896. The English sitters arrive at conclusions in direct conflict with those of the French, who claim that they had long known of the tricks "discovered" at Cambridge, and in consequence took means to guard against them. Dr Maxwell indicts the Cambridge way of controlling the medium, which he says consisted, for a time at least, in affording the medium opportunities to cheat to see if she would avail herself of them. Opportunities of which she took the fullest advantage.

Nevertheless, Dr Maxwell offers but little encouragement for the theory of spiritualistic agency. "I believe," he says, "in the reality of certain phenomena, of which I have repeatedly been a witness. I do not consider it necessary to attribute them to a supernatural intervention of any kind, but am disposed to think that they are produced by some force existing within ourselves."

In the same way as certain psychical phenomena, such as automatic writing, trance, "controls," crystal vision, and so forth, in which an intelligence seems to be present independent of the intelligence of the medium, can be shown beyond dispute to be merely manifestations of his subliminal intelligence, frequently taking the form of a dramatic personification; so may the agency, revealing itself in raps, movements of objects, and other phenomena of a physical character, perhaps be traceable, not to any power external to the medium and the sitters, but merely to a force latent within themselves, and may be an exteriorisation in a dynamic form, in a way not yet ascertained, of their collective subliminal capacities.

However strange new and unknown facts may be, we need not fear they are going to destroy the truth of the old ones. Would the science of physics be overthrown if, for example, we admit the phenomenon of "raps"—i.e. audible vibrations in wood and other substances—is a real phenomenon, and that in certain cases there may be blows which cannot be explained by any mechanical force known to us? It would be a new force exercised on matter, but none the less would the old forces preserve their activity. Pressure, temperature, and the density of air or of wood might still exercise their usual influence, and it is even likely that the transmission of vibrations by this new force would follow the same laws as other vibrations.

In the opinion of the leading members of this society, some of the physical phenomena which have been adduced as among those proclaimed to have occurred, such as "apports," scent, movement of objects, passage of matter through matter, bear a perilous resemblance to conjuring tricks, of a kind fairly well known; which tricks if well done can be very deceptive. Hence extreme caution is necessary, and full control must be allowed to the observers—a thing which conjurers never really allow. Sir Oliver Lodge says that he has never seen a silent and genuinely controlled conjurer; and in so far as mediums find it necessary to insist on their own conditions, so far they must be content to be treated as conjurers. For instance, no self-registering thermometer has ever recorded the "intense cold" felt at a sÉance. Flowers and fruit have made their appearance in closed rooms, but no arsenic has penetrated the walls of the hermetically sealed tube. Various investigators have smelt, seen, and handled curious objects, but no trace has been preserved. We have to depend on the recollection of the observer's passing glimpse of spirit lights, of the hearing of the rustle of spirit garments, the touch, in the dark, of unknown bodies. Exquisite scents, strange draperies, human forms have appeared seemingly out of nothing, and have returned whence they came unrecorded by photography, unweighed, unanalysed.

Briefly, then, the result of my carefully formed judgment is that a large part of the physical phenomena heard, seen, felt at the average spiritualistic sÉance must be placed on a level with ordinary conjuring. To return to the recent case of Eusapia Paladino. A number of English scientists, interested in the reports of her sÉances, induced her to come to England and repeat them at Cambridge. Every effort was made to make the experiments as satisfactory as possible. They used netting for confining the medium or separating her from objects which they hoped would move without contact; different ways of tying her were tried; also sufficient light was used in the sÉance room. She refused to submit to any of these conditions. The investigators pressed her at each sitting to allow some light in the room, and they long persevered in making the control in every case as complete as she would allow it to be. She permitted a very faint light usually at the beginning, but before long she insisted on complete darkness, and until the lights were extinguished the touches were never felt. The sitters then held the medium, the only method of control allowed, as firmly and continuously as possible. This she resisted, and then every form of persuasion was used, short of physical force, to induce her to submit. But she was allowed to take her own way without remonstrance when the sitters were convinced of the constant fraud practised.

It is only fair to state that recent experiments on the Continent have convinced a number of leading scientists of the genuineness of Eusapia Paladino's powers, and the conclusions arrived at by the Cambridge investigators are condemned as hasty and premature.

But, even of the other class, those who have lent themselves to the conditions of the investigator, while admitting the bona-fides of the medium, we are by no means prepared to regard them as necessarily the result of the action of disembodied spirits. Nor do many leading spiritualists themselves.

For, as we have just seen, there is still another explanation for supernormal physical movements. May there not be an unknown, or at least an unrecognised, extension of human muscular faculty? Such a hypothesis is no more extravagant than would have been the hypothesis of the Hertzian waves or a prediction of wireless telegraphy a few short years ago.

This is not all. We must remember that there is a mass of phenomena which cannot lightly be explained away by glib references to unknown extensions of muscular faculty. Of such is the fire ordeal, one of the most inexplicable and best attested of the manifestations presented by Daniel Dunglas Home. The evidence is abundant and of high quality, the witnesses of undoubted integrity, and, from the nature of the experiment, the illuminations of the room were generally more adequate than in the case of the levitations and elongations. On one occasion, Home thrust his hand into the fire, and bringing out a red-hot cinder laid it upon a pocket-handkerchief. When at the end of half-a-minute it was removed, the handkerchief was quite free from any traces of burning.

Not content with handling glowing embers himself, Home would hand them on to others present at the sÉance, who were generally able to receive them with impunity. This effectually disposes of the theory formulated by an ingenious critic that Home was in the custom of covering his hands with some fire-proof preparation as yet unknown to science! Even if Home possessed and used such a preparation he would find considerable difficulty in transferring it to the hands of his spectators.

Here is an account of a sÉance which took place on the 9th May 1871. After various manifestations, two out of the four candles in the room were extinguished. Home went to the fire, took out a piece of red-hot charcoal, and placed it on a folded cambric pocket-handkerchief which he borrowed for the purpose from one of the guests. He fanned the charcoal to white heat with his breath, but the handkerchief was only burnt in one small hole. Mr Crookes, who was present at the sÉance, tested the handkerchief afterwards in his laboratory and found that it had not been chemically prepared to resist the action of fire.

After this exhibition—

"Mr Home again went to the fire, and, after stirring the hot coal about with his hand, took out a red-hot piece nearly as big as an orange, and putting it on his right hand, so as almost completely to enclose it, and then blew into the small furnace thus extemporised until the lump of charcoal was nearly white hot, and then drew my attention to the lambent flame which was flickering over the coal and licking round his fingers; he fell on his knees, looked up in a reverent manner, held up the coal in front, and said, 'Is not God good? Are not his laws wonderful?'"

Among those who have left on record their testimony to this manifestation are Lord Lindsay, Lord Adare, H. D. Jencken, W. M. Wilkinson, S. C. Hall, etc. etc.

As the great mathematician Professor de Morgan once wittily and wisely wrote:

"If I were bound to choose among things which I can conceive, I should say that there is some sort of action of some combination of will, intellect, and physical power, which is not that of any of the human beings present. But, thinking it very likely that the universe may contain a few agencies—say, half-a-million—about which no man knows anything, I cannot but suspect that a small proportion of these agencies—say, five thousand—may be severally competent to the production of all the phenomena, or may be quite up to the task among them. The physical explanations which I have seen are easy, but miserably insufficient; the spiritual hypothesis is sufficient, but ponderously difficult. Time and thought will decide, the second asking the first for more results of trial."

It is inconceivable that such a man as Stainton Moses—a hard-working parish priest and a respected schoolmaster—should deliberately have entered upon a course of trickery for the mere pleasure of mystifying a small circle of acquaintances. The whole course of his previous life, his apparently sincere religious feeling, all combine to contradict such a supposition. Neither is it credible that such a petty swindler would have carried out his deceptions to the end, and have left behind fresh problems, the elucidation of which his eyes could never behold.