The Death-Blow to Spiritualism Part 8

In all of the "investigations" of the "rappings," at this or at any other time, the attentive student will find somewhere a loop-hole of escape from observation, an unguarded avenue of detection. In some of the princ.i.p.al seances, described at great length by Leah, the conditions favorable to fraud and illusion were so very obvious that they ought to have excited derision in the veriest child.

The following pa.s.sage in the report of a so-called investigation, is pointed to by professional spiritualists as one of the best "evidences" of the genuineness of Spiritualism:

"One of the committee placed one of his hands on the feet of the ladies and the other on the floor, and though the feet were not moved, there was a distinct jar of the floor."

Here, then, there were three operators and one investigator. The latter puts his hand on the feet of the ladies. How many feet, pray you? There were six feet on the platform, as we know, all of which had been carefully educated in the production of "raps." Could one man's hand cover them all?

And if it could not, does not this pretended "evidence" fall at once to the ground?

All of the recitals made by spiritualistic writers concerning the doings of the "Fox Sisters," contain this element of vagueness, the lack of precision and completeness, which to persons unaccustomed to a.n.a.lysis may possibly appear plausible enough, but to the experienced inquirer is merely a more certain proof of weakness and prevarication.

Volumes might be written to meet the statements advanced in every case, and to show how clumsily misleading they are. It is not worth while at this late day, and in that direction, to do more than I have already accomplished in this chapter.

Indeed, the actual demonstration of the fact that the far-famed "rappings"

are produced in the manner described at the beginning of this work, should be quite sufficient to all logical minds, to condemn every claim that the professional mediums have advanced as being the agents of any supernatural manifestations.

The good old Latin maxim never applied with greater force than it does here: _Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus_.

The operations of the eldest sister all tended to the one end: fame and money. In Rochester, fees for the first time were accepted by "mediums,"

and shortly afterward a tariff of prices for admission to the seances and the "private circles" was adopted and made public. No jugglers ever drove a more prosperous business than did the "Fox family" for a number of years, when once fairly launched upon that sea of popular wonder, which somebody has said is supplied by the inherent fondness of mankind for being humbugged.

Mrs. Fish had actually the project of founding a new religion, and she tried hard to convince her younger sisters and her own child that there were really such things as spiritual communications, notwithstanding that all of those that were produced in their seances they knew to be perfectly false. She a.s.serted that even before Maggie and Katie were born she had received messages warning her that they were destined to do great things.

"In all of our seances, while we were under her charge," says Mrs. Kane, "we knew just when to rap 'yes' and when to rap 'no' by signals that she gave us, and which were unknown to any one but ourselves. Of course, we were too young, then, to have been successful very long in deluding people, had it not been for an arrangement such as this.

"Her own daughter, Lizzie, had no manner of patience with her transparent pretence.

"'Ma,' she would exclaim, when Leah attempted to impress her with a belief in some of the frauds which she perpetrated, 'how can you ever pretend that that is done by the spirits? I am ashamed to know even that you do such things--it's dreadfully wicked.'"

Some day it will be known that one other person beside Lizzie, who afterwards occupied a filial relation to this woman, detested even more strongly the atmosphere of hypocrisy and deceit with which the latter surrounded herself, and hated, too, the rankling obligation under which an unkind fate had placed her.

It is not so wonderful that men of learning and originality were drawn to the mysterious seances of the Fox girls, when it is considered that they became a sort of fas.h.i.+onable "fad," as the receptions of Mesmer did in the last century in Paris. There were great opportunities there for studying human nature, and the period was one of a notable awakening of scientific and transcendental speculation. Such men as Greeley, Bancroft, Fenimore Cooper, Bryant, N. P. Willis, Dr. Francis, John Bigelow, Ripley, Dr.

Griswold, Dr. Eliphalet Nott, Theodore Parker, William M. Thackeray, James Freeman Clarke, Thomas M. Foote and Bayard Taylor, and women of the intellectual strength of Alice Cary and Harriet Beecher Stowe became deeply interested. But nearly all of these lost their interest in Spiritualism in time, for they became morally, if not positively convinced, that the effects produced were the mere result of fraud.

There was another attraction, however, in those early days. The younger "mediums" were both very pretty and very young. Sympathy and commiseration, as much as aught else, often drew visitors to them, and caused such visitors to continue their friends. Thus, we find that Horace Greeley and Dr. Elisha Kent Kane became important factors in the lives of both of these interesting creatures, the former educating Katie, and the latter striving to form Maggie's mind and to reform her character with the express object of making her his wife.

Mrs. Kane, in commenting upon the life which she led at that time, says:

"When I look back, I can only say in defense of my depraved calling, that I took not the slightest pleasure in it. The novelty and the excitement that had half intoxicated me as a child were fast being dissipated. The true conception of this infamous thing soon dawned upon me. The awakening was full of anguish--the anguish of hope, as well as the anguish of grief.

I then first knew Dr. Kane, and with that acquaintance entered the new light into my life."

CHAPTER X.

SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS.

In nearly all of the so-called investigations of the "rappings" produced by the "Fox Sisters," there was an absolute absence of genuine scientific inquiry. Only once in this critical stage of their career, did they submit to experiment and examination by doctors of unquestioned repute and learning. The result of this investigation has been held up by professional spiritualists as a triumphant proof that the source of "rappings" was beyond any mortal finding out. The fact is that the doctors. .h.i.t upon the right principle at the inception of the inquiry, but were misled into a wrong application of it, an error which the "mediums," of course, encouraged up to a certain point, so that they might gain prestige afterwards by refuting it. Following out this policy, Mrs. Underhill has incorporated in her book the testimony of the doctors, heedless of the law of destiny, that truth must prevail finally.

I propose to take this same statement of the doctors, based as it is upon an erroneous a.s.sumption and a correct theory, and show how strongly it sustains and plainly corroborates the explanation of the "rappings" now given by Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Jencken.

The gentlemen who made this notable investigation are usually spoken of as the "Buffalo doctors." They were members of the faculty of the University of Buffalo. Austin Flint, who afterward held the highest medical rank in the metropolis, was the most prominent of the three. The other two were Drs. Charles A. Lee and C. B. Coventry.

The theory that they advanced was that the mysterious noises were produced by some one of the articulations of the body. Their a.s.sumption was that it was the great joint of the knee which produced them. Had they worked upon their theory alone, and left all a.s.sumption aside, until actual evidence had led up to them; or, even had they investigated other joints of the lower limbs, besides that of the knee, they must have inevitably arrived at the correct conclusion. Unfortunately, however, the idea which so beset them as to render their labor abortive, arose from the actual existence in Buffalo of a woman whose knee-joints could be snapped audibly at will.

The closeness of the scrutiny applied by these gentlemen displeased the eldest "medium," and her resentment finds characteristic expression in her volume, printed thirty-seven years after the occurrence. She declares that she found Dr. Lee to be "a wily, deceitful man."

If anything can circ.u.mvent cunning, it is certainly cunning itself, and in this sense, it is entirely laudable when exerted in a proper cause. There is no doubt that strategy had to be used to induce this woman, conscious of her falsity, and schooled in subterfuges and evasions, to submit to a coldly scientific test. The challenge, however, came under such circ.u.mstances, public suspicion being so whetted by the fact that a woman had been discovered whose knee-joints possessed the peculiar quality of making sound, that it could not well be avoided, without it becoming generally known that the declination was a tacit confession of fraud.

The doctors published very promptly the result of their preliminary examination, which was made without any special faculties being afforded them.

They said:

"Curiosity having led us to visit the rooms at the Phelps House, in which two females from Rochester, Mrs. Fish and Miss Fox, profess to exhibit striking manifestations from the spirit world, by means of which communion may be had with deceased friends, etc.; and having arrived at a physiological explanation of the phenomena, the correctness of which has been demonstrated in an instance which has since fallen under our observation, we have felt that a public statement is called for, which may, perhaps, serve to prevent a further waste of time, money and credulity (to say nothing of sentiment and philosophy) in connection with this so long successful imposition.

"The explanation is reached almost by a logical necessity, on the application of a method of reasoning much resorted to in the diagnosis of diseases, namely, _the reasoning by exclusion_.

"It was reached by this method prior to the demonstration which has subsequently occurred.

"It is to be a.s.sumed, first, that the manifestations are not to be regarded as spiritual, provided they can be physically or physiologically accounted for. Immaterial agencies are not to be invoked until material agencies fail. We are thus to _exclude_ spiritual causation in this stage of the investigation.

"Next, it is taken for granted that the 'rappings' are not produced by artificial contrivances about the persons of the females, which may be concealed by the dress. This hypothesis is excluded because it is understood that the females have been repeatedly and carefully examined by lady committees.

"It is obvious that the 'rappings' are not caused by machinery attached to tables, doors, etc., for they are heard in different rooms, and in different parts of the same room in which the females are present, _but always near the spot where the females are stationed_. This mechanical hypothesis is then to be excluded. So much for the negative evidence, and now for what positively relates to the subject.

"_On carefully observing the countenances of the two females it is evident that they involve an effort of the will. They evidently attempted to conceal any indications of voluntary effort, but did not succeed. A voluntary effort was manifested, and it was plain that it could not be continued very long without fatigue._ a.s.suming, then, this _positive fact_, the inquiry arises, how can the will be exerted to produce sounds ('rappings') without obvious movements of the body? The voluntary muscles themselves are the only organs, save those which belong to the mind itself, over which volition can exercise any direct control. But contractions of the muscles do not, in the muscles themselves, occasion obvious sounds. The muscles, therefore, to develop audible vibrations, must act upon parts with which they are connected. Now, it was sufficiently clear that the 'rappings' were not _vocal_ sounds; these could not be produced without movements of the respiratory muscles, which would at once lead to detection. Hence, excluding vocal sounds, _the only possible source of the noises in question, produced as we have seen that they must be, by voluntary muscular contraction, is in one or more of the movable articulations of the skeleton_, from the anatomical construction of the voluntary muscles. This explanation remains as _the only alternative_.

"By an a.n.a.lysis prosecuted in this manner we arrive at the conviction that the 'rappings,' a.s.suming that they are not spiritual, _are produced by the action of the will, through voluntary action on the joints_.

"Various facts may be cited to show that the motion of the joints, under certain circ.u.mstances, is adequate to produce the phenomena of the 'rappings.' * * * By a curious coincidence, after arriving at the above conclusion respecting the source of the sounds, _an instance has fallen under our observation, which demonstrates the fact that noises precisely identical with the spiritual 'rappings' may be produced in the knee-joints_."

The doctors then describe how the sounds may be produced in certain subjects by the partial dislocation of the knee joint; and they add:

"The visible vibrations of articles in the room, situated near the operator, occur if the limb, or any portion of the body, is _in contact with them_ at the time the sounds are produced. _The force of the semi-dislocation of the bone is sufficient to occasion distinct jarring of the doors, tables, etc., if in contact._ The intensity of the sound may be varied in proportion to the force of the muscular contractions, and this will render the apparent source of the 'rappings' more or less distinct."

I have italicized the portions of these extracts which apply in a measure to the action of the toe-joints, as well as to that of the knee. No especial comment upon them is needed. The reader may easily comprehend the relation of these peculiar facts.

Knowing, from this brief of their supposed case, exactly what she had to apprehend from them, and anxious to prove triumphantly that she and her sisters did not make the "rappings" with their knees, Mrs. Fish rushed into print, and challenged the doctors to a more public investigation, to be made by three men and three women, the latter of whom were to disrobe the "mediums," if they so desired. The doctors, of course, accepted.

In her account of this scene, Mrs. Fish speaks of herself and her sister Maggie as "two young creatures thus baited as it were by cruel enemies."

It should be remembered at this point that her age at that time was about thirty-four years, whilst that of Maggie was only eleven! So much for the disingenuousness of the narrator.

She herself says that during the test, Maggie and she sat on a sofa together a long time and no raps came. The watch was too close. Then a zealous and indiscreet friend rapped on the back of her chair, and to s.h.i.+eld herself from seeming complicity, she rebuked him with great ostentation. How kindly she felt toward fraud, however, is shown by the excuses which she makes for his conduct.

"It was certainly a severe and cruel ordeal for us," she goes on, "as we sat there under that accusation, surrounded by all these men, authorities, some of them persecutors, _while the raps, usually so ready and familiar, would not come to our relief. Some few and faint ones did indeed come--some nine or ten. The doctors say in their account that it was while they intermitted the holding of our feet_. Such was not my _impression_, but _I_ attach _small importance_ to that."

There were several sittings of the investigators in company with the "mediums," and Mrs. Underhill a.s.serts that at times plentiful "rappings"