The Unknown Guest by Maurice Maeterlinck
page 5 of 211 (02%)
page 5 of 211 (02%)
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Let us first be content to enumerate them. We shall find that we
have table-turning, with its raps; the movements and transportations of inanimate objects without contact; luminous phenomena; lucidite, or clairvoyance; veridical apparitions or hallucinations; haunted houses; bilocations and so forth; communications with the dead; the divining-rod; the miraculous cures of Lourdes and elsewhere; fluidic asepsis; and lastly the famous thinking animals of Elberfeld and Mannheim. These, if I be not mistaken, after eliminating all that is in, sufficiently attested, constitute the residue or caput mortuum of this latter-day miracle. Everybody has heard of table-turning, which may be called the A B C of occult science. It is so common and so easily produced that the Society for Psychical Research has not thought it necessary to devote special attention to the subject. I need hardly add that we must take count only of movements or "raps" obtained without the hands touching the table, so as to remove every possibility of fraud or unconscious complicity. To obtain these movements it is enough, but it is also indispensable that those who form the "chain" should include a person endowed with mediumistic faculties. I repeat, the experiment is within the reach of any one who cares to try it under the requisite conditions; and it is as incontestable as the polarization of light or as crystallization by means of electric currents. In the same group may be placed the movement and transportation of objects without contact, the touches of spirit hands, the luminous phenomena and materialization. Like table-turning, they demand the presence of a medium. I need not observe that we here |
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