The
"spirit" of the Planchette will indeed write you out sentences; but to
that, like the actor in melodrama, I will return anon. In the stock
_seances_, I know, spirits materialise themselves and glide white-sheeted
through darkened rooms. But as my own _seances_ and "spirits" were
personally conducted by myself, the optical illusions of Messrs.
Maskelyne & Cook, the Pepper's Ghost of the dear old Polytechnic, had no
opportunity of putting in an appearance. My spooks did nothing but answer
questions, so that the very suggestion that they were spirits came
entirely from me. In fact, they do but dance to the "medium's" piping;
and should he suggest that they are methylated, the chances are that not
a few would cheerfully acquiesce in this description of themselves. In
short, it is only the prepossession, the pathetic prejudice, in favour of
visitors from other worlds that leads at all to the thought of "spirits,"
drawing such a red herring across the track that the average observer,
who is nothing if not unobservant, has all his partisan faculties of
mis-observation brought into full play on behalf of the spirit-world.
Doubtless the actual presence of "spirits" is the cheapest way of
accounting for the phenomena. But one might as well call in "spirits" to
explain the dancing of a kettle-lid.
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