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should believe that Home could overcome the force of gravity without employing
any mechanical means, that Lombroso should believe that Eusapia Palladino could
move objects by the action of her will alone, that Stumpf should believe that
a horse could be educated_ like a child and be influenced by telepathy, that
Richet should believe that the murder of the Servian royal family was foretold
in Paris by occult means—all these things are but instances of the errors
that other-wise competent investigators may make. For they are nothing but cases
of error, not because the investigators attempted to explain the impossible,
but because they
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based their conclusions on imperfect data, and did not see the pitfalls before
them. These scientists and others like them, prove that a man may be proficient
in his own special branch and yet quite incapable of criticizing other methods
of research. In spite of these and other authors who express a belief in occultism
and spiritism, I can safely say, not only as the result of my own experiments
but also from a careful study of numerous occultistic and spiritistic works,
that I have never come across even one single experiment carried out under strictly
scientific conditions that could be said to justify the assumption that occult
forces eicist. One of the biggest swindles perpetrated by occultists is the
way in which they promise beforehand strict adherence to scientific conditions,
and then do their utmost to prevent such conditions being observed.
In spite of my most earnest endeavours, I have never been able to detect even
the slightest approach to occult phenomena, provided strict conditions were
observed; in all these investigations the assumption of animal magnetism, telepathy,
clairvoyance, etc., was altogether superfluous. I am, of course, just as willing
in the future as I always have been in the past to investigate, under the conditions
enjoined by science, all cases of mediums, magnetizers, etc., etc., who profess
to possess occult powers, for I consider a priori negation just as unscientific
as those swindles and frauds connected with occultism which I have so strongly
condemned.
ALBERT MOLL. ST. HELIER, JERSEY.
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