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Perhaps we have to do here with states not far removed from paralysis from fright. The sense of touch is also brought into play in hypnosis; Richet set great value on the so-called mesmeric strokes or passes. It is often stated that touches on the forehead induce a sleepy state in many persons.
"Yes; but those experiments were afterward made of no value by the confession of a coachman, who admitted his complicity in the fraud." "No; that story is not true. The experiments stand, and Richet still defends both himself and the circle against the charge of fraud." "But read on," I insisted.
Experiments of this kind have not been made by Professor Barrett, and other modern inquirers, except by M. Richet, as a mode of detecting automatic action. But it would be just as sensible to use the twig as to use planchette or any other 'autoscopic' apparatus. If these elicit knowledge unconsciously present to the mind, mere water-finding ought not to be the sole province of the rod.
Bottazzi succeeded at last in getting Paladino's consent, but only through the good offices of Professor Richet, whom she deeply loves and reverences. Submissively she entered into this most crucial series of tests. She was no longer afraid of any scientist, but it was not precisely a joy to her.
In the centre a handful of fearless scientists: Crookes, Wallace, Richet, Flammarion, Morselli, Baraduc, Myers, Lombroso, Lodge, and Barrett; in the inner circle a number of academic investigators, disdaining alike the premature proclamation of phenomenal results and the obstinate denial of facts; in the outer circle an ever-growing mass of souls clamouring for the crumbs of evidence, hungry for something personal and soul-warming in our dealings with the Divine dispensation.
It is not cited because M. Richet is a professor of physiology, but because he reached his conclusion after six years of minute experiment. He says: 'There exists in certain persons, at certain moments, a faculty of acquiring knowledge which has no rapport with our normal faculties of that kind.
Richet has obtained this important result, that henceforth the possibility of mental suggestion cannot be met with contemptuous rejection. Mental suggestion on this limited scale, is a phenomenon much less startling to belief than the reality, and causal nature, of coincidental hallucinations, of wraiths.
The reference in the recent edition is p. 289. Mrs. Sidgwick, pp. 30, 356; vol. vi. p. 66, Professor Richet, p. 407, Drs. Among savage methods of provoking hallucinations whence knowledge may be supernormally obtained, various forms of 'crystal-gazing' are the most curious. I have already given, in the Introduction, Ellis's record of the Polynesian case.
"You've got to believe that a man like Richet has seen something after three months' experiment in his own house." Miller faced them all stubbornly: "And yet even Richet may have been deceived." "Are you the only one competent to study these facts?" asked Brierly, hotly. "The egotism of you professional physicists is a kind of insanity.
Richet speaks of this curious recession of belief, and admits his own inability to retain the conviction that, at the moment of the phenomenon, was complete. 'No sooner is the sitting over than my doubts come swarming back upon me, he says.
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