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He says merely, that to him, subjectively, jugglery did not seem a good "or sufficient" explanation of the phenomena. Professor Scheibner said that he had never seen anything of the kind before. He had never even, since his childhood, seen any exhibitions of jugglery; he does not go to see such things, because he is so short-sighted that if he went he would see nothing.
Professor Scheibner said that he did not believe in these things before. He came to the séances because Professor Zoellner was a personal friend. He has seen very little of the sort since. That little has been in the presence of a lady in Leipsic through whom raps occurred, and psychography.
(2.) It is evident, both from what Zoellner has himself printed and from what Professor Scheibner has said, that Zoellner's interest in the investigation centered in his attempt to prove experimentally what he already held to be speculatively true as to a fourth dimension of space. In a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Science, for April, 1878, he says: "At the end of my first treatise, already finished in manuscript in the course of August, 1877, I called attention to the circumstance that a certain number of physical phenomena, which, by 'synthetical conclusions
These men are: William Wundt, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Leipsic; Gustav Theodore Fechner, now Professor Emeritus of Physics in the University of Leipsic; W. Scheibner, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Leipsic; and Wilhelm Weber, Professor Emeritus of Physics in the University of Goettingen all of them men of eminence in their respective lines of scholarship.
I failed at this time to meet Professor Scheibner, who, though resident in Leipsic, happened to be away from home on a visit; but, having made an appointment with him by letter, I returned to Leipsic on July 3d, and called upon him at his home; upon this occasion he gave me more full and satisfactory details concerning Professor Zoellner's investigation than I succeeded in obtaining from any of the others.
Professor Scheibner "holds suspicion of conscious deception to be out of the question." Professor Zoellner was, said Professor Scheibner, a man of keen mind, but in his investigations apt to see "by preference" what lay in the path of his theory. He could "less easily" see what was against his theory. He was childlike and trustful in character, and might easily have been deceived by an impostor.
The copy reads as follows: On July 3d, 1886, I visited Professor W. Scheibner, at his rooms, in Leipsic, and obtained from him the following information concerning Professor Zoellner's Spiritistic experiments with Dr. Henry Slade, the American Medium: 1. Professor Scheibner thinks that he was present at three or four of the regular séances with Slade.
He expected everyone to be honest and frank as he was. He started with the assumption that Slade meant to be honest with him. He would have thought it wrong to doubt Slade's honesty. Professor Zoellner, said Professor Scheibner, set out to find proof for four-dimentional space, in which he was already inclined to believe. His whole thought was directed to that point.
In these conversations Professor Scheibner was present perhaps five or six times. Some of these took place during the day, and some in the evening. Professor Scheibner said that each single thing that he saw might possibly have been jugglery, "although he perceived nothing that raised a direct suspicion."
His attitude towards the phenomena described is based on his faith in Professor Zoellner's powers of observation, and not on what he saw himself. He does not, therefore, as an independent witness would, add anything to the force of Professor Zoellner's testimony. As to Professor Scheibner.
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