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But I will observe here that an Immortality liable at any moment to betray itself fatuously by the forcible incantations of Mr. Stead or Professor Crookes is scarcely worth having. Can you imagine anything more squalid than an Immortality at the beck and call of Eusapia Palladino?
If life be a physical force, if vitality be a specific energy, then, it seems to me, many things fall into line many phenomena, hitherto inexplicable, become at once intelligible. Let me illustrate this conclusion by mentioning a few such facts: Take, for instance, the phenomena manifested in the presence of Eusapia Palladino.
Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur, which is allowed to stew and fume until the witches' broth is strong enough to scorch the third arm of Palladino herself. Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with cubic gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their hind legs and flung into the compound.
During séances held with Eusapia Palladino, objects were moved from place to place in the room without visible contact, and apparently of their own accord. They were also lifted from place to place and floated about in the air without visible support.
Let us therefore turn to this newer evidence, and see which alternative is rendered more probable by the phenomena in question. This newer evidence is, of course, supplied by the case of Eusapia Palladino.
As the medium was detected in trickery shortly afterwards I wiped these off entirely as evidence. At the same time I think that the presumption is very clear, that in the case of some mediums like Eusapia Palladino they may be guilty of trickery when their powers fail them, and yet at other times have very genuine gifts.
Upon being developed, the impression of a very large left hand was found upon the plate so large that only a portion of the hand could be seen! The whole of the medium's hand can easily be placed upon the plate. These are very similar to the enormous hands frequently seen in the Palladino séances, and said to be those of 'John King.
This case strikes me as particularly interesting, for the reason that it illustrates the possible manner of the externalization of forces, and the possible manner of their guidance and manipulation by outside intelligences, as postulated in Eusapia Palladino, p. 300.
Tomczyk would simply have been cured by him in the general routine manner and dismissed. The world would thus have been deprived of one of the most remarkable mediums on record! In the second place, these fluidic hands are almost identical in many ways with those presented by Eusapia Palladino at her best.
From this feeling of social responsibility some years ago I approached the hysterical trickster, Madame Palladino, who had so much inflamed the mystical imagination of the country, and from this interest in the social aspect I undertook again recently a research into the mental powers of Beulah Miller, who was well on the way to bewilder the whole nation and thus to stir up the always latent mystic inclinations of the community.
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