in 1876, and was for years after convinced that what he had seen could not be accounted for by any forces known to science. I am glad to say that my conviction has been shared by many conjurers, professional and amateur.[1] No Spiritualist marvel, indeed, has seemed more inexplicable, and none, happily for our purpose, has been so freely and fully attested. Thus in the Spiritualist journal, Light, for October, 1886, the testimony of about a hundred observers, amongst them many persons of intellectual distinction, is quoted as endorsing the genuineness of the manifestation.
In view of these considerations the Society selected the manifestation of slate-writing, as presented by the medium Eglinton, for the purpose of a crucial investigation. At the instance of the Society, several witnesses went in couples to the performance and wrote independent accounts of what they saw. And, from a minute examination, the late Dr. Richard Hodgson was able to demonstrate frequent and, as he showed, significant discrepancies in these separate accounts. In a word, the witnesses did as we all do—they selected for record what appeared to them the most important incidents and omitted what seemed to them irrelevant. But occasionally a witness more scrupulous than most would record some of these irrelevant incidents; and it is precisely in these that the key to the whole performance is to be found. Eglinton, it would thus appear, was habitually affected
- ↑ See the instances quoted in my Modern Spiritualism, vol. ii., pp. 204–7.
