Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/49

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Presidential Address.
39

is sufficiently improbable."[1] To which may be added what, in a lapse into veracity, that colossal old liar, Madame Blavatsky, is reported to have said:

"I have not met with more than two or three men who knew how to observe, and see, and remark what was going on around them. It is simply amazing! At least nine out of every ten people are entirely devoid of the capacity of observation and of the power of remembering accurately what took place even an hour before. How often it has happened that, under my direction and revision, minutes of various occurrences and phenomena have been drawn up; lo, the most innocent and conscientious people, even sceptics, even those who actually suspected me, have signed en toutes lettres as witnesses at the foot of the minutes! And all the time I knew that what had happened was not in the least what was stated in the minutes."[2]

A word or two as to the sequel. The befooled observers "all with one consent began to make excuse." But some muttered "e pur si muove." Mr. Myers, despite what has happened, sees no reason for "abandoning a quest which has already in other instances proved more fruitful than psychical researchers had ventured to hope."[3] Professor Lodge is as uneasy as he deserves to be, but hints at "genuine phenomena in other cases."[4] Professor Barrett sees in Eusapia's cheating "a dynamic force in human thought," whatever that may mean. Mr. Lang, in a halfbantering letter where one hears him whistling to keep up his courage, "frankly admits that, on the strength of Mr. Lodge's report, he did expect Eusapia to give the S. P. R, a better run for their money."[5] However, we gather from subsequent remarks of his that he washes his hands of the whole sorry business. He is surprised that Dr. Hodgson, who was the first to predict Eusapia's method and to detect her tricks, should, "after exploding her, Madame Blavatsky,

  1. Realm, 25 January, 1895.
  2. A Modern Priestess of Isis, p. 156.
  3. Daily Chronicle, 4 November, 1895.
  4. Ib., 5 November, 1895.
  5. Ib., 12 November, 1895