The Complete Spiritual Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated Edition). Ðртур Конан ДойлЧитать онлайн книгу.
will be to admit the phenomena, but to put them down to material causes in the unexplored realms of nature with no real connection with human survival. This change of front is now due, but it will fare no better than the old one. Before quitting the subject I should have added that these conclusions of Dr. Geley concerning the paraffin moulds taken from Kluski's materialisation are shared by Charles Richet and Count de Gramont of the Institute of France, who took part in the experiments. How absurd are the efforts of those who were not present to contradict the experiences of men like these.
I was disappointed to hear from Dr. Geley that the experiments in England with the medium Eva had been largely negative, though once or twice the ectoplasmic flow was, as I understand, observed. Dr. Geley put this comparative failure down to the fantastic precautions taken by the committee, which had produced a strained and unnatural atmosphere. It seems to me that if a medium is searched, and has all her clothes changed before entering the seance room, that is ample, but when in addition to this you put her head in a net-bag and restrict her in other ways, you are producing an abnormal self-conscious state of mind which stops that passive mood of receptivity which is essential. Professor Hyslop has left it on record that after a long series of rigid tests with Mrs. Piper he tried one sitting under purely natural conditions, and received more convincing and evidential results than in all the others put together. Surely this should suggest freer methods in our research.
I have just had a sitting with Eva, whom I cannot even say that I have seen, for she was under her cloth cabinet when I arrived and still under it when I left, being in trance the whole time. Professor Jules Courtier of the Sorbonne and a few other men of science were present. Madame Bisson experiments now in the full light of the afternoon. Only the medium is in darkness, but her two hands protrude through the cloth and are controlled by the sitters. There is a flap in the cloth which can be opened to show anything which forms beneath. After sitting about an hour this flap was opened, and Madame Bisson pointed out to me a streak of ectoplasm upon the outside of the medium's bodice. It was about six inches long and as thick as a finger. I was allowed to touch it, and felt it shrink and contract under my hand. It is this substance which can, under good conditions, be poured out in great quantities and can be built up into forms and shapes, first flat and finally rounded, by powers which are beyond our science. We sometimes call it Psychoplasm in England, Richet named it Ectoplasm, Geley calls it Ideoplasm; but call it what you will, Crawford has shown for all time that it is the substance which is at the base of psychic physical phenomena.
Madame Bisson, whose experience after twelve years' work is unique, has an interesting theory. She disagrees entirely with Dr. Geley's view, that the shapes are thought forms, and she resents the name ideoplasm, since it represents that view. Her conclusion is that Eva acts the part which a "detector" plays, when it turns the Hertzian waves, which are too short for our observation, into slower ones which can become audible. Thus Eva breaks up certain currents and renders them visible. According to her, what we see is never the thing itself but always the reflection of the thing which exists in another plane and is made visible in ours by Eva's strange material organisation. It was for this reason that the word Miroir appeared in one of the photographs, and excited much adverse criticism. One dimly sees a new explanation of mediumship. The light seems a colourless thing until it passes through a prism and suddenly reveals every colour in the world.
A picture of Madame Bisson's father hung upon the wall, and I at once recognised him as the phantom which appears in the photographs of her famous book, and which formed the culminating point of Eva's mediumship. He has a long and rather striking face which was clearly indicated in the ectoplasmic image. Only on one occasion was this image so developed that it could speak, and then only one word. The word was "Esperez."
We have just returned, my wife, Denis and I, from a round of the Aisne battlefields, paying our respects incidentally to Bossuet at Meaux, Fenelon at Château Thierry, and Racine at La Ferté Millon. It is indeed a frightful cicatrix which lies across the brow of France—a scar which still gapes in many places as an open wound. I could not have believed that the ruins were still so untouched. The land is mostly under cultivation, but the houses are mere shells, and I cannot think where the cultivators live. When you drive for sixty miles and see nothing but ruin on either side of the road, and when you know that the same thing extends from the sea to the Alps, and that in places it is thirty miles broad, it helps one to realise the debt that Germany owes to her victims. If it had been in the Versailles terms that all her members of parliament and journalists should be personally conducted, as we have been, through a sample section, their tone would be more reasonable.
It has been a wonderful panorama. We followed the route of the thousand taxi-cabs which helped to save Europe up to the place where Gallieni's men dismounted and walked straight up against Klück's rearguard. We saw Belleau Wood, where the 2nd and 46th American divisions made their fine debut and showed Ludendorff that they were not the useless soldiers he had so vainly imagined. Thence we passed all round that great heavy sack of Germans which had formed in June, 1918, with its tip at Dormans and Château Thierry. We noted Bligny, sacred to the sacrifices of Carter Campbell's 51st Highlanders, and Braithwaite's 62nd Yorkshire division, who lost between them seven thousand men in these woods. These British episodes seem quite unknown to the French, while the Americans have very properly laid out fine graveyards with their flag flying, and placed engraved tablets of granite where they played their part, so that in time I really think that the average Frenchman will hardly remember that we were in the war at all, while if you were to tell him that in the critical year we took about as many prisoners and guns as all the other nations put together, he would stare at you with amazement. Well, what matter! With a man or a nation it is the duty done for its own sake and the sake of its own conscience and self-respect that really counts. All the rest is swank.
We slept at Rheims. We had stayed at the chief hotel, the Golden Lion, in 1912, when we were en route to take part in the Anglo-German motor-car competition, organised by Prince Henry. We searched round, but not one stone of the hotel was standing. Out of 14,000 houses in the town, only twenty had entirely escaped. As to the Cathedral, either a miracle has been wrought or the German gunners have been extraordinary masters of their craft, for there are acres of absolute ruin up to its very walls, and yet it stands erect with no very vital damage. The same applies to the venerable church of St. Remy. On the whole I am prepared to think that save in one fit of temper upon September 19th, 1914, the guns were never purposely turned upon this venerable building. Hitting the proverbial haystack would be a difficult feat compared to getting home on to this monstrous pile which dominates the town. It is against reason to suppose that both here and at Soissons they could not have left the cathedrals as they left the buildings around them.
Next day, we passed down the Vesle and Aisne, seeing the spot where French fought his brave but barren action on September 13th, 1914, and finally we reached the Chemin des Dames—a good name had the war been fought in the knightly spirit of old, but horribly out of place amid the ferocities with which Germany took all chivalry from warfare. The huge barren countryside, swept with rainstorms and curtained in clouds, looked like some evil landscape out of Vale Owen's revelations. It was sown from end to end with shattered trenches, huge coils of wire and rusted weapons, including thousands of bombs which are still capable of exploding should you tread upon them too heavily. Denis ran wildly about, like a terrier in a barn, and returned loaded with all sorts of trophies, most of which had to be discarded as overweight. He succeeded, however, in bringing away a Prussian helmet and a few other of the more portable of his treasures. We returned by Soissons, which interested me greatly, as I had seen it under war conditions in 1916. Finally we reached Paris after a really wonderful two days in which, owing to Mr. Cook's organisation and his guide, we saw more and understood more, than in a week if left to ourselves. They run similar excursions to Verdun and other points. I only wish we had the time to avail ourselves of them.
A tragic intermezzo here occurred in our Paris experience. I suddenly heard that my brother-in-law, E. W. Hornung, the author of "Raffles" and many another splendid story, was dying at St. Jean de Luz in the Pyrenees. I started off at once, but was only in time to be present at his funeral. Our little family group has been thinned down these last two years until we feel like a company under hot fire with half on the ground. We can but close our ranks the tighter. Hornung lies within three paces of George Gissing, an author for whom both of us had an affection. It is good to think that