hted that he never goes to see a juggler,
because he sees nothing.

5. As to the last witness, Professor Weber, his testimony agrees more
decidedly with that of Professor Zoellner. He was present at eight
seances, declares the occurrences to have been as represented by
Professor Zoellner, and denies that Zoellner was in any sense insane.
But Professor Weber is from Goettingen, and was at the time of the
investigation in Leipsic on a visit; it is not improbable that those of
Professor Zoellner's colleagues, who lived and worked at the same
University with him, may have had better opportunities for judging as to
his mental condition than one who only saw him occasionally. Moreover,
Professor Weber's opinion as to the qualifications of the men with whom
he was associated does not seem to have been always sound. One who could
look upon Professor Fechner as one of the best observers in the world,
and Professor Scheibner, as for the purpose in hand, an excellent
observer, neglecting entirely to note that one was partly blind and that
the other could not see well, might readily overlook the fact of a not
very pronounced mental aberration on the part of a third person. And as
to Professor Weber's opinion of the phenomena, it is well to note that
Professor Weber was seventy-four years old at the time, had had no
previous experience in investigations of this kind and was quite
ignorant of the arts of the juggler. Whatever may be a man's powers of
reflection at seventy-four, it is natural to suppose that his powers of
perception, especially when exercised in a quite new field, are not at
that age what they were some years previously.

SUMMARY.

Thus it would appear that of the four eminent men whose names have made
famous the investigation, there is reason to believe one, _Zoellner_,
was of unsound mind at the time, and anxious for experimental
verification of an already accepted hypothesis; another, _Fechner_, was
partly blind, and believed because of Zoellner's observations; a third,
_Scheibner_, was also afflicted with defective vision, and not entirely
satisfied in his own mind as to the phenomena; and a fourth, _Weber_,
was advanced in age, and did not even recognize the disabilities of his
associates. No one of these men had ever had experiences of this sort
before, nor was any one of them acquainted with the ordinary
possibilities of deception. The experience of our Commission with Dr.
Slade would suggest, that the lack