at imaginative
people, who sit for a couple of hours, 'especially if in the dark,'
believing or hoping to see a human body, or a table, rise in the
air, probably 'pass into a state which is neither sleeping nor
waking, but between the two, in which they see, hear, or feel by
touch, anything they have been led to expect will present itself.'

This is, indeed, highly probable. But we must suppose that _all_
present fall into this ambiguous state, described of old by
Porphyry. One waking spectator who sees nothing would make the
statements of the others even more worthless than usual. And it is
certain that it is not even pretended that all, always, see the same
phenomena.

'One saw an arm, and one a hand, and one the waving of a gown,' in
that seance at Branxholme, where only William of Deloraine beheld
all,

And knew, but how it mattered not,
It was the wizard, Michael Scott. {329}

Granting the ambiguous state, granting darkness, and expectancy,
anything may seem to happen. But Dr. Carpenter wholly omits such
cases as that of Mr. Hamilton Aide, and of M. Alphonse Karr. Both
were absolutely sceptical. Both disliked Home very much, and
thought him an underbred Yankee quack and charlatan. Both were in
the 'expectancy' of seeing no marvels, were under 'the dominant
idea' that nothing unusual would occur. Both, in a brilliantly
lighted room of a villa near Nice, saw a chair make a rush from the
wall into the middle of the room, and saw a very large and heavy
table, untouched, rise majestically in the air. M. Karr at once got
under the table, and hunted, vainly, for mechanical appliances.
Then he and Mr. Aide went home, disconcerted, and in very bad
humour. How do 'expectancy' and the 'dominant idea' explain this
experience, which Mr. Aide has published in the Nineteenth Century?
The expectancy and dominant ideas of these gentlemen should have
made them see the table and chair sit tight, while believers
observed them in active motion. Again, how could Mr. Crookes's lack
of 'a special training in the bodily and mental constitution,
abnormal as well as normal,' of 'mediums,' affect his power of
observing whether a plank of wood did, or did not, move to a certain
extent untouched, or slightly touched, and whether the difference of
position was, or was not, registered mechanically? (p. 70). It was
a pure matter of skilled and trained observation in mechanics. Dr.
Huggins was also present at this experiment in