Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 225 pages of information about Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism.

Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 225 pages of information about Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism.

In conclusion, we beg to express our regret that thus far we have not been cheered in our investigations by the discovery of a single novel fact; but, undeterred by this discouragement, we trust with your permission to continue them with what thoroughness our future opportunities may allow, and with minds as sincerely and honestly open, as heretofore, to conviction.

We desire to call especial attention to Professor Fullerton’s Report in the Appendix of his interviews with Professors Fechner, Scheibner and Weber, the surviving colleagues of Professor Zoellner in his experiments with Dr. Henry Slade.

And also to an investigation of the power of Mediums to answer the questions contained in ‘Sealed Envelopes.’

William Pepper,
Joseph Leidy,
George A. Koenig,
George S. Fullerton,
RobtEllis Thompson,
Horace Howard Furness,
Coleman Sellers,
James W. White,
Calvin B. Knerr,
S. Weir Mitchell.

University of Pennsylvania, May, 1887.

APPENDIX.

Soon after the appointment of the Seybert Commission, I as Secretary, was asked to make a collection of the best representative literature of Spiritualism, and to prepare for the use of the Commission a sketch of the rise, progress, present condition, doctrines and alleged phenomena of this belief, as well as an account of previous investigations, similar to the one contemplated by ourselves.  For a number of months I busied myself diligently with this work, and finally read my sketch before the Commission, at a meeting at which Mr. Thomas R. Hazard, the well-known Spiritualist, was present as our guest.  I had at this time seen scarcely anything of Spiritualism, but was much impressed with what I had read, and certainly in a fully receptive attitude towards phenomena supported by so much apparently strong testimony.  Mr. Hazard declared himself quite satisfied with the tone of the paper, saying that he had come expecting to hear something very different, but that it was fair and unbiased.  I mention these facts to show that my present opinion on the subject was not assumed at the outset, but has been arrived at gradually, and is based upon my own observations.

I have been forced to the conclusion that Spiritualism, as far at least as it has shown itself before me (and I give no opinion upon what has not fallen within my observation), presents the melancholy spectacle of gross fraud, perpetrated upon an uncritical portion of the community; that the testimony of such persons as to what they see is almost valueless, if they are habitually as inaccurate as they have been at the seances at which I have been present with them; and that there is an unwillingness on the part of Mediums to have their powers freely and thoroughly investigated—­a

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