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Authors: Julian Barnes
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above the random. They repeated the experiment enough times for a scientific conclusion to be reached: namely that, given a natural sympathy between conductor and receiver, thought-transference could indeed take place.
What might this mean? If thought could be transferred across distance without any evident means of conveyance, then the pure materialism of Arthur’s teachers was, at the very least, too rigid. The congruence of drawn shapes he had achieved with Stanley Ball did not allow the return of angels with shining swords. But it nevertheless raised a question, and a stubborn one at that.
Many others were simultaneously pushing at the ironclad walls of a materialist universe. The mesmerist Professor de Meyer, who was famous – according to the Portsmouth newspapers – across the continent of Europe, came to town and induced various healthy young men to do his bidding. Some stood with their mouths agape, incapable of closing them despite laughter from the auditorium; others fell to their knees and were unable to rise without the Professor’s permission. Arthur inserted himself into the line of candidates on stage, but Meyer’s technique left him unmesmerised and unimpressed. It smacked more of vaudeville than of scientific demonstration.
He and Touie began attending seances. Stanley Ball was often present; also General Drayson the Southsea astronomer. They found the instructions for conducting a circle in
Light
, the weekly psychical paper. Proceedings would begin with a reading of the first chapter of Ezekiel: ‘Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go.’ The prophet’s vision – of the whirlwind and the great cloud and the brightness and the fire and the four cherubim each with four faces and each with four wings – prepared those present to be receptive. Then it was the flickering candle, the felty dimness, the concentration of mind, the emptying of self and the communal waiting. Once, a spirit answering to the name of Arthur’s great-uncle appeared behind him; on another occasion, a black man with a spear. After a few months , spirit lights became occasionally visible, even to him.
Arthur was uncertain how much evidential weight should be granted to these collaborative circles. He was more convinced by an elderly psychic he met at the house of General Drayson. After various preparations of a rather thespian nature, the old man went into a heavy-breathing trance and began dispensing both advice and spirit communications to his small, hushed audience. Arthur had come fully armed with scepticism – until the misted-over eyes were directed towards him, and a frail, distant voice pronounced the words,
‘Do not read Leigh Hunt’s book.’
This was more than uncanny. For some days, Arthur had been privately wondering whether or not to read Hunt’s
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration
. He had not discussed the matter with anyone; and it was hardly a dilemma with which he would bother Touie. But then to be given such a precise answer to his unvoiced question … It could not be a magician’s trick; it could only have happened through the ability of one man’s mind to gain access in a so far inexplicable way to another man’s mind.
Arthur was so persuaded by the experience that he wrote it up for
Light
. Here was further proof that telepathy worked; for the moment, nothing more. This much so far he had seen: what was the minimum, not the maximum, that could be deduced? Though if reliable data continued to accrue, then more than the minimum might have to be considered. What if all his previous certainties became less certain? And what, for that matter, might the maximum turn out to be?
Touie regarded her husband’s involvement in telepathy and the spirit world with the same sympathetic and watchful interest that she brought to his enthusiasm for sport. The laws of psychical phenomena seemed to her as arcane as the laws of cricket; but she sensed that with each a
What might this mean? If thought could be transferred across distance without any evident means of conveyance, then the pure materialism of Arthur’s teachers was, at the very least, too rigid. The congruence of drawn shapes he had achieved with Stanley Ball did not allow the return of angels with shining swords. But it nevertheless raised a question, and a stubborn one at that.
Many others were simultaneously pushing at the ironclad walls of a materialist universe. The mesmerist Professor de Meyer, who was famous – according to the Portsmouth newspapers – across the continent of Europe, came to town and induced various healthy young men to do his bidding. Some stood with their mouths agape, incapable of closing them despite laughter from the auditorium; others fell to their knees and were unable to rise without the Professor’s permission. Arthur inserted himself into the line of candidates on stage, but Meyer’s technique left him unmesmerised and unimpressed. It smacked more of vaudeville than of scientific demonstration.
He and Touie began attending seances. Stanley Ball was often present; also General Drayson the Southsea astronomer. They found the instructions for conducting a circle in
Light
, the weekly psychical paper. Proceedings would begin with a reading of the first chapter of Ezekiel: ‘Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go.’ The prophet’s vision – of the whirlwind and the great cloud and the brightness and the fire and the four cherubim each with four faces and each with four wings – prepared those present to be receptive. Then it was the flickering candle, the felty dimness, the concentration of mind, the emptying of self and the communal waiting. Once, a spirit answering to the name of Arthur’s great-uncle appeared behind him; on another occasion, a black man with a spear. After a few months , spirit lights became occasionally visible, even to him.
Arthur was uncertain how much evidential weight should be granted to these collaborative circles. He was more convinced by an elderly psychic he met at the house of General Drayson. After various preparations of a rather thespian nature, the old man went into a heavy-breathing trance and began dispensing both advice and spirit communications to his small, hushed audience. Arthur had come fully armed with scepticism – until the misted-over eyes were directed towards him, and a frail, distant voice pronounced the words,
‘Do not read Leigh Hunt’s book.’
This was more than uncanny. For some days, Arthur had been privately wondering whether or not to read Hunt’s
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration
. He had not discussed the matter with anyone; and it was hardly a dilemma with which he would bother Touie. But then to be given such a precise answer to his unvoiced question … It could not be a magician’s trick; it could only have happened through the ability of one man’s mind to gain access in a so far inexplicable way to another man’s mind.
Arthur was so persuaded by the experience that he wrote it up for
Light
. Here was further proof that telepathy worked; for the moment, nothing more. This much so far he had seen: what was the minimum, not the maximum, that could be deduced? Though if reliable data continued to accrue, then more than the minimum might have to be considered. What if all his previous certainties became less certain? And what, for that matter, might the maximum turn out to be?
Touie regarded her husband’s involvement in telepathy and the spirit world with the same sympathetic and watchful interest that she brought to his enthusiasm for sport. The laws of psychical phenomena seemed to her as arcane as the laws of cricket; but she sensed that with each a
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