William Crookes

“ Piper, Home and Stainton Moses are the mediums with whom the case of the S.P.R. really stands or falls. Home was never detected in fraud and was non-professional. Sir William Crookes' experiments in these physical phenomena were carried on with him as medium. His work, however, was generally done for a small group of already convinced followers and their testimony, while sincere and generally consistent, may often have been influenced in ways of which they themselves were not conscious. ”

“ That volume has long been out of print. In 1890, an article by Sir William Crookes, under the title of "Notes of Seances with D. D. Home," was published in volume vi. of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. He also referred to his experiences with D. D. Home, in two addresses delivered at meetings of the Society in 1894 and in 1899. These are reported in the Journal of the Society. Sir William Crookes also devoted a portion of his address, as President of the British Association in 1898, to a reference to the part he took many years before in psychical research. ”

“ The application of methods of scientific accuracy to the physical phenomena of spiritualism 62 involves no revolution in mental processes or reversal of the laws of logic. The publication of the results of the classical experiments in materialization undertaken in 1874 by Sir William Crookes with the medium Florence Cooke caused incredulous amazement, for the simple reason that the custodians of science had not applied themselves to the lessons afforded by the continuous shifting of their frontiers. ”

“ The experiments of Sir William Crookes and others by Mr Cromwell Varley, with various mediums, supply us with the best proof we have that medium and spirit possess separate identities. Of course there were, and are still, numerous so-called exposures of mediums in the act of materialisation. On other occasions the materialised form has been seized and found to be the medium himself. ”

“ Crookes is thoroughly honest when he says that he has repeatedly witnessed the "levitation of the human body." But I can regard his statements in no other light than as evidence of the degree in which certain minds are led, by the influence of strong "prepossession," to believe in the creations of their own visual imagination. ”

“ It is probable that we shall soon have a self-acting heat-engine capable of deriving moderate amounts of energy from the ambient medium. There is also a possibility—though a small one—that we may obtain electrical energy direct from the sun. This might be the case if the Maxwellian theory is true, according to which electrical vibrations of all rates should emanate from the sun. I am still investigating this subject. Sir William Crookes has shown in his beautiful invention known as the "radiometer" ”

“ Throughout the introduction he defends Home and seems to deliberately twist the history of the man.
41 It is interesting to note that Sir William Crookes, the eminent scientist, who must have known of the history and character of Home as unveiled at the Lyon trial, should have permitted himself to fall within the mesh of D. D. Home.
42 Taking for granted that the committee in the room was not able to see or permitted to leave the table the method Home could have used with the greatest ease was: first actually get out of the window, or pretend to ”

“ Modern Miracles and Spiritualism, 1874, etc. (I cannot omit to mention that this author, at one time at least, was an anti-vaccinationist) . Sir W. Crookes, the celebrated scientist, had séances in his own house, where he walked and talked with a young lady from the Orient, dead a century before, subjected her to a quasi-medical examination, and possessed himself of a lock of her hair; Researches on the Phenomena of Spiritualism, 1870. The professors of Leipzig University received the celebrated medium, Dr. ”

“ I have shown that a diamond is the outcome of a series of Titanic earth convulsions, and that these precious gems undergo cycles of fiery, strange, and potent vicissitudes before they can blaze on a ring or a tiara. ”

“ The whole scene is more suggestive of a coal mine than a diamond mine, and all this mighty organisation, this strenuous expenditure of energy, this costly machinery, this ceaseless toil of skilled and black labour, goes on day and night, just to win a few stones wherewith to deck my lady’s finger! All to gratify the vanity of woman! ”

“ The scene below ground in the labyrinth of galleries is bewildering in its complexity, and very unlike the popular notion of a diamond mine (Fig. 7) . All below is dirt, mud, grime; half-naked men, dark as mahogany, lithe as athletes, dripping with perspiration, are seen in every direction, hammering, picking, shovelling, wheeling the trucks to and fro, keeping up a weird chant which rises in force and rhythm when a greater task calls for excessive muscular strain. ”

“ Nor must we forget that the more rigidly we scrutinize our received theories, our routine explanations and interpretations of Nature, and the more frankly we admit their shortcomings, the greater will be our ultimate reward. In the practical world fortunes have been realized from the careful examination of what has been ignorantly thrown aside as refuse ”

“ At its ordinary pressure the atmosphere is not very dense, and its recognition as a constituent of the world of matter is quite a modern notion. It would seem that, when divided by a million, so little matter will necessarily be left that we may justifiably neglect the trifling residue, and apply the term vacuum to space from which the air has been so nearly removed. ”

“ We have actually touched the border-land where matter and force seem to merge into one another, the shadowy realm between known and unknown, which for me has always had peculiar temptations. I venture to think that the greatest scientific problems of the future will find their solution in this border-land, and even beyond ”

“ Although in Arizona diamonds have fallen from the skies, confounding our senses, this descent of precious stones is what may be called a freak of nature rather than a normal occurrence. To the modern student of science there is no great difference between the composition of our earth and that of extra-terrestrial masses. ”

“ So far as repulsion is concerned, we may argue from small things to great, from pieces of pith up to heavenly bodies; and we find that the repulsion shown between a cold and warm body will equally prevail, when for melting ice is substituted the cold surface of our atmospheric sea in space, for a lump of pith a celestial sphere, and for an artificial vacuum a stellar void. ”

“ Some minds are so constituted that they seem impelled to form a theory on the slightest experimental basis. There is then great danger of their becoming advocates, and unconsciously favoring facts which seem to prove their preconceived ideas, and neglecting others which might oppose their views. ”

“ In the course of my research anomalies have sprung up in every direction. I have felt like a traveler, navigating some mighty river in an unexplored continent. I have seen to the right and the left other channels opening out, all claiming investigation, and promising rich rewards of discovery for the explorer who shall trace them to their source. Time has not allowed me to undertake the whole of a task so vast and so manifold. ”

“ The din and rattle of these thousands of wheels and the twang of the buckets along the ropes were something deafening, while the mine itself seemed almost darkened by the thick cobweb of ropes, so numerous as to appear almost touching. This mode of haulage continued in vogue during the whole of 1873, and if the appearance of the mine was less picturesque than when the roadways existed, it was, if anything, more unique. ”

“ And these diamonds, by sparseness of distribution, crystalline character, difference of tint, purity of colour, varying hardness, brittleness, and state of tension, have the story of their origin impressed upon them, engraved by natural forces—a story which future generations of scientific men may be able to interpret with greater precision than is possible to-day. ”

“ All the apparatus you see before you are the fruits of his skillful manipulation, and I now want to draw your attention to what I think is a masterpiece of glass-working—the pump which enables me so readily to produce a vacuum unattainable by ordinary means. ”

“ By gradually increasing the delicacy of my apparatus I could easily get certain results of motion when hot bodies were brought near them, but sometimes it was one of attraction, at others of repulsion, while occasionally no movement whatever was produced. ”

“ In the compound are to be seen representatives of nearly all the picked types of African tribes. Each tribe keeps to itself, and to go round the buildings skirting the compound is an admirable object-lesson in ethnology. ”

“ When I consider the variety of theories which may be formed on the slender foundation of one or two facts, I am convinced that it is the business of the true philosopher to avoid them altogether. It is more laborious to accumulate facts than to reason concerning them ”

“ As scientific men are well aware, our way of accounting for any given phenomenon is not always perfect. Some point is perhaps taken for granted, some peculiar circumstance is overlooked. Or else our explanation agrees with the facts not perfectly, but merely in an approximate manner, leaving a something still to be accounted for. ”

“ By working steadily in this manner, letting each group of experiments point out the direction for the next group, and following up as closely as possible, not only the main line of research, but also the little by-lanes which often lead to the most valuable results, after a time the facts will group themselves together and tell their own tale ”

“ The hole being unaltered in size, the number of molecules undiminished, this apparent paradox can only be explained by again supposing the size of the molecules to be diminished almost infinitely—so that, instead of entering at the rate of one hundred millions every second, they troop in at a rate of something like three hundred trillions a second! ”

“ I simply wish to show you the marvelous sensitiveness of the apparatus with which I am accustomed to work. I may, indeed, say that I know these rough estimates to be incorrect. It must be remembered that our earth is not a lampblacked body inclosed in a glass case, nor is its shape such as to give the maximum of surface with the minimum of weight. The solar forces which perpetually pour on it are not simply absorbed and degraded into radiant heat, but are transformed into the various forms of motion we see around us, and into the countless forms of vegetable, animal, and human activity. ”

“ But light, in some respects the highest of the powers of Nature, has not been hitherto found capable of direct conversion into motion, and such an exception cannot but be regarded as a singular anomaly. ”

“ METEORIC DIAMONDS Sensational as is the story of the diamond industry in South Africa, quite another aspect fixes the attention of the chemist. The diamonds come out of the mines, but how did they get in? How were they formed? What is their origin?
Gardner Williams, who knows more about diamonds than any man living, is little inclined to indulge in speculation. ”

“ My research arose from the study of an anomaly.
It is well known to scientific men that bodies appear to weigh less when they are hot than when they are cold; the explanation given being that the ascending currents of hot air buoy up the body, so to speak. Wishing to get rid of this and other interfering actions of the air during a research on the atomic weight of thallium, I had a balance constructed in which I could weigh in a vacuum. I still, indeed, found my apparatus less heavy when hot than when cold. ”

“ Although we cannot convert graphite into diamond, we can change the diamond into graphite. A clear crystal of diamond is placed between two carbon poles, and the poles with intervening diamond are brought together and an arc formed between. The temperature of the diamond rapidly rises, and when it approaches 3600° C., the vaporising point of carbon, it breaks down, swells, and changes into black and valueless graphite. ”

“ In studying this fourth state of matter we seem, at length, to have within our grasp and obedient to our control the little indivisible particles which, with good warrant, are supposed to constitute the physical basis of the universe. ”

“ If steel and granite are thus vulnerable at comparatively [132] moderate gaseous pressure, it is easy to imagine the destructive upburst of hydrogen and water-gas, grooving for itself a channel in the diabase and quartzite, tearing fragments from resisting rocks, covering the country with debris, and finally, at the subsidence of the great rush, filling the self-made pipe with a water-borne magma in which rocks, minerals, iron oxide, shale, petroleum, and diamonds are violently churned in a veritable witch’s cauldron! ”

“ What is a gas? the answer then would have been that it is matter, expanded and rarefied to such an extent as to be impalpable, save when set in violent motion; invisible, incapable of assuming or of being reduced into any definite form like solids, or of forming drops like liquids; always ready to expand where no resistance is offered, and to contract on being subjected to pressure. ”

“ To those, therefore, who admit the radiant form of matter, no difficulty exists in the simplicity of the properties it possesses, but rather an argument in their favor. These persons show you a gradual resignation of properties in the matter we can appreciate as the matter ascends in the scale of forms, and they would be surprised if that effect were to cease at the gaseous states. ”