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PRELIMINARY REPORT

OF THE COMMISSION APPOINTED BY

THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

TO INVESTIGATE

MODERN SPIRITUALISM


IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUEST OF THE LATE HENRY SEYBERT


WITH A FOREWORD BY H.H. FURNESS, JR.


1887, 1920




FOREWORD


Now, at the present time, when the attention of the public is turning
towards questions of Psychology and Psychiatry, it is most appropriate
that a volume such as the present _Report_ be again placed in the hands
of the public. While it cannot be said that the conclusions reached by
the Seybert Commission were final, yet material for future investigation
was furnished and facts so clearly stated that the reader might form his
own conclusions. The purpose and intended scope of the Commission are
plainly set forth in the Preliminary sections, and therefore need not be
entered upon here.

Of the members composing that Commission but one is now surviving, Dr.
Calvin B. Knerr, who contributed an interesting report on the
slate-writing medium, Mrs. Patterson. The sections by the
Acting-Chairman, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, on Mediumistic Development,
Sealed Letters, and Materialization were the occasion of acrimonious and
violent attack on the whole work of the Commission by those periodicals
devoted to spiritualism and its propaganda. Age cannot wither the charm
of the good humoured satire with which the Acting-Chairman treated these
subjects; and it was largely the spirit in which they were thus
approached that inspired the intense hostility on the part of the
spiritual mediums and their many followers.

It has been epigrammatically said that, Superstition is, in many cases,
the cloak that keeps a man's religion from dying of cold; possibly the
same may be said of Spiritualism and Psychology.

H.H. FURNESS, JR.

February, 1920.




PRELIMINARY REPORT

OF

The Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism.


_To the Trustees of The University of Pennsylvania:_

'The Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism'
respectfully present the following Preliminary Report, and request that
the Commission be continued, on the following grounds:

The Commission is composed of men whose days are already filled with
duties which cannot be laid aside, and who are able, therefore, to
devote but a small portion of their time to these investigations. They
are conscious that your honorable body look to them for a due
performance of their task, and the only assurance which they can offer
of their earnestness and zeal is in thus presenting to you, from time to
time, such fragmentary Reports as the following, whereby they trust that
successive steps in their progress may be marked. It is no small matter
to be able to record any progress in a subject of so wide and deep an
interest as the present. It is not too much to say that the farther our
investigations extend the more imperative appears the demand for these
investigations. The belief in so-called Spiritualism is certainly not
decreasing. It has from the first assumed a religious tone, and now
claims to be ranked among the denominational Faiths of the day.

From the outset your Commission have been deeply impressed with the
seriousness of their undertaking, and have fully recognized that men
eminent in intelligence and attainments yield to Spiritualism an entire
credence, and who can fail to stand aside in tender reverence when
crushed and bleeding hearts are seen to seek it for consolation and for
hope? They beg that nothing which they may say may be interpreted as
indicating indifference or levity. Wherever fraud in Spiritualism be
found, that it is, and not whatever of truth there may be therein, which
is denounced, and all Spiritualists who love the truth will join with us
in condemnation of it.

The admission of evidence concerning the so-called Spiritual
manifestations has been duly weighed. There is apparent force in the
argument that our national histories are founded, accepted and trusted
on evidence by no means as direct as that by which, it is claimed, the
proofs of Spiritual miracles are accompanied. But it must be remembered
that the facts of profane history are vouched for by evidence which is
in accord with our present experience; they are in harmony with all that
is now going on in the light of day (that history repeats itself has
grown into a commonplace), and we are justified in accepting them on
testimony, however indirect, which is nevertheless at one with the
ordinary course of events. But the phenomena of Spiritualism have no
such support; they are commonly regarded as in contravention of the
ordinary experience of mankind (in that they are abnormal and
extraordinary lies their very attractiveness to many people), and no
indirect testimony concerning them can be admitted without the most
thorough, the most searching scrutiny. We doubt if any thoughtful
Spiritualist could be found to maintain that we should unquestioningly
accept all the so-called 'facts' with which their annals teem. To sift
the evidence of merely half a dozen would require incalculable labor.
Wherefore we decided that, as we shall be held responsible for our
conclusions, we must form those conclusions solely on our own
observations; without at all imputing untrustworthiness to the testimony
of others we can really vouch only for facts which we have ourselves
observed.

The late Mr. Henry Seybert during his lifetime was known as an
enthusiastic believer in Modern Spiritualism, and shortly before his
death presented to The University of Pennsylvania a sum of money
sufficient to found a chair of Philosophy, and to the gift added a
condition that the University should appoint a Commission to investigate
'all systems of Morals, Religion, or Philosophy which assume to
represent the Truth, and particularly of Modern Spiritualism.'

A Commission was accordingly appointed, composed as follows: Dr. William
Pepper, Dr. Joseph Leidy, Dr. George A. Koenig, Professor Robert Ellis
Thompson, Professor George S. Fullerton and Dr. Horace Howard Furness;
to whom were afterwards added Mr. Coleman Sellers, Dr. James W. White,
Dr. Calvin B. Knerr and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Of this Commission Dr.
Pepper, as Provost of The University, was, _ex-officio_, Chairman, Dr.
Furness, Acting Chairman, and Professor Fullerton, Secretary.

As a befitting preliminary, at one of our earliest meetings each member
in turn expressed his entire freedom from all prejudices against the
subject to be investigated, and his readiness to accept any conclusion
warranted by facts; one of our number, the Acting Chairman, so far from
being unprejudiced confessed to a leaning in favor of the substantial
truth of Spiritualism.

We deemed ourselves fortunate at the outset in having as a counselor
the late Mr. Thos. R. Hazard, a personal friend of Mr. Seybert, and
widely known throughout the land as an uncompromising Spiritualist.

By the advice of Mr. Hazard we addressed ourselves first to the
investigation of Independent Slate Writing, and through his aid a seance
for this purpose was arranged with a noted Medium, Mrs. S.E. Patterson.

This mode of manifesting Spiritualistic power, as far as it has come
under our observation, is, concisely stated, the writing on the
concealed surface of a slate which is in contact with a Medium. In the
present instance, between two slates fastened together by a hinge on one
side and a screw on the other, there was placed a small fragment of
slate pencil; when this fragment is bitten off by the Medium, it
receives, so Mr. Hazard assured us, additional Spiritualistic power. As
soon as a Spirit has finished writing its communication with the pencil
on the inner surface of the slates, the completion of the task is made
known by the appearance of the slate pencil on the outside, upon the
slates. The slates are always held in concealment under the table, and
never has this remarkable passage of the pencil through the solid
substance of the slate been witnessed by any one, not even by the Medium
herself, in all the years during which this wonderful phenomenon has
been a matter of daily, almost hourly, experience.

Our first seance was held in the evening at the Medium's own home. The
slates were screwed together with the bit of slate pencil enclosed, and
held by the Medium between her open palms, in her lap, under the table.
After waiting an hour and a half without the least response on the
slates from the Spirits, the attempt was abandoned for that evening much
to the disappointment, not only of us all, but to the chagrin of Mr.
Hazard, who could not understand 'what the deuce was in it, seeing that
the Medium was one of the very best in the world, and on the preceding
evening, when he was all alone with her, the messages from the spirit of
Henry Seybert came thick and fast.'

No better success attended our second seance with this Medium, although
we waited patiently an hour and twenty minutes, while the slates were in
the Medium's lap.

By the advice of the Medium, in order to eliminate any possible
antagonism, we divided our numbers, and only one or two of us at a time
sat with her. On one occasion writing did appear on the slates, after
the slates had been held by both hands of the Medium for a long time in
concealment under the table, but to neither of the two sitters did the
screw appear to be by any means as tightly fastened after the writing as
before; nor did the writing of two or three illegible words seem beyond
the resources of very humble legerdemain; in fact, no legerdemain was
needed, after a surreptitious loosening of the screw which, considering
the state of the frame of the slate, could have been readily effected.

From some cause or other the atmosphere of Philadelphia is not favorable
to this mode of Spiritual manifestation. With the exception of the
Medium just alluded to, not a single Professional Independent Slate
Writing Medium was known to us at that time in this city, nor is there
one resident here even at this present writing, as far as we know.

We were, therefore, obliged to send for one to New York. With this
Medium, Dr. Henry Slade, we had a number of sittings, and, however
wonderful may have been the manifestations of his Mediumship in the
past, or elsewhere, we were forced to the conclusion that the character
of those which passed under our observation was fraudulent throughout.
There was really no need of any elaborate method of investigation; close
observation was all that was required.

At the risk of appearing inconsequent by mentioning that first which in
point of time came last, we must premise that in our investigations
with this Medium we early discovered the character of the writing to be
twofold, and the difference between the two styles to be striking. In
one case the communication written on the slate by the Spirits was
general in its tone, legible in its chirography, and usually covered
much of the surface of the slate, punctuation being attended to, the
_i's_ dotted, and the _t's_ crossed. In the second, when the
communication was in answer to a question addressed to a Spirit the
writing was clumsy, rude, scarcely legible, abrupt in terms, and
sometimes very vague in substance. In short, one bore the marks of
del