"Doyle, Arthur Conan - The New Revelation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

I have given this synopsis of a communication to
show the kind of thing we got--though this was a very
favourable specimen, both for length and for coherence.
It shows that it is not just to say, as many critics
say, that nothing but folly comes through. There was
no folly here unless we call everything folly which
does not agree with preconceived ideas. On the other
hand, what proof was there that these statements were
true? I could see no such proof, and they simply left
me bewildered. Now, with a larger experience, in which
I find that the same sort of information has come to
very, many people independently in many lands, I think
that the agreement of the witnesses does, as in all
cases of evidence, constitute some argument for their
truth. At the time I could not fit such a conception
of the future world into my own scheme of philosophy,
and I merely noted it and passed on.

I continued to read many books upon the subject and
to appreciate more and more what a cloud of witnesses
existed, and how careful their observations had been.
This impressed my mind very much more than the
limited phenomena which came within the reach of
our circle. Then or afterwards I read a book by
Monsieur Jacolliot upon occult phenomena in India.
Jacolliot was Chief Judge of the French Colony of
Crandenagur, with a very judicial mind, but rather
biassed{sic} against spiritualism. He conducted a
series of experiments with native fakirs, who gave him
their confidence because he was a sympathetic man and
spoke their language. He describes the pains he took
to eliminate fraud. To cut a long story short he found
among them every phenomenon of advanced European
mediumship, everything which Home, for example, had
ever done. He got levitation of the body, the handling
of fire, movement of articles at a distance, rapid
growth of plants, raising of tables. Their explanation
of these phenomena was that they were done by the
Pitris or spirits, and their only difference in
procedure from ours seemed to be that they made more
use of direct evocation. They claimed that these
powers were handed down from time immemorial and traced
back to the Chaldees. All this impressed me very
much, as here, independently, we had exactly the
same results, without any question of American frauds,
or modern vulgarity, which were so often raised against
similar phenomena in Europe.

My mind was also influenced about this time by the