Observations placeholder

PSYCHISM Analysis of Things Existing ESSAYS BY PAUL GIBIER, M. D. Director of the New York Pasteur Institute.

This case was related through a letter … by Mr. C. Demole, once a French Consul in the Extreme East. We from the letter, which its author has allowed us to reproduce.

"I have seen in British India, at Bombay, a Hindoo who made us hold (there were five of us) between the thumb and forefinger, the edge of a bowl made of hammered brass, of a diameter of perhaps forty centimetres (i6 inches) and mounted on a tripod. We were in a parlor moderately lighted. After innumerable gestures and invocations to Brahma, which lasted fully twenty-five minutes, we saw with stupefaction that the bowl had disappeared while we were looking at and touching it. How did this happen? I could not find out. I examined the table upon which the vase had been resting, and nothing showed the existence of a cavity in which a bowl of such dimensions could have been hidden, and yet the first demonstration, which presented some similarity to this one, made me careful, and I watched the slightest movements of the Fakir.

"Since then I have always sought, but in vain, an opportunity to see again such examples. Nothing so far has been presented but the common tricks of legerdemain done by Hindoos of other castes.

"The Indian with the bowl was, I am certain, a descendant of that race of superior men named Celts, Brahmins or Arias. ( ?) The bonze mentioned, as well as the Hindoo, were about one metre and eighty centmetres (6 feet) tall. Both were of a dead white complexion, with Grecian profile, and eyes very dark and of extraordinary fixity.

"There, my dear Doctor, is what I have personally seen, and I take pleasure in telling you of It. . . .

Yours, etc.,

C. Demole.

October 31, 1886.