The phenomena narrated by Zoellner--the bursting of the wooden screen, the passages of coins out of closed boxes, the abnormal actions of the solid wooden rings, the tying of knots in the endless cord, the prints made upon smoked paper by the feet of four-dimentional beings--all these have become classic in Spiritistic literature, and the accounts may be obtained in convenient form collected, arranged and translated into English by Mr. C.C. Massey, of Lincoln's Inn, London.
Of these phenomena themselves, verification is, at this late date, manifestly out of the question. The only published accounts are those made by Zoellner, and in the absence of notes made at the time, all descriptions of phenomena given now by the other persons present would be valueless, except as indicating the impression made upon them at the time by the occurrences.
But, though the phenomena themselves cannot be satisfactorily sifted, the men who were engaged in the investigation are, with the exception of Zoellner himself, still living, and it occurred to me when in Germany during the past summer, that a conference with each of these men, and an inquiry into their qualifications for making such an investigation into the phenomena of Spiritism, might be of no small value. These men are: _William Wundt_, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Leipsic; _Gustav Theodore Fechner_, now Professor Emeritus of Physics in the University of Leipsic; _W. Scheibner_, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Leipsic; and _Wilhelm Weber_, Professor Emeritus of Physics in the University of Goettingen--all of them men of eminence in their respective lines of scholarship.
On Saturday, June 19th, I called upon Professor Wundt at his home in Leipsic; with respect to the investigation of 1877-78 he gave me the following information, which I noted down during my conversation with him, asking him to repeat the points mentioned as I noted them, so as to avoid any error or misunderstanding, and which I copied out, with merely verbal changes, two days later.
1. That at the séances at which he himself was present (and he was present at two or three of them) the conditions of observation were very unsatisfactory. All hands had to be kept on the table, and no one was allowed to look under it.