SCEPTICAL PARIS SCIENTISTS

Evening Star, Issue 17548, 31 December 1920, Page 8

SCEPTICAL PARIS SCIENTISTS

SPIRIT-WORLD HUMBUG. The announcement that Mr Edison is at work on a machine with which he hopes to be able to communicate with the spirits of the departed has been received with intense interest in Paris, where the question of whether there is or is not an after life is a perennial subject of speculation among all classes. It is alleged that the impulse which lias latterly moved so many people to_ try to peer into the future has resulted in there now being over 3,000 professional " voyants," or what are vulgarly termed fortune-tellers and mediums, in Paris alone. One of the books of the day is M. Camille Flammarion's 'La Mort et son Mystere,' in which the celebrated French astronomer presents a xoldly scientific study, classified in three volumes, of an enormous number of recorded phenomena alleged to have occurred prior to, at, and after the moment of death. The first of the three -volumes, entitled 'Avant la Mort,' which appeared recently, has already passed its thirtieth thousand, and the fortieth is in the press. Another suggestive indication is the appearance on the boulevard kiosks of a popular edition in French of the prophecies of Joanna Southcott, the English mystic. Articles by Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir "Arthur Conan Doyle, and other leading English apostles of spiritualism have recently formed features of Borne of the French monthly magazines and reviews. In view of the interest felt in Mr Edison's latest effort the 'Gaulois* has gathered the opinions, of a number of well-known scientific, authorities on the subject. Most of those cited are frankly sceptical, not only as to the probable sue-. cess of iMr Edison's hoped-for, invention but on the whole question of "the spirit world." Professor Maquenne, of the Natural History Museum, bluntly dismisses the whole matter as " humbug." (Professor Laveran, of the Pasteur Institute, says t _ I don't believe a word about this alleged invention, any more than I believe in spirits. Every so-called 'spiritualist' phenomenon has proved, when it has been closely studied, to be trickery. There can be no two opinions on the subject." Professor 'Robin of the Faculty of Medicine roundly asserts that "there is nothing to lead to the belief that there is any such thing as post mortem existence under another fotin," and counsels that such day dreams should be left alone. M. Lippmann, professor of physics at the Sorbonne says he hopes, for Edison's own sake, that he has never made the statements put into his mouth by his interviewer. _He adds: " Communication with the spirits will be no surprise, hc-wever in the United States, where there exist establishments that have" been specially created for telephoning with the dead, and I am told they do very good business'" Professor Branly, professor of physics at the Catholic Institute, whom the French acclaim as the inventor of wireless telegraphy, says: "If Edison really made the statements attributed to him, all I can say is that he is deluding himself. Even if his apparatus works, it will not follow that its action is due to spirits. Certain natural forces may have this influence, as often happens in connection with wireless telegraphy."