Observations placeholder

And lastly, we require about twelve to sixteen earnest and really sympathetic men and women — persons trained on scientific lines for choice — all in the best of health : men and women who, whilst strictly on their guard against anything in the shape of fraud, are still so much in sympathy with the person who is acting as the Sensitive that they are all the time sending out kindly thoughts towards him ; for if, as has been said, " thoughts are things,'' it is possible that hostile thoughts would be sufficient not only to enfeeble, but actually to check demonstrations of physical phenomena of all kinds in the presence of such specially organised, highly developed individuals as the Sensitives through whom materialisations can be produced.

I shall refer to these men and women as The Sitters.

We generally select an equal number so far as sex is concerned; and, in addition, we endeavour to obtain an equal number of persons possessing either positive or negative temperaments. In this way we form the Sitters into a powerful human battery, the combined force given off by them (if the battery is properly arranged, and the individual members of that battery are in good health) proving of enormous assistance during our experiments. If in ill-health, we find that a man or woman is useless to us : for we can no more expect to obtain the necessary power from such an individual, than we can expect to produce an electric spark from a discharged accumulator, or pick up needles with a demagnetised piece .of steel.