I07
spilled
in the sunlight
is perhaps
the most beautiful
colour
that is
to be
found
in nature.
It is a notorious
fact that
it
is practically
impossible
to get
a reliable
description
of what occurs
at a spiritualistic
seafice;
the emotions
cloud
the vision.
Only in
the absolute
calm
of the
laboratory,
where
the
observer
is
perfectly
indifferent
to what
may
happen,
only
concerned
to
observe
exactly what that happening
is,
to measure and to weigh
it
by means
of
instruments
incapable
of emotion,
can
one
even
begin
to hope
for
a
truthful
record of events.
Even the common
physical
bases of emotion,
the senses of pleasure
and pain, lead the observer infallibly to err. This
though
they be not sufficiently
excited
to disturb
his mind.
Plunge
one hand
into
a
basin
of hot water, the
other into
a
basin of
cold water, then both
together into
a
basin of tepid water;
the one hand
will say hot, the other cold.
Even
in instruments
themselves,
their physical
qualities,
such
as
ex-
pansion
and
contraction
(which
may
be called,
in
a
way, the
roots
of
pleasure
and pain),
cause error.
Make
a
thermometer,
and
the glass
is
so excited
by
the
necessary
fusion
that year by year, for thirty
years afterwards
or more, the
height
of the
mercury
will
continue
to alter;
how
much
more
then with
so
plastic
a
matter
as the mind:
There
is
no emotion which
does