Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (409 page)

great and noble scholar William Crookes, who only recently said: 'I take nothing of what I have said back.' Criticism must be exercised, that is a condition of science. In due course the truth will come to light in all its beauty, but it will not be brought to light by incompetents and ignoramuses, who have seen nothing, checked nothing, examined nothing, indeed have not even read the record carefully, but rather by the scholars who have really worked and experimented without cease, who prefer truth to probability .... It is surely not our fault if the metaphysical field offers so many improbabilities and contradictions. ...

To the extent that the documentation of Eva C's case is available, it can be objectively stated that the theory of cheating is not tenable, that Eva C complied with the requirements of the scientific boards, that well over a hundred people observed and confirmed the materializations. One of Dr. Schenck-Notzing's arguments seems convincing to me. Why should Eva C have exposed herself to the gruesome tests described without getting any material benefits from them? There are large numbers of cases of materialization for which validity is claimed, but Eva C's case has kept its special position to the present day, because none of the others was so painstakingly recorded and documented. For that reason it constantly reappears as an example in the scientific literature of parapsychology.

There remains the final comment on Eva C's case by Professor Mikuska, University of Genoa: So it is reserved for an occult biology of the future to research into the mystery of life, the connection between spirit and matter, soul and body, the living and the lifeless. Already today we are shown that the spirit, the idea, the will is the driving agent behind teleplastic manifestations and we hope that in the not too distant future it will bring us closer to the great mystery of how the universe in its totality, and cosmic processes in the infinity of their development and perfection, originate through creative acts of will by the universal spirit.

Materializations of the kind so common with Eva C have nothing to do with spiritualism (*) and very little to do with the occult, (+) for the phenomenal apparitions were visible, tangible and could be photographed. What happened and was checked in the case described is certainly not a unique case. I do not doubt the documentary reports of Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing and his fellow-scientists. Instead I ask a question which was not yet topical at that time: what form of energy was involved?