The late Mr. Henry Seybert during his lifetime was known as an enthusiastic believer in Modern Spiritualism, and shortly before his death presented to The University of Pennsylvania a sum of money sufficient to found a chair of Philosophy, and to the gift added a condition that the University should appoint a Commission to investigate 'all systems of Morals, Religion, or Philosophy which assume to represent the Truth, and particularly of Modern Spiritualism.'
A Commission was accordingly appointed, composed as follows: Dr. William Pepper, Dr. Joseph Leidy, Dr. George A. Koenig, Professor Robert Ellis Thompson, Professor George S. Fullerton and Dr. Horace Howard Furness; to whom were afterwards added Mr. Coleman Sellers, Dr. James W. White, Dr. Calvin B. Knerr and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Of this Commission Dr. Pepper, as Provost of The University, was, _ex-officio_, Chairman, Dr. Furness, Acting Chairman, and Professor Fullerton, Secretary.
As a befitting preliminary, at one of our earliest meetings each member in turn expressed his entire freedom from all prejudices against the subject to be investigated, and his readiness to accept any conclusion warranted by facts; one of our number, the Acting Chairman, so far from being unprejudiced confessed to a leaning in favor of the substantial truth of Spiritualism.
We deemed ourselves fortunate at the outset in having as a counselor the late Mr. Thos. R. Hazard, a personal friend of Mr. Seybert, and widely known throughout the land as an uncompromising Spiritualist.
By the advice of Mr. Hazard we addressed ourselves first to the investigation of Independent Slate Writing, and through his aid a séance for this purpose was arranged with a noted Medium, Mrs. S.E. Patterson.
This mode of manifesting Spiritualistic power, as far as it has come under our observation, is, concisely stated, the writing on the concealed surface of a slate which is in contact with a Medium. In the present instance, between two slates fastened together by a hinge on one side and a screw on the other, there was placed a small fragment of slate pencil; when this fragment is bitten off by the Medium, it receives, so Mr. Hazard assured us, additional Spiritualistic power. As soon as a Spirit has finished writing its communication with the pencil on the inner surface of the slates, the completion of the task is made known by the appearance of the slate pencil on the outside, upon the slates. The slates are always held in concealment under the table, and never has this remarkable passage of the pencil through the solid substance of the slate been witnessed by any one, not even by the Medium herself, in all the years during which this wonderful phenomenon has been a matter of daily, almost hourly, experience.