idea’ was incredulity attested many singular occurrences.  At the end of his article, Dr. Carpenter decides that table-turners push unconsciously, as they assuredly do, but they cannot push when not in contact with the object.  The doctor did not allege that table-turners are ‘biologised’ as he calls it, and under a glamour.  But M. de Gasparin averred that no single example of trance, rigidity, loss of ordinary consciousness, or other morbid symptoms, had ever occurred in his experiments.  There is thus, as it were, no common ground on which he and Dr. Carpenter can meet and fight.  He dissected the doctor’s rather inconsequent argument with a good deal of acuteness and wit.

M. de Gasparin then exhibited some of the besetting sins of all who indulge in argument.  He accepted all his own private phenomena, but none of those, such as ‘raps’ and so forth, for which other people were vouching.  Things must occur as he had seen them, and not otherwise.  What he had seen was a chaine of people surrounding a table, all in contact with the table, and with each other.  The table had moved, and had answered questions by knocking the floor with its foot.  It had also moved, when the hands were held close to it, but not in contact with it.  Nothing beyond that was orthodox, as nothing beyond hypnotism and unconscious cerebration was orthodox with Dr. Carpenter.  Moreover M. de Gasparin had his own physical explanation of the phenomena.  There is, in man’s constitution, a ‘fluid’ which can be concentrated by his will, and which then, given a table and a chaine, will produce M. de Gasparin’s phenomena:  but no more.  He knows that ‘fluids’ are going out of fashion in science, and he is ready to call the ‘fluid’ the ‘force’ or ‘agency,’ or ‘condition of matter’ or what you please.  ’Substances, forces, vibrations, let it be what you choose, as long as it is something.’  The objection that the phenomena are ‘of no use’ was made, and is still very common, but, of course, is in no case scientifically valid.  Electricity was ‘of no use’ once, and the most useless phenomenon is none the less worthy of examination.

M. de Gasparin now examines another class of objections.  First, the phenomena were denied; next, they were said to be as old as history, and familiar to the Greeks.  We elsewhere show that this is quite true, that the movement of objects without contact was as familiar to the Greeks as to the Peruvians, the Thibetans, the Eskimo, and in modern stories of haunted houses.  But, as will presently appear, these wilder facts would by no means coalesce with the hypothesis of M. de Gasparin.  To his mind, tables turn, but they turn by virtue of the will of a ‘circle,’ consciously exerted, through the means of some physical force, fluid, or what not, produced by the imposition of hands.  Now these processes do not characterise the phenomena among Greeks, Thibetans, Eskimo, Peruvians, in haunted houses, or in presence of the late Mr. Home,—­granting the facts as alleged.  In these instances, nobody is ‘circling’ round a chair, a bed, or what not, yet the chair or bed moves, as in the story of Monsieur S. at St. Maur (1706), and in countless other examples.  All this would not, as we shall see, be convenient for the theory of M. de Gasparin.