Chapter VI: The Experiments of Count De Gasparin (1)

One of the most important series of experiments that has been made on the subject of moving tables is that of Count Agenor de Gasparin at Valleyres, Switzerland, in September, October, November, and December of the year 1853. The Count has published formal reports of these studies in two large volumes.[51] These seances may be called purely scientific, for they were conducted with the most scrupulous care and were under the severest control. The table usually employed had a round oak top thirty-two inches in diameter, which rested on a heavy three-footed central column, the feet being about twenty-two inches apart. There were usually ten or twelve experimenters, and they formed the chain on the table by touching each other with their little fingers in such a way that the thumb of the left hand of each operator touched that of his right hand, and the little finger of the right hand touched that of the left hand of his neighbor. In the opinion of the author, this chain is useful, but not absolutely necessary. The rotation of the table usually began after a waiting of five or ten minutes. Then it lifted one foot to a height that varied from time to time, and fell back again. The levitation took place even when a very heavy man was seated on the table. Rotations and levitations were obtained without the contact of hands. But let us hear the author himself:

It is a question of positive fact that I wish to solve. The theory
will come later. To prove that the phenomenon of turning tables is
real and of a purely physical nature; that it can neither be explained
by the mechanical action of our muscles nor by the mysterious action
of spirits,--such is my thesis. It is my wish to state it with
precision and circumscribe its limits here at the very start. I
confess I find some satisfaction in meeting with unanswerable proofs
the sarcasms of people who find it easier to mock than to examine. I
am well aware that we have got to put up with that. No new truth
becomes evident without having been first ridiculed. But it is none
the less agreeable to reach the moment when things assume their
legitimate place, and when roles cease to be inverted. This moment
might have been long in coming. For a long time I feared that
table-phenomena would not admit of a definite scientific
demonstration; that, while they inspired absolute certainty in the
minds of the operators and witnesses at first hand, they would not
furnish irrefutable arguments to the public. In the presence of bare
possibilities, each person would be free to cherish his own particular
opinion; we should have had believers and sceptics. The classification
would have taken place in virtue of tendencies rather than by reason
of one's knowledge or ignorance of the facts. Some, in the agreeable
sensation of their intellectual superiority, would have carried their
head very high, and others would have abandoned themselves in despair
to the current superstitions of the day. The truth incompletely
demonstrated would have been treated as a lie, and, what is worse,
would have ended by becoming such.

But thank God! it will not be so now. Our meetings were real and
formal seances, to which the best hours of the day were given. The
results, verified with the most minute care, were embodied in formal
and official declarations. I have these _proces-verbaux_ before me
now, and it seems to me that I could not do better than to take up one
after another and extract from each the interesting observations it
may contain. I shall thus follow the method of certain historians, and
relate the truth rather than systematize it. The reader will, as it
were, follow us step by step. He will examine and check my various
assertions by comparing them; he will form his own conviction, and
will judge whether my proofs have that character of frequent
occurrence, of persistency, of progressive development which false
discoveries, based upon some fortuitous and poorly described
coincidence, never have.

These are promising premises. We shall see whether the promises will be kept. The report (or minutes) of the first meeting bears the date of September 20, 1853. Numerous seances had been held before, but it had not been thought necessary to write down the results. What those results were will be seen by the following brief account:

Only those have an invincible conviction (writes Count de Gasparin)
who have participated in seance studies frequently and directly, who
have felt under their very fingers the production of those peculiar
movements which the action of our muscles cannot imitate. They know
the limitations of their powers and where to stop. For they have seen
the table refuse to rotate at all, in spite of the impatience of the
investigators, and in spite of their clamorous appeals. Then again,
they have been present when it started to move so gently, so softly
and spontaneously started, it can be said, under fingers which hardly
touched it. They have at times seen the legs of the table (riveted by
some enchantment to the floor) refuse to budge on any terms, in spite
of the incitement and coaxing of those who composed the chain. On
other occasions they have seen the same table-legs perform levitations
that were so free and energetic that they anticipated the hands, got
the start of the orders, and executed the thoughts almost before they
were conceived, and with an energy well-nigh terrifying. They have
heard with their own ears stunning raps and gentle raps, the one
threatening to break the table, the others of such incredible fineness
and delicacy that one could scarcely catch the sounds, and none of us
could in any degree imitate them. They have remarked that the force of
the levitations is not diminished when the sitters are removed from
the side of the table that is to form the fulcrum. They have
themselves commanded the table to lift that one of its legs over
which rest the only hands that compose that portion of the chain still
remaining, and the leg has risen as often and as high as they wished.
They have observed the table in its dances when it beats the measure
with one foot or with two; when it reproduces exactly the rhythm of
the music that has just been sung; when, yielding in the most comic
way to the invitation to dance the minuet, it takes on grandmotherly
airs, sedately makes a half turn, curtsies, and then comes forward
turning the other side! The manner in which the events took place told
the experimenters more than the events themselves. They were in
contact with a reality which soon made itself understood.

The persevering experiments we had made before the 20th of September
had already given us proof of two principal things,--the levitation of
a weight that the muscular action of the operators was powerless to
move, and the reproduction of numbers by mind reading.

I shall now give the formal declarations or reports, by Count de Gasparin, or at least the essential parts of them. I shall present them here as the author has done, seance after seance. The reader will judge. He is urged to read the reports with the greatest attention. They are scientific documents of the highest value, and quite as important as the preceding ones.

_Seance of September 20_

Some one proposed the experiment which consists in causing a table to
rotate and give raps while it has on it a man weighing say a hundred
and ninety pounds. We accordingly placed such a man on the table, and
the twelve experimenters, in chain, applied their fingers to it.

The success was complete: the table turned, and rapped several
strokes. Then _it rose up entirely off the floor_ in such a way as to
upset the person who was upon it. Let me be permitted here, in
passing, to make a general remark. We had already had numerous
meetings. Our experimenters, among whom were several young ladies of
delicate physique, had worked with very unusual perseverance and
energy. Their bodily fatigue at the end of each sitting was naturally
very great. It seems as if we should therefore have expected some
nervous collapses more or less grave, to show themselves among us. If
explanations based upon involuntary acts performed in a state of
extraordinary excitement had the least foundation in fact, we should
have had trances, almost possessions, and, at any rate, nervous
attacks. Now, in spite of the exciting and noisy character of our
meetings, it did not happen, in five months time, that any one of us
experienced a single moment of indisposition or sickness of any kind.
We learned something more: when a person is in a state of nervous
tension, he or she becomes positively unfit to act upon the table. It
must be handled cheerfully, lightly, and deftly, with confidence and
authority, but without passion. This is so true that the moment I took
too much interest in things I ceased to obtain obedience. If, on
account of public discussions in which I had been engaged, I chanced
to desire success too ardently and to grow impatient over delay, I had
no longer any control over the table; it remain inert.

_Seance of September 24_

We began pretty poorly, and were almost inclined to think that the net
result of the day's experiments would be limited to the two following
observations, which have their value, to tell the truth, and which our
experience has always confirmed: First, there are days when nothing
can be done, nothing prospers, although the sitters are as numerous,
as strong, and as excited as ever,--which proves that the movements of
the table are not obtained by fraud or by the involuntary pressure of
the muscles. Second, there are persons (those among others who are
sickly or fatigued) whose presence in the chain is not only of no use,
but even detrimental. Destitute themselves of the fluidic force, they
seem, besides, to hinder its circulation and transmission. Their good
will, their faith in the table are of no avail; as long as they are
there the rotations are feeble, the levitations spiritless, the drafts
drawn on the table are not honored; that one of its feet facing them
is especially struck with paralysis. Beg them to retire, and
immediately the vitality appears again and everything succeeds as if
by magic. Indeed, it was only after we had taken this course that we
finally obtained the free and energetic movements to which we had been
accustomed. We had become quite discouraged; but when the purging of
which I have just spoken took place, lo, what a change! Nothing seems
difficult to us. Even those who (like myself) ordinarily have only
mediocre success, now think of numbers and make the table rap them out
with complete success, or with the slight imperfection (that
frequently occurs) of a tap too many, owing to the delay in giving the
mental order to stop the taps.

Seeing that everything was going according to our wish, and having
decided to try the impossible, we next undertake an experiment which
marks our entrance into a wholly new phase of the study and places our
former experimental demonstrations under the guarantee of a positively
irrefutable demonstration. We are going to leave probability behind
and dwell with evidence. We are going to make the table move _without
touching it_. And this is how we succeeded that first time:

At the moment when the table was whirling with a powerful and
irresistible rotation, at a given signal we all lifted our fingers.
Then keeping our hands united by means of the little fingers, and
continuing to form the chain at a height of say an eighth or a quarter
of an inch above the table, we continued our circular movement. _To
our great surprise the table did the same_; it made in this way three
or four turns! We could scarcely believe our good fortune; the
by-standers (witnesses) could not keep from clapping their hands. And
the way in which the rotation took place was as remarkable as the
rotation itself. Once or twice the table stopped following us because
the little accidents and interruptions of our march had withdrawn our
fingers from their regular distance from the top of the table. Once or
twice the table had come to life again--if I may so express
myself--when the turning chain had again got into the right relation
with it. We all had the feeling that each hand had carried along in
its course that portion of the table immediately beneath it.

_Seance of September 29_

We were naturally impatient to submit rotation without contact to a
new test. In the confusion of the first success we forgot to renew and
vary this decisive experiment. When we got to thinking about it
afterwards we saw that it behooved us to do the thing over again with
more care and in the presence of new witnesses; that it was, above
all, important to produce the movement and not merely to continue it,
and to produce it in the form of levitations instead of limiting it to
rotations. Such was the program of our meeting of September 29. Never
was program carried out with greater precision. As a preliminary, we
repeated our successful feat of the 24th. While the table was rotating
rapidly, the interlocked hands were lifted from it, though continuing
to turn above it and form the chain. The table followed, making now
one or two revolutions, and now a half or a quarter turn only. The
success, more or less prolonged, was certain. We confirmed it several
times. But some one might say that, the table being already in motion,
the momentum carried it along mechanically while we imagined it was
yielding to our fluidic force. The objection was absurd, and we would
have challenged anybody to obtain a single quarter of a turn without
forming the chain, however rapid might have been the rotation
imparted. Above all, would we have challenged anyone to renew its
motion when it had been for an instant suspended. However, it is well
in such cases to forestall even absurd objections, however little of
plausibility they may have. And this particular objection might seem
plausible to the inattentive man. It was imperative, then, that we
should produce rotation starting from a state of complete inertia.
This we did. The table being as motionless as we were, the chain of
hands parted from it and began to turn slowly at a height of about
three-eighths of an inch above its edge. In a moment the table made a
slight movement, and each of us striving to draw along by his will
that part situated under his own fingers, we succeeded in drawing the
disk in our train. The details that followed resembled those of the
preceding case. There is such difficulty in maintaining the chain in
the air without breaking it, in keeping it near the border of the
table without going too quick and thus destroying the harmonious
relation established, that it often happens that the rotation stops
after a turn or a half-turn. Yet it is sometimes prolonged during
three or even four revolutions. We expected to encounter still greater
obstacles when we should undertake levitation without contact. But the
matter turned out quite otherwise. This is easily explained when we
remember that in this ease there is no circular movement and it is
much easier to maintain the normal position of the hands above the
table. The chain, then, being formed at a distance of an eighth of an
inch or so above the round top of the table, we ordered one of its
legs to lift itself up, and it did so.

We were highly delighted, and repeated this pretty experiment many
times. Without touching it in any way, we ordered the whole table to
rise into the air, and to resist the witnesses, who had to put forth
effort to bring it down to the floor. We commanded it to turn bottom
side up, and it fell over with its feet in the air, although we never
touched it with our fingers, but kept them in advance of it as it
fell, at the distance agreed upon.

Such were the essential results of this meeting. They are such that I
hesitate to mention in the same connection incidents of secondary
importance.

I will only say, in passing, that the seance was very discouraging at
the start; for, not only was it found necessary to remove certain new
operators, but several of the old ones did not bring to it their usual
high spirits. The table responded poorly; raps were made faintly and
as if with reluctance; the telepathic reading of numbers did not
succeed. Then we took a resolution from which we derived much benefit:
we persevered, and persevered gaily; we sang, we made the table dance;
we gave up all thoughts of new experiments and persisted in easy and
amusing ones. After a while conditions changed; the table fairly
bounded, and hardly waited for our orders; we were now in condition to
try more serious things.

_Seance of October 7_

A long meeting, and very fatiguing. It was principally devoted to the
trial of various mechanical devices which had no success
whatever,--such as metal rings; frameworks of canvas or of paper
placed upon the table; plates on pivots and spring-keys. Whether the
sight of all this gear hindered the radiation of the fluidic force
from the operators, whether the contrivances themselves stopped its
circulation in the table, or whether, in fine, the natural conditions
of the phenomenon were disturbed in some other way, it is certain that
the results amounted to nothing or were doubtful.

One new experiment succeeded. A plate turning on a pivot held a tub. I
filled this tub with water, and two of my collaborators and I plunged
our hands into it. We formed the chain and began a circular walk,
being careful not to touch the tub. This at once imitated our
movement. We repeated the thing several times in succession.

Since it might be supposed that the impulse given to the water would
suffice to set in motion a tub resting on so delicately balanced a
plate, we at once proceeded to prove the contrary. The water was given
a circular whirl causing it to move with much greater rapidity than
when we formed the chain; but the tub moved not a peg. Undoubtedly the
point remains to be considered whether one of us three did not touch
the inside of the tub and so determine its movement. To that I reply,
first, that the way in which our hands were held in the water
obviously proves that none of our fingers could really touch bottom;
secondly, that, taking pains as we did to form the chain at the
centre, it would have been scarcely less difficult for us to touch the
vertical sides of the tub.

And yet, the doubt being not wholly inadmissible, I class this
experiment among those of which I do not purpose to make any use. I
wish to show that I am hard to please in the matter of evidence.

The proof which the rapping of numbers by mind-reading furnishes has
always seemed to be one of the most convincing. In the sitting I am
describing, it had this special feature, that each of the ten
operators in turn received the communication of a number in writing,
the others having their eyes shut. Now, in the whole ten, one alone
failed to obtain perfect obedience from the table-leg which had been
assigned to him by very suspicious witnesses, or by-standers. If my
readers will reflect carefully they will see that the combinations of
movements communicated and of cheating tricks which such a solid
result as this would require passes far beyond the bounds of
admissible things. To justify it the objector must invent a miracle
much more astounding than ours.

Let us turn again to the finest of all demonstrations, that of
levitation without contact. We began by performing it three times.
Then, since it was thought by some that the inspection of the
witnesses could be carried on in a surer way in the case of a small
table than in that of a large one, and with five operators more
certainly than with ten, we had a plain deal centre-table brought
which the chain, reduced by half, sufficed to put in rotation. Then
the hands were lifted, and, _contact with the table being entirely
broken, it rose seven times into the air at our command_.

_Seance of October 8_

Two circumstances occurred to confirm the results we had obtained in
preceding seances. Among the numbers selected for the thought-test the
roguery of one of the witnesses had placed a zero, and the leg
selected by him to respond was at the left of the operator and beyond
the reach of his muscular action. Now, the command having been given
to the leg and no action resulting, we were all feeling disconsolate,
being convinced that our weakness that day was so great that we were
not going to obtain even simple levitations. I affirm most
emphatically that if movement had ever been imparted by an
experimenter to a table leg, it would have appeared at that moment.
Our nerves were in an exalted state and our impatience was at its
height. Yet no movement of the table took place, and we were
consequently all the more solaced when we learned that the figure
communicated had been a cipher.

Movement without contact was accomplished twice.

To our experiment of a table that gave raps while having a man upon
it, it had been objected that this man might lend his aid to the
movement, and even incite it in part. Determined to seek out the truth
with the most anxious care, we had recognized a certain plausibility
in this objection, and had decided to meet it fairly. The being who
was living, intelligent, and consequently suspected must be replaced
by an inert weight. Buckets filled with sand must be placed in the
precise centre of the table, which should then be called on to exhibit
its skill.

But the day was badly chosen. After we had placed on the table two
buckets, one upon the other, both weighing in all 143 pounds, it was
discovered that we were unable to produce the levitation. It was
necessary for us to content ourselves with continuing them in circular
movement after they had been started. The buckets were removed, the
table was set in motion, and the buckets replaced while the movement
was at its height. They did not arrest it in the least, but were
carried around with such force that the sand flew out on all sides.

The remainder of the sitting was given up to an investigation of the
subject of (alleged) divination, or guessing.

When the table was asked to guess something known to one of the
members of the chain, it pretty frequently and quite naturally
happened that it guessed it. It is the case of thought-reading by
numbers,--nothing more, nothing less.

When it is asked to guess a thing known to a member of the company who
does not form at the time a part of the chain, it happens sometimes
that it guesses it. But the person in question must be endowed with
great fluidic power and be able to exercise it at a distance. We did
not ourselves obtain anything like this; but others have succeded, and
their testimony seems too well established to be called in question.

Up to the present moment, it is plain, there is not the least trace of
divination. It is fluidic action, near-by or distant.

If the tables divine, if they think, if there are spirits, we ought to
get decisive responses in the case where no one knows the facts,
either in the chain or out of the chain. The problem thus stated, the
solution is not difficult.

Take a book. Do not open it, but invite the table to read the first
line of the page you will designate,--say page 162 or page 354. The
table will not flinch: it will rap, and will compose words for you. It
was thus, at least, that it always acted with us. At any rate, one
thing is certain, that neither here nor elsewhere, has any spirit,
however cunning, read, this simple line; nor will it be able in the
future to do so. I recommend the experiment to the partisans of spirit
evocations.

As to the test of pieces of money in a purse, hours, playing-cards
etc., the tables betake themselves to a strict calculation of
probabilities; they guess just as much as you do, or as I do. Inasmuch
as it is a question of small numbers of which one can form in advance
an approximate idea, the range of possible combinations is not very
extensive. The mind fixes upon a number which has a fairly good chance
of being the true one, and the proportion between the failures of the
table and its successes is in such a case just what it would be apart
from all question of miraculous divination.

_Seance of November 9_

Before entering upon the description of this sitting,--a very
remarkable one,--I will say that neither the thermometer nor the
mariners' compass have furnished the slightest indication of anything
interesting. I thought I ought to note this, in passing, to show to
the reader that we did not neglect to employ instruments which seemed
likely to put us in the way of obtaining a scientific explanation. In
general, I pass by that phase of our work, as well as the different
trials which remained merely trials, and did not lead to any positive
results.

Our first care was to renew the experiment of the levitation of an
inert weight. It was agreed among us this time that we would always
start from the state of absolute immobility in the object: we wanted
to produce movement, not to continue it.

The centre of the table, then, having been fixed with nice precision,
a first tub of sand, weighing 46 pounds, was placed upon it. _The legs
easily rose from the floor when they got the order._

A second tub, weighing 42 pounds, was next placed in the middle of the
other. _They were both lifted_--less easily, but very neatly and
clearly.

Then a third tub, smaller, and weighing 28-3/5 pounds, was placed on
top of the two others. The levitations took place.

We had still further got ready enormous stones weighing altogether
48-1/2 pounds. They were placed on the third tub. After rather long
hesitation, _the table lifted several times in succession each of its
three legs_. It lifted them with a force, a decision, an elan, which
surprised us. But its strength, already put to so many proofs, could
not resist this last one. Bending under the powerful swaying motion
imparted by the total mass of 165 pounds, _it suddenly broke down_,
and its massive centre-post was split from top to bottom--to the great
peril of the operators on the side of whom the entire load rolled off.

I shall not stop to comment on such an experiment. It answers all
demands. Our united muscular force would not have sufficed to
determine the movements that took place. A mass of inert matter free
from the suspicion of being obliging, had replaced the person whose
complicity was held in suspicion. Finally, when the three legs had
been lifted, each in turn, critics no longer had as a resource the
insinuation that we had caused the weight to be laid more on one side
than on the other.

Inasmuch as our poor table had been wounded on the field of honor and
could not be repaired on the spot, we got a new one which much
resembled it. But it was a little larger and a little lighter.

The interesting point was to be settled whether we were going to be
obliged to wait for it to be charged with the psycho-physical fluid.
The occasion was a famous one for solving this important problem:
Where does the fluid reside?--in the operators or in the piece of
furniture. The solution was as prompt as it was decisive. Scarcely had
our hands, in chains, been placed upon this second table than it began
to revolve with the most unexpected and the most comic rapidity!
Evidently, the fluid was in us, and we were free to apply it in
succession to different tables.

We lost no time. In the mood in which we then were, movement without
contact must succeed better than ever. Nor did we deceive ourselves in
so thinking. We first developed rotations without contact to the
number of five or six.

As to levitations without contact, we discovered a method of
proceeding that renders their success easier. The chain, formed a few
millimetres above the top disk, is arranged so as to go in the
direction in which the movement is to take place; the hands the
nearest to the leg called on to rise are outside of and beyond the
top; they draw near and pass gradually by, while the hands that are
opposite, and which had at first advanced toward the same leg, move
away from it while they attract it. It is during this progression of
the chain, while all our wills are fixed upon a particular spot on the
wood, and when the orders to levitate are forcibly given, that the
foot quits the ground and the table-top follows the hands,--to the
point of upsetting, if one did not keep hold of it.

This levitation without contact was produced about thirty times. We
produced it by each of the three legs in succession, in order to
remove every pretext for criticism. Moreover, we watched the hands
with scrupulous care. If the reader will please observe that this
surveillance was exercised during thirty operations without detecting
the slightest contact, I think it will be concluded that the reality
is henceforth placed beyond all doubt.

_Seance of November 21_

The chief characteristic of this seance was the absence of that one of
our number who exercised the greatest authority at the table.[52] In
working without her we were put in a position to establish two things:
first, that one cannot with impunity do without an extraordinary
gifted experimenter; and, second, that one can, nevertheless, do
without him or her, if it is absolutely necessary, and that success,
although less brilliant in this case, is not impossible. I call
special attention to this last point, as well as to the frequent
modifications of our personnel, for the benefit of suspicious persons
who, not knowing the mental worth of the persons in question, might be
disposed to place to the account of their dexterity the results to
which they essentially contribute. The psycho-physical working power
of a "sensitive" table-turner is of a mixed nature: a resolute posture
and a circular movement are not sufficient to give birth to it.
Besides this, and above all, there is needed _the will_.

Our will having at last asserted itself, and muscular pressure having
yielded its place to the pressure of commands, the fluidic rotation
arrives, after five or six minutes of concentration of our thoughts.
We felt, indeed, keenly that some important person was lacking and
that we did not possess our usual power. However, we were determined
to succeed, even at the price of greater mental fatigue.

So we took up boldly our most difficult feat; namely, movements
without contact. Rotations without touch were obtained thrice. I
should add that they were very incomplete,--a quarter of a turn, or a
half-turn at most.

As to levitations without touch our success was more decisive; but it
was purchased at the price of a very considerable expenditure of
force. After each levitation we had to rest, and, when we had reached
No. 9 we were absolutely obliged to stop, overcome with fatigue. One
must have had personal knowledge of such experiments to understand
what drafts they make upon one's attention and energy, and at what
point it is indispensible to will, and to will peremptorily, that such
and such a knot of wood in the table shall follow the opened fingers
that are alluring it at a distance.

But be that as it may, our attempt was crowned with success, and we
could end the sitting with less exhausting exercises.

The idea came to us then and there to try our powers on a large table
with four legs. It had often been claimed that three-legged
centre-tables alone would respond to our manipulations. It was time to
furnish undeniable proof to the contrary. So we took a table three
feet five inches in diameter, a folding half of which (independent of
the leg that supports it when it is raised) can be turned up at will.

Scarcely were our fingers in place than the table began a rotation
with noisy bustle, the sprightliness of which surprised us. It thus
showed that tables with four legs were no more refractory than others.
In addition to this, it furnished a new argument in favor of one of
our former observations,--that the fluid is in the persons and not in
the tables. In fact the movement of the large table took place almost
immediately, and before it could be considered as charged with fluid.

The next task before us was to make it give raps with its different
legs. We began with those fastened to one half of the top, three in
number. They rose from the floor two at a time with such force that at
the end of a moment one of the casters flew to pieces.[53] Now it is
difficult to form an idea of the intensity which a fraudulent action
of the fingers must have acquired in order to exercise a leverage upon
so heavy a table, and launch it into the air to such a height.

There remained the leg of the table which was independent of the top.
We thought it would obey as well as the others. But no! In vain did we
pour out the most prodigal and pressing invitations: it was never
willing to rise, either along with its right-hand neighbor or with its
neighbor on the left. Our next thought was that this was due to the
persons placed near it, and certain members of the chain changed
seats. In vain! All combinations failed one after another.

We drew great deductions from this circumstance. But since it was
refuted later, when the contumacious leg yielded perfect obedience at
another meeting, I will not take the public into our confidence by a
display of our reasonings on the subject. I will only ask that two
things be noted; first, the care we took to verify many times the
phenomena before affirming them; and, second, that we have here once
more a fine refutation of the critics who assert that muscular action
can explain everything. If this were so, why did not muscular action
lift the free leg as well as those fastened tight to the table? It
could have done so just as easily; and yet for some _unknown reason_,
but one evidently _foreign to the laws of mechanics_, only the
attached legs consented to move.

_Seance of November 27_

We were in full muster; but two or three of the operators were
slightly indisposed. On the whole, whatever was the cause, the
occasion was scarcely remarkable for anything except the almost total
absence of fluidic power. For a single moment we had a little of it. A
half-hour of action and two hours and a half of inertia--this was our
net result.

Nothing was more lamentable, and at the same time more curious, than
to see us about the different tables, passing from one to another,
enjoining them to do the most elementary things, and only obtaining a
weak and languid rotation, which soon stopped altogether.

_Seance of December 2_

I should have been vexed to have to close my recital with so dull and
spiritless a record as the preceding one. By good fortune the last of
our reports gives me the right to leave a totally different impression
on the reader's mind.

We were in fine temper. Perhaps the beautiful weather helped. It is
not the first time I have noticed this. What is certain is that the
very same persons who, on November 27, had only a half-hour of success
and had passed the rest of the sitting in beseeching in vain for
anything better than poor abortive rotations or faint raps, to-day
governed the table with an authority, a quickness, and, if I may so
put it, an elasticity of bearing that left nothing to be desired.

The large table with four legs was set in motion. And this time, the
ease with which the free leg lifted its share of the table proved that
we were right in not drawing too definite conclusions from its former
refusal. Every time that we tried to lift without contact that part of
the table the farthest removed from myself I felt the table-leg
nearest me gradually approach and press against my leg. Struck with
this occurrence, which took place several times I drew the conclusion
that the table _was gliding forward_, not having enough force to rise.
We were, then, exercising a perceptible influence on this large table
without touching it in any way.

In order the better to assure myself of it, I left the chain and
observed the movement of the feet of the table on the floor. It ranged
from fractions of an inch to several inches. When we then tried to
turn up without contact the folding leaf of a gaming-table covered
with cloth, we obtained the same result: the folding leaf would not
yield to our influence, but the entire table advanced in the direction
of the prescribed movement. Now, I ought to add that the gliding was
not at all easy, for the floor of our room was rough and uneven.

It is interesting to note in this connection the moment when this
gliding movement ordinarily begins. It occurs at precisely the same
time that the levitation without contact takes place when that
manifestation is in process. When the portion of the chain which is
pushing on has just advanced beyond the side of the table-top, where
it begins to turn, and when that portion of the chain that is pulling
has just crossed the middle point in its recession, then the
ascensional movement--or, in default of that, the _gliding
motion_--manifests itself. Our fluidic power is then at its maximum,
precisely at the instant when our mechanical power is at its minimum,
when the hands that are pushing have ceased to act (supposing the case
of fraud) and when the hands that pull are powerless to act.

Let us now revert to our ordinary table. We tried to produce rotations
and levitations without contact, and had complete success.

Such reports as the foregoing are of more value than all the dissertations. They show the undeniable reality of the levitation not total, but partial,--of the table which remained in an oblique position poised on two legs only. They show also rotations and levitations _without contact_, as well as glidings under the influence of a natural force hitherto only slightly studied.

_Levitations of a heavy table, having on it a man weighing 191 pounds, or of tubs of sand and stones weighing 165 pounds_,--no denial of these occurrences can be admitted.

The same is true of the movements of the table dancing in accordance with the rhythm of certain airs, of its over-turnings, of its obedience to the orders given. These facts have been observed precisely as mechanical, physical, chemical, meteorological, astronomical facts have been observed.

To the above reports I will add here a supplementary experiment described in the preface of Count de Gasparin's book:

Certain distinguished savants to whom I had communicated the results
we had secured, agreed in assuring me that levitations without contact
would have the character of absolute certain proof if we succeeded in
verifying them by the following practical device: "Sprinkle flour upon
the table," they said, "at the instant your hands have just left it;
then produce one or more levitations; finally assure yourselves that
the layer of flour bears not the slightest sign of any touch, and all
objectors will be dumb."

Why, it is precisely this experiment that we have performed
successfully several times. Let me give a few details:

Our first trial had succeeded very badly. We used a coarse sieve which
we had to move to and fro over the entire table. This produced the
double inconvenience; first, of suspending too long, and so of
nullifying the action of the operators; and, secondly, of spreading a
layer of flour much too thick. The buoyant spring and impulse of the
wills of the operators was abated, the fluidic action was thwarted,
the table-top got chilled down, so to speak; nothing moved. The
mischief went so far that the table not only refused us levitations
and rotations without contact, but almost all the ordinary ones.

Then a brilliant idea came to one of us. We possessed one of those
bellows used in blowing sulphur upon vines attacked by the
grape-mildew. In place of sulphur we put flour into it, and, so
prepared, began the test.

The conditions were most favorable. The weather was dry and warm, the
table went leaping under our fingers, and, indeed, before the order to
lift hands had been given, the greater part of the band of us had
spontaneously ceased to touch the table-top. Then the command rings
out; the whole chain lifts up from the table, and at the same instant
the bellows covers its entire surface with a light dusting of flour.
Not a second had been lost; the levitation without contact had
already taken place. But to leave no doubt, the thing was repeated
three or four times in succession.

That done, the table was scrupulously examined; _no finger had touched
it, or even grazed it in the slightest degree_.

The fear of grazing it involuntarily had even been so great that the
hands had acted fluidically from a height much greater than in
previous sittings. Each one had thought he could not raise his hands
too high, and the hands removed to such a distance from the top, had
not had recourse to any of the manoeuvres or passes of which we had at
other times made use. Keeping its place, above the table to be lifted,
the chain had preserved its form intact; it had made hardly a
perceptible motion in the direction of the movement it was producing
at a distance from the table.

I will add, finally that we did not content ourselves with a single
experience. A careful inspection following each of several
levitations, always showed that the dust-like layer of flour was
absolutely untouched; and no portion of the table had escaped its
tell-tale coat of white.

The author of these reports himself estimates as follows the results he has recorded:

The phenomena observed confirm and elucidate each other. Large
four-legged tables compete with three-legged ones. Inert weights,
placed on these, come forward as substitutes for persons suspected of
giving a helping hand to the table charged with the task of lifting
them. At last the great discovery arrives in its turn: we begin by
continuing without contact movements already initiated, and we end by
producing them; we succeed almost in creating the process, to such an
extent that these extraordinary facts manifest themselves sometimes in
an uninterrupted series of fifteen or thirty performances. The
glidings round out the subject by throwing light on one phase of
action at a distance: they reveal it as powerless (at times) to lift
the table, but able to draw it along over the floor.

Such is the rapidly sketched account of our progress. Taken just by
itself alone, it constitutes a solid proof and I recommend a study of
it to serious men. It is not thus that error proceeds. Illusions
originating in accident, or chance, do not thus resist a long study,
and do not pass unmasked through a long series of experiments that
justify them more and more.

The reading of numbers in others' minds, and the balance of forces,
merit special consideration.

When all the operators but one are ignorant of the number to be
materialized by raps, the operation (unless it is fluidic) ought to
proceed either from the person who knows the number and furnishes at
once the movement and the arrest, or else it ought to proceed from a
relation instinctively established between that person who furnishes
the arrest and his vis-a-vis who furnishes the movement. Let us
examine both hypotheses.

The first is untenable; for, in the case where some one chooses a leg
of the table upon which the operator who knows the number can exercise
no muscular action, the leg thus designated none the less rises at his
command.

The second is untenable; for, in the case where some one indicates a
zero, the movement which ought to take place does not do so. Nay more.
If you place at loggerheads two persons placed on opposite sides of
the table and enjoin each to make a different number triumph, the more
powerful operator secures the execution of the chief number although
his vis-a-vis is interested not only in not furnishing it to him, but
in arresting it.

I know that this matter of the divining of numbers thought of is in
bad odor. It lacks a certain pedantic and scientific form. Yet I have
not hesitated to insist on it; for there are few experiments in which
is better manifested the _mixed character_ of the
phenomenon,--physical power developed and applied outside of ourselves
by the effect of our will. Just because it forms the great offense, or
stumbling block, I am unwilling to be shame-faced about it. I
maintain, besides that this is just as scientific as anything else.
True science is not tied to the employment of such and such a process
or such and such an instrument. That which a fluidometer would show
would be no less scientifically demonstrated than what is seen with
the eyes and estimated by the reason.

Let us go on, however. We have not yet reached the end of our proofs.
One of these has always especially struck me: I mean the proof derived
from failures.

It is claimed that the movements are produced by the action of our
muscles, by involuntary pressure. Now here are the same operators who
yesterday secured from the table the fulfilment of their most
capricious desires; their muscles are as strong, their vivacity is as
great, their desire to succeed is perhaps keener--and yet nothing!
absolutely nothing! A whole hour will pass without the least rotation
beginning; or, if there are rotations, levitations are impossible to
procure; what little is done by the table is done feebly, dismally,
and as if reluctantly. I repeat it again, the muscles have not
changed; then why this sudden incapacity? The cause remaining
identically the same, whence comes it that the effect varies to such a
degree?

"Ah!" says an objector, "you are talking of involuntary pressure, and
say nothing about voluntary pressure, of fraud, in short. Don't you
see that the cheaters may be present at one sitting and not appear at
another, that they may act one day and not give themselves the trouble
on the next?"

I will reply very simply, and by facts.

"The cheaters are absent when we do not succeed!" But it has happened
many a time that our personnel has not been changed in any way. The
same persons, absolutely the same, have passed from a state of
remarkable power to a state of comparative impotence. And that is not
all. If there exists no operator whose presence has preserved us from
failures, no more does any exist whose absence has rendered us
incapable of success. With and without each one of the members of the
chain we have succeeded in performing all the experiments,--all
without exception.

But 'the cheaters do not take so much pains every day!' The pains
would be great indeed, and those who infer fraud little think what
prodigies they are invoking. The accusation is an absurdity which
verges on silliness, and its silliness removes its sting. One does not
take offense at things like that. But come now, let us suppose for the
moment that Valleyres were peopled with disciples of Bosco, that
prestidigitation were generally practised there, and that it had been
thrust under our very eyes for five months, and under the eyes of
numerous and very suspicious witnesses without a single case of
perfidy having been pointed out. We have so well concealed our game
that we have invented a secret telegraphic code for the experiment of
reading numbers, a particular turn of the finger for moving the most
enormous masses, a method of gradually lifting tables that we do not
seem to touch. We are all liars, all; for we have been mutually
watching each other for a long time now, and do not denounce anybody.
Nay, more, the contagion of our vices is so swift to take that, as
soon as we admit a stranger, a hostile witness, into the chain, he
becomes our accomplice; he voluntarily closes his eyes to the
transmission of signals, to muscular efforts, to the repeated and
prolonged suspicious actions of his next neighbors in the chain! Well
and good; suppose we grant all that, we shall not have got farther
along for that. It will still remain to be explained why our cheaters
sometimes do nothing at the very moment when it would be to their
interest to succeed. It has happened, indeed, that a certain sitting
at which we had many witnesses and a great desire to convince turned
out to be a mediocre one. Such and such another, under the same
conditions, was, on the contrary, a brilliant success.

There you have real and important inequalities, and they dare to talk
to us of muscular action and of fraud.

Fraud and muscular action! Here for instance is a fine opportunity to
put them to the proof. We have just placed a weight on the table. This
weight is inert and cannot be accessory to any device. Fraud is all
around it perhaps, but it is not in the tubs of sand. This weight is
equally divided among the three legs of the table, and they are going
to prove it by each one rising in turn. The total load weighs 165
pounds, and we scarcely dare to increase it, for, as it is, it was
enough, one day, to break our very solid table. Very well; now let
someone try to move this weight. Since muscular action and fraud must
explain everything, it will be easy for them to put the mass in
motion. Now they cannot do it. Their fingers contract and the knuckles
whiten without their obtaining a single levitation, whereas, some
moments later, levitations will take place at the touch of the same
fingers, which gently graze the table's top and make no effort at all,
as any one may easily convince himself.

Certain very ingenious scientific rules of measurement, for the
invention of which I cannot claim the credit, put us in the way of
translating into figures the effort which the rotation or levitation
of the table demands, when loaded in the way just described. With the
above-mentioned weight of 165 pounds, rotation is secured by means of
a lateral traction of about 17-1/2 pounds, while levitation is only
obtained by a perpendicular pressure of 132 pounds at least (which I
will reduce, however, to 110, in deference to the presumed wishes of
the critic, and on the supposition that the pressure might not be
absolutely vertical). Several deductions are to be drawn from these
figures.

In the first place, muscular action may cause the table to turn, but
it cannot lift it. As a matter of fact, the ten operators have one
hundred fingers applied to its surface. Now, the vertical, or
quasi-vertical, pressure of each finger cannot exceed twelve ounces on
the average, the chain being composed as it is. They only develop,
then, a total pressure of 66 pounds, which is quite insufficient to
produce levitation.

In the next place, this striking thing befalls, that the phenomenon
which muscular action could easily produce is precisely the one that
we most rarely and with the greatest difficulty obtain, and that the
phenomenon which muscular action could not compass is the one the most
habitually realized when the chain is formed. Why does not our
involuntary impulse always make the table turn? Why should not our
"fraud" always procure such a triumph? Why, as a general thing, do we
only succeed in effecting that which is mechanically impossible?

I advise people who like to make fun of table-turnings not to
investigate them too closely, and to beware of giving too careful
attention to our supreme demonstration,--that of movements without
contact, for it will leave them not the slightest pretext for
incredulity.