As far as regards unconscious movements, M. Babinet adds nothing to previous explanations—nothing but the story of that lord (an English lord, he says) whose horse was so admirably trained that it seemed as if it were only necessary for one to think the movement one wished to have him execute, and he instantly realized it. I am thoroughly convinced, as is M. Babinet, that the aforesaid lord gave an impulse to the bridle without suspecting it, and I am just as thoroughly convinced that the experimenters whose hands are touching a table may exert a pressure of which they are not conscious. Only—I think there should be some proportion between the cause and the effect. Suppose the movements are unconscious: they are none the less vigorous for all that. The burden is upon M. Babinet and his followers, to prove that the very same fingers that in vain clench themselves till they are stiff in the endeavor to lift a weight of eighty-eight pounds, will lift double this weight by simply being unconscious that they are making any effort.
My honorable and learned opponent will not hear of movements obtained without contact. "Everything that has been said about action exercised at a distance ought to be banished to the realm of fiction." The judgment is curt and summary. Movements without contact are a fiction,—first because they are impossible; secondly because powdered soapstone has hindered the rotation of a table; and, finally, because perpetual movement is impossible.
Movements at a distance are impossible! To be strictly logical, M. Babinet ought to have stopped there, remembering the reply made by Henry IV to the magistrates who had thus begun an address to him:
"We did not give a salute of cannon on the approach of Your Majesty, and that for three good reasons. In the first place, because we had no cannon—"
"That reason is sufficient," said the king.
We are fain to believe that M. Babinet himself has little doubt about his "impossibility." He has acted wisely in doing so; for this impossibility is based entirely on a vicious circle of reasoning. "Is there a single known example of movement produced without a force acting from the outside? No. Well, movement at a distance would very plainly take place by an active external force. Therefore movement at a distance is impossible." I feel very much disposed to say to M. Babinet, in the technical language of the schools, that his major premise is true and that his conclusion would be legitimate if his minor were not purely and simply a begging of the question. You claim that there is no active force exterior to the table which lifts it without the touch of the hands. But that is precisely the point at issue between us. A fluid is an external active force. It is handy for my critic, indeed, to begin by establishing this axiom. Now (he says), there is no fluid, or analogous physical agent, in the case of the tables; therefore there is no effect produced.
The learned gentlemen, Faraday, Babinet, and others, do not limit themselves to objections derived from nascent or unconscious movements, small causes producing great effects. They have still another method of proceeding. If an experiment has succeeded it has no longer any value. Oh, if one could succeed in performing such another experiment, well and good! But this would not hinder the new experiment from becoming insignificant in its turn and giving place to a new desideratum. The phrasing runs somewhat in this way:
"You are doing such and such a thing. Very well; but now let us see you do a different thing. You are employing such or such a method; be pleased to be contented with those which we prescribe you. To succeed in your way is not enough; you must succeed in ours. Your way is not scientific; it runs contrary to the traditions. We shut the door in the face of facts if they do not come in the regulation claw-hammer coat of full dress. We shall pay no attention to your experiments if our experimental apparatus does not figure in them."
Strange way of verifying and establishing the results of experiments! You begin by changing the conditions under which they are produced. You might as well say to the man who has seen the harvesting of barley in Upper Egypt in January, "I will believe it when I see it done before my eyes in Bourgogne." One can understand, of course, how an unreasonable and troublesome fastidiousness might be shown regarding travellers' tales. But scientific experiments are of another character. In the presence of facts so evident, it is almost incredible that they wish to impose upon us instruments, needles, and mechanical devices. The idea of introducing becauses and therefores into an investigation in which the real nature of the acting force is a mystery to all the world!
Polemical essays are not scientific studies. In general, they are the direct opposite. When persons who have seen nothing, who have not devoted any considerable portion of their energy and time to experimentation, who have perhaps been present only at some ridiculous rotations of centre-tables, take their pen in hand for the purpose of exposing theories or giving lofty reprimands to experimenters, I do not look at them in the light of scientific students.