I saw these instruments. The smaller, on the ground floor, is a rectangular horizontal piano. According to my calculations, a force of about 165 pounds applied to the edge of the case, beneath the key-board, is necessary to lift this piano as it was lifted by the unknown force. The instrument in the first story of the house is a heavy Erard piano, weighing, with the packing-box in which it was sent, 812 pounds, as stated in the way-bill, which I myself saw. According to my approximate calculations a pressure of 440 pounds is required to lift this piano, under the same conditions as the first was lifted.
I do not think that anyone will be tempted to attribute to the direct muscular effort of a child eleven years old the lifting up a weight of 440 pounds.[57] A lady who had attributed the effect produced to the action of the knees passed her own hand between the edge of the piano and the knees of the child, and was thus able to convince herself that her explanation had no foundation in fact. Even when the child got upon his knees upon the piano-stool to play, he did not find that the perturbations he dreaded ceased any the more.
These authenticated facts of Professor Thury are at once precise and formidable. What! two pianos rise from the floor and jump about! What do the physicists, the chemists, the learned pedants in office need, then, to arouse them from their torpor and make them shake their ears and open their eyes? What shall be done to remove their noble and pharisaical indolence?
But, happen what may, no one is occupying himself with the fascinating problem as stated, except scattered investigators who are freed from the fear of ridicule and are aware of the exact value of the human race, in large and small, and the worth of its judgments.
M. Thury next discusses the explanation based on "the will."
Did this boy (he says) will what took place, as the theory of M. de Gasparin would require us to admit? According to the boy's testimony, which we believe to be wholly true, he did not will it; he seemed to be visibly annoyed by what occurred; it disturbed his custom of industriously practicing his lesson and offended his taste for regularity and order, a thing well known to his intimates. My personal conviction is that we positively cannot admit, in the case of this lad, a conscious will, a settled design, to produce these strange occurrences. But it is known that sometimes we have a double personality, and one of them converses with the other (as in dreams); that our nature then unconsciously desires what it does not will, and that between will and desire there is only a difference in degree rather than in kind. It would be necessary to have recourse to explanations of this kind,—too subtle, perhaps,—in order to square these piano-facts with the theory of M. Gasparin; and it would still be necessary to modify and enlarge the facts if you admit that even unconscious desire suffices, in the absence of the expressed will. There is, then, reason for doubt on this essential point. That is the sole deduction that I wish to draw from the events I have related.
This levitation, equivalent to an effort exerted of 440 pounds, has its scientific value. But how could the will, conscious or unconscious, lift a piece of furniture of that weight? By an unknown force which we are obliged to recognize.
Preliminary Action.—Power is developed by action. The rotations prepare for the tippings and the levitations. The rotations and the tippings, with contact, seem to develop the force necessary to produce the rotations and tippings without contact. In their turn, the rotations and the tippings without contact prepare for the production of true levitations, such as those of the swinging table; and the persons who have this latent force awaked in them are better fitted to appeal to it a second time.
There is, then, a gradual preparation required, at least for the majority of operators. Does this preparation consist in a modification that takes place in the operator, or in the inert body on which he acts, or in both? In order to resolve this problem, experimenters who had been practicing at one table went over to another, operating on which they found their full power unabated. The preparation therefore consists in a modification that takes place in the individuals, and not in the inert body.[58] This modification occurring in individuals is dissipated rather rapidly, especially when the chain of experimenters is broken.
Inner Development of the Operators.—It is only after a certain period of waiting that the operators, who have not so far acted, cause even the easiest movement,—that of rotation with contact. It is during this time that the force, or the conditions determining the manifestation of the force, develop themselves. From that time on, the developed force has nothing to do but to increase. That which takes place, therefore, in this time of waiting, is a very important thing to be considered. We already know that it is the operators themselves who are modified. But what is it that takes place within them?