14. Raps and typtology.
In tables, in pianos, and other pieces of furniture, in the walls, in the air, raps are heard, and their vibrations perceived by the touch. They somewhat resemble the sounds obtainable by tapping against a piece of wood with the joint of the bent finger. The question arises, Whence come these noises? The question is asked aloud. They are repeated. The request is made that a certain number of strokes be rapped. The raps are heard. Well-known airs are accompanied by raps beaten in perfect time with them and identifiable as the counterpart of the airs. When bits of music are played, the accompaniment is rapped out. Things take place as if an invisible being were listening and acting. But how could a being without acoustic nerve and without a tympanum hear? The sonorous waves must strike something in order to be interpreted. Is this a mental transmission?
These raps are made. Who makes them? And how? The mysterious force emits radiations of wave-lengths inaccessible to our retina, but powerful and rapid, without doubt more rapid than those of light, and situated beyond the ultraviolet. Besides, light impedes their action.
In proportion as we advance in the examination of the phenomena, the psychic, intellectual, mental element is more and more mingled with the physical and mechanical element. In the case we are considering we are forced to admit the presence, the action, of a thought. Is this thought simply that of the medium, of the chief experimenter, or the resultant of the thoughts of all the sitters united?
Since these raps or those made by the legs of the table, on being interrogated, dictate words and phrases and express ideas, there is something more in the matter than a simple mechanical action. The unknown force, the existence of which we have been obliged to admit in the preceding observations, is in this case at the service of an intelligence. The mystery grows complicated.
It is owing to this intellectual element that I proposed (before 1865; see [p. xix]) to give the name "psychic" to this force, a name proposed anew by Crookes in 1871. We saw also that, as early as the year 1855, Thury had proposed the name "psychode" and "ecteneic" force. From this on, it would be impossible for us in our examination not to take into consideration this psychic force.
Up to this point, Gasparin's fluid might suffice, just as unconscious muscular action sufficed for the first three classes of facts. But starting from this fourteenth class, the psychic order plainly manifests itself (and even in the preceding class we begin already to divine its presence).
15. Mallet-blows.
I have heard—as have all other experimenters—not only sharp light raps upon a table, like those of which I have just been speaking, but mallet-blows, or blows of the fist upon a door, capable of knocking down a man if he had received them. Generally, these tremendous blows are a protestation against a denial on the part of one of the sitters. There is in them an intention, a will, an intelligence. They may also be due to the medium, who is indignant, or who is amusing himself or herself. The action is not muscular; for the hands and feet of the medium are held, and the rapping may occur some distance away from him or her.