"Can we not then keep the golden mean between negation, which denies all, and credulity, which accepts all? Is it rational to deny everything that we cannot understand, or, on the contrary, to believe all the follies that morbid imaginations give birth to, one after another? Can we not possess at once the humility which becomes the weak and the dignity which becomes the strong?
"I end this plea, as I began it, by declaring that it is not for the sake of the brothers Davenport, nor of any sect, nor of any group, nor, in short, of any person whatever, that I have entered the lists of controversy, but solely for the sake of facts the reality of which I ascertained several years ago, without having discovered their cause. However, I have no reason to fear that those who do not know me will take a fancy to misrepresent my thought; and I think that those who are acquainted with me know that I am not accustomed to swing a censer in any one's honor. I repeat for the last time: I am not concerned with individuals. My mind seeks the truth, and recognizes it wherever it finds it. 'Gallus escam quærens margaritam reperit.'"[3]
A certain number of my readers have been for some time kindly expressing a wish for a new edition of this early book. But strictly speaking I could not do this without considerably enlarging my original plan and composing an entirely new work. The daily routine of my astronomical labors has constantly hindered me from devoting myself to that task. The starry heaven is a vast and absorbing field of work, and it is difficult to turn aside (even for a relaxation in itself scientific) from the exacting claims of a science which goes on developing unceasingly at a most prodigious rate.
Still, the present work may be considered as, in a sense, an enlarged edition of the earlier one. The foregoing citation of a little book written for the purpose of proving the existence of unknown forces in nature has seemed to me necessary here; useful in this new volume, brought out for the same purpose after more than forty years of study, since it may serve to show the continuity and consistent development of my thought on the subject.
MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC FORCES
CHAPTER I
ON CERTAIN UNKNOWN NATURAL FORCES
I purpose to show in this book what truth there is in the phenomena of table-turnings, table-movings, and table-rappings, in the communications received therefrom, in levitations that contradict the laws of gravity, in the moving of objects without contact, in unexplained noises, in the stories told of haunted houses,—all to be considered from the physical and mechanical point of view. Under all the just mentioned heads we can group material facts produced by causes still unknown to science, and it is with these physical phenomena that we shall specially occupy ourselves here; for the first point is to definitely prove, by sufficient observations, their real existence. Hypotheses, theories, doctrines, will come later.