“People will be advocating miracles, you say—magic! Every new law appears to them as a prodigy. Calm yourselves; I take upon myself the task to quiet those who are alarmed. In the face of such phenomena, we do not cross at all the boundaries of natural law.”[212]
Most assuredly, we do not. But can the scientists assert that they have in their possession the keys to such law? M. de Gasparin thinks he has. Let us see.
“I do not risk myself to explain anything; it is no business of mine.(?) To authenticate simple facts, and maintain a truth which science desires to smother, is all I pretend to do. Nevertheless, I cannot resist the temptation to point out to those who would treat us as so many illuminati or sorcerers, that the manifestation in question affords an interpretation which agrees with the ordinary laws of science.
“Suppose a fluid, emanating from the experimenters, and chiefly from some of them; suppose that the will determined the direction taken by the fluid, and you will readily understand the rotation and levitation of that one of the legs of the table toward which is ejected with every action of the will an excess of fluid. Suppose that the glass causes the fluid to escape, and you will understand how a tumbler placed on the table can interrupt its rotation, and that the tumbler, placed on one of its sides, causes the accumulation of the fluid in the opposite side, which, in consequence of that, is lifted!”
If every one of the experimenters were clever mesmerizers, the explanation, minus certain important details, might be acceptable. So much for the power of human will on inanimate matter, according to the learned minister of Louis Philippe. But how about the intelligence exhibited by the table? What explanation does he give as to answers obtained through the agency of this table to questions? answers which could not possibly have been the “reflections of the brain” of those present (one of the favorite theories of de Gasparin), for their own ideas were quite the reverse of the very liberal philosophy given by this wonderful table? On this he is silent. Anything but spirits, whether human, satanic, or elemental.
Thus, the “simultaneous concentration of thought,” and the “accumulation of fluid,” will be found no better than “the unconscious cerebration” and “psychic force” of other scientists. We must try again; and we may predict beforehand that the thousand and one theories of science will prove of no avail until they will confess that this force, far from being a projection of the accumulated wills of the circle, is, on the contrary, a force which is abnormal, foreign to themselves, and supra-intelligent.
Professor Thury, who denies the theory of departed human spirits, rejects the Christian devil-doctrine, and shows himself unwilling to pronounce in favor of Crookes’s theory (the 6th), that of the hermetists and ancient theurgists, adopts the one, which, he says in his letter, is “the most prudent, and makes him feel strong against every one.” Moreover, he accepts as little of de Gasparin’s hypothesis of “unconscious will-power.” This is what he says in his work:
“As to the announced phenomena, such as the levitation without contact, and the displacement of furniture by invisible hands—unable to demonstrate their impossibility, a priori, no one has the right to treat as absurd the serious evidences which affirm their occurrence” (p. 9).
As to the theory proposed by M. de Gasparin, Thury judges it very severely. “While admitting that in the experiments of Valleyres,” says de Mirville, “the seat of the force might have been in the individual—and we say that it was intrinsic and extrinsic at the same time—and that the will might be generally necessary (p. 20), he repeats but what he had said in his preface, to wit: ‘M. de Gasparin presents us with crude facts, and the explanations following he offers for what they are worth. Breathe on them, and not many will be found standing after this. No, very little, if anything, will remain of his explanations. As to facts, they are henceforth demonstrated’” (p. 10).
As Mr. Crookes tells us, Professor Thury refutes “all these explanations, and considers the effects due to a peculiar substance, fluid, or agent, pervading in a manner similar to the luminiferous ether of the scientists, all matter, nervous, organic or inorganic, which he terms psychode. He enters into full discussion as to the properties of this state, or form, or matter, and proposes the term ectenic force ... for the power exerted when the mind acts at a distance through the influence of the psychode.”[213]