I will examine in succession raps, movements without contact, luminous phenomena, and finally, intellectual phenomena.
[2] Vertot, an historian of the eighteenth century, failing to receive, when he was ready for them, the documents upon which he counted in order to write his Siege of Rhodes, finished his work for all that; and when the documents were handed to him, he contented himself with saying: ‘I am very sorry, but I have finished my siege.’ He preferred leaving his work imperfect to beginning it over again.
Qui fit, Mæcenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem
Seu ratio dederit, seu fors objecerit, illa
Contentus vivat, laudet diversa sequentes?
Satyr, I. lib. i. 1.
CHAPTER II
RAPS
I will not stop to consider movements with contact. From a physical point of view they have no serious signification whatever. They are so easily explained by the combined, unconscious, muscular movements of the experimenters, that it is really not worth while stopping to examine them. The messages obtained by their intermedium may present an internal or clinical interest, but in that case they belong to the category of intellectual phenomena, properly so-called.
The first physical phenomena, which deserves attention, is that of ‘raps.’ It is generally the one most frequently obtained. We must, however, point out that the faculties of mediums are not identical: some produce chiefly physical, others chiefly intellectual phenomena. The former also manifest diverse qualities: some of them obtain raps, others movements, others luminous phenomena. Still in a general way ‘raps’ have seemed to me to be one of the simplest phenomena of a material order.
If we work with a physical medium of even only average force, raps will be heard after the third or fourth seance. They will be heard much sooner if we have a powerful medium.