357. “Moreover, this absurd explanation by imagination he renewed under these circumstances; and that of jugglery is not more fortunate. What prejudice! These two words rendered much service, and covered many retreats! That is, however, passed; it will be necessary hereafter, not only to admit them, but to redeem all analogous precedents, for these are about to be, at last, explained. Again, what is to be done? It will be necessary to proclaim that these electric phenomena which are real as an effect, are not in fact real in their cause; that they lie when they wish the contrary to be believed, that they joke when they act by turns with and without a chain in a particular town, and not in some other, &c.

358. “But on the other hand to perceive a capricious and lying cause, is almost to perceive ... a mind. A mind, grands dieux! You represent yourself before the whole Academy Arago as recognising spirits, hobgoblins! grand experiment! But that itself is horrid to contemplate! Not a face at the Institute can remain uncovered, and that day will forever be regarded as unlucky for science, as it robs it of a victory which was thought to have been gained centuries before.

359. “Beware, however, of the first supernal intelligence! for we shall fall back on our ancient and primitive criterion, our infallible touchstone.

360. “All depends on what it is going to give us; think well of it this time; an imprudent question might lose all.

361. “And already, what signifies that last phrase of a serious article which we find in the Courier du Nord? ‘In another house the table, they say, obeyed the commands of one of the experimenters; took the direction indicated, danced in measure to the sound of a piano, counted the hours, and told the age of the assistants,’ &c.

362. “What means that other letter from Bordeaux, in the Guyenne? ‘A hat submitted to animal magnetism appeared more intelligent even than the table; it indicated, they say, by little gambols, the age of persons, the number of pieces of money they had in their pockets, it told the amount of ladies and gentlemen together in the room,’ &c.

363. “What follows is better still: see in the Journal le Pays, a letter of M., the Abbé of Moigno, according to which it follows that MM. Seguin and de Montgolfier, very distinguished engineers, ordered the tables to rest on this leg and then on the other, and made them beat time, &c.

364. “We read in La Patrie—‘Explanation given by the savans.’ Ah! let us see! this subject is becoming important. According to this journal the following is the hypothesis at which the savans have arrived: ‘The table and hat turners act mostly in good faith, (quite a concession,) but they deceive themselves; they think they cause the motion of an inanimate object by an act of volition, or an effusion of magnetic fluid from their fingers; while it is by muscular action, imperceptible to themselves, or others.’ Ah! take notice! It is by a vibratory movement coming from thousands of small nervous branches. Add to this, lassitude, humidity of the hands, and you will have an explanation, if not entirely satisfactory, at least sufficiently plausible, of the phenomena which engage our attention. M. Chevreul (of the Institute) has analyzed this physiological predisposition, and has illustrated it by the fact familiar to the billiard player, who having struck the ball, follows it with his eyes, with his shoulders, and with the whole body, and makes fantastic motions, as if to impel it, though no longer subject to his direct action, &c.

365. “It is well M. Chevreul has used the phrase ‘as if to impel it,’ for had he been so unfortunate as to say, and in fact he did impel it, we should have been lost. In truth we should have been silenced. But that lucky ‘as if,’ saves us from a very bad predicament; it brings back to our memory what we were about to forget; that is to say, that in the relations of man and matter, never, up to the present time, has all the muscular effort of the world been able to influence, in the smallest degree, the direction of an object, not under its direct action. To the present time all the laws of physics have been based on the grand primordial law, and the player of ten-pins is not more successful from such efforts, than he of the billiard ball just named.