The intelligence governing these phenomena is sometimes obviously inferior to that of the medium, and is often in direct opposition to his wishes. When a determination has been reached to do something which could not be regarded as quite reasonable, I have seen communications urging a reconsideration of the matter. This intelligence is at times of such a character that one is forced to believe it does not emanate from any person present. (Researches in Spiritualism, by William Crookes.)
This last sentence might be slightly modified, and the words forced to believe might be replaced by the words disposed to believe; for human nature is complex, and we are not perpetually the same, even to ourselves. What uncertainty we often find in our own opinions, upon points not yet elucidated; and this we feel, even when called upon to judge actions or events! Are we not sometimes contradictions to ourselves?
Among the experiments made with these physical and psychical manifestations of the tables, I will mention, as among the best, those of Count de Gasparin, and of my sympathetic friend, Eugene Nus. The Count has obtained rotations, upliftings, raps, revelations of numbers previously thought of, movements without any human contact, and so on. He concludes that human beings are endowed with a fluid, with an unknown force, with an agency capable of impressing objects with the action determined by our wills. (On Table-turning, Supernaturalism in General, and Spirits.)
Eugene Nus has obtained, besides sentences dictated by the table, certain philosophic definitions given almost invariably in exactly a dozen words each. Here are some of them:
Geology: Studies in the transformation of the planets in their periods of revolution.
Astronomy: Order and harmony of the external life of worlds, individually and collectively.
Love: The pivot of mortal passion; attractive sexual force; the element of continuity.
Death: Cessation of individuality, disintegration of its elements, a return to universal life.
Let us note, in passing, the strangely singular fact of a departed soul declaring that death is always the cessation of individuality!
There are whole pages of this kind. Eugene Nus had, as companions in his experiments, Antony Méray, Toussenel, Franchot, Courbebaisse, a whole group of transcendental socialists. Well, this is absolutely the language of Fourier. The words aroma, passional, solidarity, clavier, composite, association, harmony, pivotal force, are in the vocabulary of the table. The author therefore inclines towards the following explanation, as given in his Choses de l’Outre Monde (Things of the Other World), Volume I. Paris, 1887.