For the second time, I affirm upon my honor that I will tell you nothing that is not strictly true, and usually easy to verify.In spite of the calling I follow, I am not at all gifted with imagination. I have lived much in the company of physicians, men from the nature of their profession little given to credulity; and, whether it is in consequence of my natural disposition, or by reason of the principles which I absorbed in this kind of company, I have always been very sceptical.

This is, indeed, one of the reasons why I abandoned my psychical experiments. I reached the most stupifying results, and yet it was impossible for me to get to believe myself. I was thoroughly convinced that I was not seeking to deceive myself or to deceive others, and, not being able to surrender myself to the evidence, I was always seeking some other reason than the one given by the believers. That made me suffer, and I stopped.

I here end this preamble, and am going to unfold to you the course of my observations.

I was acquainted with a company of people, who were occupied with Spiritualism and with turning-tables, and had made them the butt of my wit,[76] a little; for, although not bitter or severe, I never neglected to play a good practical joke on them when occasion served.

It seemed to me that these worthy people, who were, moreover, very sincere, were all a little "cracked" (maboules), if I may be allowed so uncouth, or fin de siÈcle, an expression.

One day I was visiting them. The drawing-room was lighted by two large windows. I began, as usual, by some pleasantries. Their reply was in the shape of an invitation to me to take part in the experiments.

"But," said I, "if I take a seat at your table it will not turn any more, because I shall not push it."

"Come all the same."

Well, I declare upon my honor that, just for a joke, I tried it. I had scarcely put my hands on the table when it made a rush at me.

I said to the person facing me, "Don't push so hard.""But, dear sir, I was not pushing."

I put the centre-table back in its place, but the same thing occurred again, once, twice, thrice. I began to get impatient and said,

"What you are doing is not very clever. If you want to convince me, don't push."

He replied to me, "Nobody is pushing, only you probably have so much fluid in you that the table is attracted toward you. Perhaps you could make it go, by yourself."

"Oh, if I myself could make it go, that would be different!"

"Try it."

They all moved back. I remained alone face to face with the table. I took hold of it, lifted it, thoroughly examined it. There was no trick about it. I made every body go behind me. I was facing the windows, and had my eyes open, I assure you. I stretched my arms out as far as possible, in order to have a good view, only placing the ends of my fingers on the table.

In a little less than two minutes it began to rock to and fro. I confess that I felt a little foolish, not wishing to surrender—

"Yes, perhaps it moves," said I. "It is possible that an unknown fluid is acting upon it; at any rate, it does not come toward me, and just now some one was pushing it."

"No," said one of the sitters, "nobody was pushing it; but, although you are highly charged with fluid, the assistance of another person is needed for the production of the phenomenon: you are not enough by yourself. Will you allow one of us to put a hand upon yours, without touching the table?"

"Yes."

Someone put a hand on mine and I watched. The table at once began to move, and came and pressed against me. They all cried out, and claimed that they had caught a medium in me. I was not very much flattered with the title, which I considered as synonymous with "lunatic."

"You ought to try to write," said some one to me.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, see here. You take paper and pen, let your arm lie passive, and have the wish in your mind that some unknown person or force shall cause you to write."

I tried it. At the end of five minutes, my arm felt as if it were wrapped in a woolen blanket. Then, in spite of myself, my hand began to trace at first mere strokes, then o's, a's, letters of all sorts, as a schoolboy learning to write would do. Then, all of a sudden, came the notorious word attributed to Cambronne at Waterloo! I assure you, my dear sir, that I am never in the habit of using this coarse and dirty term, and that there was no auto-suggestion, or unconscious act of my own, in the case. I was absolutely stupefied by the occurrence.

I continued these experiments at my own home.

1. One day, when I was seated at my writing-desk, I felt the weird seizure in my arm. I let my arm remain passive. The Unknown wrote:

"Your friend Aroud is coming to see you. He is at this moment in such and such an omnibus-office in the suburbs. He is asking the price of tickets and the hour of departure."

(This M. Aroud is chief of the bureau of police, prefecture of the Rhone.) In fact, a half-hour afterwards, Aroud made his appearance. I told him what had taken place.

"It is a good thing for you that you are living in the nineteenth century," said he to me. "A few hundred years ago you would not have escaped death at the stake."

2. On another occasion the phenomenon occurred again, and this time also I was at my writing desk:

"Your friend Dolard is coming to see you."

An hour afterward, sure enough he came. I told him how it happened that I was waiting for him. Although he was very incredulous by nature, yet, for all that, this fact set him to thinking. The next day saw his re-appearance.

"Can you get a reply to a question I am going to ask you?" said he.

"Don't ask," I replied, "think it. We will try."

I must here tell you parenthetically that I had known of Dolard for thirty years. He was my comrade at the Beaux-Arts. I knew that he had lost an elder brother, that he had been married, and had had the misfortune to lose, one by one, all the members of his family. That was all I knew about them.

I took the pen and the Invisible wrote, "The sufferings of your sister Sophia have just ended."

Now Dolard had mentally asked what had become of the spirit of a sister named Sophia, whom he had lost forty-two years ago, and about whom I had never heard a word spoken.

3. My principal at the School of Fine Arts in Lyons, a former architect of the city of Paris, was M. HÉdin. This M. HÉdin had an only daughter, who some years ago had married another architect, M. Forget, in Paris. The woman became enceinte.

One day when I was thinking of anything but her, the same thing occurred as before. The Invisible wrote:

"Mme. Forget is going to die."

Mme. Forget was not at all ill, apart from her being in a delicate situation. The next day morning, M. HÉdin said to me that his daughter was in her pains; and the same evening he told me that his wife had just set out for Paris to be with her. The next day I received instructions to assume his duties. Mme. HÉdin had telegraphed to her husband to come to her. Her daughter was taken with puerperal fever. When the father got there he found only a corpse.

4. I had a cousin named Poncet (since dead) who was formerly an apothecary, at Beaune (CÔte-d' Or). I had never been at his apartments. One day he came to Lyons to see our aunt (she who had the vision about which I spoke to you). We conversed about these extraordinary psychical occurrences. He was incredulous.

"Well then," said he, "try to find for me a thing which has no particular market value, but which I laid great store by, because it belonged to my deceased wife. I had a little packet of laces that she was very fond of, and I can't put my hand on it."

The Unknown wrote, "It is in the middle drawer of the secretary in the chamber, behind a package of visiting cards."

My cousin wrote to his servant at Beaune, without giving her any hint of our experiment, "Send by post a little packet which you will find in [such a place] behind a package of visiting cards."The laces arrived by return mail.

You will notice, my dear sir, that, during the experiments, I was by no means asleep or in a state of trance, and that I was conversing in my usual manner.

5. One of my childhood friends, M. Laloge, at the present time a dealer in coffees and chocolates at Saint-Etienne (Loire), had had as his professor, as well as I, an excellent man whom we most highly esteemed, and who was named Thollon.[77]

M. Thollon, after having directed the education of the children of the Prince of Oldenburg, uncle of the present emperor of Russia, had returned to France and entered the Nice Observatory.

We had the misfortune to lose him shortly after. Laloge had a photograph of him but had lost it. He came and begged me to try to find it. The Unknown wrote, "The photograph is in the upper drawer of the secretary in the chamber."

Laloge had two rooms,—one which he called the "salon," and another called the "chamber."

"There is some mistake," said he. "I have turned everything topsy-turvy in the place you mention and have found nothing."

In the evening having to search for some object in the drawer, he saw in the middle of a package of letter-paper a little dark end of something sticking out. He pulled it forth: it was the photograph.

6. Camille Bellon, No. 50 Avenue de Noailles, at Lyons, had three young children whose education he had intrusted to a young governess. This person left when the children entered college, and, sometime after, she married a very fine man, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, but which I can easily find again if there is any need of it.

This young woman came on her wedding trip to visit her old employer. I was invited to go and pass a day with them at the chÂteau of my friend Bellon. During the course of this visit, we talked of spiritualistic phenomena; and the newly married man, a highly educated veterinary doctor, joked me about my so-called mediumship. I, of course, laughed about it and we parted the best kind of friends.

Some days afterward, I received a letter from my friend. He had himself received a letter from the young lady, who was in a great state of mind. She had lost her wedding ring, and was in despair. She begged my friend to ask me to recover it for her.

The Mysterious Force wrote, "The ring slipped from her finger while she was asleep. It is on one of the cleats which hold up the mattress of the bed."

I transmitted the despatch. The husband put his hands between the wood of the bed and the mattress. The wife did the same thing. Nothing was found. Some days afterwards, having decided to change the arrangement of their apartments, they moved their bed into another room. Of course they had to lift up the mattress, in order to get it into the other chamber. The ring was upon one of the cleats. They had not found it when they were hunting for it, because it had slipped under the mattress, which did not adhere to the cleat in that particular place.

7. One of my friends, named Boucaut, who lived at 15 quai de la GuillotiÈre at Lyons, had lost a letter which he sadly wanted. He begged me to ask where it was.

The Invisible replied in writing, "He must remember that he has an oven in his garden."

Before showing it to him, I began to laugh, saying that it was a joke and had nothing to do with his request. As he insisted that it did, I read it to him.

"Why yes," he said to me, "that agrees very well. My tenant-farmer had just had his bread baked. I had heaps of papers which I wanted to get rid of, to burn up. My letter must have been burned in the pile which I reduced to ashes."

8. One evening, in an assembly composed of a score of persons, a lady dressed in black greeted my entrance with a little nervous laugh. After the customary introductions, this lady spoke to me as follows:

"Sir, would it be possible to ask your spirits to reply to a question I am going to ask you?"

"In the first place, madam, I have no spirits at my disposal; but I should be a lack-wit indeed if I said yes. You, of course, don't suppose that I am unintelligent enough not to find some kind of an answer; and, consequently, if any 'spirits,' as you so kindly call them should happen to respond, you would not be convinced, and you would be right. Write your request. Put it in an envelope there on the table and we will try. You see that I am not in a somnambulistic state, and you must believe that it is wholly impossible for me to know the contents of what you are going to enclose in it."

So said, so done.

At the end of five minutes I assure you I was very much embarrassed. I had written a reply, but it was such that I did not dare to communicate it. But here it is:

"You are in a very bad way, and, if you persist, you will be severely punished. Marriage is something sacred, it should never be regarded as a question of money."

After some oratorical precautions, I decided to read her this reply. The lady blushed up to the roots of her hair and stretched out her hands to seize her envelope.

"Pardon me, madam," I replied, putting my hand upon it. "You began by making fun of me. You wished a reply. It is only just, since we are making an experiment, that we know what the request was."

I tore open the envelope. Behold its contents:

"Will the marriage take place that I am trying to bring about between M. X. and Mlle. Z? And, in that case, shall I get what I have been promised?"

Notwithstanding this shameful exposure, the woman did not consider that she was beaten. She asked a second question under the same conditions.

Reply: "Leave me alone! When I was living you abandoned me. Now don't bother me."

Upon this, the lady got up and disappeared! I told you she was in mourning. This last request of hers was as follows: "What has become of the soul of my father?"

Her father had been ill for six months. Persons who were present and who were stupefied at the results, told me that during his illness she had not paid him a single visit.

9. One day, shortly after I had lost one of my good friends, I was seated at my writing-desk with my head resting on my hand, and I was thinking of what the hereafter might possibly be. If all the work that a man had done was to be irretrievably lost, and if the beyond existed, I was wondering what the life might be that one would lead there. All of a sudden, the phenomenon well known to me occurred (that weird seizure of the arm). Of course, I allowed my arm to remain passive, and here is what I read:

In all the communications which I have obtained, every time a word representing an idea of the Supreme Being—such as God, the All-Powerful, etc.—came under my pen, the writing doubled in size, but immediately after resumed the same dimensions as before.[78] It would be very easy for me to give you still more numerous examples of the strange things that happened to me, but those I have given seem to me quite remarkable. I shall be happy if this true account can give you any assistance in your important researches.

May 1st, 1899.

You ask me, my dear sir, the following questions:

1. Whether I have reached absolute conviction as to the existence of one or of several spirits?

I am a person of absolute good faith. I examined myself as a surgeon would examine an invalid. I am a person of such good faith that I have long been seeking (without finding him) a skilful practitioner who would consent to study in my own person the phenomenon while it was taking place; to ascertain the state of my pulse, the warmth of the skin, etc.,—in a word, the apparent physical side. Furthermore, in my opinion there is no auto-suggestion in this thing; and the proof is that I was absolutely ignorant of the things that I was writing mechanically,—so mechanically that, when, by chance, my attention was called away, whether by reading or by conversation, and I forgot to look where my hand was going, when it approached the edge of the paper the writing would continue backward across the sheet in reversed letters and just as fast, so that I was obliged to turn the paper over in order by holding it to the light to read what was written on it.

So then, if there is neither auto-suggestion in it, nor a somnambulistic condition (I was completely awake and not at all hypnotized), then there must be external "forces" acting upon my senses, "intelligent forces." This is my fixed and unalterable opinion.

Now are these forces spirits? Do they belong to beings like ourselves? It is evident that this hypothesis would explain many things, but leave quite a number obscure. Since I several times discovered a mental state of the lowest kind among these "beings," I have reached a conclusion that it is not absolutely necessary to think that they are "men."

We are told that there are stars which photography alone can reveal, and which, possessing a color imperceptible to our eye, are invisible to us. Then there are the gases through which a human body passes without experiencing resistence. Who will say then, that there are not around us invisible beings?

And look at the instinct of the child, of the woman, of feeble beings in general. They fear darkness; isolation makes them afraid. This sentiment is instinctive, irrational. Is it not due to an intuitive perception of the presence of these invisible personages, or forces, against which they are helpless? That is pure hypothesis on my part, but after all it seems to me defensible. As to the number of the invisible beings, I believe they are legion.

2. You ask me whether I have been able to establish their identity.

I answer that they sign some name or other, choosing in preference names of illustrious persons, in whose mouths they sometimes put the most stupid sort of expressions.

Furthermore the writing frequently ceases abruptly, as if an electric current has just been interrupted, and that without any appreciable reason. Then the writing changes, and sometimes sensible things end in absurdities, etc.

How explain this tangle of contradictions? I was so chafed and fretted by these incoherent results that I had for a long time abandoned the study of psychic forces, when your alluring researches came to wake in me my old self.

If the unconscious doubling of the personality of the individual (his externalization) can, in an extreme case, be sometimes admitted, it seems to me that there are cases in which this explanation becomes possible.

But I will explain. If, as respects the facts which happened to me personally, and the authenticity of which I affirm to you upon my honor, there are some in which this externalization could have been possible, there are others in which it seems to me impossible.

Yes, strictly speaking, I might have been able, without suspecting it, to externalize myself, or, rather, unknown to myself, to be influenced by my friend Dolard when, in my own presence, he mentally asked me what had become of the soul of a deceased sister of whose name and very existence I was ignorant; yes, the same thing may, strictly speaking, explain the responses I made to the lady who questioned me on the subject of a marriage and her father, although it would in that case be necessary to suppose that she dictated to me the words that I was writing; yes, my friend Boucaud, who was hunting letters, might, at the moment when he was asking me about them, have thought of that oven, of the existence of which I was ignorant; yes, all of that is (in the last analysis) possible, although it would need a large amount of good will to admit it.

Yes, once more I say—and always with much good will—a table may be under the unconscious domination of a musician present and dictate a musical phrase. But, as it stands, it is difficult to admit the same phenomenon in the case of Victor Hugo, whose curious sÉances you have just described to the public. Why, just look at this great poet who, when he is asked by the table to put one or more questions in verse, and, not feeling that he is man enough, in spite of his genius, to improvise something passable, asks for a breathing spell to prepare his questions, and brings them in next day!—and yet you would wish that, on this same next day, a part of himself should perform its functions, unknown to himself, and compose illico, without any preparation, verses at least as fine as those which he took an entire day to create!—verses of a pitiless logic and more profound than his own!

Yet let us admit even that. You see, dear sir, that I have all the good will possible, and that I have the most profound respect for the scientific method. But can you explain by externalization the case of finding a lost object when one is even ignorant of the way in which the apartment is arranged where it has been lost? or the ability to know, two days in advance, of the death of a person about whom one was not thinking at all? A possible coincidence, you will tell me, but at least very strange.

And those inverted dictations? and those in which we are obliged to skip every other letter?

No, I believe that we need not give ourselves so much trouble and rack our brains, for it seems to me that it is like looking for mid-day at two o'clock in the afternoon. It would require the labor of all the devils to explain how this phenomenon can take place in our nature without the knowledge of the proprietor. I do not like to see a part of my personality scampering away, and then housing itself again without my knowing anything about it.

As to what concerns the production of this externalization in a way which I may call voluntary—when a person who feels himself dying thinks intensely about those whom he loves and whose absence he deplores, yes, it may be that his will, even unknown to himself, suggesting the absent person produces the phenomena of telepathy; but, in the phenomena of which we are speaking, that explanation seems to me more than doubtful.

I find much more simple the explanation that the phenomena are caused by the presence and the action of an independent being,—a spirit, phantasm, or elemental.

In fine what are we all seeking? The proof of the survival of the ego, of the individuality after death. To be or not to be—it is all in that. For I frankly confess to you if I am going to dissolve away again into the great All, I should just as soon be annihilated. That is perhaps a weakness; but it cannot be helped. I hold above everything else to my individuality; not that I set a great value on it, but the feeling is instinctive and I believe that at bottom everybody is of this opinion. This then is the goal or end, which at all epochs has powerfully interested man and interests him still to-day.

One of the weightiest proofs of the survival of the individual being that I have ever met with is, in my opinion, the vision which my aunt had several days after the death of a friend of hers who, in order to give her a proof of the reality of her apparition, inspired in her by mental suggestion the power of seeing her in the dress she had on in her coffin, a costume which my aunt had never seen.

This is one of the fine and rare arguments in favor of the survival of the soul, so far as my experience goes. Many things are explained by this survival,—above all, what is apparently the frightful injustice of this world.

Table-turning sÉances yield very insignificant results, regarded as pure science obtained from the spirits; but they are not lacking in interest from the point of view of the analysis of the facts and of the science to be established in accordance with the causes and the laws which govern these phenomena.

I believe that I can draw the conclusion from these phenomena that two theories (the reflex and the Spiritualistic) may be drawn from the facts. It seems to me impossible to maintain that an intelligent agent other than that of the experimenters is not operative in them. What is this intelligence? I believe it is very hazardous to express a confident opinion on this point in view of the incongruity of all these communications.

It is also undeniable that the intellects of the operators enter into the phenomena to a great extent, and that in many cases they alone seem to act.

I should perhaps be sufficiently near the truth if I gave the following definition of the phenomenon:

Functions external to the animistic principle of the operators, and above all of the medium, and governed by their intellects, but sometimes associated with an intellect unknown and relatively independent of man.

Experimenters have maintained that communications obtained from the so-called spirits through mediums never show more intellectual capacity than is possessed by the most intelligent person among the sitters. This assertion is generally justified, but it is not absolute.

I will mention, in connection with this point, some sÉances which took place at my house. The medium was Mme. G., whose life I had been familiar with for twenty-seven years, day by day, and consequently had an intimate acquaintance with her character, her manners, temperament and education.The communications which were obtained through mediumistic writing in these sÉances extended over a period of more than fifteen months.

Mme. G. had the sense of a kind of mental, rather than auricular, psychical rather than physical, audition which dictated to her what she had to write in bits of sentences one after another; and this impression was accompanied by a strong desire to write, somewhat like the intense longing that a woman with child experiences.

If this medium gave her attention to the sense of the writing during the composition, the current of power was shut off, and everything resumed the state of ordinary composition. Her condition was that of a clerk writing unconcernedly and mechanically under the dictation of a superior. It resulted from this that the writings, executed at the maximum speed of the subject, and generally without retardation or stoppage after the questions, were in one long string, without punctuation or paragraphs, and full of mistakes in spelling, resulting from the fact that the medium was acquainted with the sense of the writing only when she had read it over, at least in the case of rather long communications.

The gist or substance of the writings seems very frequently to be drawn from our ideas, our conversation, our reading, or our thoughts; but there are certain plainly marked exceptions.

While Mme. G. was writing, I applied myself to other occupations,—calculations, music, etc., or I walked up and down in the room; but I only examined the replies when she had stopped writing.

Nothing indicated that the physical and physiological condition of the medium during these writings was in any way different from that of her ordinary condition. Mme. G. could interrupt her writing at will and apply herself to other occupations or make responses about things unconnected with the sÉance, and it never happened that she found herself short of an answer.

There is no parallelism between these writings and the mental endowments of Mme. G., either in promptness of repartee, in breadth of view, or in philosophic depth.In 1890 I bought Flammarion's Uranie, which Mme. G. did not read until 1891. I found in it doctrines absolutely similar to those which I had deduced from my experiments and from our communications. Any one who should compare these mediumistic writings with the philosophical works of the French astronomer would be led to believe that Mme. G. had previously read them.

Psychic phenomena have this peculiarity, that identical assertions are made in far distant places through mediums who have never known each other,—a fact which would tend to demonstrate that, running through many declarations which apparently contradict each other, there is a certain uniformity of action on the part of the intelligent occult power.

In 1890 I also read the work of Dr. Antoine Cros, The Problem, in which I also found astonishing agreements between the ideas of this author and those of our Unknown Inspirer,—among others this: that man himself creates his Paradises and becomes that to which he has aspired.

We should always seek the simplest explanation of the facts, without desiring to find the occult in them, and above all without looking for spirits everywhere, but also without wishing, under any circumstances, to reject the intervention of unknown agents and deny the facts when they cannot be explained.

It is rather curious to remark that if we compare the dictations given by the tables and the other so-called mediumistic phenomena with observations made in conditions of natural or hypnotic somnambulism, we find the same phases of incoherence, hesitation, error, lucidity and supernormal excitation of the faculties.

On the other hand, the supernormal excitation of the faculties neither explains the cases of prediction nor the citation of unknown facts. In the case of many telepathic or other phenomena every explanation limps that excludes the intervention of external intelligences. But it is still impossible to formulate a theory. There exists a gap to be filled by new discoveries.[79]

1. Replying to the request which you address to your readers, I will say that I have never observed telepathic cases, but that I have for a long time been experimenting with the phenomena called Spiritualistic, of which I was a simple analyst. I have come to no conclusions as to explanatory theories. However, I consider it probable that there exists powerful intelligences other than human that intervene under certain circumstances. My opinion is based upon a large number of very curious personal occurrences. In my opinion, we have not in these phenomena the appearance of simple coincidences, but of circumstances willed, foreseen, and produced by an intelligent x.

2. Of the ensemble—of all that I have seen—there is simultaneously the reflex action of the experimenters and an independent personality. This hypothesis seems to me true, while I should make at the same time this reservation, that the personality or spirit is not a finished being, with limitations of form, such as an invisible man would have, going, coming and executing commissions for human beings. I have glimpses of a grander and vaster system.

Take a handful of the ocean, and you have water.

Take a handful of the atmosphere, and you have air.

Take a handful of space, and you have mind.

That is the way I interpret it. That is why mind is always present, ready to respond when it finds in any place a stimulus that incites it, and an organism which permits it to manifest itself.

An inexplicable occurrence which my sister, Mme. Charlot, and myself witnessed impressed us most deeply. It took place at the time of the last sickness of M. de Musset. I shall never forget the emotion we felt that evening, and I still have the minutest incidents of the strange occurrence stamped on my memory.

My master, who had taken no rest during all the previous night, had toward the end of the day, fallen into a doze in a large easy-chair. My sister and I had entered the chamber on tip-toe, in order not to trouble this precious rest of his, and we sat quietly down in a corner where we were concealed by the curtains of the bed.

The invalid could not perceive us, but we saw him very well, and I sorrowfully contemplated that suffering face which I knew I could not much longer look upon. And still, even now, when I recall the features of my master, I see them as they appeared to me on that evening,—the eyes closed, his finely shaped head resting upon the easy-chair, and his long, thin, pale hands (the paleness of the dead already upon them), crossed upon his knees in a contracted and shriveled way. We remained motionless and silent, and the chamber, lighted only by a feeble lamp, seemed wrapped in shadows and was filled with that peculiar mournful atmosphere that characterizes the chamber of the dying.

Suddenly we heard a deep sigh. The invalid had waked up and I saw his looks go toward the bell-cord that hung near the fireplace some steps from the easy-chair. He evidently wanted to ring, and I do not know what feeling it was that held me nailed to my place. Still I did not move, and my master, having a horror of solitude and believing that he was alone in his chamber, rose up, stretched out his arm with the evident intention of calling someone; but, already fatigued by this effort, he fell back into the chair without having taken a step. It was at this moment that we had an experience that terrified us. The bell, which the sick man had not touched, rang, and instinctively, at the same moment, my sister and I seized each other's hands, each anxiously interrogating the face of the other.

"Did you hear?"—"Did you see?"—"He did not move from his chair!"

At this moment the nurse entered and innocently asked, "Did you ring, sir?"

This event put us into an extraordinary state of mind, and if I had not had my sister with me I should have believed that it was an hallucination. But both of us saw, and all three of us heard. It is a good many years now since all that took place, but I can still hear the ominous and mournful sound of that bell ringing in the silence of the chamber.

It is a principle of physics that a heavy body can only be put in motion by the direct application of a mechanical force sufficient to overcome its inertia, and orthodox science maintains that the idea of action at a distance is an erroneous idea.

The authors of the present study assert, on the contrary, that heavy bodies may be, and frequently are, put in motion without any kind of direct application of mechanical force, and that action at a distance is a well-established fact in nature. We offer proofs of these propositions based on a series of experiments undertaken for this purpose.

We often repeated these experiments, during more than two years, with results that were convincing not only to ourselves but to many other witnesses.

We do not understand how the scientific world has been able to accept the idea that the expression "action at a distance" is a false one, unless those who see an error in the assertion attach to these words a special meaning of which we are ignorant.

It is certain that the sun acts at a distance upon the earth and the other planets of the solar system. It is certain that a piece of anything thrown into the air falls back in consequence of the attraction of gravitation,—and that, too, at no matter what distance. The law of gravitation, so far as we know it, is universal, and it is not yet proved that there exists a ponderable, or otherwise palpable, medium which serves to transmit the force.[81]

We go a little farther, even, and declare that, probably, all action of matter is an action at a distance, especially since (so far as our knowledge goes) there are not in the whole universe two particles of matter in absolute contact; and, consequently, if they act the one upon the other, it must be at some distance, this distance being infinitely small and entirely inappreciable to our senses.

We therefore maintain that the law of movement at a distance is a universal mechanical law and that the idea that it does not exist is a kind of a paradox, simply a hair-splitting quibble.