A will simple and strong, animation, high spirits, the concentration of the thought upon the work to do, good bodily health, perhaps the very physical act of turning around the table, and, finally, everything that can contribute to unity of will-power among the experimenters,--all these things help to make efficacious the commands addressed to the table with force and authority.
The tables (says M. de Gasparin) "wish to be handled gaily, freely, with animation and confidence; they must be humored at the start with amusing and easy exercises." The first condition necessary for success with the table is good health and the second, confidence.
Among unfavorable circ.u.mstances, on the other hand, must be reckoned a state of nervous tension; fatigue; a too pa.s.sionate interest; a mind anxious, preoccupied or distracted.
The tables--M. de Gasparin further says, in his metaphorical language--"detest folks who quarrel, either as their opponents or as their friends." "As soon as I took too deep an interest, I ceased to command obedience." "If it happened that I desired success too ardently, and showed impatience at delay, I no longer had any power of action on the table." "If the tables encounter preoccupied minds or nervous excitement, they go into a sulking mood." "If you are touchy, over-anxious ... you can"t do anything of any value." "In the midst of distractions, chatterings, pleasantries, the operators infallibly lose all their power." Away with salon experiments!
Must one have faith? It is not necessary; but confidence in the result predisposes to a larger endowment of power in the seance of the occasion. It does not suffice to have faith there are persons who have faith and good will, yet with whom power of action is altogether wanting.
Muscular force or nervous susceptibility do not seem to play any role.
Meteorological conditions have seemed to exercise some influence, probably by acting upon the physique and the spirits of the operators.
Thus fine weather, dry and warm weather (but not a suffocating heat) act favorably.
The especially efficacious influence of dry heat upon the surface of the table[59] will perhaps receive a different explanation.
_Unconscious Muscular Action, produced during an especially Nervous Condition._--So long as only movements with contact were known, in which the movement observed was one of those which muscular action might produce, explanations based on the hypothesis of unconscious muscular action were certainly sufficient and much more probable than all the other explanations which had been up to that time proposed.
From this point of view (entirely physiological) it is settled that we must distinguish between the effort which a muscle exerts and the consciousness we have of this effort. It will be remembered that there exist in the human organism a great number of muscles that habitually exert considerable effort without our being in the slightest degree aware of it. It has been pointed out that muscles exist whose contractions are perceptible by us in a certain state of the system and unperceived in another state. It is therefore conceivable that the muscles of our limbs might as an exceptional thing, exhibit the same phenomenon. The preparation for the movement of the table, the special kind of reaction that takes place at this interval of waiting, put the nervous system into a particular condition in which certain muscular movements may take place in an unconscious manner.
But, evidently, this theory is not sufficient to account for movements without contact, nor those that take place in such a way that muscular action could not produce them. It is therefore these two cla.s.ses of movements which must serve as the basis of new experiments and as the foundation of a new theory.
How also explain the very peculiar and truly inconceivable character of the movements of the table?--this starting to move, so insensible, so gentle, so different from the abruptness characteristic of the impetus given by mechanical force; these levitations so spontaneous, so energetic, which leap up to meet the hands; these dances and imitations of music which you would in vain attempt to equal by means of the combined and voluntary action of the operators; these little raps succeeding the loud ones, when the command is given, the exquisite delicacy of which nothing can express. Several times when someone asked a so-called spirit his age, one of the legs of the centre-table lifted up and rapped 1, 2, 3, etc. Then the movement was accelerated. Finally, the three legs beat a kind of drum-roll so rapid that it was impossible to count, and which the most skilful could never succeed in imitating. On another occasion, under the contact of hands, the table was turning upon three legs, upon two, upon a single one; and, in this last position, changed feet, throwing its weight first upon one and then upon another with great ease, and with nothing abrupt or jerky in its motions. Neither the experimenters nor their most eminent opponents would ever be able to imitate mechanically this dance of the table, and, above all, the whirling pirouettes and changes of feet.
_Electricity._--Many have tried to explain the movements of tables by electricity. Even supposing that they involve the very abundant production of this agent, no known effect of electricity would account for the movement of the tables. But, in fact, it is easy to show that there is no electricity produced; for, when a galvanometer was interposed in the chain, no deviation of the needle took place. The electrometer remains as indifferent to the solicitations of the tables as does the mariner"s compa.s.s.
_Nervo-magnetism._--There is certainly some a.n.a.logy between several phenomena of nervo-magnetism and those of the tables. Those pa.s.ses which seem to favor balancing without contact; the motion imparted by the chain to this man whom they cause to turn about (unless, indeed, there is in this some effect of the imagination); finally, the power that many mesmerizers exert over the tables--all this seems to indicate a kinship between the two orders of phenomena. But, since the laws of nervo-magnetism are little known, there is no conclusion to be drawn from this, and it seems to me preferable, for the present, to study separately the phenomena of tables, which are better adapted to the experiments of the physicist, and which, well studied, will render more service to nervo-magnetism than it could receive in a long time from this obscure branch of physiology.
Thury next touches upon M. de Gasparin"s theory of fluidic action. Being certain that he accurately understands this theory, he gives a resume of it in the following items:
1. A fluid is produced by the brain, and flows along the nerves.
2. This fluid can go beyond the limits of the body; it can be _emitted_.
3. Under the influence of the will, it can move hither and thither.
4. This fluid acts upon inert bodies; yet it shuns contact with certain substances, such as gla.s.s.
5. It lifts the parts toward which it moves, or in which it acc.u.mulates.
6. It further acts upon inert bodies by attraction or by repulsion, with a tendency to either join or separate the inert body and the organism.
7. It can also determine interior movements in matter, and give rise to noises.
8. This fluid is especially produced and developed by turning, and by the will, and by the joining of hands in a certain manner.
9. It is communicated from one person to another by vicinage or by contact. Yet certain persons impede its communication.
10. We have no knowledge of special movements of the fluid, which are determined by the will.
11. This fluid is probably identical with the nervous fluid and with the nervo-magnetic fluid.
_Application._--Rotation is a resultant of the action of the fluid and of the resistances of the wood.
Tipping results from the acc.u.mulation of the fluid in the leg of the table which is lifted.
The gla.s.s placed in the middle of the table stops the movement because it drives away the fluid.
The gla.s.s placed on one side of the table makes the opposite side rise because the fluid, fleeing from the gla.s.s, acc.u.mulates there.
Thury does not attempt the discussion of this theory. But we may repeat with Gasparin, "When you shall have explained to me how I lift my hand, I will explain to you how I cause the leg of the table to rise."
The whole problem lies in that,--the action of mind on matter. We must not dream that we can give a final solution of it at the present time. To reduce the new facts to conformity with the old ones; that is to say, to relate the action of mind upon inert bodies outside of us to the action of mind upon the matter in our bodies--such is the only problem which the science of to-day can reasonably propose to itself. Thury states it in general terms as follows:
_General Question of the Action of Mind upon Matter._--We shall seek to formulate the results of experiment up to the point where experiment abandons us. From there on we shall study all the alternatives offered to our mind, as simple possibilities, some of which will give place to hypotheses explanatory of the new phenomena.
_First principle: In the ordinary state of the body, the will acts directly only in the sphere of the organism._--Matter belonging to the external world is modified _on contact with the organism_, and the modifications which it undergoes gradually produce others by contiguity. It is thus that we can act upon objects at a distance from us. Our action at a distance upon all that surrounds us is _mediate_ and not immediate. We believe that this is true of the action of all physical forces, such as gravity, heat, electricity. Their effect is gradually communicated, and thus alone they put distance behind them and come into relation with man as a sentient being.
_Second principle: In the organism itself there is a series of mediate acts._--Thus the will does not act directly upon the bones which receive the movement of the muscles; nor does the will modify any more directly the muscles, since, when deprived of nerves, they are incapable of movement. Does the will act directly upon the nerves? It is a mooted question whether it modifies them directly or indirectly.
Thus the substance upon which the soul immediately acts is still undetermined. The substance may be solid, may be fluid; it may be a substance still unknown, or perhaps a particular state of known substances. In order to avoid a circ.u.mlocution, let me give it a name.
I shall call it the _psychode_ ([Greek: psyche], soul, and [Greek: odos], way).
_Third principle: The substance upon which the mind immediately acts--the psychode--is only susceptible of very simple modifications under the influence of the mind_, for, since the movements are to be somewhat varied, an extensive and complicated apparatus appears in the organism,--a whole system of muscles, vessels, nerves, etc., which are wanting in the inferior animals (among whom movements are very simple), and which would have been unnecessary had matter been directly susceptible of modifications equally varied under the influence of mind. When movements are intended to be very simple (as in the case of infusoria) the complicated apparatus is wanting and the life-spirit acts upon matter that is almost h.o.m.ogeneous.
The following four hypotheses regarding the psychode may be formed:
_a._ The psychode is a substance peculiar to the organism, and not capable of emerging from it. It acts only mediately upon everything outside of the visible organism.
_b._ The psychode is a substance peculiar to the organism, capable of extending beyond the limits of the visible organism under certain special conditions. The modifications it receives necessarily act upon other inert bodies. The will acts upon the psychode, and thus mediately, upon the bodies that the sphere of this substance embraces.
_c._ The psychode is a universal substance which is conditioned in its action on other inert bodies by the structure of living organisms, or by a certain state of inorganic bodies--a state determined by the influence of living organisms in certain special conditions.
_d._ The psychode is a peculiar state of matter, a state habitually produced within the sphere of the organism, but which may also be produced beyond its limits under the influence of a certain state of the organism,--an influence comparable to that of magnets in the phenomena of diamagnetism.
Thury proposes the adjective _ecteneic_ (from [Greek: ekteneia], extension) to describe that special state of the organism in which the mind can, in some measure, extend the habitual limits of its action, and he styles "ecteneic force" that which is developed in this state.
The first hypothesis (he adds) would not be at all adapted to explain the phenomena with which we are concerned. But the three others give rise to three different explanations, in which (he a.s.sures us) the greater part of the phenomena investigated will be comprised.
_Explanations based upon the Intervention of Spirits._--M. de Gasparin has shown the error of all these explanations:
1. By theological considerations.
2. By the very just remark that we should not resort to explanations which introduce spirits into the problem until other interpretations have been proved to be entirely insufficient.
3. Finally, by physical considerations.
Looking at the question here solely from the general physical point of view, I do not follow M. de Gasparin (says Thury) in his exploitation of theological explanations. As to the second, I will only call attention to the suggestion that the sufficiency of explanations purely physical should strictly apply only to the Valleyres experiments, where, in truth, nothing gives evidence of the intervention of wills other than the human will.
The question of the intervention of spirits might be decided from the tenor or content of the revelations, in any case in which this content would be such as evidently could not have originated in the human mind. It is not my intention to discuss this point. The present study takes cognizance solely of movements of inert bodies, and we have only to consider, among the arguments of M. de Gasparin, those which are included in this field of view.