40 to 42.

[IV]

(Pages)

If the phenomena with which we are occupying ourselves had been limited to the movement of objects, they would have remained, as we said, in the domain of the physical sciences.

But that is not what happened: it fell to them to set us on the trail of facts of a singular order.

They believed they had discovered, we do not know on whose initiative, that the impulse given to objects was not only the product of a blind mechanical force, but that there was in this movement the intervention of an intelligent cause.

Once opened, this path was an entirely new field of observations; it was the veil that was lifted from over many mysteries.

Is there, indeed, an intelligent power? Such is the question. If that power exists, what is it, what is its nature, its origin?

Is it above Humanity? Such are the other questions that follow from the first.

The first intelligent manifestations were produced by means of tables that rose up and, with one of their legs, gave a determined number of rappings, answering in this way—yes or no—as had been agreed, to a proposed question.

Up to that point, nothing surely convincing for the skeptics, because one could believe in an effect of chance.

Next, more developed answers were obtained by means of the letters of the alphabet: the movable object giving a number of rappings corresponding to the order number of each letter, one came to form words and sentences that answered the proposed questions.

The exactness of the answers and their correlation with the questions caused astonishment.

The mysterious being that thus answered, questioned about its nature, declared that it was a Spirit, or genie, gave its name, and furnished various pieces of information in this regard.

Such a means of correspondence was slow and inconvenient. The Spirit, and this is still a circumstance worthy of note, indicated another. It was one of these invisible beings who advised the adaptation of a pencil to a basket or to some other object.

The basket, placed on a sheet of paper, is set in motion by the same hidden power that makes the tables move; but, instead of a simple regular movement, the pencil traces of itself letters forming words, sentences, and discourses of many pages, treating of the highest questions of Philosophy, of Morals, of Metaphysics, of Psychology, etc., and with as much rapidity as if it were writing by hand.

The advice was given simultaneously in America, in France, and in various countries.

Here are the terms in which it was given in Paris, on June 1, 1853, to one of the most fervent adherents of the Doctrine, who, for several years already, since 1849, had been occupying himself with the evocation of Spirits:

“Go and fetch, in the room next door, the little basket; fasten a pencil to it; place it on the paper and put your fingers on the rim.”

A few moments later the basket set itself in motion and the pencil wrote, in a quite legible manner, this sentence:

“What I tell you here, I expressly forbid you to tell anyone. The next time I write, I will write better.”

Since the object to which the pencil is adapted is no more than a simple instrument, its form and nature are completely indifferent; 20 the most convenient arrangement was sought, and it was thus that many persons came to use the planchette.

The basket and the planchette can be set in motion only under the influence of certain persons, endowed, for that, with a special power, who are designated by the name of mediums, that is, means or intermediaries between Spirits and men.

The conditions that grant this power are connected to causes at once physical and moral, still imperfectly known, since one finds mediums of all ages, of both sexes, and in all degrees of intellectual development.

It is, moreover, a faculty that develops through exercise. >>>