onishment is a joke against me to this hour.
We pursued the inquiry almost nightly during the remainder of my stay in
Paris--up to late in the summer of 1857 that is--and also on our return
to England; but, strangely as it seems to me now, considering how we
began, we did it more as a pastime than anything else. The only time we
were serious was when my wife and I sat alone, as we often did. Of
course when I came to inquire at all into the matter I was met by
Faraday's theory of involuntary muscular action, and also with the
doctrine of unconscious cerebration--I was quite ready to accept either.
My own position, as far as I can recall it, then was that the spiritual
agency was "not proven." My wife had great reluctance against admitting
the spiritual theory. I was simply passive; but two circumstances seemed
to me to militate against the theories I have mentioned: (1.) The table
we used for communicating was a little gimcrack French affair, the top
of which spun round on the slightest provocation, and no force whatever,
not even a philosopher's, applied to the surface would do more than spin
the top round; but when the table turned, _it turned bodily, legs and
all_. (2.) As to that ponderously difficult theory of unconscious
cerebration communicated by involuntary muscular action, whenever we
asked any questions as to the future, we were instantly checked, and
told it was better that the future should not be revealed to us. I was
anxious about a matter in connexion with an election to an appointment
in England, and we asked some questions as to what form the proceedings
would take. The reply was that certain candidates would be selected from
the main body, and the election made from these. I thought I had caught
the table in an inconsistency, and said--"There now you _have_ told us
something about the future." It immediately replied--"No, I have not;
the matter is already settled in the minds of the examiners." Whence
came that answer? Certainly not from our minds, for it took us both by
surprise. I could multiply a hundredfold instances of this kind, but, of
course, to educated spiritualists these are mere A B C matters; whilst
non-spiritualists would only accept them on the evidence of their own
senses. I do not mean to say they actually question the facts to the
extent of doubting one's veracity, or else nearly all testimony must go
for nothing; but there is in these matters always room for doubting
whether the narrat