, which is so correlated with electricity that an equivalent of
the one may in some yet unknown manner excite, give rise to, or even be
converted into the other. In this concatenation of the several forces of
nature, physical and vital, the force acting in a nerve may also be
correlated with chemical force, with the heat developed in the muscle,
and even with the peculiar molecular motions which produce muscular
contraction and all its accompanying physical and mechanical
consequences." If, then, two brains, one in London and one in New York,
may be brought into communication with each other through their
respective nerve systems and the common medium of the electric wire, and
both brought to bear on one idea--say the rate of exchange, consols, or
the price of gold--is it to be wondered at that two other brains, in
close proximity, may be brought into communication through the media of
the nerve fibres which are operated upon by a force so similar to that
which courses along the electric wire? Or is it strange that the two
sympathetic minds--two minds having a strong affinity for each
other--should combine and generate ideas? and having produced them, is
it strange they should give them expression in writing? Before the days
of Franklin, this might indeed appear strange, but it surely cannot be
so considered now.

Such, then, is the rationale of what may be termed the automatic
writing, by means of Planchette, and such writing is simply a
manifestation of what has been named psychic force. Whether operated by
one or two persons, the rationale is the same.

There is reason to believe that the phenomenon just explained was known
to the ancients, and that it was the origin of the oracles which formed
so important a feature, at one period, in the history of Greece; such,
for example, as the "Whispering Groves of Dodona," and the yet more
famous oracle of Delphi.[7] It is worthy of remark that these oracles
were not established at the first by the Greeks themselves. They were of
_foreign_ origin, having been first introduced from Egypt, then the seat
of learning.

The secret of psychic force having been once discovered, it may easily
be conceived how it would be seized upon as a means of communicating, as
the pagans supposed, with beings of another world, and how readily the
more enlightened and designing would avail themselves of it as a means
to practise upon the credulity of a superstitious people. Such were the
cunnin