act of all is
that every phenomenon we obtain coheres with those obtained by Maxwell,
Crookes, and Flammarion. It will not do to admit the spirit hypothesis,
or grant the objectivity of phantasms, merely because we have proved the
movements of a particle of matter from A to B without a known push or a
pull, for such admission is far-reaching. If Maxwell is right, these
phenomena--even the most complicated of them--are metapsychical, but
perfectly normal. For example, he says: 'A movement without contact was
forthcoming this afternoon. I placed a table upside down on a linen
sheet. M. Meurice and I then put our hands on the sheet, some distance
away from the table. The table turned completely over. The movement was
performed slowly and gently. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and
the sunlight was streaming in through an open window.' Now here was a
perfectly clear case of telekinesis, with no one present but Dr. Maxwell
and his friend; but the turning over of the table does not imply the
action of spirit hands."

"I don't see why not," responded Mrs. Fowler, "if Dr. Maxwell had
mediumistic power."

"It was Meurice who had the power; but it was a physical power, which
went out from his organism like heat. He was often ill after his
experiments, and felt nausea and a disturbing weakness in the solar
plexus, as though his bodily powers had been seriously drawn upon. I
have felt this myself--or so it seemed; perhaps I imagined it."

Fowler struck in: "But what will you do with materializations such as
Dr. Richet studied at the Villa Carmen in Algiers? What will you do with
the photographs of the spectre of the helmeted soldier which he obtained
under what he declares were test conditions?"

"But were they? That's the point."

"I am willing to trust a man of Richet's wide knowledge and known skill
in experimentation. When he says he saw, touched, and heard the
apparition of a man, I am ready to believe that he had taken quite as
many precautions as his newspaper critics would have done. He saw a
helmeted soldier leave the seance cabinet and walk about. He clasped his
hand, he affirmed, and found it warm and jointed (perfectly real), and
he secured the breath of this phantom in a tube of baryta so
unmistakably that the liquid was chemically changed in accordance with
his test. There are thousands of other well-authenticated cases of
materialization. I have seen scores of them myself. I am only quoting
Richet because