ves, where the exile was
torn from his native soil, away from life. Myself a living
corpse, it did not astonish me to encounter the dead alive; and
so little is certainty natural to man, that one may doubt even
the things he has seen with his eyes and touched with his hands.

Finally, Victor Hugo, who assisted at these experiments, has
said: "The moving and speaking table has been greatly ridiculed.
Let us speak plainly! This ridicule is misplaced. It is the
bounden duty of science to sound the depths of all phenomena. To
ignore spiritualistic phenomena, to leave them bankrupt by
inattention, is to make a bankrupt of truth itself." (Les Genies
[The Geniuses]: Shakespeare.)

It is table movements which are here spoken of, dictations by tipping or
rapping; that is to say, by the third method heretofore referred to.
This method has always appeared to be the most independent. In placing
our fingers on a planchette, armed with a pencil, and in aiding its
motions, we are brought into direct personal association with the
results. We may be under the illusion that an outside spirit is guiding
the hand, when we are unintentionally controlling it ourselves. We put
questions relating to subjects which specially interest us. Passively we
write things which we already know more or less about, and unconsciously
inspire ourselves with the name of the personage invoked. Far more
reliable are the answers given by a table.

4

Several persons place themselves around a table, their hands resting
thereupon and await results. After a given time, if the required
conditions for the production of the phenomena have been complied with,
raps are heard, apparently within the table, and there are certain
motions of the furniture. Sometimes the table tips on one or two legs,
and slowly oscillates. Sometimes it rises entirely from the floor, and
remains suspended, as if adhering to the palms lying upon it; and this
lasts during ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Sometimes the table fastens
itself to the floor with such tenacity that its weight seems to be
doubled or tripled. At other times, and almost always when so requested
by one of the sitters, a noise is heard like that of a saw, a hatchet,
or a pencil at work. These are physical effects, which have been
observed, and prove undeniably the existence of an unknown force.

This force is physical. If one perceived only movements devoid of
purpose, blind