It will indicate where the boundary-stone that has been moved, ought to stand. The branch further discloses the sins of the persons concerning whom it is consulted, as well as their talents and abilities, the journeys they have made and the wounds they have received. It will indicate whether or not a person has money and how much. It can announce what absent persons are doing and what apparel they are wearing, and of what color it is. It will give information on theological, medical, zoological, and botanical questions. In fine, no matter what the question, it will never fail of an answer.[100, 101] The impossibility of explaining the phenomena in a purely physical way was recognized at a very early date. For a long time the activity of the users of the divining rod seems to have been restricted to the search for metals. The first (or one of the first) to raise his voice against it was the learned G. Agricola[102] (1556), and after him there were many who all wrote more or less independently of one another. Aside from swindle and chance, it was usually believed that sorcery of the agency of Beelzebub was involved, and for that reason the Church has repeatedly forbidden the use of the divining-rod. But even in the 17th century we find some who believed that it was imagination alone that moved the person's hand, and with it the rod,[103, 104] ("fortassis etiam phantasia manum in motum concitante"); and that points out the essentials of the solution of the phenomenon, and we will not go into the matter here in detail. A number of complex psychological problems arising in connection with it are still waiting to be solved, but this much appears certain; the staff or branch plays no other part in the whole process than that which is served by the three levers in the tests described in Chapter IV (pages 116 ff.),--they simply magnify the expressive movements of the diviner. And so we can understand why the instruments serving as rod might be so varied. Hay-forks, pickets, clock-springs and pendulums, scissors and pliers have been used. A knife and fork or two pipes, fastened together, an open book, and even a sausage, grasped at both ends and thus bent together somewhat,--all have served the purpose equally well. We can understand, too, how some adepts are able to achieve the same degree of success--for they do succeed beyond a doubt--without any rod whatever, but simply by placing the index fingers end to end and bending them somewhat, and even by merely groping about with hands outstretched or folded before them.[106]]