Among accounts of 'demoniac affections,' descriptions of objects moved without contact are of frequent occurrence. As M. Littre says, it is always the same old story. But why is it always the same old story? There were two theories before the world in 1856. First there was the 'animistic-hypothesis,' 'spirits' move the objects, spirits raise the medium in the air, spirits are the performers of the airy music. Then there was the hypothesis of a force or fluid, or faculty, inherent in mankind, and notable in some rare examples of humanity. This force, fluid, agency, or what you will, counteracts the laws of gravitation, and compels tables, or pots, to move untouched. To the spiritualists M. Littre says, 'Bah!' to the partisans of a force or fluid, he says, 'Pooh!' 'If your spirits are spirits, why do they let the world wag on in its old way, why do they confine themselves to trivial effects?' The spiritualist would probably answer that he did not understand the nature and limits of spiritual powers. To the friends of a force or faculty in our nature, M. Littre remarks, in effect, 'Why don't you _use_ your force? why don't you supply a new motor for locomotives? _Pooh_!' The answer would be that it was not the volume and market value of the force, but the _existence_ of the force, which interested the inquirer. When amber, being rubbed, attracted straws, the force was as much a force, as worthy of scientific study, as when electricity is employed to bring bad news more rapidly from the ends of the earth. These answers are obvious: M. Littre's satire was not the weapon of science, but the familiar test of the bourgeois and the Philistine. Still, he admitted, nay, asserted strongly, that the whole series of 'demoniac affections' was 'most worthy of investigation,' and was 'hardly sketched out'. In a similar manner, Brierre de Boismont, in his work on hallucinations, explains a number of 'clairvoyant' dreams, by ordinary causes. But, coming to a vision which he knew at first hand, he breaks down: 'We must confess that these explanations do not satisfy us, and that these events seem rather to belong to some of the deepest mysteries of our being'. {60} There is a point at which the explanations of common-sense arouse scepticism. Much has been done, since 1856, towards producing a finished picture, in place of an ebauche. The accepted belief in the phenomena of hypnotism, and of unconscious mental and bodily actions--'automatisms'--has expelled the old belief in spirits from many a dusty nook. But we still ask: '_Do_ objects move untouched? _why_ do they move, or if they move not at all (as is most probable) _why_ is it always the same story, from the Arctic circle to the tales of witches, and of mediums?'