“Suppose a fluid, emanating from the experimenters, and chiefly from _some of them_; suppose that the will determined the direction taken by the fluid, and you will readily understand the rotation and levitation of that one of the legs of the table toward which is ejected with every action of the will an excess of fluid. Suppose that the glass causes {112} the fluid to escape, and you will understand how a tumbler placed on the table can interrupt its rotation, and that the tumbler, placed on one of its sides, causes the accumulation of the fluid in the opposite side, which, in consequence of that, _is lifted_!” If every one of the experimenters were clever mesmerizers, the explanation, _minus_ certain important details, might be acceptable. So much for the power of _human will_ on inanimate matter, according to the learned minister of Louis Philippe. But how about the intelligence exhibited by the table? What explanation does he give as to answers obtained through the agency of this table to questions? answers which could not possibly have been the “reflections of the brain” of those present (one of the favorite theories of de Gasparin), for their own ideas were quite the reverse of the very _liberal_ philosophy given by this wonderful table? On this he is silent. Anything but _spirits_, whether human, satanic, or elemental. Thus, the “simultaneous concentration of thought,” and the “accumulation of fluid,” will be found no better than “the unconscious cerebration” and “psychic force” of other scientists. We must try again; and we may predict beforehand that the thousand and one theories of science will prove of no avail until they will confess that this force, far from being a projection of the accumulated wills of the circle, is, on the contrary, a force which is abnormal, foreign to themselves, and _supra-intelligent_. Professor Thury, who denies the theory of departed human spirits, rejects the Christian devil-doctrine, and shows himself unwilling to pronounce in favor of Crookes’s theory (the 6th), that of the hermetists and ancient theurgists, adopts the one, which, he says in his letter, is “_the most prudent_, and makes him feel strong against every one.” Moreover, he accepts as little of de Gasparin’s hypothesis of “unconscious will-power.” This is what he says in his work: “As to the announced phenomena, such as the _levitation without contact_, and the displacement of furniture by invisible hands—unable to demonstrate their impossibility, _a priori_, no one has the right to treat as absurd the serious evidences which affirm their occurrence” (p. 9).