In all this, is there any proof that the directing agent was “the intelligence of the medium”? Is there not, on the contrary, every indication that the movements of the lath and pencil were directed by spirits “of the dead,” or at least of those of some other unseen {204} intelligent entities? Most certainly the word magnetism explains in this case as little as the term _psychic force_; howbeit, there is more reason to use the former than the latter, if it were but for the simple fact that the _transcendent_ magnetism or mesmerism produces phenomena identical in effects with those of spiritualism. The phenomenon of the _enchanted_ circle of Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, is as contrary to the accepted laws of physiology as the rising of a table without contact is to the laws of natural philosophy. As strong men have often found it impossible to raise a small table weighing a few pounds, and broken it to pieces in the effort, so a dozen of experimenters, among them sometimes, academicians, were utterly unable to step across a chalk-line drawn on the floor by Du Potet. On one occasion a Russian general, well known for his skepticism, persisted until he fell on the ground in violent convulsions. In this case, the magnetic fluid which opposed such a resistance was Mr. Cox’s psychic force, which endows the tables with an extraordinary and supernatural weight. If they produce the same psychological and physiological effects, there is good reason to believe them more or less identical. We do not think the deduction could be very reasonably objected to. Besides, were the fact even denied, this is no reason why it should not be so. Once upon a time, all the Academies in Christendom had agreed to deny that there were any mountains in the moon; and there was a certain time when, if any one had been so bold as to affirm that there was life in the superior regions of the atmosphere as well as in the fathomless depths of the ocean, he would have been set down as a fool or an ignoramus. “The Devil affirms—it must be a lie!” the pious Abbé Almiguana used to say, in a discussion with a “spiritualized table.” We will soon be warranted in paraphrasing the sentence and making it read—“Scientists deny—then it must be true.” CHAPTER VII. {205} “Thou great First Cause, least understood.”—POPE. “Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? ’Tis the divinity that stirs within us; ’Tis heaven itself that points out our hereafter And intimates eternity to man. ETERNITY! Thou pleasing, dreadful thought!”—ADDISON. “There is another and a better world.”—KOTZEBUE: _The Stranger_.