But, happen what may, no one is occupying himself with the fascinating problem as stated, except scattered investigators who are freed from the fear of ridicule and are aware of the exact value of the human race, in large and small, and the worth of its judgments. M. Thury next discusses the explanation based on "the will." Did this boy (he says) _will_ what took place, as the theory of M. de Gasparin would require us to admit? According to the boy's testimony, which we believe to be wholly true, he did not will it; he seemed to be visibly annoyed by what occurred; it disturbed his custom of industriously practicing his lesson and offended his taste for regularity and order, a thing well known to his intimates. My personal conviction is that we positively cannot admit, in the case of this lad, a conscious will, a settled design, to produce these strange occurrences. But it is known that sometimes we have a double personality, and one of them converses with the other (as in dreams); that our nature then unconsciously desires what it does not will, and that between will and desire there is only a difference in degree rather than in kind. It would be necessary to have recourse to explanations of this kind,--too subtle, perhaps,--in order to square these piano-facts with the theory of M. Gasparin; and it would still be necessary to modify and enlarge the facts if you admit that _even unconscious desire_ suffices, in the absence of the expressed will. There is, then, reason for doubt on this essential point. That is the sole deduction that I wish to draw from the events I have related. This levitation, equivalent to an effort exerted of 440 pounds, has its scientific value. But how could the will, conscious or unconscious, lift a piece of furniture of that weight? By an unknown force which we are obliged to recognize. _Preliminary Action._--Power is developed by action. The rotations prepare for the tippings and the levitations. The rotations and the tippings, with contact, seem to develop the force necessary to produce the rotations and tippings without contact. In their turn, the rotations and the tippings without contact prepare for the production of true levitations, such as those of the swinging table; and the persons who have this latent force awaked in them are better fitted to appeal to it a second time.