"There are mysteries in Planchette. No one is ready to explain the mysterious connection between the mind and the little machine, but there can no longer be any doubt that these curious phenomena, table-tipping and all, are produced by magnetism and electricity.... It is useless to ignore these things, or to laugh at them. It were better to account for them, and subject the influence to the power of man.... When some scientific man will condescend to toy with Planchette, we shall have the curtain drawn aside behind which the spirits have operated these years, and this calamitous spirit-rapping mania will destroy no longer." One might almost regret that this latter thought did not occur to the writer before he commenced his article, in which case, by a little patient waiting for this ideal and very condescending "scientific man," we might have been spared this diatribe of jumbled electricity, magnetism, will-power, opium, hashish, monomania, and driving wheels. ELECTRICITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. From much and varied observation and experiment in reference to the performances of Planchette, and of kindred phenomena, now extending over a period of about twenty years, I here record my denial, in the most emphatic manner, that electricity or magnetism, properly so called, has anything to do with the mystery at all, and call for the proof that it has. That a certain psycho-dynamic agency closely allied to, and in some of its modifications perhaps identical with, Reichenbach's "Od," or odylic force, may have some mediatorial part to play in the affair, I do not dispute, nor yet, for the present, do I affirm. But though this agency has sometimes been identified with what, for the want of a better term, has been called "animal magnetism," it has yet to be proved, I believe, that there are any of the properties of the magnet, or of magnetism, about it, even so much as would suffice to attract the most comminuted iron filings. It is remarkable that the assertion or hypothesis that electricity or magnetism is concerned in the production of the phenomena in question, has never yet had an origin in any high scientific authority. This is accounted for by the fact that those who are properly acquainted with this agency, and who have the proper apparatus at their command, can demonstrate the truth or falsity of such a hypothesis with the greatest ease. For an experiment, place your Planchette upon a plate of glass, or some other non-conducting substance. Attach to it a common pith-ball electrometer, and then let your medium place his hands upon the board. If electricity equal to the force even of a small fraction of a grain passes from the medium to the board, the pith ball, to that extent, will be deflected from its position. By means of the _Torsion Balance_ electrometer, invented by Coulomb, the presence of almost the smallest conceivable fraction of a grain of electrical force in your Planchette or your table might be