The first difficulty that stands in the way of this hypothesis is that it supposes a thing which, if true, is quite as mysterious and inexplicable as the mystery which it purports to explain. How is it that an "intellectual principle" can detach itself from an intellectual being, of whose personality it formed the chief ingredient, and become an outside, objective, "floating," and "circumambient" entity, with a capability of thinking, willing, acting, and expressing thought, in which the original possessor of the emanated principle often has no conscious participation? And after you have told us this, then tell us how the "intellectual principle," not only of _one_, but of _several_ persons can emanate from them, become "floating" and "ambient," and then, losing separate identity, _conjoin_ and form _one_ active communicating agent with the powers aforesaid? And after you have removed from these _mere assumptions_ the aspect of physical and moral impossibility, you will have another task to perform, and that is to show us how this emanated, "combined," "floating," "circumambient" intelligence can sometimes assume an individual and seemingly _personal_ character of its own, totally distinct from, and, in some features, even _antagonistic_ to, all the characters in the circle in which the "emanation" is supposed to have its origin? It is not denied now that the answers and communications of Planchette (and of the influence acting through other channels) often do exhibit a controlling influence of the mind of the medium or of other persons in the circle. But no theory should ever be considered as explaining a mystery unless it covers the _whole ground_ of that mystery. Even, therefore, should we consider the theory of the "floating intelligence" of the circle reproducing itself in expression, as explaining that part of the phenomenon which identifies itself with the minds of the circle (which it does not), what shall be said of those cases in which the phenomena exhibit characteristics which are _sui generis_, and can not possibly have been derived from the minds of the circle?