I was somewhat puzzled, it is true, but I was resolved to continue my experiments, and wrest from nature, if possible her last secret. I soon found that it was not necessary to operate with others; that I had the clairvoyant power myself. With a slight effort I could throw myself into the mesmeric state. As soon as I found myself in this state I seemed no longer master of myself. I suffered in entering into it, and on coming out of it, convulsions more or less violent. While in it, I felt oppressed at the pit of my stomach, and my organs of speech seemed to be used by another. When I spoke, it was clear to me that I heard a voice at the pit of my stomach, speaking the words, and I was perfectly conscious of struggling not to say things which, nevertheless, were uttered by my organs. If in this state I sat down to write, my arm and pen seemed seized upon by a foreign power, and moved and guided without any agency of mine. What I wrote I knew not, and had never had in my mind till it came off the end of my pen, and I read it as written down. Evidently the power was distinct from me, and operated by a will not my own. But I was not at all pleased to find myself subject even momentarily to a foreign power. I did not choose to let another use my organs, and to suffer my own will to lie in abeyance. The question arose, whether the same power could not be made to operate without using my organs. If I could mesmerize a material object, and by that mesmerize persons, why might I not mesmerize by it other material objects, and make them serve as organs to this power? I tried the experiment. I mesmerized a bunch of flowers and laid them on a table in my room, with the will that they should communicate to the table their mesmeric virtue. Immediately the table began to move, and to dance round the room, to raise itself from the floor, to balance itself on two legs, then on one leg, to come to me or remove from me as I willed. I was delighted. I found the force could be communicated to the table. I wished to ascertain whether this power was intelligent or not. I required the table, if it could understand me, to give two raps with one of its feet. Immediately it did so. Then I required it, by the same sign, to tell me, whether it understood me by virtue of the mesmeric force. It gave the sign. Then I requested it to tell me, in the same way, whether this mesmeric force is one of the forces of nature, like electricity or magnetism, or whether it is a spirit. There was no answer. Is it, I asked, a spirit? No answer. If not a spirit, let the table, I said, strike with one foot. No movement. I went to the table, and found it, as it were, nailed to the floor. I could not move it. I am a strong man, of far more than ordinary physical strength, and was then in its full possession. The table was a light card-table, but with all my strength, repeatedly put forth, I could not so much as raise one end of it. This was extraordinary. I sat down on