“If any one is so unwise as to be willing to pay £100 in the event of the phenomenon taking place in his presence, and of his being unable to detect any imposture, I undertake that the ‘medium’ shall exhibit _in any private room, in any home, and with any furniture_ (provided it be not too heavy), and that the said medium shall submit _to be searched both before and after the exhibition_. “Nothing is easier than to lift a table by means of a concealed apparatus. The knocking also may be produced by means of muscular motion or otherwise. But can any one lift a table _without any apparatus_, simply by placing the hand on it; or can any one contrive an apparatus so cunning that no one present, having full liberty to examine everything, shall be able to detect it? “By collusion or otherwise questions also might be answered, but I maintain that the agent in spiritualism can tell all the most secret and hidden things of one’s life, and even one’s secret thoughts, and also that it understands and can converse _in any language_. I have verified this _by repeated experience_. But it will not always speak when it is wanted to speak, and the ‘medium’ has no power over it to make it answer questions. But the fact that it often tells lies and often refuses to tell anything, does not make void the fact that it does also at times answer _every question which one can ask it_. It is by this sort of capricious behaviour that it succeeds in completely deluding some to trust in it, and others to disbelieve in it altogether. But let a man confine himself at first to the physical phenomenon and try if he can make a table to rise up into the air completely off the ground, simply by placing his hand on it, and _without any apparatus whatever_. If he cannot do this, and if no human being can do it, let it be acknowledged that there is some non-human agent. A little experience will very soon convince any one that it is an intelligent, and a wonderfully intelligent, agent, and then it will remain to be considered whether this intelligent agent is good or evil—_I say it is evil_. R. C.”