"A nervous impulse or current is generated in my brain which flows along my nerves. This current, or series of waves, extends far beyond my body, and my will can influence its direction and force. Thus I can make it move in any direction I please. I can make it lift, or depress, or shift the objects lying in its path. Thus I can cause this wave-force to depress the keys of a piano, or an organ either softly or loudly. I can even cause it to give rise to taps and noises, and I can control these noises, and by generating supplementary overtones I can imitate any instrument I please. Since this nervous impulse passes down my nerves, it causes the twitching movements in my fingers which you observed, and these are synchronous with the movements of the keys of the instrument, or in popular language both my fingers and the keys move simultaneously." "What is the nature of this impulse?" asked Riche. "That I cannot tell you. I only know the vibrations are exceedingly rapid. Some people call it odic force, others magnetic fluid, others nervo-magnetic impulses. But these terms are worse than valueless, they are actually harmful, as they tend to mislead by giving rise to the idea that the impulse is known and explained, whereas we are profoundly ignorant of the nature of the waves. You will invariably find ignorant people ascribing these unknown impulses to magnetism or electricity, and calling it magnetic force, but it has nothing in common with magnetism, since no magnetic field is developed, nor has it, as far as we know, anything to do with electricity. People when they know nothing about a force give it a mysterious name, and imagine by so doing that they have explained it, whereas they have done nothing of the sort. If I guess rightly, this force which emanates from my will acts much in the same way that gravity does, by pulling two bodies towards each other. When I project the force in a strong current, or as we physicists call it an ethereal wave-motion, into the table, I can either make this force positive and draw the table away from the ground, or make it negative and thus neutralise the combined pulling force which you all exerted to raise the table. But this is merely a surmise. Future research may upset the theory altogether, or at any rate profoundly modify it. You see how ignorant I am. Nevertheless, although I cannot explain this force I have the power not only to move heavy bodies, but to cause instruments to play, and even apparently to create material bodies by causing the molecules of a body to leave it and to re-combine to form another body outside. Nor is this power confined to the immediate vicinity. I can affect bodies, and cause them to appear in phantom form at prodigious distances away. You may well shrug your shoulders and shake your heads and smile, but you will be compelled to repeat what Tertullian wrote seventeen centuries ago, 'Certum est quia impossibile est.'"[8]