Well, the slightest exercise of the finger or wrist muscles is sufficient to move the small, light round table which is usually the subject of experiment; and when once the slightest movement is established--by the involuntary contraction of a single muscle--all the other persons' muscles, in accommodating themselves to the movement of the table, cannot help helping it, either by pulling or pushing in the direction in which it is going. It is, in fact, almost impossible to follow the movement of a moving table and yet keep your superimposed hands perfectly passive; and with ninety-nine persons out of a hundred the startled interest in the movement even begets an unconscious desire to help it, which at times almost rises to a curious semi-conscious self-deception, a voluntary exaggeration of the marvellous. Yet nothing makes the ordinary sitter angrier than to be told he has helped to move the table. It is as though he were accused of cheating at whist, or worse, of playing a foolish card. Take half a dozen persons at random, and there are sure to be one or two so impressionable and emotional that they cannot help contributing the slight initial impulse which gathers force as it goes. These nervous subjects cannot sit a quarter of an hour perfectly still without a twitching of the muscles, while the tense state of expectation which subtly transforms itself into a wish to see the table move and not have the experiment in vain, finally compels them, despite themselves, to start the "manifestations." Indeed, to think of a thing is half to do it. Every idea has a tendency to project itself in action. If you think strongly, for instance, of lifting your hand, it is difficult not to do it, for the idea of motion is motion in embryo. The wish is father to the thought, and the thought to the deed. The wish to see the table move is the grandfather of its motion. Even with the most sceptical, when the table is requested to go in a particular direction the muscles involuntarily tend thither. All the deepest analyses of scientific psychology are involved in this wretched little episode of table-turning, and it is not marvellous that the ordinary observer should perceive only the marvellous.