ve messages with more or less
accuracy.

The intelligence governing these phenomena is sometimes
obviously inferior to that of the medium, and is often in direct
opposition to his wishes. When a determination has been reached
to do something which could not be regarded as quite reasonable,
I have seen communications urging a reconsideration of the
matter. This intelligence is at times of such a character that
one is forced to believe it does not emanate from any person
present. (Researches in Spiritualism, by William Crookes.)

This last sentence might be slightly modified, and the words _forced to
believe_ might be replaced by the words _disposed to believe_; for human
nature is complex, and we are not perpetually the same, even to
ourselves. What uncertainty we often find in our own opinions, upon
points not yet elucidated; and this we feel, even when called upon to
judge actions or events! Are we not sometimes contradictions to
ourselves?

Among the experiments made with these physical and psychical
manifestations of the tables, I will mention, as among the best, those
of Count de Gasparin, and of my sympathetic friend, Eugene Nus. The
Count has obtained rotations, upliftings, raps, revelations of numbers
previously thought of, movements without any human contact, and so on.
He concludes that human beings are endowed with a fluid, with an unknown
force, with an agency capable of impressing objects with the action
determined by our wills. (On Table-turning, Supernaturalism in General,
and Spirits.)

Eugene Nus has obtained, besides sentences dictated by the table,
certain philosophic definitions given almost invariably in exactly a
dozen words each. Here are some of them:

Geology: Studies in the transformation of the planets in their
periods of revolution.

Astronomy: Order and harmony of the external life of worlds,
individually and collectively.

Love: The pivot of mortal passion; attractive sexual force; the
element of continuity.

Death: Cessation of individuality, disintegration of its
elements, a return to universal life.

Let us note, in passing, the strangely singular fact of a departed soul
declaring that death is always the cessation of individuality!

There are whole pages of this kind. Eugene Nus had, as companions in his
experiments, Antony Meray, Toussenel, Franchot, Courbebaisse, a whole
group of transcendental socialists