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[ Having no literary gossip to fill its accustomed place this week , we are tempted to enlarge the already elastic limits of the article which habitually opens the literature of our journal , and to insert a few remarks on the allengrossing topic of " table-moving , " which has become a mama in France , in Germany , and in our own country . Every house you enter has its chronicles of marvels . Cabinet ministers and men of science , fashionables and workmen , all are table-moving and hat-moving with an energy only bestowed on manias . ] WHAT IS THE REAL CAUSE OF TABLE-MOVING ?
The fact that if three or more persons stand round a small table , with their hands resting on it , each little finger touching that of the hand belonging to a neighbour , after a lapse of about ten or fifteen minutes the table will commence a slow circular movement which becomes rapidly accelerated , and forces the persons to follow it—this fact , we Say , is indisputable . But what does this fact imply ? What is the explanation of the seeming marvel ? Have we here the revelation of a new agency , or is the fact referrible to well-known agencies ? The question is not without its importance ; not only from the interest now following the subject , and the eminence of the names which countenance the absurd theories thrown off
in explanation , but also from the light which it may shed on many very delicate questions of organic action and of popular credulity . It is high time that those who pretend to lead opinion through the press should rigorously examine this matter , when a journal like the Literary Gazette , which has high scientific pretensions , can print , without disavowal , an article by one of its contributors , wherein the following passage occurs . Alluding to the men who have borne public testimony to the fact , the writer remarks : — These gentlemen are not gullible fools easily imposed on ; and it is not to be supposed for one moment that they would deliberately tell falsehoods for the sake of imposing on the public . We have , then , the established fact that the electricity from the human body can , so to speak , animate inanimate substances , and give
life , and it may almost be said intelligence , to inert wood . This is evidently one of those " things not dreamt of in our philosophy , " of which the poet spoke . The speculations to which it has given rise are very curious . Some people will have it that it is nothing less than a marked advance towards the discovery of the great and mysterious secret of what composes human life , or at least that it is the opening of a wider and nobler field of human knowledge than any now possessed ; whilst others opine that it is a sort of unconscious magic , and hence . they assume that the art of the Baptista Portas and the Michael Scott s was not only no imposture , a « our ancestors and ourselves have sagely decided , but the greatest of all arts—the most wonderful of all sciences . So convinced is one of the principal daily papers that something extraordinarily great is destined to flow from this magnetism , or magic , or whatever it may be , that it has resolved to set apart a certain portion of its apace daily to records of what may bo done in it .
Very instructive , and not a little amusing , is it to note in the foregoing passage the almost universal tendency to confound facts with inferences . The fact observed is , that tables move ; the inference that it is moved by " electricity" is supposed to be " established" by the fact , and away the theorist flies into the " immense inane" of speculation . Cautious thinkers will cry " Not so fast ! All that is at present established is the simple fact of a table ( or a hat , for both objects are in favour ) moving when a chain is formed by persons round it . When we come to interrogate the meaning of this fact , we shall require something more than the rash assertion of ' electricity '—a word always dragged in to cloak ignorance , and always more used by those entirely ignorant of electricity than l ) y those acquainted with some of its properties . "
The table moves . It may be moved by Spirits ; it may be moved by Electricity ; it may be moved by the unconscious muscular action of persons forming the chain round it . Here are three explanations , not to suggest more , which the investigator may severally examine . 1 . Spirits . Table-moving issued out of Spirit-Rapping . Indeed we may claim the first article published in this journal rts the origin ; for it was owing to the translation of that article in . Germany , and the sensation there excited by it , that Dr . Andhbe first commenced his experiments of Tablemoving ; from Germany it spread rapidly to Paris and London . Those
who believe in the Spirit-llappings will have no difficulty m assigning a cause to the Table-movings ; but for more cautious thinkers there will be these difficulties : First , the existence of the Spirits requires proof ; secondly , their / M-cvence requires some more definite proof than lies in an assumption . Indeed , it should be stated here , to exonerate the sensible people who occupy themselves with the new phenomenon , that Table-moving has no necessary connexion with Spirit-Kapping , and is investigated by hundreds who are fully aware of the ignoble imposture practised under the title of Spiritual Manifestations . As we are of the latter we may dismiss this first explanation without further discussion .
2 . Electricity . This is more plausible , and entraps all but those accustomed to scientific analysis . But we are bound to call attention to the following points : First , there is absolutely no proof whatever of the existence of the current of electricity passing from human beings to the table ; it is ft pure assumption made to overarch the chasm of ignorance .
Secondly , although what is called nerve-force has many striking analogies with electricity , yet every well-informed Physiologist knows that thie identity of the two forces far from being proven , is , in the present state of science , to be rejected . Thus you have to prove the existence of the very agent you assume , and then , having proved it , you have to prove that its mode of operation is that which you assume ! For granting that nerveforce is electricity , we have still to learn that this electricity passes m a stream from our fingers to the table we have still to learn that electricity when it passes into a table or a hat makes that table or that hat gyrate . These are difficulties which will prevent the scientific mind from accepting electrical agency . At present the question stands thus : The table moves ; by no known laws of electricity or physidlogy can this movement be explained as electrical j and to suppose that the movement itself is the
proof , is to indulge in the most vicious circular reasoning , by which an assumption is made to demonstrate the validity of the assumption . 3 . Unconscious muscular action . Instead of unproven " Spirits ^ and questionable " Electricity , " it would seem more natural to try the simpler explanation of unconscious muscular action , did we not know that in such cases the simple explanation is always the last to be thought of . Appetite for the marvellous will not be appeased by commonplaces ! Let us , however , inquire a little more closely into this said muscular action , and see if we cannot by the aid of known laws explain all the phenomena . In standing or sitting round a table for many minutes with the hands
lightly resting on it , and the mind eagerly expectant , the fatigue of the muscles causes you to rest with your weight on one leg if standing , —on one side if sitting , —and this gives a stress to the table ( unless you are very vigilant ) , which may cause it slightly to move ; no sooner does the movement begin than all the expectant circle , now gratified at the result , unconsciously aid in the movement ( in a way hereafter to be explained ) , and thus , although no one is conscious of effort , but fancies the table moves without his cooperation , yet , in fact , all or most of the persons forming the chain do
really co-operate in moving , it . We must beg that no captious verbal criticism be applied to this explanation of the process ; we are aiming at an intelligible explanation , and hope in succeeding remarks to clear up every point involved . The reader must bear in mind that expectation of the result is necessary , otherwise the table will not move . Those who adopt the magnetic hypothesis explain the necessity of this condition ( as the mesmerists explain failures ) , by saying that " scepticism destroys the influence . " Truly it does so ; because the muscular action , which produces the movement in obedience to what is called an " expectant attention , " will not be brought into play unless expectation be there .
Scepticism , however , is a word of loose signification . There are two classes of sceptics . There is the class of men who are , it is true , perfectly incredulous with respect to the fact , but as perfectly credulous with respect to the inference ; they approach the table with laughter , or with an emphatic declaration of "It ' s all humbug ; " yet no sooner does the table move , and they believe in the honesty of those moving it , than their incredulity is suddenly changed to a credulity as rash ! They doubted the fact ; no sooner is the fact proved than they no longer doubt the inference ! But the scientific sceptic , knowing where lies the source of most fallacies ,
is willing enough to believe the fact , he is only sceptical of the lmmatvfre hypothesis suggested to explain the fact . It is thus that Spirit-Rappings convert the incredulous . When something is told them which " it is impossible that the Medium or any one present could have known , " theyforced to accept the fact—believe they are forced to accept the inference which the impostor wishes them to accept ; but a cautious thinker would accept the fact and examine closely the inference . He would say— " It is true I have been told such and such things ; but does it , therefore , follow that they were told me by departed spirits ? May there not be some juggle in it ?"
We dwell on this distinction between scepticism of facts and scepticism of inferences , because it is important , and because men commonly fancy they are bringing strong evidence in support of their opinions when they preface it by saying , "I assure you I approached this subject ns complete a sceptic as you can be ; I thought it monstrous humbug ; I laughed at the idea ; bnt I was forced to own the truth at last . " If you interrogate these sceptics , you will find that they all imagine the fact proves the hypothesis —as if no other hypothesis would explain the fact ! The explanation of " tnble moving" we have from the first suggested , has been this week strengthened by a reprint in the Journal dr ' s Debats of an article written twenty years ago by M . Ciikvhkul , the celebrated chemist , an analysis of which had already been given by Lonukt in his Traite * de Physiologic . We will reproduce its leading points .
In 1833 , Paris was amused by the oscillations of a pendulum , as recently London was by the oscillations of gold rings under the pretended Magnetoscope of Mr . Rutter . * Electricity , " of course , was the explanation of the following fact : —If an iron ring were suspended by a thread over mercury , and held there by the right hand , it began to oscillate ; on introducing some other substance between the mercury and the suspended ring , the oscillations ceased , to recommence with the withdrawal of the foreign substance . But Ciiisvuisur , showed that this was the result of insensible muscular action , by various experiments , of which it is enough to say , that on supporting his arm by a wooden rest , the oscillations decreased in proportion na the wooden rest approached the wrist , and disappeared when
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforcethem . —EdmburghMev % eM > .
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498 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 21, 1853, page 498, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1987/page/18/
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