22
PLANCHETTE.
things. These most worthy and respectable opponents are, if
wrong, to be reckoned the lineal descendants of those who
proved the earth could not be round, because the people on the
other side would then tumble off. . . .
“ I have said that the deluded spirit-rappers are on the right
track : they have the spirit and the method of the grand time
when those paths were cut through the uncleared forest in which
it is now the daily routine to walk. What was that spirit? It
was the spirit of universal examination, wholly unchecked by
fear of being detected in the examination of nonsense. . . .
“ I hold those persons to be incautious who give in at once to
the spirit doctrine, and never stop to imagine the possibility of
unknown power other than disembodied intelligence. But I am
sure that this calling in of the departed spirit, because they do
not know what else to fix it on, may be justified by those who
do it, upon the example of the philosophers of our own
day. . . .
“My state of mind, which refers the whole either to unseen
intelligence, or something which man has never had any con¬
ception of, proves me to be out of the pale of the Royal
Society. . . .
“What I reprobate is, not the wariness which widens and
lengthens inquiry, but the assumption which prevents or nar¬
rows it; the imposture theory, which frequently infers imposture
from the assumed impossibility of the phenomena asserted,
and then alleges imposture against the examination of the evi¬
dence. . . ...
“It is now [1863] twelve or thirteen years since the matter
began to be everywhere talked about; during which time there
have been many announcements of the total extinction of the
spirit-mania. But in several cases, as in Tom Moore’s fable,
the extinguishers have caught fire ”
The late Daniel Davis, of Boston, well known as an electrical
instrument-maker, was so thoroughly persuaded of the genuine¬
ness of the phenomena, as manifested in raps, movements of
tables, &c,, that, after exhausting all his practical knowledge