122. THE first fruit of my attention to the phenomena of table
turning, was the following letter. I trust I shall not be considered
as self-complacent, when I allege it to be an exemplification of _wise
ignorance_, which is about equivalent to folly. The wisest man who
speaks in ignorance, speaks foolishly to the ears of those who perceive
his ignorance. The great mass of men of science appear in this light to
spiritualists when they argue against Spiritualism. Men who are only
_nominally_ Know Nothings have proved a formidable party in politics;
unfortunately, Spiritualism has, in its most active opponents, _real_
Know Nothings, who will not admit any fact of a spiritual origin,
unless such as they have been educated to believe. In that case, many
have powers of intellectual deglutition rivalling those of the anaconda
in the physical way.[5]
_Letter in reply to an Inquiry respecting the influence of Electricity
in Table Turning._
PHILADELPHIA, July 27, 1853.
123. “_Dear Sir_: I am of opinion that it is utterly impossible for
six or eight, or any number of persons, seated around a table, to
produce an electric current. Moreover, I am confident that if by any
adequate means an electrical current were created, however forcible,
it could not be productive of table turning. A dry wooden table is
almost a non-conductor, but if forming a link necessary to complete a
circuit between the sky and earth, it might possibly be shattered by
a stroke of lightning; but if the power of all the galvanic apparatus
ever made was to be collected in one current, there would be no power
to _move_ or otherwise affect such a table.
124. “Frictional electricity, such as produced by electric machines,
must first be accumulated and then discharged, in order to produce any
striking effect. It is in _transitu_ that its power is seen and felt.
125. “Insulated conductors, whether inanimate, or in the form of
animals, may be electrified by the most powerful means, without being
injured or seriously incommoded. Before a spark of lightning passes,
every object on the terrestrial surface, for a great distance around,
is subjected to a portion of the requisite previous accumulation. Yet
it is only those objects which are made the medium of discharge that
are sensibly affected.
126. “Powerful galvanic accumulation can only be produced by those
appropriate arrangements which concentrate upon a comparatively small
filament of particles their peculiar polarizing power; but nothing
seems to me more inconsistent with experience than to suppose a table
moved by any possible form or mode of galvanic reaction. It was
ascertained by Gaziot that one of the most powerful galvanic batteries
ever made could not give a spark _before_ contact to a conductor
presented to it, at the smallest distance which could be made by a
delicate micrometer. If there is any law which is pre-eminent for its
invariability, it is, that _inanimate_ matter cannot, _per se_, change
its state as respects motion or rest. Were this law liable to any
variation, we should be proportionably liable to perish; since in that
case the revolutions and rotations of our planet and its satellite
might undergo perturbations by which the ocean might inundate the
land, or the too great proximity or remoteness of the sun cause us to
be scorched or frozen. If the globe did not carry the Pacific more
steadily than the most competent person could carry a basin of water,
we should be drowned by the overflow of the land. I recommend to
your attention, and that of others interested in this hallucination,
Faraday’s observations and experiments, recently published in some of
our respectable newspapers. I entirely concur in the conclusions of
that distinguished experimental expounder of Nature’s riddles.