INTRODUCTION.

Great thinkers are sometimes so childish that it would not be impossible for certain elite minds to have believed it beneath them to concern themselves with what was commonly called table-turning original: "la danse des tables" (literally "the dance of the tables"). In the mid-19th century, this was a popular social phenomenon where participants sat around a table that would tilt or rotate, eventually leading to the study of Spiritism.. It is even probable that if the phenomenon observed by GalvaniLuigi Galvani (1737–1798), an Italian physician who discovered that the muscles of dead frogs' legs twitched when struck by an electrical spark; this was the foundational discovery for bioelectricity. had been observed by common men and remained characterized by a ridiculous name, it would still be relegated to the same category as the divining rod. Indeed, what scientist would not have thought it beneath their dignity to occupy themselves with the dancing of frogs?

Some, however, were modest enough to admit that nature might not yet have said its final word to them, and wanted to see for their own satisfaction; but it happened that the phenomenon did not always meet their expectations, and because it did not constantly occur at their will, or according to their method of experimentation, they concluded in the negative. Despite their judgment, the tables—since tables there are—continue to turn, and we can say with GalileoThe author references the famous (though likely apocryphal) phrase "E pur si muove," said to have been whispered by Galileo after he was forced by the Inquisition to recant his claim that the Earth moves around the sun.: and yet they move! We will say more: the facts have multiplied so much that today they have earned their place in society, and it is now only a matter of finding a rational explanation for them. Can we infer anything against the reality of the phenomenon from the fact that it does not always occur in an identical manner according to the will and requirements of the observer? Are the phenomena of electricity and chemistry not subordinated to certain conditions, and should we deny them because they do not occur outside of those conditions? Is it then anything surprising that the phenomenon of the movement of objects by the human fluid In 19th-century Spiritist theory, the "human fluid" (or vital/magnetic fluid) was thought to be an invisible energy emitted by living beings that could interact with physical matter under specific conditions. also has its conditions for existence, and ceases to occur when the observer, placing themselves at their own point of view, pretends to make it work at their whim, or subject it to the laws of known phenomena, without considering that for new facts there can and must be new laws? Now, to know these laws, one must study the circumstances in which the facts occur, and this study can only be the fruit of sustained, attentive, and often very long observation.

But, some people object, there is often obvious trickery. We will first ask them if they are quite certain that there is trickery, and if they have not mistaken for such those effects for which they could not account,