Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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ALLAN KARDEC
uproot trees and hurl to considerable distances the heaviest bodies, attracting or repelling, as
the case may be?
The rappings and other unusual noises, supposing them to be due to something else than the
dilatation of the wood, or other accidental cause, might very well be produced by an
accumulation of the mysterious fluid; for does not electricity produce the loudest sounds?
Up to this point everything might be considered as belonging to the domain of physics and
physiology. Without going beyond this circle of ideas, the learned might have found in the
phenomenon referred to matter well worthy of serious study. Why was this not done? It is
painful to be obliged to make the confession, but the neglect of the scientific world was due
to causes that add one more proof to the many already given of the frivolity of the human
mind. In the first place, the non-glamour of the object which mainly served as the basis of the
earliest experimentations had something to do with this disdain. What an influence, in regard
to even the most serious matters, is often exerted by a mere word! Without reflecting that the
movement referred to might be communicated to any object, the idea of tables became
associated with it in the general mind, doubtless because a table, being the most convenient
object upon which to experiment, and also because people can place themselves round a table
more conveniently than round any other piece of furniture, was generally employed in the
experiments referred to. But men who pride themselves on their mental superiority are
sometimes so puerile as to warrant the suspicion that a good many keen and cultivated minds
may have considered it beneath them to take any notice of what was commonly known as "the
dance of tables." If the phenomenon observed by Galvani had been made known by some
unlearned person, and dubbed with some absurd nickname, it would probably have been
consigned to the lumber-room, along with the divining-rod; for where is the scientist who
would not in that case have regarded it as derogatory to occupy himself with the dance of
frogs?
A few men of superior intellect, however, being modest enough to admit that nature might
not have revealed to them all her secrets, conscientiously endeavoured to see into the matter
for themselves; but the phenomena not having always responded to their attempts, and not
being always produced at their pleasure, and according to their methods of experimenting,
they arrived