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The following contribution, under the preceding head, is translated by my much esteemed friend, Dr. Geib, from the work of De Mirville, whence the articles under the designation of Foreign Coroborative Evidence have been obtained through the same able translator:

333. “Toward the end of the year 1852 the epidemic had been imported into the North of Scotland by some American mediums; thence it got to London, where, according to the latest accounts, it must have reached, by the present time, a pretty extensive development. Seeing its progress in this way, we were led to say, If it ever reaches Germany, that whole country will be on fire.

334. “The religious gazette of Augsburg of June 18, 1853, contained an article from which we make some extracts:

335. “‘Again the world is presented with various marvellous appearances, which, coming from elevated sources, force themselves on public notice, and which, in every case, throw a very marked shadow on our own epoch of civilization. It may be appropriate to communicate some of those found in the Gazette Générale; and leaving reflection to the reader, we will give some of the most striking.

336. “‘The Morgan Blatt (Morning Sheet) announces among its novelties from Palatinat Rhénan, the phenomenon of a young girl not yet pubescent, who, they say, is able at will to command a rapping spectre, (Klopferle.) The spectre raps as often as the little girl orders him, being obedient in the extreme. What is remarkable is, that the spectres of the Old World, as well as the New, have a strong family likeness, being as much alike as two drops of water. And the Tribune of New York, printed in the German language, has lately contained various communications on this subject. But whence come these rapping spectres, and why make their appearance all at once?’

337. “The Gazette of Augsbourg then refers to several other facts of the same nature, which, at all times, have caused much embarrassment to the German authorities, either in giving rise to lengthy inquests, or in causing the condemnation of persons proved afterward to be entirely innocent; but as for those of the present time, it fully understands, proclaims, and demonstrates them to be of the American Affiliation.

338. “The Journal du Magnetisme of the 10th of March, 1853, had already furnished us with the reported account given in the course of last January to the tribunal of London, by the rapping spirit of the house of Sanger; the same phenomena, the same stupefaction, the same impossibility to discover the jugglers. However, the subject appeared to rest at this point in Germany, when, in the month of April, the first phenomenon of table moving reached Bremen, and then the Augsbourg Gazette insisted on its true origin.

339. “‘For eight days previous,’ it said, ‘our good town has been in an agitation difficult to describe; it is completely absorbed by a miracle which was not thought of before the arrival of the steamer from New York—the Washington. The new phenomenon is imported from America.’

340. “Now a certain Doctor André was the first to describe this first exhibition of table turning; therefore they called it his discovery. What a discovery!

341. “‘Having formed a chain,’ he says, ‘of seven or eight persons, the right little finger of each touching the left one of his neighbour, the table they surround will commence turning, and continue as long as the chain remains unbroken, and stop when an individual leaves it.’

342. “A general burst of pleasantry and incredulity first accompanied the revelation of the doctor. But soon experiment begins, and laughter gives place to a sort of dejection. Certain savans, professors of the University of Heidelberg, MM. Mittermouer and Zoepfl, M. Molh, brother of the member of the Institute, Eschenmajer, Ennemoser, and Kerner, attest the same facts; and Doctor Lœwe of Vienna undertakes to give the theory of it: ‘This theory consists, according to him, in the opposite polarity of the right and left sides of the human body; hence, having formed a chain of human beings, the contrary poles of which, viz. the right and left, touch each other, and this chain, exerting upon any body whatever a prolonged action, conveys to it an electric current, and converts it into a magnet, and thus polarization is established in that body; and in virtue of its tendency to magnetic orientation, the south pole of the table impressing it with a movement to the north, the latter commences a continued rotation, and turns on its axis as long as the indispensable conditions are continued.’

343. “Unfortunately, the spirits are very soon seen to dispense with these indispensable conditions. Thus, then, at Bremen, Vienna, and Berlin, there was not a table at rest on its legs, and still the French press observed a uniform inexplicable silence!

344. “We ask, however, what would have been said, had we foretold what began to appear unavoidable, that in less than a month, table and hat turning would reach Paris. The announcement was scarcely known when it appears that such a thing has always existed; that it is a law of nature; and that tables never had any other destiny!

345. “Again we inquire of all serious minds, What is the faculty by which we predict, among other coming events, the turning of tables, which, nevertheless, do not turn till after the arrival of a vessel and a medium? However, silence becoming impossible, the French press has thought proper to speak. On the 4th of May, the Journal of the Empire, Le Pays, happened to inform us that ‘from the Baltic to the banks of the Danube, all Germany was in a fever.’ It became then plainer and plainer that we were going to be infected, and from that time we hastened to prepare our batteries.

346. “It was high time, for about the end of April, the grand mysterious army had this time decidedly crossed the Rhine, and in all the large cities of France—Strasbourg, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, &c.—the turning epidemic broke out like a discharge of musketry; and better to impress the mind, it only at first attacked stands, tables, hats, seats, &c., for all these participated in the demonstration.

347. “At Paris especially, in repeating the experiments, they were made a pastime for a soirée. Children were introduced into the circles, without considering whether correlative evil might not be coupled with these mysterious amusements.

348. “It is true they would not allow the smallest Leyden jar to come near them; but what troubles might have resulted from the action of an electricity that could raise tables of eighteen dishes like a feather?

349. “It is true, too, that M. Rouilly, maître de pension at Orleans, undertook to give an answer. In the Moniteur due Loiret, he informs us that ‘at his house, even in the middle of the process, a large young man of twenty-six was seized with a violent trembling in all his limbs, and that his left forearm began suddenly to oscillate in a frightful manner, making as many as a thousand movements in a minute; being able, he said, to utter only broken syllables; staggered like an intoxicated man; it was necessary to carry him to bed, and the next day he still felt some nervous trembling.’ M. Rouilly ended in saying ‘that he felt it his duty to report this fact for the benefit of those who may enter into these experiments without knowing their possible serious inconveniences.’ Little attention was paid to this, so much had fashion asserted empire, so much was this pleasure worth its cost.

350. “However, knowing long since all the particulars, we are disposed to ask ourselves, What is going to result from all this? what will the savans say? Will they allow themselves to be carried away by electric appearances? will their philosophy allow them to seek independently of the fluids, which may be imagined to operate, the real agent of such a variety of effects? No; they well know, however, that in the sciences—medicine, for example—every investigation that stops short of phenomena, is of very secondary value; we may be satisfied, for want of better, but still we do not feel ourselves in possession of the truth; we still seek it. Why in this case should we do otherwise? These suppositions were just, but we say without hesitation our fantastic experimenters committed from the first an unpardonable fault, philosophically speaking; that is, not to have taken the least notice of those facts from America which were beginning to sound in their ears from all sides. When we are visited by the plague, yellow fever, or cholera, the first care of the faculty is to have it studied in Egypt, Spain, and Poland. These scourges are investigated even at the place of their birth; we notice their origin, development, and termination. Well! in doing the same in this case, these gentlemen would have seen as clear as day that the Augsbourg Gazette was right in telling them that this animal magnetizing was received direct from America. But what shall we do? we take no pleasure in looking at what we do not want to see.

351. “However, this affiliation once well established, well understood, by thoroughly studying the American prodigies, we should very soon have reached the assurance that there, at least, the spirits had exhibited themselves in open day; and there, as they were first concealed in tables or behind partitions, we could have seen immediately what might be reserved for us for the future.

352. “But rest assured our French science will not yield; the snare is too gross; French science has no rival in physics and electricity; it only sees in this a waggish electricity, and will never consent to be persuaded that it has slept a hundred years at the side of such truths, or rather at the side of such enormities in physics.

353. “And then iniquity is exhibited to herself at all times. Sir, then what becomes of the indispensable conditions of Dr. André? that is to say: ‘All the effects ceasing on the least interruption of the chain.’

354. “This morning, in a journal of Lorraine, there is a notice of a circle formed in a first story, round a massive table; as long as the circle continued nothing was done; but getting tired they all leave for the street, and a few moments afterward the rebellious table begins to waltz, as if to bid defiance to the party. What a law of physics, what electricity! Behold, on the other hand, cities and countries disinherited! Behold the city of Valence, who laboured all in her power, who followed with angelic patience all the prescriptions of the new science; nothing could produce the phenomena. Is it that at Valence, perchance, the human species has no electricity? Mon Dieu! it has electricity, but it is not of that accidental and local kind, the real kind for the occasion, and which may be therefore denominated erratic; as the ancients called those gods that moved about from place to place.

355. “No, Science is not to be so deceived; she is not satisfied with the explanation of the little fingers, but soon perceives that these little fingers supply here precisely the part of the famous mesmeric trough, and the chain that was formed entirely round it. Then, also, the chain was said to be very important; and the trough, magnet, steel, glass pile all necessary agents. Very well, what has now become of all these necessities? The magnetic effects exceed all those of that time, and notwithstanding they are not made any use of. Much more! since the passes have ceased to be the fashion, the phenomena have doubled. In Germany, where people go to the bottom of things, they have desired to look into the heart of it. Each master of the magnet—and they are pretty plenty there—has constructed his own trough. That of Walford consists of an iron box, furnished with bottles, iron wire, ground glass, &c. That of Keiser was made of beech without bottles, and filled with water, which did not prevent the effects from being precisely the same in the two cases. Thus it was said: It is magnetism alone which gives them this power, and they magnetized their best. But one lucky day it was thought proper not to magnetize, and the trough lost none of its power! ‘Ah! ah!’ they say, ‘the trough is magnetized by the magnetized patients themselves, and they put a stout man into it, free from all magnetic influence, and besides in excellent health. Well, this time! the magnetic effects exceeded in intensity all the previous experiments, and never had the phenomena exhibited themselves so brilliantly.’

356. “This is the precise account of the famous report of Bailly, of which M. Arago spoke so highly in his last memoir; and in one respect he was right; for these great experimenters did not allow themselves to be caught by any of these electric seductions, and proclaimed physics to be entirely innocent of all the effects they witnessed. But at the same time they thought proper to refer to the imagination these same prodigious effects, which no one could understand even after having seen them; and there was their great mistake; they were right as savans, as philosophers inexcusable.

357. “Moreover, this absurd explanation by imagination he renewed under these circumstances; and that of jugglery is not more fortunate. What prejudice! These two words rendered much service, and covered many retreats! That is, however, passed; it will be necessary hereafter, not only to admit them, but to redeem all analogous precedents, for these are about to be, at last, explained. Again, what is to be done? It will be necessary to proclaim that these electric phenomena which are real as an effect, are not in fact real in their cause; that they lie when they wish the contrary to be believed, that they joke when they act by turns with and without a chain in a particular town, and not in some other, &c.

358. “But on the other hand to perceive a capricious and lying cause, is almost to perceive ... a mind. A mind, grands dieux! You represent yourself before the whole Academy Arago as recognising spirits, hobgoblins! grand experiment! But that itself is horrid to contemplate! Not a face at the Institute can remain uncovered, and that day will forever be regarded as unlucky for science, as it robs it of a victory which was thought to have been gained centuries before.

359. “Beware, however, of the first supernal intelligence! for we shall fall back on our ancient and primitive criterion, our infallible touchstone.

360. “All depends on what it is going to give us; think well of it this time; an imprudent question might lose all.

361. “And already, what signifies that last phrase of a serious article which we find in the Courier du Nord? ‘In another house the table, they say, obeyed the commands of one of the experimenters; took the direction indicated, danced in measure to the sound of a piano, counted the hours, and told the age of the assistants,’ &c.

362. “What means that other letter from Bordeaux, in the Guyenne? ‘A hat submitted to animal magnetism appeared more intelligent even than the table; it indicated, they say, by little gambols, the age of persons, the number of pieces of money they had in their pockets, it told the amount of ladies and gentlemen together in the room,’ &c.

363. “What follows is better still: see in the Journal le Pays, a letter of M., the Abbé of Moigno, according to which it follows that MM. Seguin and de Montgolfier, very distinguished engineers, ordered the tables to rest on this leg and then on the other, and made them beat time, &c.

364. “We read in La Patrie—‘Explanation given by the savans.’ Ah! let us see! this subject is becoming important. According to this journal the following is the hypothesis at which the savans have arrived: ‘The table and hat turners act mostly in good faith, (quite a concession,) but they deceive themselves; they think they cause the motion of an inanimate object by an act of volition, or an effusion of magnetic fluid from their fingers; while it is by muscular action, imperceptible to themselves, or others.’ Ah! take notice! It is by a vibratory movement coming from thousands of small nervous branches. Add to this, lassitude, humidity of the hands, and you will have an explanation, if not entirely satisfactory, at least sufficiently plausible, of the phenomena which engage our attention. M. Chevreul (of the Institute) has analyzed this physiological predisposition, and has illustrated it by the fact familiar to the billiard player, who having struck the ball, follows it with his eyes, with his shoulders, and with the whole body, and makes fantastic motions, as if to impel it, though no longer subject to his direct action, &c.

365. “It is well M. Chevreul has used the phrase ‘as if to impel it,’ for had he been so unfortunate as to say, and in fact he did impel it, we should have been lost. In truth we should have been silenced. But that lucky ‘as if,’ saves us from a very bad predicament; it brings back to our memory what we were about to forget; that is to say, that in the relations of man and matter, never, up to the present time, has all the muscular effort of the world been able to influence, in the smallest degree, the direction of an object, not under its direct action. To the present time all the laws of physics have been based on the grand primordial law, and the player of ten-pins is not more successful from such efforts, than he of the billiard ball just named.

366. “How changed are the times! Two years ago, the whole Academy of Sciences revolted against the Baron de Humboldt for supposing that at a distance he caused a deviation of the magnetic needle—an experiment, too, which could never be renewed at Paris; and, behold! in place of needles, all at once heavy tables are seen waltzing about the room, and obedient to the will; and all this is easily explained! It is quite plausible! Yes, but this time, gentlemen Savans, we will not allow you to distort the facts. Since the commencement of this volume, we have done nothing but establish, on good evidence, all those which your colleagues arrange agreeably to their fancy, after having absolutely denied them. But now the half of France rises with us to convict them, and to say to you: No, your nervous branches will never explain it; neither the physical phenomena which you would refer to them, nor the intelligence of our tables which respond to our own questions, nor the super-intelligence of those which probably to-morrow will reveal to us what we are ignorant of ourselves.

367. “Attending on the morrow, then! It is truly sorrowful to see a man of the highest merit, like M. Chevreul, expose himself in this way to the weakest scholar who, cue in hand, might fairly undertake to answer him. Those may hereafter believe in physics who wish. It is most horribly compromised. A science, capable of thus forswearing all its principles, loses, in our estimation, much of its authority.

368. “La Revue Medicale, cited by La Patrie of May 20th, declares in its turn ‘the explanation either by imagination or muscular vibrations, as represented by MM. Corvisart and De Castelnan, entirely nullified by the fact of the simple change in the relations of the little fingers.’

369. “As for the Medical, they see in it animal magnetism, and exclaim: ‘No one is able to foresee the application of which this discovery is susceptible. It is an entire world for explanation. Who knows if there is not at the end of this hint the means of illustrating a whole generation!’

370. “Lucky Magnetism—what a reparation you have a right to demand! what incense will be bestowed on you to-morrow, by those who yesterday so cruelly tore you to pieces! But La Presse and L’Union Medicale may do what they please, no one will hereafter believe them on their word.

371. “A just reward, gentlemen, for things here below. You would not believe and you are not believed now! We read afresh in La Patrie of May 21st, the recital of ‘tables promenading and upsetting without contact by pure efforts of volition, or even by a simple magnetic pass—a very superfluous precaution of the experimenter.’ Very superfluous, indeed! It could not have been better expressed.

372. “In the presence of such a fact, will the magnetizers still maintain that the magnetic rapport results from the mixture of the two nervous atmospheres? The nervous system of tables, (disgueridons,) to use the language of Reichenbach, must be very sensitive; and in this new dance without contact—what becomes of the explanation by muscular vibration, and especially by the humidity of the hands?

373. “We have some very important communications, on the 23d of May, from M. Bonjean, member of the Royal Academy of Savoy, at Chambéry, respecting several experiments made at the academy itself, and establishing the perfect intelligence of the agent in question. M. Bonjean, however, always refers this intelligence to one uniform process. ‘These responses,’ he says, ‘are not, and cannot be but the reflection of the thoughts of the person who causes the phenomena, and the movables are only able to satisfy those questions whose answers are known, without ever being able to supply an answer that is not known.’

374. “The idea that the furniture is unable to give satisfaction is charming! but up to this point it was not understood to be super-intelligence. Patience, however, for it is bound to happen!

375. “Besides, M. Bonjean does full justice to the muscular movements of M. Chevreul, by means of that single exception of the table of Strasbourg turning with all its operators, or certain tables at Lyons moved without immediate contact. Next, he passes from the physical to the moral question, which, if to be believed, is certainly not very encouraging. ‘Fathers and mothers,’ he exclaims, ‘if you do not desire to develope premature feelings in your daughters, husbands who regard the peace of your wives, be mistrustful of the magnetic chain in general, and of the dancing of tables in particular.’

376. “It will be recollected that in the famous secret report of Bailly on mesmerism, in 1784, exactly the same thing was said. There is under all this, then, we have good reason to apprehend, a uniform unrepented sin.

377. “In a letter of May 24th from M. Seguin, one of our most distinguished engineers, to the Abbé Moigno, who had very ably opposed these experiments in Le Pays, M. Seguin says, ‘When I reason dispassionately on the real and very positive results which I have obtained, and seen obtained by others before my eyes, I think myself under the control of an hallucination which causes me to see things differently to what they are, so much does my reason refuse to admit them; but when I repeat my experiments, I find it impossible any longer to resist the force of evidence, when indeed it confounds and upsets all my opinions.

378. “‘How can you expect me to accept your explanation, when a table touched very lightly by the ends of the fingers, presses against my hand and against my legs to such a degree as to repel me and almost break itself? How believe that the person whose hands touch it could impart to it a force equal to such efforts, and especially when that person is myself? Accept, then, freely and with courage, the facts as THEY ARE, the facts well seen and satisfactorily produced by myself, in whom you have, I think, as much confidence as in yourself. The explanation will come hereafter, rest assured. Believe firmly that in these phenomena of turning tables there is something more than you see—a physical reality outside of the imagination and of the faith of those who appear to make them move.’

379. “It is impossible, as we see, to be more positive, or better to defend the physical evidence on the ground of facts. M. Seguin has a thousand times the advantage over his learned antagonist; but let us see if M., the Abbé Moigno, defeated on this ground, will not take his revenge on another.

380. “Referring to a communication made to the academy by one M. Vauquelin, about one of these enchanted tables, which in his hands was able to reply to the most mysterious questions, divine the most secret thoughts, &c., M. Meigno exclaims in Le Cosmos Revue Encyclopédique des Sciences: ‘This time it is too strong; we find ourselves definitively at the mercy of magic, and the moment has come to proclaim it at Rome. Then there is neither magnetism nor electricity; not even the influence of human volition on matter; but supposing the fact to be certain—WHICH IS HARD TO SWALLOW—there must be in it the intervention of spirits, or magic. Intelligence that can refuse these deductions of common sense, would be DISORDERED intelligence, as useless to dispute with as with fools. If you have not been mistaken, if the extraordinary facts which you affirm are true, we ourselves are believers. The intervention of spirits and of magic became the sorrowful but great realities.’

381. “M. Agenor De Gasparin, one of our most sedate philosophers, writes what follows in La Gazette de France:—‘I will not insist on this point. The phenomenon of rotation, if alone, would not appear to me entirely satisfactory. I am mistrustful, though not an academician, and, I admit, that it may be possible (at a pinch) that a mechanical impulsion might be communicated. But the rotation only serves to present other phenomena, the explanation of which it is impossible to refer to any kind of muscular action.

382. “‘Each of us, in his turn, gave orders to the table, which it promptly obeyed; and I should succeed with difficulty in explaining to you the strange character of these movements, of blows struck with an exactness, with a solemnity that fairly frightened us. “Strike three blows; strike ten blows. Strike with your left foot; with your right foot; with your middle foot. Rise on two of your feet; on only one foot; remain up; prevent those on the side raised from returning the table to the floor.” After each command the table obeyed. It produced movements that no complicity, involuntary or voluntary, could have induced; for we should have afterward tried in vain to place it on one foot, and keep it there by the pressure of the hands, resisting incontestably the efforts to press it down.

383. “‘Each one of us gave orders with equal success. Children were obeyed as well as grown persons.

384. “‘Still more: it was agreed that the requests should not be audible, but merely mental, and whispered to a neighbour. Still the table obeyed! There was in no instance the least error.

385. “‘Each person desired the table to rap the number of years of his age, and it gave our ages as indicated only in our mind, endeavouring in the most curious manner to hurry when the number was large. I must own, to my shame, that I was rebuked by it, for having unintentionally diminished my age; the table gave forty-three instead of forty-two, because my wife, with a better memory, had thought of the correct number.

386. “‘Finally, having continued these experiments more than an hour, at which the neighbours and the servants of the farm were present, I felt that it was time to stop. I requested the table to raise; to raise again, and turn over on my side, which it did.

“‘Accept, gentlemen, the assurance of my best consideration,

A. De Gasparin.’

387. “We stop our citations here; for those who are not content with the testimony we have furnished, emanating as it does from philosophers, or men of serious minds, the same revelations appearing, too, in all parts of the world, will not be better satisfied by any thing we could add. A day is coming, however, that will open every mouth. Then from all those parlours so reserved before—from all those cabinets in which experiments had been conducted with closed doors, the truth will burst forth in its full power. Then it will be known that some of the most esteemed men of Paris, of the bench, pulpit, and men of letters, have both desired to see and have seen it; have desired to know and have known it. It will be known that the evil super-intelligence has been revealed to them, and that if they have been silent on the subject, or desired to suppress their name, it was only an act of prudence to restrain public opinion.

388. “But on that day what will Science be doing? We can boldly predict: the facts of to-day which it does admit, proving to amount to nothing, and the inadmissible facts being admitted, its faith will change, and its language become more modest. Like the ancient Augurs, two savants will not be able to look at each other any more without smiling, and often enough to exclaim: ‘It has been well said, my dear colleague; it has always been foretold, that “He, who is outside of pure mathematics, pronounces the word IMPOSSIBLE, WANTS PRUDENCE.’”

Arago.””