Of his statements in regard to physical phenomena the following may be quoted: "I have known a pine table with four legs lifted bodily up from the floor in the centre of a circle of six or eight persons, turned upside down, and laid upon its top at our feet, then lifted up over our heads and put leaning against the back of the sofa on which we sat. I have seen a mahogany table, having only a centre leg, and with a lamp burning upon it, lifted from the floor at least a foot, in spite of the efforts of those present, and shaken backward and forward as one would shake a goblet in his hand, and the lamp retain its place, though its glass pendants rung again. I have seen the same table tipped up with the lamp upon it, so that the lamp must have fallen off unless retained there by something else than its own gravity; yet it fell not, moved not. I have known a mahogany chair thrown on its side and moved swiftly back and forth on the floor, no one touching it, through a room where there were at least a dozen persons sitting; and it was repeatedly stopped within a few inches of me, when it was coming with a violence which, if not arrested, must have broken my legs."
Of the phenomena classed under the head of spiritualistic three explanations have been offered. One is that they are purely the result of fraud in the mediums and self-delusion in the believers. A second is that they are due to some unknown law and force of nature, the physical manifestations being ascribed to a psychic energy of nervous origin, the mental to _unconscious cerebration_. A third explanation is that they are due to the action of disembodied spirits, who are able to return to the earth and make their presence manifest in all the methods above recounted. Of these explanations the first is that given by the general public, and particularly by those who know nothing practically about the subject, but have reached their opinions by their own inner consciousness and without troubling themselves to investigate the facts. That it does apply, however, to much of what is known as spiritual manifestations there can be no doubt. Of frauds under the name of mediums there has been an abundance. Of dupes under the name of Spiritualists there has been an equal abundance. And the tricks of false mediums have been so often detected as to throw a shadow of doubt over everything connected with the asserted phenomena. Yet that it is not all fraud has been abundantly proved by the testimony of the men above named and many others of equal powers of discrimination, and by the occurrence of numerous phenomena under circumstances that absolutely precluded deception, either in medium or audience. To these cases one or other of the second and third explanations must be given. Acceptance of the third, that they are really the work of spirits, would of course settle the whole business and explain all the phenomena in a word. But the great body of critical observers are disinclined to accept this theory, for the reason that many of the scientific class doubt the existence of any spirit beyond the earth-life, that many of the religious class question the possibility of freed spirits returning to earth, and that many of an intermediate class consider the manifestations too puerile and the mental communications given too unsatisfactory and too far below the mental calibre of the professed speakers to be worthy of assignment to any such source. These communications seem usually painted by the mind of the medium, and are often notably feeble, absurd, and valueless.