So much for the movements. But how about the raps? How about those
mysterious tappings which come from the very heart of the table, as
eloquent of the preternatural as those immortal taps heard by Poe ere the
raven stepped into his chamber? I should be more impressed by these taps
if I were not capable of manufacturing them myself _ad lib._ without
detection, by secretly manipulating the ball of my thumb. One is
therefore justified in assuming that, where these raps are not produced
by conscious fraud, they are the involuntary result of the same motions
that produced them voluntarily. Even wood has a certain elasticity, and
an imperceptible increase followed by an imperceptible relaxation of
pressure on the surface of the table will alter the tension of the wood,
the molecules of which in springing back to their prior position will
emit a creak or a tap, just as a piece of extended elastic will when let
go again. Both the raps and the movements, then, are in essence phenomena
of the same order: simple results of muscular pressure, conscious,
sub-conscious, or unconscious.
It now only remains to explain the answers themselves, to account not
only for their almost invariably logical form, but also for their
occasionally astonishing content.
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