73. When we had arrived at a knowledge of the nature of spirits, of their human
form, of the semi-material properties of the perispirit, and of the mechanical action that
the perispirit can exercise over matter, - when we had seen their fluidic hands, often as
tangible as human ones,
taking hold of various objects, and Carrying them about, it was only natural to infer
from all this that the spirit simply made use of its hands when it turned a table, and that
it raised a table into the air by the action of its arms. But if so, where was the need of a
medium? could not the spirit act alone? The medium, as we know, often places his
hands the wrong way to help the movement, and sometimes does not even put them on
the table at all; he therefore cannot assist the spirit by any muscular action. How was
this difficulty to be explained? We will let this question be answered by the spirits
whom we have interrogated in regard to it.
