But if this is wonderful, what shall we think of the achievements of this same "electricity" and "magnetism" in revealing facts of the second class--facts which the questioner himself did not and does not now _know_ were in his mind, but only _supposes they must have been_? Think of a diffused element of nature, which, from the dawn of creation had been blind and dead, and only passively obedient to certain laws of equilibrium, suddenly assuming intelligence and volition, burrowing into a man's brains, rummaging among ten thousand thoughts, emotions, and experiences stored up in the archives of his memory, and finally coming to the mere fossil of a (_supposed_) experience from which the last vestige of memory-life had departed, and seizing this incident, it moves the little board with an intelligent volition, and lo, the fact stands revealed.
And again, what of that spicy colloquy in which Planchette writes the words "devil," "devil's brother," "stir fires," "broil you," etc.? Oh, Mr. H. tells us, "That was owing to the irritation of the mediums, their horror and fright, their superstition, and their repugnance to the questions that were being asked." Curious, is it not? to see "electricity" seizing hold of this irritation, that horror, the other fright, and such and such a superstition, repugnance, and disgust, and, carefully arranging these mental emotions, building them up by a mysterious mason-work into a distinctly defined and sharply pronounced individuality, with a peculiar moral and intellectual character of its own, differing more from each and all of the parties present in the flesh than any one of the latter differed from another! And this individuality, too, putting forth a volition which was not _their_ volition, moving the Planchette which _they_ did not move, making and arranging letters which _they_ did not make and arrange, writing intelligent words and sentences which _they_ did not write, and then causing this creation to assume the name and character of a regularly built "devil"--a character which appears to have been so far from these young persons' minds that they were unwilling to look it in the face, and were sorely afraid of it! Surely, if "electricity" can do all this, then "electricity" itself is the "devil," and the less mankind have to do with it the better.