THEORY SECOND--IT IS ELECTRICITY, OR MAGNETISM.
That electricity, or magnetism (a form of the same thing), is the agent of the production of these phenomena, is a theory which, perhaps, has more advocates among the masses than any other. It is the theory urged by Mr. Headley with a great amount of confidence in his article already referred to; and with his arguments, as those of an able and, in some sense, _representative_ writer on this subject, we shall be principally occupied for a few paragraphs.
When this theory is offered in seriousness as a final solution of the mystery in question, we are tempted to ask, Who is electricity? what is his mental and moral _status_? and how and where did he get his education? Or if by "electricity" is here simply meant the subtile, imponderable, and _impersonal_ fluid commonly known by that name, then let us ask, Who is at the other end of the wire?--for there must evidently be a _who_ as well as a _what_ in the case. But when the advocates of the electrical theory are brought to their strict definitions, they are compelled to admit that this agent is nothing more than a medium of the power and intelligence that are manifested. Now a medium, which signifies simply a _middle_, distinctly implies two opposite ends or extremes, and as applied in this case, one of those ends or extremes must be the source, and the other the recipient of the power or influence that is transmitted through the medium or middle; and it is an axiom of common sense that no medium can be a perfect medium which has anything to do with the origination or qualification of that which is intended simply to flow through it, or which is not absolutely free from action except as it is acted upon. That there are so-called mediums which refract, pervert, falsify, or totally obliterate the characteristics of that which was intended to be transmitted through them, is not to be denied; but these are by no means perfect or reliable mediums, either in physical or psychic matters.
If the little instrument in question, therefore, is, through the medium of electricity or any other agency, brought under perfect control and then driven to write a communication, the force that drives and the intelligence that directs it can not be attributed to the medium itself, but to something behind and beyond it which must embrace _in itself_ all the active powers and qualifications to produce the effect. Now let us see where Mr. Headley gets the active powers and qualifications to produce the phenomena manifested by his Planchette. He shall speak for himself: