To the friends of a force or faculty in our nature, M. Littre
remarks, in effect, 'Why don't you _use_ your force? why don't you
supply a new motor for locomotives? _Pooh_!' The answer would be
that it was not the volume and market value of the force, but the
_existence_ of the force, which interested the inquirer. When
amber, being rubbed, attracted straws, the force was as much a
force, as worthy of scientific study, as when electricity is
employed to bring bad news more rapidly from the ends of the earth.

These answers are obvious: M. Littre's satire was not the weapon of
science, but the familiar test of the bourgeois and the Philistine.
Still, he admitted, nay, asserted strongly, that the whole series of
'demoniac affections' was 'most worthy of investigation,' and was
'hardly sketched out'. In a similar manner, Brierre de Boismont, in
his work on hallucinations, explains a number of 'clairvoyant'
dreams, by ordinary causes. But, coming to a vision which he knew
at first hand, he breaks down: 'We must confess that these
explanations do not satisfy us, and that these events seem rather to
belong to some of the deepest mysteries of our being'. {60} There
is a point at which the explanations of common-sense arouse
scepticism.

Much has been done, since 1856, towards producing a finished
picture, in place of an ebauche. The accepted belief in the
phenomena of hypnotism, and of unconscious mental and bodily
actions--'automatisms'--has expelled the old belief in spirits from
many a dusty nook. But we still ask: '_Do_ objects move untouched?
_why_ do they move, or if they move not at all (as is most probable)
_why_ is it always the same story, from the Arctic circle to the