Geley. Granting that these
manifestations are really proved, it is no longer possible to
explain them or rather to classify them without having recourse
to fresh theories. Now we can entertain doubts on many points, we
can cavil and argue; but I defy anyone approaching these facts in
a serious and honest spirit to reject them all. It is permissible
to neglect the most extraordinary; but there are a multitude of
others which have become or, to speak more accurately, are
acknowledged to be as frequent and habitual as any fact whatever
in normal, everyday life. It is not difficult to reproduce them
at will, provided we place ourselves in the condition demanded by
their very nature; and, this being so, there remains no valid
reason for excluding them from the domain of science in the
strict sense of the word.
Hitherto, all that we have learnt regarding these occurrences is
that their origin is unknown. It will be said that this is not
much and that the discovery is nothing to boast of. I quite
agree: to imagine that one can explain a phenomena by saying that
it is produced by an unknown agency would indeed be childish. But
it is already something to have marked its source; not to be
still lingering in the thick of a fog, trying any and every
direction in order to find a way out, but to be concentrating our
attention on a single spot which is the starting-point of all
these wonders, so that at each instant we recognize in each
phenomenon the characteristic customs, methods or features of the
same unknown agency.
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