ABSTRACT
The following account of the methods pursued and the results obtained by Prof. Faraday in the investigation of a subject which has taken such strange occupation of the public mind, both here and abroad, has been communicated to our columns by that high scientific authority. The subject was generally opened by Mr. Faraday in the Times of Thursday: it being therein intimated that the details were to be reserved for our this day’s publication. The communication is of great importance in the present morbid condition of public thought,—when, as Professor Faraday says, the effect produced by table-turners has, without due inquiry, been referred to electricity, to magnetism, to attraction, to some unknown or hitherto unrecognized physical power able to affect inanimate bodies, to the revolution of the earth, and even to diabolical or supernatural agency:—and we are tempted to extract a passage from Mr. Faraday’s letter to the Times which we think well worth adding to the experimental particulars and the commentaries with which he has favoured ourselves. “I have been,” says the Professor, “greatly startled by the revelation which this purely physical subject has made of the condition of the public mind. No doubt, there are many persons who have formed a right judgment or used a cautious reserve,—for I know several such, and public communications have shown it to be so; but their number is almost as nothing to the great body who have believed and borne testimony, as I think, in the cause of error. I do not here refer to the distinction of those who agree with me and those who differ. By the great body, I mean such as reject all consideration of the equality of cause and effect,—who refer the results to electricity and magnetism, yet know nothing of the laws of these forces,—or to attraction, yet show no phenomena of pure attractive power,—or to the rotation of the earth, as if the earth revolved round the leg of a table,—or to some unrecognized physical force, without inquiring whether the known forces are not sufficient,—or who even refer them to diabolical or supernatural agency, rather than suspend their judgment, or acknowledge to themselves that they are not learned enough in these matters to decide on the nature of the action. I think the system of education that could leave the mental condition of the public body in the state in which this subject has found it must have been greatly deficient in some very important principle.”
