These Zulu performances must be really very curious.  In the last chapter we told how a Zulu named John, having a shilling to lay out in the interests of psychical research, declined to pay a perplexed diviner, and reserved his capital far a more meritorious performance.  He tried a medium named Unomantshintshi, who divined by Umabakula, or dancing sticks—­

’If they say “no,” they fall suddenly; if they say “yes,” they arise and jump about very much, and leap on the person who has come to inquire.  They “fix themselves on the place where the sick man is affected; ... if the head, they leap on his head....  Many believe in Umabakula more than in the diviner.  But there are not many who have the Umabakula."’

Dr. Callaway’s informant only knew two Umabakulists, John was quite satisfied, paid his shilling, and went home.[9]

The sticks are about a foot long.  It is not reported that they are moved by spirits, nor do they seem to be regarded as fetishes.

Mr. Tylor also cites a form of the familiar pendulum experiment.  Among the Karens a ring is suspended by a thread over a metal basin.  The relations of the dead strike the basin, and when he who was dearest to the ghost touches it the spirit twists the thread till it breaks, and the ring falls into the basin.  With us a ring is held by a thread over a tumbler, and our unconscious movements swing it till it strikes the hour.  How the Karens manage it is less obvious.  These savage devices with animated sticks clearly correspond to the more modern ‘table-turning.’  Here, when the players are honest, the pushing is certainly unconscious.

I have tested this in two ways—­first by trying the minimum of conscious muscular action that would stir a table at which I was alone, and by comparing the absolute unconsciousness of muscular action when the table began to move in response to no voluntary push.  Again, I tried with a friend, who said, ‘You are pushing,’ when I gently removed my hands altogether, though they seemed to rest on the table, which still revolved.  My friend was himself unconsciously pushing.  It is undeniable that, to a solitary experimenter, the table seems to make little darts of its own will in a curious way.  Thus, the unconsciousness of muscular action on the part of savages engaged in the experiment with sticks would lead them to believe that spirits were animating the wood.  The same fallacy beset the table-turners of 1855-65, and was, to some extent, exposed by Faraday.  Of course, savages would be even more convinced by the dancing spoon of Mr. Darwin’s tale, by the dancing sticks of the Zulus, and the rest, whether the phenomena were supernormal or merely worked by unseen strings.  The same remark applies to modern experimenters, when, as they declare, various objects move untouched, without physical contact.