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MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC FORCES
MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC FORCES
AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR'S INVESTIGATIONS
IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, TOGETHER WITH
THOSE OF OTHER EUROPEAN SAVANTS
BY CAMILLE FLAMMARION
_Director of Observatory of Jovisy,
France. Author of "The Unknown,"
"The Atmosphere," etc._
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
1909
_Copyright, 1907_,
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & CO.
_All rights reserved._
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
_He who pronounces anything to be "impossible," outside of the field of
pure mathematics, is wanting in prudence._
FRANCOIS ARAGO.
_A learned pedant who laughs at the possible comes very near being an
idiot. To purposely shun a fact, and turn one's back upon it with a
supercilious smile, is to bankrupt Truth._
VICTOR HUGO.
_Science is under bonds, by the eternal principles of honor, to look
fearlessly in the face every problem that is presented to her._
SIR WILLIAM THOMPSON.
PREFACE
The subject treated in the following pages has made great progress in the
course of forty years. Now what we are concerned with in psychical studies
is always unknown forces, and these forces must belong to the natural
order, for nature embraces the entire universe, and everything is
therefore under the sway of her sceptre.
I do not conceal from myself, however, that the present work will excite
discussion and bring forth legimate objections, and will only satisfy
independent and unbiased investigators. But nothing is rarer upon our
planet than an independent and absolutely untrammelled mind, nor is
anything rarer than a true scientific spirit of inquiry, freed from all
personal interest. Most readers will say: "What is there in these studies,
anyway? The lifting of tables, the moving of various pieces of furniture,
the displacement of easy-chairs, the rising and falling of pianos, the
blowing about of curtains, mysterious rappings, responses to mental
questions, dictations of sentences in reverse order, apparitions of hands,
of heads, or of spectral figures,--these are only common place
trivialities or cheap hoaxes, unworthy to occupy the attention of a
scientist or scholar. And what would it all prove even if it were true?
That kind of thing does not interest us."
Well, there are people upon whose heads the sky might tumble without
causing them any unusual emotion.
But I reply: What! is it nothing to know, to prove, to see with one's own
eyes, that there are unknown forces around us? Is it nothing to study our
own proper nature and our own faculties? Are not the mysterious problems
of our being such as are worthy to be inscribed on the program of our
investigation, and of having devoted to them laborious nights and days? Of
course, the independent seeker gets no thanks from anybody for his toil.
But what of that? We work for the pleasure of working, of fathoming the
secrets of nature, and of instructing ourselves. When, in studying the
double stars at the Paris Observatory and cataloguing these celestial
twins, I established for the first time a natural classification of those
distant orbs; when I discovered stellar systems, composed of several
stars, swept onward through immensity by one common impulse; when I
studied the planet Mars and compared all the observations made during two
hundred years in order to obtain at once an analysis and a synthesis of
this next-door neighbor of ours among the planets; when, in examining the
effect of solar radiations I created the new branch of physics to which
has been given the name "radioculture" and caused variations of the most
radical and sweeping nature in the dimensions, the forms, and the colors
of certain plants; when I discovered that a grasshopper, eviscerated and
kept in straw did not die, and that these insects can live for a fortnight
after having had their heads cut off; when I planted in a conservatory of
the Museum of Natural History, in Paris, one of the ordinary oaks of our
woods (_quercus robur_), thinking that, if withdrawn from the changes of
seasons, it would always have green leaves (a thing which everybody can
prove),--when I was doing these things I was working for my own personal
pleasure; but that is no reason why these studies have not been useful in
the developing work of science, and no reason for their not being admitted
within the scope of the practical work of specialists.
It is the same with these psychical studies of ours; only there is a
little more passion and prejudice connected with them. On the one hand,
the sceptics cleave fast to their denials, convinced that they know all
the forces of nature, that all mediums are humbugs, and all experimenters
imbeciles. On the other hand, there are the credulous Spiritualists, who
imagine they always have spirits at their beck and call in a centre-table,
who evoke, with the utmost sang-froid, the spirits of Plato, Zoroaster,
Jesus Christ, St. Augustine, Charlemagne, Shakespeare, Newton, or
Napoleon, and who set about stoning me for the tenth or twentieth time,
affirming that I am sold to the Institute on account of a deep-seated and
obstinate ambition, and that I dare not declare myself in favor of the
identity of the spirits for fear of annoying my illustrious friends. The
individuals of this class refuse to be satisfied just as much as the first
class.
So much the worse for them! I insist on only saying what I know; but I do
say this.
And if what I know is displeasing, so much the worse for the prejudices,
the general ignorance, and the good breeding of these distinguished
gentry, in whose eyes the maximum of happiness consists in an increase of
their fortune, the pursuit of lucrative places, sensual pleasures,
automobile-racing, a box at the Opera, or five-o'clock teas at a
fashionable restaurant, and whose lives are frittered away along paths
that never cross those of the rapt idealist, and who never know the pure
satisfaction of his mind and heart, or the pleasures of thought and
feeling.
As for me, a humble student of the prodigious problem of the universe, I
am only a seeker. What are we? We have scarcely shed a ray more of light
on this point than at the time when Socrates laid down, as a principle,
the maxim, _Know thyself_,--notwithstanding we have measured the distances
of the stars, analyzed the sun, and weighed the worlds of space. Does it
stand to reason that the knowledge of ourselves should interest us less
than that of the macrocosm, the external world? It is not credible. Let
us therefore study on, convinced that all sincere research will further
the progress of humanity.
_Juvisy Observatory, December, 1906._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER
I. On Certain Unknown Natural Forces 1
II. My First Seances In The Allen Kardec Group, And With
The Mediums Of That Epoch 24
III. My Experiments With Eusapia Paladino 63
IV. Other Seances With Eusapia Paladino 135
V. Frauds, Tricks, Deceptions, Impostures, Feats Of
Legerdemain, Mystifications, Impediments 194
VI. The Experiments Of Count De Gasparin 229
VII. The Researches Of Professor Thury 266
VIII. The Experiments Of The Dialectical Society Of London 289
IX. The Experiments Of Sir William Crookes 306
X. Sundry Experiments And Observations 352
XI. My General Inquiry Respecting Observations Of
Unexplained Phenomena 376
XII. Explanatory Hypotheses--Theories And Doctrines--
Conclusions Of The Author 406
INDEX 455
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate I. Complete Levitation of a Table in Professor
Flammarion's Salon through Mediumship of Eusapia
Paladino _Facing page_ 8
Plate II. House of Zoroastre of Jupiter from
Somnambulistic Drawing by Victorien Sardou _After page_ 26
Plate III. Animals' Quarters. House of Zoroastre
of Jupiter from Somnambulistic Drawing by Victorien
Sardou _After page_ 26
Figure 1. The Inclination of the System of Uranus _Page_ 54
Figure 1_a_. Orbits of Satellites of Uranus as Seen
from the Earth _Page_ 56
Plate IV. Plaster Cast of Imprint Made in Putty
without Contact by the Medium Eusapia Paladino _After page_ 76
Plate V. Eusapia Paladino, Showing Resemblance to
the Imprint in Putty _After page_ 76
Plate VI. Photographs Taken by M. G. de Fontenay of
an Experiment in Table Levitation _Facing page_ 82
Plate VII. Plaster Casts of Impressions in Clay
Produced by an Unknown Force _Facing page_ 138
Plate VIII. Drawing from Photograph, Showing Method
of Control by Professors Lombroso and Richet of
Eusapia. Table Completely Raised _Facing page_ 154
Plate IX. Photographs of Levitation of Table
Accompanying Colonel De Rochas' Report _Facing page_ 174
Plate X. Scales Used in Professor Flammarion's
Experiments _Facing page_ 200
Plate XI. Method Used by Eusapia to Surreptitiously
Free her Hand _Facing page_ 206
Plate XII. Cage of Copper Wire, Electrically Charged,
Used by Professor Crookes in the Home Accordion
Experiment _Facing page_ 308
Figure 3. Board and Scale Experiment of Sir William
Crookes _Page_ 312
Figures 4 and 5. Instruments Used in Scale Experiment
by Sir William Crookes _Page_ 5
Figure 6. Glass Vessel Used by Home _Page_ 318
Figure 7. Automatically Registered Chart of Unknown
Force Generated by Mr. Home _Page_ 317
Figures 8, 9, 10. Charts from Sir William Crookes
Instruments Used in Experiments with Mr. Home _Page_ 321
Figures 11 and 12. Third Instrument Devised by Sir
William Crookes for Recording Automatically the
Unknown Force Generated by Home _Page_ 322
Figure 13. Charts Made by Third Instrument _Page_ 323
Figures 14 and 15. Charts Made by Third Instrument _Page_ 324
Plate XIII. Instantaneous Photograph Taken by M. de
Fontenay of Table Levitation Produced by the Medium
Auguste Politi _Facing page_ 368
INTRODUCTION
As long ago as 1865 I published, under the title, _Unknown Natural
Forces_, a little monograph of a hundred and fifty pages which is still
occasionally found in the book-shops, but has not been reprinted. I
reprint here (pp. xiii-xxiii), what I wrote at that time in this critical
study "apropos of the phenomena produced by the Davenport brothers and
mediums in general." It was published by Didier & Co., book-sellers to the
Academy, who had already issued my first two works, _The Plurality of
Inhabited Worlds_ and _Imaginary Worlds and Real Worlds_.
"France has just been engaged in an exciting debate, where the sound of
voices was drowned in a great uproar, and out of which no conclusion has
emerged. A disputation more noisy than intelligent has been raging around
a whole group of unexplained facts, and so completely muddled the problem
that, in place of illuminating it, the debate has only served to shroud it
in deeper darkness.
"During the discussion a singular remark was frequently heard, to the
effect that those who shouted the loudest in this court of assize were the
very ones who were least informed on the subject. It was an amusing
spectacle to see these persons in a death-grapple with mere phantoms.
Panurge himself would have laughed at it.
"The result of the matter is that less is known to-day upon the subject in
dispute than at the opening of the debates.
"In the mean time, seated upon neighboring heights were certain excellent
old fellows who observed the writs of arrest issued against the more
violent combatants, but who remained for the most part grave and silent,
though they occasionally smiled, and withal did a deal of hard thinking.
"I am going to state what weight should be given to the opinions of those
of us who do not rashly affirm the impossibility of the facts now put
under the ban and who do not add their voices to the dominant note of
opposition.
"I do not conceal from myself the consequences of such sincerity. It
requires a good deal of boldness to insist on affirming, _in the name of
positive science_, the POSSIBILITY of these phenomena (wrongly styled
supernatural), and to constitute one's self the champion of a cause
apparently ridiculous, absurd, and dangerous, knowing, at the same time,
that the avowed adherents of said cause have little standing in science,
and that even its eminent partisans only venture to speak of their
approval of it with bated breath. However, since the matter has just been
treated momentarily in fugitive writings by a group of journalists whose
exacting labors wholly forbid a study of the psychic and physical forces;
and since, of all this multitude of writers, the greater part have only
heaped error upon error, puerility upon extravagance; and since it appears
from every page they have written (I hope they will pardon me) that not
only are they ignorant of the very _a, b, c_ of the subject they have so
fantastically treated, but their opinions upon this class of facts rest
upon no basis whatever,--therefore I have thought it would serve a purpose
if I should leave, as a souvenir of the long wrangle, a piece of writing
better based and buttressed than the lucubrations of the above-mentioned
gentlemen. As a lover of truth, I am willing to face a thousand
reproaches. Be it distinctly understood that I do not for a moment deem my
judgment superior to that of my confreres, some of whom are in other
respects highly gifted. The simple fact is that they are not familiar with
this subject, but are straying in it at random, wandering through a
strange region. They misunderstand the very terminology, and imagine that
facts long ago well authenticated are impossible. By way of contrast, the
writer of these lines will state that for several years he has been
engaged in discussions and experiments upon the subject. (I am not
speaking of historical studies.)
"Moreover, although the old saw would have us believe that 'it is not
always desirable to state the truth,' yet, to speak frankly, I am so
indignant at the overweening presumption of certain polemical opponents,
and at the gall they have injected into the debate, that I do not hesitate
to rise and point out to the deceived public that, _without a single
exception_, all the arguments brought up by these writers, and upon which
they have boldly planted their banner of victory, prove absolutely
_nothing_, NOTHING, against the possible truth of the things which they,
in the fury of their denial, have so perverted. Such a snarl of opinions
must be analyzed. In brief, the true must be disentangled from the false.
_Veritas, veritas!_"
"I hasten to anticipate a criticism on the part of my readers by apprising
them, on the threshold of this plea, that I am not going to take the
Davenport brothers as my subject, but only as the ostensible motive or
pretext of the discussion,--as they have been, for that matter, of the
majority of the discussions. I shall deal in these pages with _the facts_
brought to the surface again by these two Americans,--facts inexplicable
(which they have put on the stage at Herz Hall here in Paris, but which
none the less existed before this _mise-en-scene_, and which none the less
will exist even should the Davenport brothers' representations prove to be
counterfeit),--things which others had already exhibited, and still
exhibit with as much facility and under much better conditions;
occurrences, in short, which constitute the domain of the unknown forces
to which have been given, one after another, five or six names explaining
nothing. These forces, mind you, are as real as the attraction of
gravitation, and as invisible as that. It is about facts that I here
concern myself. Let them be brought to the light by Peter or by Paul, it
concerns us little; let them be imitated by Sosie[1] or parodied by
Harlequin, still less does it concern us. The question is, Do these facts
exist, and do they enter into the category of known physical forces?
"It amazes me, every time I think of it, that the majority of men are so
densely ignorant of the psychic phenomena in question, considering the
fact that they have been known, studied, valued, and recorded for a good
long time now by all who have impartially followed the movement of thought
during the last few lustrums.
"I not only do not make common cause with the Davenport brothers, but I
ought furthermore to add that I consider them as placed in a very
compromising situation. In laying to the account of the supernatural
matters in occult natural philosophy which have a tolerable resemblance to
feats of prestidigitation, they appear to a curious public to add
imposture to insolence. In setting a financial value upon their talents,
they seem to the moralist, who is investigating still unexplained
phenomena, to place themselves on the level of mountebanks. Whatever way
you look at them, they are to blame. Accordingly, I condemn at once both
their grave error in assuming to be superior to the forces of which they
are only the instruments and the venal profit they draw from powers of
which they are not master and which it is no merit of theirs to possess.
In my opinion, it is a piece of exaggeration to draw conclusions from
these unhappy semblances of truth; and it is to abdicate one's right of
private judgment to make one's self but the echo of the vulgar herd who
hiss and shout themselves hoarse before the curtain rises. No, I am not
the advocate of the two brothers, nor of their personal claims. For me,
individual men do not exist. That which I defend is the superiority of
nature to us: that which I fight against is the conceited silliness of
certain persons.
"You satirical gentlemen will have the frankness, I hope, to confess with
me that the different reasons pleaded by you in explanation of these
problems are not so solid as they appear to be. Since you have discovered
nothing, let us admit, between ourselves, that your explanations explain
nothing.
"I do not doubt that, at the point in the discussion which we have
actually reached, you would like to change roles with me, and, stopping me
here, constitute yourselves in turn my questioners.
"But I hasten to anticipate your proposal. As for me, gentlemen, I am not
sufficiently well informed to explain these mysteries. I pass my life in a
retired garden belonging to one of the nine Muses, and my attachment to
this fair creature is such that I have scarcely ever quitted the
approaches to her temple. It is only at intervals, in moments of
relaxation or curiosity, that I have allowed my eyes to wander, from time
to time, over the landscapes which surround it. Therefore ask me nothing.
I am making a sincere confession. I know nothing of the cause of these
phenomena.
"You see how modest I am. All I wanted in undertaking this examination was
to have the opportunity of saying this:
"You know nothing about it.
"Neither do I.
"If you acknowledge this, we can shake hands. And, if you are tractable, I
will tell you a little secret.
"In the month of June, 1776 (few among us remember it), a young man
twenty-five years old, named Jouffroy, was making a trial trip on the
river Doubs of a new steamboat forty feet in length and six feet in
breadth. For two years he had been calling the attention of scientific
authorities to his invention; for two years he had been stoutly asserting
that there is a powerful latent energy in steam,--at that time a neglected
asset. All ears were deaf to his words. His only reward was to be
completely isolated and neglected. When he passed through the streets of
Baume-les-Dames, his appearance was the signal for jests innumerable. He
was dubbed 'Jouffroy, the Steam Man' ('_Jouffroy-la-Pompe_'). Ten years
later, having built a pyroscaphe [literally, fireboat] which had ascended
the Saone from Lyons to the island of Barbe, he presented a petition to
Calonne, the comptroller-general of finance, and to the Academy of
Sciences. They would not look at his invention!
"On August 9, 1803, Fulton went up the Seine in a new steamboat at the
rate of about four miles an hour. The members of the Academy of Sciences
as well as government officials were present on the occasion. The next day
they had forgotten all about it, and Fulton went to make the fortunes of
Americans.
"In 1791 an Italian at Bologna, named Galvani, having hung on the iron
railing outside his window some skinned frogs which had been used in
making a bouillon for his wife, noted that they moved automatically,
although they had been killed since the evening before. The thing was
incredible, so everybody to whom he told it opposed his statement. Men of
sense would have thought it beneath their dignity to take the trouble to
verify the story, so convinced were they of its impossibility. But Galvani
had noted that the maximum of effect was attained when he joined the
lumbar nerves and the ends of the feet of a frog by a metallic arc of tin
and copper. The frog's muscles then jerked convulsively. He believed it
was due to a nervous fluid, and so lost the fruit of his investigations.
It was reserved for Volta to discover electricity.
"And to-day the globe is threaded with a network of trains drawn by
flame-breathing dragons. Distances have disappeared, annihilated by
improvements in the locomotive. The genius of man has contracted the
dimensions of the earth; the longest voyages are but excursions over
definite lines (the curved paths of the 'ocean lanes'); the most gigantic
tasks are accomplished by the tireless and powerful hand of this unknown
force. A telegraphic despatch flies in the twinkling of an eye from one
continent to another; a man can talk with a citizen of London or St.
Petersburg without getting out of his arm-chair. And these wonders attract
no special notice. We little think through what struggles, bitter
disappointments and persecutions they came into being! We forget that the
impossible of yesterday is the accomplished fact of to-day. So it comes to
pass that we still find men who come to us saying: 'Halt there, you little
fellows! We don't understand you, therefore you don't know what you're
talking about.'
"Very well, gentlemen. However narrow may be your opinions, there is no
reason for thinking that your myopia is to spread over the world. You are
hereby informed that, in spite of you and in spite of your obscurantism
and obstruction tactics, the car of human progress will roll on and
continue its triumphal march and conquest of new forces and powers. As in
the case of Galvani's frog, the laughable occurrences that you refuse to
believe reveal the existence of new unknown forces. There is no effect
without a cause. Man is the least known of all beings. We have learned
how to measure the sun, cross the deeps of space, analyze the light of the
stars, and yet have not dropped a plummet into our own souls. Man is
dual,--_homo duplex_; and this double nature remains a mystery to him. We
think: what is thought? No one can say. We walk: what is that organic act?
No one knows. My will is an immaterial force; all the faculties of my soul
are immaterial. Nevertheless, if I _will_ to move my arm, my will moves
matter. How does it act? What is the mediator between mind and muscle? As
yet no one can say. Tell me how the optic nerve transmits to the thinking
brain the perception of outward objects. Tell me how thought is born,
where it resides, what is the nature of cerebral action. Tell me--but no,
gentlemen: I could question you for ten years on a stretch, and the most
eminent of you could not answer the least of my interrogatories.
"We have here, as in the preceding cases, the unknown element in a
problem. I am far from claiming that the force that comes into play in
these phenomena can one day be financially exploited, as in the case of
electricity and steam. Such an idea has not the slightest interest for me.
But, though differing essentially from these forces, the mysterious
psychic force none the less exists.
"In the course of the long and laborious studies to which I have
consecrated many a night, as a relief or by-play in more important work, I
have always observed in these phenomena the action of a force the
properties of which are to us unknown. Sometimes it has seemed to me
analogous to that which puts to sleep the magnetized subject under the
will of the hypnotizer (a reality this, also slighted even by men of
science). Again, in other circumstances, it has seemed to me analogous to
the curious freaks of the lightning. Still, I believe I can affirm it to
be a force distinct from all that we know, and which more than any other
resembles intelligence.
"A certain savant with whom I am acquainted, M. Fremy, of the Institute,
has recently presented to the Academy of Science, apropos of spontaneous
generation, substances which he has called _semi-organic_. I believe I am
not perpetrating a neologism bolder than this when I say that the force of
which I am speaking has seemed to me to belong to the _semi-intellectual_
plane.
"Some years ago I gave these forces the name _psychic_. That name can be
justified.
"But words are nothing. They often resemble cuirasses, hiding the real
impression that ideas should produce in us. That is the reason why it is
perhaps better not to name a thing that we are not yet able to define. If
we did, we should find ourselves so shackled afterwards as not to have
perfect freedom in our conclusions. It has often been seen in history that
a premature hypothesis has arrested the progress of science, says Grove:
'When natural phenomena are observed for the first time, a tendency
immediately arises to relate them to something already known. The new
phenomenon may be quite remote from the ideas with which one would compare
it. It may belong to a different order of analogies. But this distinction
cannot be perceived, since the necessary data or co-ordinates are
lacking.' Now the theory originally announced is soon accepted by the
public; and when it happens that subsequent facts, different from the
preceding, fail to fit the mould, it is difficult to enlarge this without
breaking it, and people often prefer to abandon a theory now proved
erroneous, and silently ignore the intractable facts. As to the special
phenomena in question in this little volume, I find them implicitly
embodied in three words uttered nearly twenty centuries ago,--MENS AGITAT
MOLEM (mind acting on matter gives it life and motion); and I leave the
phenomena embedded in these words, like fire in the flint. I will not
strike with the steel, for the spark is still dangerous. '_Periculosum est
credere et non credere_' ('It is dangerous to believe and not to
believe'), says the ancient fabulist Phaedrus. To deny facts _a priori_ is
mere conceit and idiocy. To accept them without investigation is weakness
and folly. Why seek to press on so eagerly and prematurely into regions to
which our poor powers cannot yet attain? The way is full of snares and
bottomless pits. The phenomena we are treating in these pages do not
perhaps throw new light upon the solution of the great problem of
immortality, but they invite us to remember that there are in man elements
to study, to determine, to analyze,--elements still unexplained, and which
belong to the psychic realm.
"There has been much talk about Spiritualism in connection with these
phenomena. Some of its defenders have thought to strengthen it by
supporting it on so weak a basis as that. The scoffers have thought they
could positively ruin the creed of the psychics, and, hurling it from its
base, bury it under a fallen wardrobe (_l'eboulement d'une armoire_).[2]
Now the first-named have rather compromised than assisted the cause: the
others have not overturned it after all. Even if it should be proved that
Spiritualism consists only of tricks of legerdemain, the belief in the
existence of souls separate from the body would not be affected in the
slightest degree. Besides, the deceptions of mediums do not prove that
they are always tricky. They only put us on our guard, and induce us to
keep a stern watch upon them.
"As to the psychological question of the soul and the analysis of
spiritual forces, we are just where chemistry was at the time of Albert
the Great: we don't know.
"Can we not then keep the golden mean between negation, which denies all,
and credulity, which accepts all? Is it rational to deny everything that
we cannot understand, or, on the contrary, to believe all the follies that
morbid imaginations give birth to, one after another? Can we not possess
at once the humility which becomes the weak and the dignity which becomes
the strong?
"I end this plea, as I began it, by declaring that it is not for the sake
of the brothers Davenport, nor of any sect, nor of any group, nor, in
short, of any person whatever, that I have entered the lists of
controversy, but solely for the sake of facts the reality of which I
ascertained several years ago, without having discovered their cause.
However, I have no reason to fear that those who do not know me will take
a fancy to misrepresent my thought; and I think that those who are
acquainted with me know that I am not accustomed to swing a censer in any
one's honor. I repeat for the last time: I am not concerned with
individuals. My mind seeks the truth, and recognizes it wherever it finds
it. '_Gallus escam quaerens margaritam reperit._'"[3]
A certain number of my readers have been for some time kindly expressing a
wish for a new edition of this early book. But strictly speaking I could
not do this without considerably enlarging my original plan and composing
an entirely new work. The daily routine of my astronomical labors has
constantly hindered me from devoting myself to that task. The starry
heaven is a vast and absorbing field of work, and it is difficult to turn
aside (even for a relaxation in itself scientific) from the exacting
claims of a science which goes on developing unceasingly at a most
prodigious rate.
Still, the present work may be considered as, in a sense, an enlarged
edition of the earlier one. The foregoing citation of a little book
written for the purpose of proving the existence of unknown forces in
nature has seemed to me necessary here; useful in this new volume, brought
out for the same purpose after more than forty years of study, since it
may serve to show the continuity and consistent development of my thought
on the subject.
MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC FORCES
CHAPTER I
ON CERTAIN UNKNOWN NATURAL FORCES
I purpose to show in this book what truth there is in the phenomena of
table-turnings, table-movings, and table-rappings, in the communications
received therefrom, in levitations that contradict the laws of gravity, in
the moving of objects without contact, in unexplained noises, in the
stories told of haunted houses,--all to be considered from the physical
and mechanical point of view. Under all the just mentioned heads we can
group material facts produced by causes still unknown to science, and it
is with these physical phenomena that we shall specially occupy ourselves
here; for the first point is to definitely prove, by sufficient
observations, their real existence. Hypotheses, theories, doctrines, will
come later.
In the country of Rabelais, of Montaigne, of Voltaire, we are inclined to
smile at everything that relates to the marvellous, to tales of
enchantment, the extravagances of occultism, the mysteries of magic. This
arises from a reasonable prudence. But it does not go far enough. To deny
and prejudge a phenomenon has never proved anything. The truth of almost
every fact which constitutes the sum of the positive sciences of our day
has been denied. What we ought to do is to admit no unverified statement,
to apply to every subject of study, no matter what, the experimental
method, without any preconceived idea whatever, either for or against.
We are dealing here with a great problem, which touches on that of the
survival of human consciousness. We may study it, in spite of smiles.
When we consecrate our lives to an idea, useful, noble, exalted, we should
not hesitate for a moment to sacrifice personalities; above all, our own
self, our interest, our self-esteem, our natural vanity. This sacrifice is
a criterion by which I have estimated a good many characters. How many
men, how many women, put their miserable little personality above
everything else!
If the forces of which we are to treat are real, they cannot but be
natural forces. We ought to admit, as an absolute principle, that
everything is in nature, even God himself, as I have shown in another
work. Before any attempt at theory, the first thing to do is to
scientifically establish the real existence of these forces.
Mediumistic experiences might form (and doubtless soon will form) a
chapter in physics. Only it is a kind of transcendental physics which
touches on life and thought, and the forces in play are pre-eminently
living forces, psychic forces.
I shall relate in the following chapter the experiments I made between the
years 1861 and 1865, previous to the penning of the protest, reprinted in
the long citation above given (in the Introduction). But, since in certain
respects they are summed up in those I have just had, in 1906, I will
begin by describing the latter in this first chapter.
In fact, I have recently renewed these investigations with a celebrated
medium,--Mme. Eusapia Paladino, of Naples, who has been several times in
Paris; namely, in 1898, 1905, and, very recently, in 1906. The things I am
going to speak of happened in the salon of my home in Paris,--the last
ones in full light without any preparation, very simply, as if during
after-dinner talks.
Let me add that this medium came to Paris during the first months of the
year, 1906, at the invitation of the Psychological Institute, several
members of which have been recently engaged in researches begun long ago.
Among these savants I will mention the name of the lamented Pierre Curie,
the eminent chemist, with whom I had a conversation a few days before his
unfortunate and terrible death. My mediumistic experiences with Mme.
Paladino formed for him a new chapter in the great book of nature, and he
also was convinced that there exist hidden forces to the investigation of
which it is not unscientific to consecrate one's self. His subtle and
penetrating genius would perhaps have quickly determined the character of
these forces.
Those who have given some little attention to these psychological studies
are acquainted with the powers of Mme. Paladino. The published works of
Count de Rochas, of Professor Richet, of Dr. Dariex, of M. G. de Fontenay,
and notably the _Annales des sciences psychiques_, have pointed them out
and described them in such detail that it would be superfluous to recur to
them at this point. Farther on we shall find a place for discussing them.
Running underneath all the observations of the above-mentioned writers,
one dominant idea can be read as if in palimpsest; namely, the imperious
necessity the experimenters are constantly under of suspecting tricks in
this medium (Mme. Paladino). But all mediums, men and women, have to be
watched. During a period of more than forty years I believe that I have
received at my home nearly all of them, men and women of divers
nationalities and from every quarter of the globe. One may lay it down as
a principle that all professional mediums cheat. But they do not always
cheat; and they possess real, undeniable psychic powers.
Their case is nearly that of the hysterical folk under observation at the
Salpetriere or elsewhere. I have seen some of them outwit with their
profound craft not only Dr. Charcot, but especially Dr. Luys, and all the
physicians who were making a study of their case. But, because hysteriacs
deceive and simulate, it would be a gross error to conclude that hysteria
does not exist. And, because mediums frequently descend to the most
brazen-faced imposture, it would not be less absurd to conclude that
mediumship has no existence. Disreputable somnambulists do not forbid the
existence of magnetism, hypnotism, and genuine somnambulism.
This necessity of being constantly on our guard has discouraged more than
one investigator, as the illustrious astronomer Schiaparelli, director of
the Observatory of Milan, specially wrote me, in a letter which will
appear farther on.
Still, we have got to endure this evil.
The words "fraud" (_supercherie_) and "trickery" (_tricherie_) have in
this connection a sense a little different from their ordinary meaning.
Sometimes the mediums deceive purposely, knowing well what they are doing,
and enjoying the fun. But oftener they unconsciously deceive, impelled by
the desire to produce the phenomena that people are expecting.
They help on the success of the experiment when that success is slow in
its appearance. Mediums who deal with objective phenomena are gifted with
the power of causing objects at a distance to move, of lifting tables,
etc. But they usually appear to apply this power at the ends of their
fingers, and the objects to be moved have to be within reach of their
hands or feet, a very regrettable thing, and one which furnishes fine
sport for the prejudiced sceptics. Sometimes the mediums act like the
billiard player, who continues for an instant the gesture of hand and arm,
holding his cue pointed at the rolling ivory ball, and leaning forward as
if by his will he could push it to a carom. He knows very well that he has
no further power over the fate of the ball, which his initial stroke
alone impels; but he guides its course by his thought and his gesture.
It may not be superfluous to caution the reader that the word "medium" is
employed in these pages without any preconceived idea, and not in the
etymological sense in which it took its rise at the time of the first
Spiritualistic theories, which affirmed that the man or the woman endowed
with psychic powers is an inter_mediary_ between spirits and those who are
experimenting. The person who has the power of causing objects to move
contrary to the laws of gravity (even sometimes without touching them), of
causing sounds to be heard at a distance and without any exertion of
muscular force, and of bringing before the eyes various apparitions, has
not necessarily, on that account, any bond of union with disembodied minds
or souls. We shall keep this word "medium," however, now so long in use.
We are concerned here only with facts. I hope to convince the reader that
these things really exist, and are neither illusions nor farces, nor feats
of prestidigitation. My object is to prove their reality with absolute
certainty, to do for them what (in my volume _The Unknown and the Psychic
Problems_) I have done for telepathy, the apparitions of the dying,
premonitory dreams, and clairvoyance.
I shall begin, I repeat, with experiments which I have recently renewed;
namely, during four seances on March 29, April 5, May 30, and June 7, of
1906.
1. Take the case of the levitation of a round table. I have so often seen
a rather heavy table lifted to a height of eight, twelve, sixteen inches
from the floor, and I have taken such undeniably authentic photographs of
these; I have so often proved to myself that the suspension of this
article of furniture by the imposition _upon it_ of the hands of four or
five persons produces the effect of a floating in a tub full of water or
other elastic fluid, that, for me, the levitation of objects is no more
doubtful than that of a pair of scissors lifted by the aid of a magnet.
But one evening when I was almost alone with Eusapia, March 29, 1906
(there were four of us altogether), being desirous of examining at leisure
how the thing was done, I asked her to place her hands with mine upon the
table, the other persons remaining at a distance. The table very soon rose
to a height of fifteen or twenty inches _while we were both standing_. At
the moment of the production of the phenomenon the medium placed one of
her hands on one of mine, which she pressed energetically, our two other
hands resting side by side. Moreover, on her part, as on mine, there was
an act of will expressed in words of command addressed to "the spirit":
"Come now! Lift the table! Take courage! Come! Try now!" etc.
We ascertained at once that there were two elements or constituents
present. On the one hand, the experimenters address an invisible entity.
On the other hand, the medium experiences a nervous and muscular fatigue,
and her weight increases in proportion to that of the object lifted (but
not in exact proportion).
We are obliged to act as if there really were a being present who is
listening. This being appears to come into existence, and then become
non-existent as soon as the experiment is ended. It seems to be created by
the medium. Is it an auto-suggestion of hers or of the dynamic ensemble of
the experimenters that creates a special force? Is it a doubling of her
personality? Is it the condensation of a psychic _milieu_ in the midst of
which we live? If we seek to obtain proofs of actual and permanent
individuality, and above all of the identity of a particular soul called
up in our memory, we never obtain any satisfaction. There lies the
mystery.
Conclusion: we have here an unknown force of the psychic class, a living
force, the life of a moment only.
May it not be possible that, in exerting ourselves, we give rise to a
detachment of forces which acts exteriorly to our body? But this is not
the place, in these first pages, to make hypotheses.
The experiment of which I have just spoken was repeated three times
running, _in the full light_ of a gas chandelier, and under the same
conditions of complete proof in each case. A round table weighing about
fourteen pounds is lifted by this unknown force. A table of twenty-five or
fifty pounds or more requires a greater number of persons. But they will
get no result if one at least among them is not gifted with the
mediumistic power.
And let me add, on the other hand, that there is in such an experiment so
great an expenditure of nervous and muscular energy that such an
extraordinary medium as Eusapia, for instance, can obtain scarcely any
results six hours, twelve hours, even twenty-four hours, after a seance in
which she has so lavishly expended her psychic energy.
I will add that quite often the table continues to rise even after the
experimenters have ceased to touch it. This is _movement without contact_.
This phenomenon of levitation is, to me, absolutely proved, although we
cannot explain it. It is like what would happen if one had his hands
gloved with loadstone, and, placing them on a table of iron, should lift
it from the ground. But the action is not so simple as that: it is a case
of psychic activity exterior to ourselves, momentarily in operation.[4]
Now how are these levitations and movements produced?
How is it that a stick of sealing-wax or a lamp-chimney, when rubbed,
attracts bits of paper or elder pith?
How is it that a particle of iron grips so firmly to the loadstone when
brought near it?
How is it that electricity accumulates in the vapor of water, in the
molecules of a cloud, until it gives rise to the thunder, the thunderbolt,
the lightning flash, and all their formidable results?
How is it that the thunderbolt strips the clothes from a man or a woman
with its characteristic nonchalance?
And (to take a simple instance), without departing from our common and
normal condition of life, how is it that we raise our arm?
2. Take now a specimen of another group of cases. The medium places one of
her hands upon that of some person, and with the other beats the air, with
one, two, three, or four strokes or raps. The raps are heard in the table,
and you feel the vibrations at the same time that you hear them,--sharp
blows which make you think of electric shocks. It is superfluous to state
that the feet of the medium do not touch those of the table, but are kept
at a distance from them.
The medium next places her hands with ours upon the table, and the taps
heard in the table are stronger than in the preceding case.
[Illustration: PLATE I. COMPLETE LEVITATION OF A TABLE IN PROFESSOR
FLAMMARION'S SALON THROUGH MEDIUMSHIP OF EUSAPIA PALADINO.]
These taps audible in the table, this "typtology" well known to
Spiritualists, have been frequently attributed to some kind of trickery or
another, to a cracking muscle or to various actions of the medium. After
the comparative study I have made of these special occurrences I believe I
am right in affirming that this fact also is not less certain than the
first. Rappings, as is well known, are obtained in all kinds of rhythms,
and responses to all questions are obtained through simple conventions, by
which it is agreed, for instance, that three taps shall mean "yes" and two
mean "no," and that, while the letters of the alphabet are being read,
words can be dictated by taps made as each letter is named.
3. During our experiments, while we four persons are seated around a table
asking for a communication which does not arrive, an arm-chair, placed
about twenty-four inches from the medium's foot (upon which I have placed
my foot to make sure that she cannot use hers),--an arm-chair, I say,
begins to move, and comes sliding up to us. I push it back; it returns. It
is a stuffed affair (_pouf_), very heavy, but easily capable of gliding
over the floor. This thing happened on the 29th of last March, and again
on April 5th.
It could have been done by drawing the chair with a string or by the
medium putting her foot sufficiently far out. But it happened over and
over again (five or six times), automatically moving, and that so
violently that the chair jumped about the floor in a topsy-turvy fashion
and ended by falling bottom side up without anybody having touched it.
4. Here is a fourth case re-observed this year, after having been several
times verified by me, notably in 1898.
Curtains near the medium, but which it is impossible for her to touch,
either with the hand or the foot, swell out their whole length, as if
inflated by a gusty wind. I have several times seen them envelop the
heads of the spectators as if with cowls of Capuchin monks.
5. Here is a fifth instance, authenticated by me several times, and always
with the same care.
While I am holding one hand of Eusapia in mine, and one of my astronomical
friends, tutor at the Ecole Polytechnique, is holding the other, we are
touched, first one and then the other, upon the side and on the shoulders,
as if by an invisible hand.
The medium usually tries to get together her two hands, held separately by
each of us, and by a skilful substitution to make us believe we hold both
when she has succeeded in disengaging one. This fraud being well known by
us, we act the part of forewarned spectators, and are positive that we
have each succeeded in holding her hands apart. The touchings in this
experiment seem to proceed from an invisible entity and are rather
disagreeable. Those which take place in the immediate vicinity of the
medium _could_ be due to fraud; but to some of them this explanation is
inapplicable.
This is the place to remark that, unfortunately, the extraordinary
character of the phenomena is in direct ratio with the absence of light,
and we are continually asked by the medium to turn down the gas, almost to
the vanishing point: "_Meno luce! meno luce!_" ("Less light, less light").
This, of course, is advantageous to all kinds of fraud. But it is a
condition no more obligatory than the others. There is in it no
implication of a threat.
We can get a large number of mediumistic phenomena with a light strong
enough for us to distinguish things with certainty. Still, it is a fact
that light is unfavorable to the production of phenomena.
This is annoying. Yet we have no right to impose the opposite condition.
We have no right to demand of nature conditions which happen to suit us.
It would be just as reasonable to try to get a photographic negative
without a dark room, or to draw electricity from a rotating machine in the
midst of an atmosphere saturated with moisture. Light is a natural agent
capable of producing certain effects and of opposing the production of
others.
This aphorism calls to my mind an anecdote in the life of Daguerre,
related in the first edition of this book.
One evening this illustrious natural philosopher meets an elegant and
fashionable woman in the neighborhood of the Opera House, of which he was
at that time the decorator. Enthusiastic over his progress in natural
philosophy, he happens to speak of his photogenic studies. He tells her of
a marvellous discovery by which the features of the face can be fixed upon
a plate of silver. The lady, who is a person of plain common sense,
courteously laughs in his face. The savant goes on with his story, without
being disconcerted. He even adds that it is possible for the phenomenon to
take place instantaneously when the processes become perfected. But he has
his pains for his trouble. His charming companion is not credulous enough
to accept such an extravagance. Paint without colors and without a brush!
design without pen or crayon! as if a portrait could get painted all by
itself, etc. But the inventor is not discouraged, and, to convince her,
offers to make her portrait by this process. The lady is unwilling to be
thought a dupe and refuses. But the skilful artist pleads his cause so
well that he overcomes her objections. The blond daughter of Eve consents
to pose before the object-glass. But she makes one condition,--only one.
Her beauty is at its best in the evening, and she feels a little faded in
the garish light of day.
"If you could take me in the evening--"
"But, madame, it is impossible--"
"Why? You say that your invention reproduces the face, feature by
feature. I prefer my features of the evening over those of the
morning."
"Madame, it is the light itself which pencils the image, and without
it I can do nothing."
"We will light a chandelier, a lamp, do anything to please you."
"No, madame, the light of day is imperative."
"Will you please tell me why?"
"Because the light of the sun exhibits an intense activity, sufficient
to decompose the iodide of silver. So far, I have not been able to
take a photograph except in full sunlight."
Both remained obstinate, the lady maintaining that what could be done at
ten o'clock in the morning could also easily be done at ten o'clock in the
evening. The inventor affirmed the contrary.
So, then, all you have to do, gentlemen, is to forbid the light to blacken
iodine, or order it to blacken lime, and condemn the photographer to
develop his negative in full light. Ask Electricity why it will pass
instantaneously from one end to the other of an iron wire a thousand miles
long and why it refuses to traverse a thread of glass half an inch long.
Beg the night-blooming flowers to expand in the day, or those that only
bloom in the light not to close at dusk. Give me the explanation of the
respiration of plants, diurnal and nocturnal, and of the production of
chlorophyll and how plants develop a green color in the light; why they
breathe in oxygen and exhale carbonic acid gas during the night, and
reverse the process during the day. Change the equivalents of simple
substances in chemistry, and order combinations to be produced. Forbid
azotic acid to boil at the freezing temperature, and command water to boil
at zero. You have only to ask these accommodations and nature will obey
you, gentlemen, depend upon it.
A good many phenomena of nature only occur in obscurity. The germs of
plants, animals, man, in forming a new being, work their miracle only in
the dark.
Here, in a flask, is a mixture of hydrogen and chlorine in equal volumes.
If you wish to preserve the mixture, you must keep the flask in the dark,
whether you want to or not. Such is the law. As long as it remains in the
dark, it will retain its properties. But suppose you take a schoolboy
notion to expose the thing to the action of light. Instantly a violent
explosion is heard; the hydrogen and the chlorine disappear, and you find
in the flask a new substance,--chloridic acid. There is no use in your
finding fault: darkness respects the two substances, while light explodes
them.
If we should hear a malignant sceptic of some clique or other say, "I will
only believe in jack-o'-lanterns when I see them in the light of day,"
what should we think of his sanity? About what we should think if he
should add that the stars are not certainties, since they are only seen at
night.
In all the observations and experiments of physics there are conditions to
be observed. In those of which we are speaking a too strong light seems to
imperil the success of the experiment. But it goes without saying that
precautions against deception ought to increase in direct ratio with the
decrease of visibility and other means of verification.
Let us return to our experiments.
6. Taps are heard in the table, or it moves, rises, falls back, raps with
its leg. A kind of interior movement is produced in the wood, violent
enough, sometimes, to break it. The round table I made use of (with
others) in my home was dislocated and repaired more than once, and it was
by no means the pressure of the hands upon it that could have caused the
dislocations. No, there is something more than that in it: there is in
the actions of the table the intervention of mind, of which I have already
spoken.
The table is questioned, by means of the conventional signs described a
few pages back, and it responds. Phrases are rapped out, usually banal and
without any literary, scientific, or philosophical value. But, at any
rate, words are rapped out, phrases are dictated. These phrases do not
come of their own accord, nor is it the medium who taps
them--consciously--either with her foot or her hand, or by the aid of a
snapping muscle, for we obtain them in seances held without professional
mediums and at scientific reunions where the existence of trickery would
be a thing of the greatest absurdity. The mind of the medium and that of
the experimenters most assuredly have something to do with the mystery.
The replies obtained generally tally the intellectual status of the
company, as if the intellectual faculties of the persons present were
exterior to their brains and were acting in the table wholly unknown to
the experimenters themselves. How can this thing be? How can we compose
and dictate phrases without knowing it. Sometimes the ideas broached seem
to come from a personality unknown to the company, and the hypothesis of
spirits quite naturally presents itself. A word is begun; some one thinks
he can divine its ending; to save time, he writes it down; the table
parries, is agitated, impatient. It is the wrong word; another was being
dictated. There is here, then, a psychic element which we are obliged to
recognize, whatever its nature may be when analyzed.
The success of experiments does not always depend on the will of the
medium. Of course that is the chief element in it; but certain conditions
independent of her are necessary. The psychical atmosphere created by the
persons present has an influence that cannot be neglected. So the state of
health of the medium is not without its influence. If he is fatigued,
although he may have the best will in the world, the value of the results
will be affected. I had a new proof of this thing, so often observed, at
my house, with Eusapia Paladino, on May 30, 1906. She had for more than a
month been suffering from a rather painful affection of the eyes; and
furthermore her legs were considerably swollen. We were seven, of whom two
lookers-on were sceptics. The results were almost nil; namely, the
lifting, during scarcely two seconds of time, of a round table weighing
about four pounds; the tipping up of one side of a four-legged table; and
a few rappings. Still, the medium seemed animated by a real wish to obtain
some result. She confessed to me, however, that what had chiefly paralyzed
her faculties was the sceptical and sarcastic spirit of one of the two
incredulous persons. I knew of the absolute scepticism of this man. It had
not been manifested in any way; but Eusapia had at once divined it.
The state of mind of the by-standers, sympathetic or antipathetic, has an
influence upon the production of the phenomena. This is an incontestable
matter of observation. I am not speaking here merely of a tricky medium
rendered powerless to act by a too close critical inspection, but also of
a hostile force which may more or less neutralize the sincerest volition.
Is it not the same, moreover, in assemblies, large or small, in
conferences, in salons, etc.? Do we not often see persons of baleful and
antipathetic spirit defeat at their very beginning the accomplishment of
the noblest purposes.
Here are the results of another sitting of the same medium held a few days
afterwards.
On the 7th of June, 1906, I had been informed by my friend Dr. Ostwalt,
the skilled oculist, who was at that time treating Eusapia, that she was
to be at his house that evening and that perhaps I would be able to try a
new experiment. I accepted with all the more readiness because the
mother-in-law of the doctor, Mme. Werner, to whom I had been attached by a
friendship of more than thirty years, had been dead a year, and had many a
time promised me, in the most formal manner, to appear after her death for
the purpose of giving completeness to my psychical researches by a
manifestation, if the thing was possible. We had so often conversed on
these subjects, and she was so deeply interested in them, that she had
renewed her promise very emphatically a few days before her death. And at
the same time she made a similar promise to her daughter and to her
son-in-law.
Eusapia, also, on her part, grateful for the care she had received at the
doctor's hands and for the curing of her eye, wished to be agreeable to
him in any way she could.
The conditions, then, were in all respects excellent. I agreed with the
doctor that we had before us four possible hypotheses, and that we should
seek to fix on the most probable one.
_a._ What would take place might be due to fraud, conscious or
unconscious.
_b._ The phenomena might be produced by a physical force emanating from
the medium.
_c._ Or by one or several invisible entities making use of this force.
_d._ Or by Mme. Werner herself.
We had on that evening some movements of the table and a complete lifting
of the four feet to a height of about eight inches. Six of us sat around
the table,--Eusapia, Madame and Monsieur Ostwalt, their son Pierre,
sixteen years old, my wife and myself. Our hands placed above the table
scarcely touched it, and were almost wholly detached at the moment it rose
from the floor. No fraud possible. Full light.
The seance then continued in the dark. The two portieres of a great
double-folding door, against which the medium was seated, her back to the
door, were blown about for nearly an hour, sometimes so violently as to
form something like a monk's hood on the head of the doctor and that of
his wife.
This great door was several times shaken violently, and tremendous blows
were struck upon it.
We tried to obtain words by means of the alphabet, but without success. (I
will remark in this connection that Eusapia knows neither how to read nor
to write.)
Pierre Ostwalt was able to write a word with the pencil. It seemed as if
an invisible force was guiding his hand. The word he pencilled down was
the first name of Mme. Werner, _well known to him_.
In spite of all our efforts, we were unable to obtain a single proof of
identity. Yet it would have been very easy for Mme. Werner to find one, as
she had so solemnly promised us to do.
In spite of the announcement by raps that an apparition would appear which
we would be permitted to see, we were only able to perceive a dim white
form, devoid of precise outline, even when we manipulated the light so as
to get almost complete darkness. From this new sitting the following
conclusions are deduced:
_a._ Fraud cannot explain the phenomena, especially the levitation of the
table, the violent blows and shakings given to the door, and the
projection of the curtain into the room.
_b._ These phenomena are certainly produced by a force emanating from the
medium, for they all occur in her immediate neighborhood.
_c._ This force is intelligent. But it is possible that this intelligence
which obeys our requests is only that of the medium.
_d._ Nothing proves that the spirit evoked had any influence.
These propositions, however, will be examined and developed one by one in
the pages that follow.
All the experiments described in this first chapter reveal to us unknown
forces in operation. It will be the same in the chapters that follow.
These phenomena are so unexplained, so inexplicable, so incredible, that
the simplest plan is to deny them, to attribute them all to fraud or to
hallucination, and to believe that all the participators are sand-blind.
Unfortunately for our opponents, this hypothesis is inadmissible.
Let me say here that there are very few men--and above all, women--whose
spirit is completely _free_; that is, in a condition capable of accepting,
without any preconceived idea, new or unexplained facts. In general,
people are disposed to admit only those facts or things for which they are
prepared by the ideas they have received, cherished, and maintained.
Perhaps there is not one human being in a hundred who is capable of making
a mental record of a new impression, simply, freely, exactly, with the
accuracy of a photographic camera. Absolute independence of judgment is a
rare thing among men.
A single fact accurately observed, even if it should contradict all
science, is worth more than all the hypotheses.
But only the independent minds, free from the classic leading-strings
which tie the dogmatists to their chairs, dare to study extra-scientific
facts or consider them possible.
I am acquainted with erudite men of genius, members of the Academy of
Sciences, professors at the university, masters in our great schools, who
reason in the following way: "Such and such phenomena are impossible
because they are in contradiction with the actual state of science. We
should only admit what we can explain."
They call that scientific reasoning!
Examples.--Frauenhofer discovers that the solar spectrum is crossed by
dark lines. These dark lines could not be explained in his time. Therefore
we ought not to believe in them.
Newton discovers that the stars move _as if_ they were governed by an
attractive force. This attraction could not be explained in his time. Nor
is it explained to-day. Newton himself takes the pains to declare that he
does not wish to explain it by an hypothesis. "_Hypotheses non fingo_" ("I
do not make hypotheses"). So, after the reasoning of our pseudo-logicians,
we ought not to admit universal gravitation. Oxygen combined with hydrogen
forms water. How? We don't know. Hence we ought not to admit the fact.
Stones sometimes fall from the sky. The Academy of Sciences of the
eighteenth century, not being able to divine where they came from, simply
denied the fact, which had been observed for thousands of years. They
denied also that fish and toads can fall from the clouds, because it had
not then been observed that waterspouts draw them up by suction and
transport them from one place to another. A medium places his hand upon a
table and seems actually to transmit to it independent life. It is
inexplicable, therefore it is false. Yet that is the predominant method of
reasoning of a great number of scholars. They are only willing to admit
what is known and explained. They declared that locomotives would not be
able to move, or, if they did succeed, railways would introduce no change
in social relations; that the transatlantic telegraph would never transmit
a despatch; that vaccine would not render immune; and at one time they
stoutly maintained (this was long ago) that the earth does not revolve.
It seems that they even condemned Galileo. _Everything_ has been denied.
Apropos of facts somewhat similar to those we are here studying,--I mean
the stigmata of Louise Lateau,--a very famous German scholar, Professor
Virchow, closed his report to the Berlin Academy with this dilemma: _Fraud
or Miracle_. This conclusion acquired a classic vogue. But it was an
error, for it is now known that stigmata are due neither to fraud nor
miracle.
Another rather common objection is presented by certain persons apparently
scientific. Confounding experience with observation, they imagine that a
natural phenomenon, in order to be real, ought to be able to be produced
at will, as in a laboratory. After this manner of looking at things, an
eclipse of the sun would not be a real thing, nor a stroke of lightning
which sets fire to a house, nor an aerolite that falls from the sky. An
earthquake, a volcanic eruption, are phenomena of observation, not of
experiment. But they none the less exist, often to the great damage of the
human race. Now, in the order of facts that we are studying here, we can
almost never experiment, but only observe, and this reduces considerably
the range of the field of study. And, even when we do experiment, the
phenomena are not produced at will: certain elements, several of which we
have not yet been able to get hold of, intervene to cross, modify, and
thwart them, so that for the most part we can only play the role of
observers. The difference is analogous to that which separates chemistry
from astronomy. In chemistry we experiment: in astronomy we observe. But
this does not hinder astronomy from being the most exact of the sciences.
Mediumistic phenomena that come directly under the observation, notably
those I have described some pages back, have for me the stamp of absolute
certainty and incontestability, and amply suffice to prove that unknown
physical forces exist outside of the ordinary and established domain of
natural philosophy. As a principle, moreover, this is an unimpeachable
tenet.[5]
I could adduce still other instances, for example the following:
7. During seance experiments, phantoms often appear,--hands, arms, a head,
a bust, an entire human figure. I was a witness of this thing, especially
on July 27, 1897, at Montfort-l'Amaury (see Chapter III). M. de Fontenay
having declared that he perceived an image or spirit over the table,
between himself and me (we were sitting face to face, keeping watch over
Eusapia, he holding one of her hands, and I the other), and I seeing
nothing at all, I asked him to change places with me. And then I, too,
perceived this spirit-shadow, the head of a bearded man, rather vaguely
outlined, which was moving like a silhouette, advancing and retiring in
front of a red lantern placed on a piece of furniture. I had not been able
to see at first from where I sat, because the lantern was then behind me,
and the spectral appearance was formed between M. de Fontenay and me. As
this dark silhouette remained rather vague, I asked if I could not touch
its beard. The medium replied, "Stretch out your hand." I then felt upon
the back of my hand the brushing of a very soft beard.
This case did not have for me the same _absolute certainty_ as the
preceding. There are degrees in the feeling of security we have in
observations. In astronomy, even, there are stars at the limit of
visibility. And yet in the opinion of all the participators in the seance
there was no trick. Besides, on another occasion, at my own home, I saw
another figure, that of a young girl, as the reader will see in the third
chapter.
8. That same day, at Montfort, in the course of the conversation, some one
recalled the circumstance that the "spirits" have sometimes impressed on
paraffin or putty or clay the print of their head or of their hands,--a
thing that seems in the last degree absurd. But we bought some putty at a
glazier's and fixed up in a wooden box a perfectly soft cake. At the end
of the seance there was the imprint of a head, of a face, in this putty.
In this case, no more than in the other, am I _absolutely certain_ there
was no trickery. We will speak of it farther on.
Other manifestations will be noted in subsequent pages of this book.
Stopping right here, for the present, at the special point of view of the
proved existence of unknown forces, I will confine myself to the six
preceding cases, regarding them as incontestable, in the judgment of any
man of good faith or of any observer. If I have considered these
particular cases so early in the work, it is in response to readers of my
works who have been begging me for a long time to give my _personal_
observations.
The simplest of these manifestations--that of raps, for example--is not a
negligible asset. There is no doubt that it is one or another of the
experimenters, or their dynamic resultant, that raps in the table without
knowing how. So, even if it should be a psychic entity unknown to the
mediums, it evidently makes use of them, of their physiological
properties. Such a fact is not without scientific interest. The denials of
scepticism prove nothing, unless it be that the deniers themselves have
not observed the phenomena.
I have no other aim in this first chapter than to give a preliminary
summary of the observed facts.
I do not desire to put forth in these first pages any explanatory
hypothesis. My readers will themselves form an opinion from the narratives
that follow, and the last chapter of the volume will be devoted to
theories. Yet I believe it will be useful to call attention at once to
the fact that matter is not, in reality, what it appears to be to our
vulgar senses,--to our sense of touch, to our vision,--but that it is
identical with energy, and is only a manifestation of the movement of
invisible and imponderable elements. The universe is a dynamism. Matter is
only an appearance. It will be useful for the reader to bear this truth in
mind, as it will help him to comprehend the studies we are about to make.
The mysterious forces we are here studying are themselves manifestations
of the universal dynamism with which our five senses put us very
imperfectly into relation.
These things belong to the psychical order as well as to the physical.
They prove that we are living in the midst of an unexplored world, in
which the psychic forces play a role as yet very imperfectly studied.
We have here a situation analogous to that in which Christopher Columbus
found himself on the evening of the day when he perceived the first hints
of land in the New World. We are pushing our prow through an absolutely
unknown sea.