MY FIRST SEANCES IN THE ALLAN KARDEC GROUP AND WITH THE MEDIUMS OF THAT
EPOCH
One day in the month of November, 1861, under the Galeries de l'Odeon,[6]
I spied a book, the title of which struck me,--_Le Livre des Esprits_
("The Book of Spirits"), by Allan Kardec. I bought it and read it with
avidity, several chapters seeming to me to agree with the scientific bases
of the book I was then writing, _The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds_. I
hunted up the author, who proposed that I should enter, as a free
associated member, the Parisian Society for Spiritualistic Studies, which
he had founded, and of which he was president. I accepted, and by chance
have just found the green ticket signed by him on the fifteenth day of
November, 1861. This is the date of my debut in psychic studies. I was
then nineteen, and for three years had been an astronomical pupil at the
Paris Observatory. At this time I was putting the last touches to the book
I just mentioned, the first edition of which was published some months
afterwards by the printer-publisher of the Observatory.
The members came together every Friday evening in the assembly room of the
society, in the little passageway of Sainte Anne, which was placed under
the protection of Saint Louis. The president opened the seance by an
"invocation to the good spirits." It was admitted, as a principle, that
invisible spirits were present there and revealed themselves. After this
invocation a certain number of persons, seated at a large table, were
besought to abandon themselves to their inspiration and to write. They
were called "writing mediums." Their dissertations were afterwards read
before an attentive audience. There were no physical experiments of
table-turning, or tables moving or speaking. The president, Allan Kardec,
said he attached no value to such things. It seemed to him that the
instructions communicated by the spirits ought to form the basis of a new
doctrine, of a sort of religion.
At the same period, but several years earlier, my illustrious friend
Victorien Sardou, who had been an occasional frequenter of the
Observatory, had written, as a medium, some curious pages on the
inhabitants of the planet Jupiter, and had produced picturesque and
surprising designs, having as their aim to represent men and things as
they appeared in this giant of worlds. He designed the dwellings of people
in Jupiter. One of his sketches showed us the house of Mozart, others the
houses of Zoroaster and of Bernard Palissy, who were country neighbors in
one of the landscapes of this immense planet. The dwellings are ethereal
and of an exquisite lightness. They may be judged of by the two figures
here reproduced (Pl. II and III). The first represents a residence of
Zoroaster, the second "the animals' quarters" belonging to the same. On
the grounds are flowers, hammocks, swings, flying creatures, and, below,
intelligent animals playing a special kind of ninepins where the fun is
not to knock down the pins, but to put a cap on them, as in the cup and
ball toy, etc.
These curious drawings prove indubitably that the signature "Bernard
Palissy, of Jupiter," is apocryphal and that the hand of Victorien Sardou
was not directed by a spirit from that planet. Nor was it the gifted
author himself who planned these sketches and executed them in accordance
with a definite plan. They were made while he was in the condition of
mediumship. A person is not magnetized, nor hypnotized, nor put to sleep
in any way while in that state. But the brain is not ignorant of what is
taking place: its cells perform their functions, and act (doubtless by a
reflex movement) upon the motor nerves. At that time we all thought
Jupiter was inhabited by a superior race of beings. The spiritistic
communications were the reflex of the general ideas in the air. To-day,
with our present knowledge of the planets, we should not imagine anything
of the kind about that globe. And, moreover, spiritualistic seances have
never taught us anything upon the subject of astronomy. Such results as
were attained fail utterly to prove the intervention of spirits. Have the
writing mediums given any more convincing proofs of it than these? This is
what we shall have to examine in as impartial a way as we can.
I myself tried to see if I, too, could not write. By collecting and
concentrating my powers and allowing my hand to be passive and
unresistant, I soon found that, after it had traced certain dashes, and
_o_'s, and sinuous lines more or less interlaced, very much as a
four-year-old child learning to write might do, it finally did actually
write words and phrases.
In these meetings of the Parisian Society for Spiritualistic Studies, I
wrote for my part, some pages on astronomical subjects signed "Galileo."
The communications remained in the possession of the society, and in 1867
Allan Kardec published them under the head _General Uranography_, in his
work entitled _Genesis_. (I have preserved one of the first copies, with
his dedication.) These astronomical pages taught me nothing. So I was not
slow in concluding that they were only the echo of what I already knew,
and that Galileo had no hand in them. When I wrote the pages, I was
in a kind of waking dream. Besides, my hand stopped writing when I began
to think of other subjects.
[Illustration: PLATE II. HOUSE OF ZOROASTRE OF JUPITER FROM SOMNAMBULISTIC
DRAWING BY VICTORIEN SARDOU.]
[Illustration: PLATE III. ANIMALS' QUARTERS. HOUSE OF ZOROASTRE OF JUPITER
FROM SOMNAMBULISTIC DRAWING BY VICTORIEN SARDOU.]
I may quote here what I said on this subject in my work, _The Worlds of
Space_ (_Les Terres du Ciel_), in the edition of 1884, p. 181:--
The writing medium is not put to sleep, nor is he magnetized or
hypnotized in any way. One is simply received into a circle of
determinate ideas. The brain acts (by the mediation of the nervous
system) a little differently from what it does in its normal state.
The difference is not so great as one might suppose. The chief
difference may be described as follows:
In the normal state we think of what we are going to write _before_
the act of writing begins. There is a direct action of the will in
causing the pen, the hand, and the fore-arm to move over the paper. In
the abnormal state, on the other hand, we do not think before writing;
we do not move the hand, but let it remain inert, passive, free; we
place it upon the paper, taking care merely that it shall meet with
the least possible resistance; we think of a word, a figure, a stroke
of the pen, and the hand of its own volition begins to write. But the
writing medium must _think_ of what he is doing, not beforehand, but
continuously; otherwise the hand stops. For example, try to write the
word "ocean," not _voluntarily_ (the ordinary way), but by simply
taking a lead-pencil, and letting the hand rest lightly and freely
upon the paper, while you think of your word and observe carefully
whether the hand will write. Very good; it does begin to move over the
paper, writing first an _o_, then a _c_, and the rest. At least that
was my experience when I was studying the new problems of spiritualism
and magnetism.
I have always thought that the circle of science is not a closed one,
and that there are many things for us still to learn. In the
mediumistic writing experiments it is very easy to deceive ourselves
and to believe that the hand is under the influence of another mind
than our own. The most probable conclusion regarding these experiences
has been that the theory of the action of foreign spirits is not
necessary for the explanation of such phenomena. But this is not the
place to enter into details upon a subject which, up to the present
time, has been only slightly examined by scientific criticism, having
more often been exploited by speculators than studied by scientists.
So I wrote in 1884; and I will indorse every word I then wrote, just as it
stands.
In these first experiences with Spiritualists, of which I have just been
speaking, I soon had the entree of the chief Parisian circles devoted to
these matters, and for a couple of years I even took the position of
honorary secretary of one of them. A natural or necessary result of this
was that I did not miss a single seance.
Three different methods were employed to receive communications: (1)
writing with the hand; (2) the use of the planchette to which a
lead-pencil was attached, and on which the hands were placed; and (3)
table-rapping (or table-moving), operated by the alphabetic code, these
raps or the movements of the table marking the desired letter as the
alphabet was read aloud by one of those present.
The first of these methods was the only one employed at the Society for
Spiritualistic Studies, of which Allan Kardec was president. It was the
one which permitted the margin for the most doubt. In fact, at the end of
two years of investigations of this kind, which I had varied as much as
possible, and which I had entered upon without any preconceived idea for
or against, and with the most ardent desire to arrive at the truth, I came
to the positive conclusion that not only are the signatures of these
papers not authentic, but that the intervention of another mind from the
spirit world is not proved at all, the fact being that we ourselves are
the more or less conscious authors of the communications by some cerebral
process which yet remains to be investigated. The explanation is not so
simple as it seems, and there are certain reservations to be made in the
general statement above.
When writing in the exalted and abnormal state of mind of the medium, we
do not, as I have just said, form our phrases as in the normal condition;
rather we wait for them to be produced. But all the same our own mind
mingles in the process. The subject treated follows the lines of our own
customary thoughts; the language employed is our native tongue, and, if we
are uncertain about the spelling of certain words, errors will appear.
Furthermore, so intimately are our own mental processes mingled with what
is being written that, if we allow our thoughts to wander to another
topic, the hand either stops writing or produces incoherent words and
scrawls. This is the mental state of the writing medium,--at least that
which I have observed in myself. It is a kind of auto-suggestion. I hasten
to add, however, that this opinion only binds me to the extent of my own
personal experiences. I am assured that there are mediums who act in an
absolutely mechanical way, knowing nothing of the nature of what they are
writing (see further on, pp. 58, 59), who treat subjects of which they are
ignorant, and also even write in foreign languages. Such cases would be
different from that of which I have just been speaking, and would indicate
either a special cerebral state or great keenness of intellect, or a
source of ideas exterior to the medium; _i.e._, if it were once proved
that our mind cannot divine that of which it is ignorant. But now the
transference of thought from one brain to another, from one mind to
another, is a fact proved by telepathy. We could conceive, then, that a
medium might write under the influence of some one near by--or even at a
distance. Several mediums have also composed (in successive seances)
genuine romances, such as The _History of Joan of Arc, Written by
Herself_, or certain voyages to other planets,--seeming to indicate that
there is a kind of doubling of the personality of the subject, a secondary
personality. But there is no authentication of this. There is also a
psychic _milieu_, of which I shall speak farther on. At present I must
concern myself only with the subject of this chapter, and say with Newton,
"_Hypotheses non fingo_."
Allan Kardec died on the 30th of March, 1869, and, when the Society of
Spiritualists came to ask me to deliver a funeral oration at his tomb, I
took occasion, during this discourse, to direct the attention of the
Spiritualists to the scientific character of investigations of this class
and to the manifest danger of allowing ourselves to be drawn into
mysticism.
I will reproduce at this point a few paragraphs taken from this address:
I wish I could impress upon you who hear me, as well as upon the
millions of men throughout Europe and in the New World who are
studying the still mysterious problem of spiritualism, what a deep
scientific interest and what a philosophic future there is in the
study of these phenomena, to which, as you know, many of our most
eminent living scholars have given their time and attention. I wish I
could present to your imagination and theirs the new and vast horizons
we shall see opening up before us in proportion as we broaden our
scientific knowledge of the forces of nature at work around us; and I
would that I could show both you and them that such conquests of the
mind are the most efficacious antidote to the leprosy of atheism which
seems to be particularly the malignant degenerative element in this
our epoch of transition.
What a salutary thing it would be could I but prove here, before this
eloquent tomb, that the methodical examination of the phenomena
erroneously called supernatural, far from calling back the spirit of
superstition, and weakening the energy of the reason, serves, on the
contrary, to banish the errors and illusions of ignorance, and assists
the progress of truth much more than do the irrational negations of
those who will not take the trouble to look at the facts.
It is high time now that this complex subject of study should enter
upon its scientific period. Enough stress has not been laid upon the
physical side of the subject, which should be critically studied; for
without rigid scientific experiment no proof is valid. This objective
_a priori_ method of investigation, to which we owe the glory of
modern progress and the marvels of electricity and steam, should take
up the still unexplained and mysterious phenomena with which we are
acquainted, to dissect them, measure them, and to define them.
For, gentlemen, _spiritualism is not a religion, but a science_, a
science of which we as yet scarcely know the _a, b, c_. The age of
dogma is past. Nature includes the Universe; and God himself, who was
in old times conceived of as a being of similar shape and form as man,
cannot be considered by modern metaphysics as other than _Mind in
Nature_.
The supernatural does not exist. The manifestations obtained by the
agency of mediums, such as those of magnetism and somnambulism, belong
to the order of nature and ought to be inexorably submitted to the
test of experiment. There are no more miracles. We are witnessing the
dawning of a new science. Who is there so bold as to predict whither
the scientific study of the new psychology will lead, and what the
results will be?
The limitations of human vision are such that the eye only sees things
between narrow bounds, and beyond these limits, on this side and on
that, it sees nothing. The body may be compared to a harp of two
chords,--the optic nerve and the auditory nerve. One kind of
vibrations excites the first and another kind the second. That is the
whole story of human sensation, which is even inferior to that of many
of the lower animals; certain insects, for example, in whom the nerves
of vision and of hearing are more delicate than in man.
Now there are in nature, not two, but ten, a hundred, a thousand kinds
of movement or vibration. We learn, then, from physical science, that
we are living in the midst of a world invisible to us, and that it is
not impossible that there may be living upon the earth a class of
beings, also invisible to us, endowed with a wholly different kind of
senses, so that there is no way by which they can make themselves
known to us, unless they can manifest themselves in acts and ways that
can come within the range of our own order of sensations.
In the presence of such truths as these, which have as yet only been
barely announced, how absurd and worthless seems mere blind denial!
When we compare the little that we know and the narrow limits of our
range of perception with the vast extent of the field of knowledge, we
can scarcely refrain from the conclusion that we know nothing and that
everything yet remains to be known. With what right do we pronounce
the word "impossible" in the presence of facts which we prove to be
genuine without yet being able to discover their causes?
It is by the scientific study of effects that we arrive at the
determination of causes. In the class of investigations which we group
under the general head "Spiritualism," FACTS EXIST. But no one
understands the method of their production. Their existence,
nevertheless, is just as true as the phenomena of electricity.
But, as for understanding them--why, gentlemen, nobody understands
biology, physiology, psychology. What is the human body? What is the
brain? What is the absolute action of the soul or mind? We do not
know. And, neither do we know anything whatever of the essence of
electricity or the essence of light. It is prudent, then, to observe
with unbiased judgment all such matters as these, and to try to
determine their causes, which are perhaps of different kinds and more
numerous than has ever been supposed up to the present time.[7]
It will be seen that what I publicly uttered as I stood on the hillock
above the grave into which Allan Kardec's coffin had just been lowered
differs not at all from the purely scientific program of the present work.
I have just said that there were three methods employed in our spiritistic
experiments. I have given my opinion of the first (writing mediums),
basing it on my personal observations, and without desiring to weaken
other proofs, if there are any. As to the second (planchette), I became
familiar with it more especially by the seances of Mme. de Girardin, at
the home of Victor Hugo in the Isle of Jersey. It works more independently
than the first method; but it is still only a prolongation, as it were, of
the hand and the brain. The third method--table-rapping, or typtology; I
mean taps in the table--seems to me still more emphatically an extension
of the hand and brain, and some forty-five years ago I often made use of
this form of experiment.
Rappings made on the floor by one foot of the table, as letters are
spelled out, have no special value. The least pressure can produce these
see-saw movements. The chief experimenter himself makes the responses,
sometimes without suspecting it.
Several persons group themselves about a table, place their hands upon it,
and wait for something to happen. At the end of five, ten, fifteen, twenty
minutes, the time depending on the psychic atmosphere[8] and the faculties
of the experimenters, raps are heard in the table, or the sitters help in
the movements of the table, which seems possessed. Why choose a table?
Because it is the only article of furniture around which folks usually
sit. Sometimes the table is lifted on one or more of its feet and is
gently rocked to and fro. Sometimes it comes up as if glued to the hands
placed on it, remaining suspended in the air two, three, five, ten,
twenty seconds. Again, it is nailed to the floor with such force that it
seems to have double or triple its usual weight. At other times, and
usually on demand, it gives forth the sound of a saw, of a hatchet, of a
lead-pencil writing, etc. We have here material results coming under
direct observation, and they prove irrefragably the existence of an
unknown force.
This force is a material force in the psychic class. If we confined our
attention to blind senseless movements of one kind or another, in relation
only with the volitions of the experimenters, and not capable of being
explained by the mere imposition of their hands, we might see proof of the
existence of a new unknown force, explicable as a transformation of
nervous force, of organic electricity; and that would be much in itself.
But the raps made in the table, or by the feet of it, are made in reply to
questions asked. Since we know the table is only a piece of wood, when we
ask it questions, we are really addressing some mental agent who hears and
replies. It was in this class of phenomena that modern Spiritualism took
its rise; namely, in the United States, in 1848, when the Fox sisters
heard sounds in their chamber,--raps in the walls and in the furniture.
Their father, after several months of vexatious investigation, finally had
recourse to the traditional theory of ghosts, and, addressing his
questions to the wall, demanded some kind of an explanation from the
invisible _thing_ therein. This thing responded by conventional taps to
the questions asked, and declared that it was the spirit of the former
proprietor once assassinated in this his very home. The spirit asked for
prayers and the burial of its body. (From this time on the replies were so
arranged that one rap in response to a question signified _yes_, two meant
_no_ while three meant an emphatic _yes_.)
I hasten to remark at once that the tapped replies prove nothing, and
could have been made unconsciously by the Fox sisters themselves, whom we
can not consider to have been playing a little comedy since the raps
produced by them in the walls astounded and overwhelmed them more, indeed,
than they did any one else. The hypothesis of jugglery and mystification,
dear to certain critics, has not the least application to this case,
although I admit that rappings and movements are often produced as
practical jokes by waggish persons.
There is, of course, an unseen cause that originates these rappings. Is it
within us or outside of us? Is it possible that we might be capable of
doubling our personality in some way without knowing it, of acting by
mental suggestion, of answering our own questions without suspecting it,
of producing material results without being conscious of it? Or does there
exist, around and about us, an intelligent medium or atmosphere, a kind of
spiritual cosmos? Or, again, is it possible that we are surrounded by
invisible non-human beings,--gnomes, spirits, and hobgoblins (there may be
an unknown world about us)? Or, finally, is it possible that the spirits
of the dead may survive, and wander to and fro, and hold communication
with us? All these hypotheses present themselves to our minds, nor have we
the scientific absolute right to reject any one of them.
The lifting of a table, the displacement of an object, may be attributed
to an unknown force developed by our nervous system or otherwise. At least
these movements do not prove the existence of a mind extraneous to that of
the subject. But when some one is naming the letters of the alphabet or
pointing them out on a sheet of pasteboard, and the table, either by raps
in the wood or by levitations, puts together an intelligible sentence, we
are forced to attribute this intelligent effect to an intelligent cause.
This cause may be the medium himself; and the simplest way is, evidently,
to suppose that he himself raps out the letters. But experiments can be
arranged in such a way that he cannot possibly do this, even
unconsciously. Our first duty is, in reality, to make fraud impossible.
Those who have sufficiently studied the subject know that fraud does not
explain what they have observed. To be sure, in fashionable Spiritualistic
soirees people sometimes amuse themselves. Especially when the seances
take place in the dark, and the alternation of the sexes is provided for
so as to "reinforce the fluids," it is not altogether an unheard of thing
for the gentlemen to profit by the temptation to temporarily forget the
object of the meeting and break the established chain of hands in order to
begin another on their own account. The ladies and the young girls like
these changes in the program, and scarcely a complaint is heard. On the
other hand, apart from fashionable soirees, to which everybody is invited
for their amusement, the more serious reunions are frequently no safer;
for the medium, who is, in one way or another, an interested person, is
anxious to give the most he can--and something to boot.
Upon the leaf of an old note-book of mine which has just turned up, I
classed Spiritualistic soirees in the following order, which is doubtless
a slightly original one:--
1. Amorous caresses. (A similar reproach was made against the ancient
Christian love-feasts or _agapes_.)
2. Charlatanry of mediums, abusing the credulity of the sitters.
3. _Some_ serious inquirers.
At the time of which I was just now speaking (1861-63) I took part, as
secretary, in experiments conducted regularly once a week, in the salon of
a well-known medium,--Mlle. Huet, of Mont-Thabor Street. Mediumship was,
in a way, her trade, and she had more than once been flagrantly detected
in some most remarkable trickery. Accordingly, it may be imagined that
she would quite often give the raps herself by hitting the table-legs with
her feet. But quite often we also obtained noises of sawing, of planing,
of drum-beating, and torrents of rain, which it would have been impossible
for her to imitate. Neither could the holding fast of the table to the
floor be the work of fraud. As to the levitations of the table, I said
awhile ago that, when one of us showed an inclination to resist with his
hand the upward movement, he received an impression as if the table were
floating on a fluid. Now it is hard to see how the medium could produce
this result. Everything took place in broad daylight.
The communications received at the very many seances (several hundred) at
which I have been present, both at that time and since, have always shown
me that the results were in direct ratio with the cultivation of mind of
the participants. I naturally asked a great many questions on astronomy.
The replies never taught us anything new whatever; and, to be perfectly
loyal to the truth, I must say that if, in these experiments, there are
spirits, or beings independent of us in action, they know no more than we
do about the other worlds.
A distinguished poet, P. F. Mathieu, was usually present at the reunions
at the Mont-Thabor salon, and hence we sometimes obtained very pretty bits
of verse, which I am sure he did not himself consciously produce; for,
like all of us, he was there to learn. M. Joubert, vice-president of the
civil tribunal of Carcassonne, has published a work, entitled _Various
Fables and Poems, by a Spirit-rapper_, which bears on its face evidence
that it is but the reflex of his customary thoughts. We had Christian
philosophers with us at our reunions. Accordingly, the table dictated to
us fine thoughts signed "Pascal," "Fenelon," "Vincent de Paul," and
"Sainte Therese." One spirit, who signed himself "Balthasar Grimod de la
Reyniere," dictated funny dissertations on the art of cooking. His
specialty was to make the heavy table dance about in all kinds of
contortions. Rabelais sometimes appeared, still loving the perfumes of
savory viands as of old. Some of the spirits took pleasure in making
_tours de force_ in cryptology (secret writing). The following are
specimens of these table-rapping communications. The first is from the
vulgate version of the Bible, the Gospel of John iii. 8:
"Spiritus ubi vult spirat; et vocem ejus audis, sed nescis unde veniat
aut quo vadat. Sic est omnis qui natus est ex spiritu." ("The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but
canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is every one
that is born of the Spirit.")
"Dear little sister, I am here, and see that you are as good as ever.
You are a medium. I will go to you with great happiness. Tell my
mother her dear daughter loves her from this world.[9]
"LOUISA."
Some one asked one of the spirits if he could indicate by taps the words
engraved inside of her ring. The response was:
"I love that one should love me as I love when I love."
A member of the company suspected that the table around which we were
sitting might conceal a piece of mechanism for producing the raps.
Accordingly, one of the sentences was dictated by raps made _in the air_.
Here is another series:
"Je suis ung ioyeux compaignon qui vous esmarveilleray avecques mes
discours, je ne suis pas ung Esperict mateologien, je vestiray non
liripipion et je diray: Beuvez l'eaue de la cave, poy plus, poy moins,
serez content.
"ALCOFRIBAZ NAZIER."
("I am a jollie blade who will astonie you by my speech. I am not a
vaine-babbling sperit. I will wear my graduate's hood and saie: Drinke
ye water of ye cellar [wine],--no more, no less. Be content.
"FRANCOIS RABELAIS.")[10]
A rather lively discussion arose upon the subject of this unexpected
visit,--and of the language, which some erudite persons present thought
not to be pure Rabelaisian. Whereupon the table rapped:
"Bons enfants estes de vous esgousiller a ceste besterie. Mieux vault
que beuviez froid que parliez chaud."
"Rabelais."
("Ye're regular babies to bawle yourselves hoarse over this selynesse.
It is bettaire to drinke cauld than to speak warme.)
"Liesse et Noel! Monsieur Satan est defun, et de male mort. Bien
marrys sont les moynes, moynillons, bigotz et cagotz, carmes chaulx et
dechaulx, papelards et frocards, mitrez et encapuchonnez: les vecy
sans couraige, les Esperictz les ont destrosnez. Plus ne serez roustiz
et eschaubouillez ez marmites monachales et roustissoires diaboliques;
foin de ces billevesees papales et clericquales. Dieu est bon, iuste
et plein de miserichorde; it dict a ses petits enfancts: aimez-vous
les ungs les autres et it pardoint a la repentance. Le grand dyable
d'enfer est mort; vive Dieu!"
("Hurrah for a merry life! Maister Satan is dead, dead as a door-nail.
The monks and the poor-devil friars are married,--bigots and fanatics,
Carmelites shod and unshod, the hypocrites and the cowled fellows,
the mitres and the hoods. There they stand trembling in their tracks;
the Spirits have dethroned them. Gone are the roastings and
soup-makings in the Devil's Dutch ovens and in monastic kettles. A
plague of these trashy tales of pope and priest! God is good, just,
and full of pity. He says to his little children, 'Love one another';
and he pardons the repentant. The great devil in hell is dead. Hurrah
for God!")
Here is still another series:
"Suov ruop eretsym nu sruojuot tnores emem srueisulp; erdnerpmoc ed
simrep erocne sap tse suov en li uq snoitseuq sed ridnoforppa ruop
tirpse'l sap retnemruot suov en. Liesnoc nob nu zevius."
"Suov imrap enger en edrocsid ed tirpse'l siamaj euq."
"Arevele suov ueid te sererf sov imrap sreinred sel zeyos; evele ares
essiaba's iuq iulec essiaba ares evele's iuq iulec."
These sentences must be read backwards, beginning at the end. Some one
asked, "Why have you dictated thus?" The reply was:
"In order to give you new and unexpected proofs."
Read backwards, these Russian-like sentences are as follows:
"Celui qui s'eleve sera abaisse, celui qui s'abaisse sera eleve; soyez
les derniers parmi vos freres et Dieu vous elevera."
"Que jamais l'esprit de discorde ne regne parmi vous."
"Suivez un bon conseil. Ne vous tourmenter pas l'esprit pour
approfondir des questions qu'il ne vous est pas encore permis de
comprendre; plusieurs meme seront toujours un mystere pour vous."
("Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth
himself shall be exalted! Be the least among your brethren, and God
will exalt you."
"Never let the spirit of discord reign among you."
"Follow good counsel. Do not torment your mind in attempting to fathom
questions that it is not yet permitted you to comprehend: several of
these will always be a mystery to you.")
Here is another of a different kind:
"Acmairsvnoouussevtoeussbaoinmsoentsfbiideenlteosuss."
"Sloeysepzruintissaeinndtieetuesnudrrvaosuessmaairlises."
I asked the meaning of this bizarre and portentous conglomeration of
letters. The reply was:
"To conquer your doubts, read by skipping every other letter."
This arrangement using the skipped letters in their turn for the second
and fourth lines gives the four following verses:
"Amis, nous vous aimons bien tous,
Car vous etes bons et fideles.
Soyez unis en Dieu: sur vous
L'Esprit-Saint etendra ses ailes."
("Friends, we love you all,
For you are good and faithful.
Be united in God: over you
The Holy Spirit will spread his wings.")
This is innocent enough, surely and without any great poetic pretensions.
But it must be admitted that this method of dictating is rather
difficult.[11]
Some one spoke of human plans. The table dictated as follows:[12]
"When the shining sun scatters the stars, know ye, O mortal men,
whether ye will see the evening of that day? And, when the sombre
curtains of night are let fall from the sky, can you tell whether you
will see the dawn of another morn?"
Another person asked, "What is faith?"
"Faith? 'Tis a blessed field that breeds a superb harvest, and every
laborer may therein reap and garner to his heart's content, and carry
home his sheaves."
Here are three prose dictations:
"Science is a forest where some are laying out roads, where many lose
their way, and where all see the bounds of the forest recede as fast
as they go forward."
"God does not illuminate the world with the lightning and the meteors.
He guides peacefully in their courses the stars of the night, which
fill the sky with their light. So the divine revelations succeed one
another in order, reason, and harmony."
"Religion and Friendship are twin companions, who aid us to traverse
the painful path of life."
I cannot forego the pleasure of inserting here, at the close of this
chapter, a fable, dictated like the others by table-rappings, and sent to
me by M. Joubert, vice-president of the civil tribunal of Carcassonne.[13]
The sentiment of it may be queried by some; but is not the central
principle applicable to all epochs and to all governments: Do not the
"_arrivistes_"[14] belong to all times?
THE KING AND THE PEASANT
A king who had profaned the public liberties, who for twenty years had
slaked his thirst in the blood of heretics; awaiting the quiet peace
of the hangman in his declining days; decrepit, surfeited with
adulterous amours; this king, this haughty monster of whom they had
made a great man,--Louis the Fourteenth, in short, if I must name
him,--was one day airing under the leafy arches of his vast gardens
his Scarron, his infamy and his troubles. The noble band of court
flunkeys came along. Each one at once lost at least six inches of his
height. Pages, counts, marquises, dukes, princes, marshals, ministers,
bowed low before insulting rivals, the creatures of the king. Grave
magistrates made their deep reverences, each humbler than a suitor
asking for audience. 'Twas pleasant to see how the ribbons, crosses
and decorations on their embroidered coats went ever backwards. Always
and always that ignoble bowing and scraping and cringing. I should
like to wake up some morning an emperor, that I might sting with my
whip the backbone of a flatterer. But see! alone, confronting the
despot, yet without abasing his head, forging along with slow steps on
his own way, modest, clad in coarse homespun garments, comes one who
seems a peasant, perhaps a philosopher, and passes by the groups of
insolent courtiers. "Oh," cries the king, in great surprise, "why do
you alone confront me without bending the knee?" "Sire," said the
unknown, "must I be frank? It is because I alone here expect nothing
from you."
If we stop to think how these sentences and phrases and different bits of
literature were produced, letter by letter, rap by rap, following the
alphabet as it was read out, we shall appreciate the difficulty of the
thing. The rappings are made either in the interior of the wood of the
table (the vibrations of which are perceptible) or in some other piece of
furniture, or even in the air. The table, as I have already said, is
alive, pregnant with a kind of momentary vitality. Melodies of well-known
airs, sounds of sawing and of the workshop, and the report of fusillades
can be drawn from it. Sometimes it becomes so light that it floats for a
moment in the air, then so heavy that two men can scarcely lift it from
the floor or budge it in any way. You must have a distinct picture in your
mind of all these manifestations,--often puerile, no doubt, sometimes
vulgar and grotesque, yet striking in their method of operation,--if you
would accurately understand the phenomena, and realize that you are in the
presence of an unknown element which jugglery and prestidigitation cannot
explain.
Some folks can move their toes separately and crack the joints. If we
should grant that the dictations, by combinations of letters (quoted
above), were arranged in advance, learned by heart, and thus rapped, the
matter would be simple enough. But this particular faculty is very rare,
and it does not explain the noises in the table, the vibrations of which
are felt by the hands. Again, one could fancy the medium tapping the
table-legs with his foot, and thus constructing such sentences as he
pleases. But it would require a wonderful memory in the medium to enable
him to remember the precise arrangement of letters (for he has no
memorandum before him), and, further, these curious dictations have been
secured just the same in select companies where no one would cheat.
As to the theory that the spirits of eminent men are in communication with
the experimenters the mere statement of the hypothesis shows its
absurdity. Imagine a table-rapper calling up from the vasty deep the
spirits of Paul or Saint Augustine, Archimedes or Newton, Pythagoras or
Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci or William Herschel, and receiving their
dictations from the interior of a table!
We were speaking, a few pages back, of the seance drawings and
descriptions of Jupiter made by Victorien Sardou. This is the proper place
to insert a letter written by him to M. Jules Claretie, and published by
the latter in _Le Temps_ at the date when that learned Academician was
putting on the boards his drama _Spiritisme_. The letter is here appended:
... As to Spiritualism, I could better tell you verbally in three
words what I think of it than I could write here in three pages. You
are half right and half wrong. Pardon my freedom of speech. There are
two things in Spiritualism,--(1) curious facts, inexplicable in the
present state of our knowledge, and yet authenticated; and (2) the
folks who explain them.
The facts are real. Those who explain them belong to three categories:
there are, first, Spiritualists who are imbecile, ignorant, or mad,
the chaps who call up Epaminondas and whom you justly make fun of, or
who believe in the intervention of the devil; those, in short, who end
in the lunatic asylum in Charenton.
_Secundo_, there are the charlatans, commencing with D.; impostors of
all sorts, prophets, consulting mediums, such as A. K., and _tutti
quanti_.
Finally, there are the scholars and scientists, who think they can
explain everything by juggleries, hallucination, and unconscious
movements, men like Chevreul and Faraday, who, while they are right
about some of the phenomena described to them, and which really are
jugglery or hallucination, are yet wrong about the whole series of
original facts, which they will not take the trouble to look at,
though they are highly important. These men are much to blame; for, by
their plea-in-bar against earnest investigators (such as Gasparin, for
example) and by their insufficient explanations, they have left
Spiritualism to be exploited by charlatans of all kinds, and at the
same time authorized serious amateurs to no longer waste their time
over these studies.
Last of all, there are observers like myself (there are not many of
us) who are incredulous by nature, but who have been obliged to admit,
in the long run, that Spiritualism concerns itself with facts which
defy any _present_ scientific explication, but who do not despair of
seeing them explained some day, and who therefore apply themselves to
the study of the facts, and are trying to reduce them to some kind of
classification which may later prove to be law. We of this persuasion
hold ourselves aloof from every coterie, from every clique, from all
the prophets, and, satisfied with the convictions to which we have
already attained, are content to see in Spiritualism the dawn of a
truth, as yet very obscure, which will some day find its Ampere, as
did the magnetic currents, and who grieve to see this truth choked out
of existence by a dual foe,--excess of credulous ignorance which
believes everything and excess of incredulous science which believes
nothing.
We find in our conviction and our conscience the wherewithal to brave
the petty martyrdom of ridicule inflicted upon us for the faith we
profess, a faith exaggerated and caricatured by the mass of follies
people never fail to attribute to us, nor do we deem that the myth in
which they dress us up merits even the honor of a refutation.
Similarly, I have never had any desire to prove to anybody whatever
that the influence of either Moliere or Beaumarchais cannot be
detected in my plays. It seems to me that that is more than evident.
Respecting the dwellings of the planet Jupiter, I must ask the good
folks who suppose that I am convinced of the real existence of these
things whether they are well persuaded that Gulliver believed in
"Lilliput,"[15] Campanella in the "City of the Sun," and Sir Thomas
More in his "Utopia."
What is true, however, is that the design of which you speak [Pl.
III.] was made in less than ten hours. As to its origin, I would not
give a penny to know about that; but the fact of its production is
another matter
V. SARDOU.
Scarcely a year passes that mediums do not bring me drawings of plants and
animals in the Moon, in Mars, Venus, Jupiter, or certain of the stars.
These designs are more or less pretty, and more or less curious. But there
is nothing in them that leads us to admit their actual resemblance to
real things in other worlds. On the contrary, everything proves that they
are the products of imagination, essentially terrestrial, both in look and
shape, not even tallying what we know to be the vital possibilities of
those worlds. The designers of them are the dupes of illusion. These
plants and animal are metamorphoses (sometimes elegantly conceived and
drawn) of terrestrial organisms. Perhaps the most curious thing of all is
that they have a family resemblance in the manner of their execution, and
have stamped on them, in some way or other, the mediumistic hall-mark.
To return to my own experiences. When I took the role of writing-medium, I
generally produced astronomical or philosophical dissertations signed
"Galileo." I will quote but one of them as a sample. It is taken from my
notebooks of 1862.
SCIENCE.
The human intellect holds in its powerful grasp the infinite universe
of space and time; it has penetrated the inaccessible domain of the
Past, sounded the mystery of the unfathomable heavens, and believes
that it has explained the riddle of the universe. The objective world
has unrolled before the eyes of science its splendid panorama and its
magnificent wealth of forms. The studies of man have led him to a
knowledge of truth; he has explored the universe, discovered the
inexorable reign of law, and the application of the forces that
sustain all things. If it has not been permitted to him to see the
First Cause face to face, at least he has attained a true mathematical
idea of the series of secondary causes.
In this latest century, above all, the experimental _a priori_ method,
the only really scientific one, has been put into practice in the
natural sciences, and by its aid man has freed himself from the
prejudices of the old school of thought, one by one, and from
subjective or speculative theories, and confined himself to a careful
and intelligent study of the field of observation.
Yes, human science is firmly based and pregnant with possibility,
worthy of our homage for its difficult and long-proved past, worthy of
our sympathy for its future, big with the promise of useful and
profitable discoveries. For nature is henceforth to be a book
accessible to the bibliographical researches of the studious, a world
open to the investigations of the thinker, a fertile region which the
human mind has already visited, and in which we must needs advance
boldly, holding in our hand experience as our compass....
An old friend of my terrestrial life recently spoke to me as follows.
One of our wanderings had brought us back to the Earth, and we were
making a new moral study of this world. My companion remarked that man
is to-day familiar with the most abstract laws of mechanics, physics,
chemistry, ... that the applications of knowledge to industry are not
less remarkable than the deductions of pure science, and that it seems
as if the entire universe, wisely studied by man, was to be his royal
appanage. As we pursued our journey beyond the bounds of this world, I
answered him in the following terms:
"A feeble atom, lost to sight in an imperceptible point of the
infinite, man has believed he could embrace in the sweep of his vision
the whole expanse of the universe, whereas he can scarcely pass beyond
the region he inhabits; he has thought he could study the laws of all
nature, and his investigations have scarcely reached the forces in
action about him; he has thought he could determine the grandeur of
the starry heaven, and he exhausted his powers in the study of a grain
of dust. The field of his researches is so small that, once lost to
view, the mind seeks in vain to recover it; the human heaven and earth
are so small that scarcely has the soul in its flight had time to
spread its wings before it has reached the last regions accessible to
the observation of man; for the immeasurable Universe surrounds us on
all sides, unfolding beyond the limits of our heavens its unknown
riches, putting its inconceivable forces into play, and reaching
forward into immensity in the splendor of its life.
"And the mere flesh-worm, the miserable mite, blind and wingless,
whose wretched existence is passed upon the leaf where it was born,
would presume (because forsooth it has taken a few steps upon this
leaf shaken in the wind) to have the right to speak of the immense
tree to which it belongs, of the forest of which this tree forms a
part, and to sagely descant upon the nature of the vegetation
developed thereon, of the beings that inhabit it, of the distant sun
whose rays bring to it movement and life? In very truth, man is
strangely presumptuous to desire to measure infinite greatness by the
foot-rule of his infinite littleness.
"Therefore be this truth well impressed on his mind,--if the arid
labors of past ages have acquired for him an elementary knowledge of
things, if the progress of thought has placed him at the vestibule of
knowledge, still he has not yet spelled out more than the first page
of the Book, and, like a child, liable to be deceived by every word,
far from claiming the right to authoritatively interpret the work, he
ought to content himself with humbly studying it, page by page, line
by line. Happy, however, those who are able to do this!"
GALILEO.
These were my customary thoughts. They are the thoughts of a student of
nineteen or twenty who has acquired the habit of thinking. There can be no
doubt that they were wholly the product of my own intellect, and that the
illustrious Florentine astronomer had nothing whatever to do with them.
Besides, this would have been a collaboration to the last degree
improbable.
It has been the same with all the communications of the astronomical
class: they have not led the science forward a single step. Nor has any
obscure, mysterious, or illusive point in history been cleared up by the
spirits. We only write that which we know, and even chance has given us
nothing. Still, certain unexplained thought-transferences are to be
discussed. But they belong to the psychological or human sphere.
In order to reply at once to objections that certain Spiritualists have
sent to me apropos of this result of my observations, I will take as an
example the case of the satellites of Uranus, since it is the chief one
always brought forward as a _proof_ of scientific discoveries imparted by
spirits. Furthermore, I received several years ago from divers sources a
pressing invitation to examine an article by General Drayson, published in
the journal named _Light_, in 1884, under the title of _The Solution of
Scientific Problems by Spirits_, in which it is asserted that the spirits
made known the true orbital movement of the satellites of Uranus. Pressing
engagements had always hindered me from making this examination; but the
case having been recently promulgated in several Spiritualistic works as
decisive, and I being so persistently importuned to discuss it, I believe
it will prove of some use if I now examine the case.
To my great regret there is an error in their communication, and the
spirits have taught us nothing. Here is one instance, wrongly selected as
a demonstration. The Russian writer Aksakof sets it forth in the following
terms (_Animism and Spiritualism_, p. 341):
The case of which we are about to give an account seems to be of such
a nature as to settle all objections. It was communicated by
Major-General A. W. Drayson and published under the title _The
Solution of Scientific Problems by Spirits_. I append a translation:
"Having received from M. Georges Stock a letter asking me if I could
mention, were it only as an instance, that, during the holding of a
seance, a spirit had solved one of those scientific problems which
have always embarrassed scientists, I have the honor to communicate to
you the following circumstance, which I witnessed with my own eyes:
"In 1781 William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus and its
satellites. He observed that these satellites, contrary to all the
other satellites of the solar system, traversed their orbits from east
to west. Sir John Herschel says in his _Outlines of Astronomy_:
"'The orbits of these satellites present peculiarities altogether
unexpected and exceptional, contrary to the general laws which govern
the other bodies of the solar system. The planes of their orbits are
almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, making an angle of 70 deg. 58',[16]
and they travel with a retrograde movement; that is to say, their
revolution about the centre of their planet takes place from east to
west in place of following the inverse course.'
"When Laplace broached his theory that the sun and all the planets
were formed at the expense of a nebulous matter, these satellites were
an enigma to him.
"Admiral Smyth mentions in his _Celestial Cycle_ that the movement of
these satellites, to the stupefaction of all astronomers, is
retrograde, contrary to that of all the other bodies observed up to
that time.
"All the astronomical works published before 1860 contain the same
reasoning on the subject of the satellites of Uranus. For my part, I
did not find any explanation for this peculiarity: to me it was a
mystery as much as for the writers whom I have cited.
"In 1858 I had as a guest in my house a lady who was a medium, and we
arranged daily seances. One evening she said to me that she saw at my
side a spirit who claimed to have been an astronomer during his life
on earth.
"I asked this person if he was wiser at present than when he lived on
the earth. 'Much wiser,' he said. I had the idea of asking this
so-called spirit a question the object of which was to test his
knowledge. 'Can you tell me,' I asked him, 'why the satellites of
Uranus make their revolution from east to west and not from west to
east?' I received at once the following reply:
"'The satellites of Uranus do not move in their orbits from east to
west: they circle about their planet from west to east, in the same
way that the moon moves around the earth. The error comes from the
fact that the south pole of Uranus was turned toward the earth at the
moment of the discovery of this planet. In the same way that the sun,
seen from our southern hemisphere, seems to run its daily course from
right to left and not from left to right, so the satellites of Uranus
were moving at that time from left to right, though this does not mean
they were moving in their orbit from east to west.'
"In reply to another question which I asked, my interlocutor added:
'As long as the south pole of Uranus was turned toward the earth, in
relation to a terrestrial observer, the satellites seemed to move from
left to right, and it was erroneously concluded from this that they
were going from east to west: this state of things lasted for about
forty-two years. When the north pole of Uranus is turned toward the
earth, his satellites run their course from right to left, but, in
either case, always from the west to the east.'
"I thereupon asked him how it happened that the error had not been
detected forty-two years after William Herschel's discovery of Uranus.
He replied, 'It is because people repeat that which the authorities
who have preceded them have said. Dazzled by the results obtained by
their predecessors, they do not take the trouble to think.'"
Such is the "revelation" of a spirit on the system of Uranus, published by
Drayson and presented by Aksakof and other authors as an undeniable proof
of the intervention of a spirit in the solution of this problem.
The following is the result of an impartial discussion of this very
interesting subject. The reasoning of the "spirit" is false. The system of
Uranus is almost perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. It is the direct
opposite of that of the satellites of Jupiter, which turn almost in the
plane of their orbit. The inclination of the plane of the satellites to
the ecliptic is 98 deg., and the planet ascends almost in the plane of the
ecliptic. This is a fundamental consideration in the picture which we
ought to make to ourselves of the aspect of this system seen from the
earth.
Let us, however, adopt for the method of movement of these satellites
around their planet the projection upon the plane of the ecliptic, as has
always been the custom. The author maintains that, "when the north pole of
Uranus is turned toward the earth, his satellites run their course from
right to left, that is to say from west to east"; he indorses the
communication of the spirit to the effect that the astronomers are in
error and that the satellites of Uranus really revolve around their planet
from west to east, in the same way that the moon revolves around the
earth.
In order to give ourselves an exact account of the position and of the
method of the movements of this system, let us construct a special
geometrical figure, clear and precise. Let us represent upon a plane the
appearance of the orbit of Uranus and of its satellites seen from the
northern hemisphere of the celestial sphere (Fig. A). The part of the
orbit of the satellites above the plane of the orbit of Uranus has been
drawn with heavy lines and hatching, the lower part in dotted lines only.
It is easily seen by the direction of the arrows that the revolution of
the satellites, projected upon the plane of the orbit, is entirely
retrograde. All dogmatic affirmations to the contrary are absolutely
erroneous.
These satellites turn like the hands of a watch,--from left to right,
looking at the upper part of the circles.
The error of General Drayson's medium comes from the fact that she
maintained that the south pole of Uranus was turned toward us at the date
of its discovery. Now, in 1781, the system of Uranus occupied relatively
to us almost the same situation as in 1862, since the time of its
revolution is eighty-four years. It is evident from the figure that, at
that moment, the planet presented to us the pole most elevated above the
ecliptic; that is, its north pole.
General Drayson allowed himself to be led into error when he adopted
without verification these paradoxical premises. As a matter of fact, if
Uranus had presented to us its south pole in 1781, the movement of the
satellites would have been direct. But the observations of the angle of
position of the orbits at the time of their passage of the nodes gives us
abundant evidence that it was really the north pole which was at that
moment turned toward the sun and the earth,--a fact which renders direct
movement impossible, retrograde movement certain.
[Illustration: Fig. 1--The inclination of the system of Uranus. Aspects
seen from the earth at the four extreme positions.]
For greater clearness, I have placed outside of the orbit, in Fig 1, the
aspect of the system of Uranus seen from the earth at the four principal
epochs of the revolution of this distant planet. It is evident that the
apparent method of the revolution was analogous to that of the hands of a
watch in 1781 and 1862, the opposite in 1818 and 1902. At these dates the
apparent orbits of the satellites are almost circles, while during the
passage of the nodes, in 1798, 1840, and 1882, they are reduced to
straight lines.
Figure 1a completes these data by presenting the aspect of the orbits and
the method of revolution for all the positions of the planet, even down to
our own epoch.
I have desired to completely elucidate this question, which is a little
technical. _To my great regret_, the spirits have taught us nothing, and
this example, to which so much importance is attached, is seen to be an
error.[17]
Aksakof cites, in this same chapter (p. 343), the discovery of the two
satellites of Mars, also made by Drayson through a medium, in 1859; that
is to say, 18 years before their discovery, in 1877. This discovery, not
having been published at the time, remains doubtful. Furthermore, after
Kepler had pointed out its probability, this subject of the two satellites
of Mars was several times discussed, notably by Swift and Voltaire (see my
_Popular Astronomy_, p. 501). This is not, then, to be set down as an
undeniable instance of a discovery made by the spirits.
The immediately foregoing instances are facts actually observed at
Spiritualistic seances. I will not treat them under a generalization
foreign to their proper setting. They do not prove that, in certain
circumstances, thinkers, poets, dreamers, investigators, may not be
inspired by influences emanating from others, from loved ones, from
departed friends. That is another question, a topic quite apart from
experiments which we are giving an account of in this book.
[Illustration: Fig. 1a.--Orbits of the satellites of Uranus as seen from
the earth at different dates since the time of their discovery (1781).]
The same author, otherwise generally very judicious, cites several
examples of foreign tongues spoken by mediums. I have not been able to
verify them, and I am asked not to say here anything but what I am
absolutely sure of.
According to my personal observations, these experiments bring us
constantly into the presence of ourselves, our own minds. I could cite a
thousand examples of this.
One day I received an "aerolite" discovered in a forest in the environs of
Etrepagny (Eure). Mme. J. L., who kindly sent it to me, added that she
consulted a spirit about its origin and that he replied to her that it
came from a star named Golda. Now in the first place there is no star of
this name; and, secondly, this is not an aerolite at all, but a piece of
slag from an old forge. (See Section 662 of my Inquiry of 1899. The first
of these sections, relating to telepathy, have been published in my work
_The Unknown_.)
A lady reader of mine wrote me from Montpellier:
Your conclusions would perhaps diminish the prestige of Spiritualism
in the eyes of certain persons. But, as prestige may produce
superstition, it is well to clear up matters. For my part, that which
you have observed agrees with what I have myself observed. This is the
method which I have employed, aided by a friend:
I took a book and, opening it, retained in my mind the number of the
right-hand page. Suppose it was 132. I said to the table, which had
been put in movement by the little manoeuvre ordinarily used, "Does a
spirit desire to communicate?"
Reply--"Yes."
Question--"Can you see the book which I have just been looking at?"
Reply--"Yes."
"How many numbers are there on the page that I have been looking at?"
"Three."
"Indicate the number of hundreds."
"One."
"Indicate the value of the tens."
"Three."
"Indicate the value of the units."
"Two."
The amounts indicated in these statements are of course 132. It was
enchanting.
Then, taking the closed book and, without opening it, sliding the
paper-knife between the pages, I resumed the conversation, and the
result with this last method was always inexact.
I frequently repeated this little experience (curious at any rate);
and, every time, I had exact replies when I knew them, inexact when I
was ignorant of them. (Section 657 of my Inquiry.)
These examples might be multiplied _ad infinitum_. Everything leads us to
think that it is we who are the actors in these experiments. But it is not
so simple as one might suppose, and there is something else in it as well
as ourselves. Certain unexplained things take place.
In his remarkable work, _Intelligence_, Taine explains Spiritualistic
communications by a sort of unconscious duplication of our mind, as I said
above.
The more singular a fact is [he writes[18]] the more instructive it
is. In this respect, Spiritualistic manifestations themselves point
the way to discoveries by showing us the coexistence at the same
moment in the same individual of two thoughts, two wills, two distinct
actions, the one conscious, the other unconscious; the latter he
attributes to invisible beings. The brain is, then, a theatre on the
stage of which several pieces are being played at once, upon several
planes, of which only one is not subliminal. Nothing is more worthy of
study than this plurality of the _me_. I have seen a person who, while
speaking or singing, writes, without regard to the paper, consecutive
sentences and even entire pages, without any knowledge of what she is
writing. In my eyes her sincerity is perfect. Now she declares that at
the end of a page she has no idea of what she has written on the
paper. When she reads it, she is astonished, sometimes alarmed. The
handwriting is different from her ordinary handwriting. The movement
of the fingers and of the pencil is stiff and seems automatic. The
writing always ends with a signature, that of a deceased person, and
bears the mark of intimate thoughts, of a secret and inner reserve of
ideas which the author would not like to divulge. Certainly there is
proof here of a doubling of the _me_, the coexistence of two parallel
and independent trains of thought, of two centres of action, or, if
you wish, of two moral persons existing in the same brain, each one
doing his work, and each one a different work, the one upon the stage
and the other behind the scenes, the second as complete as the first,
since, alone and unwitting of the other, it constructs consecutive
ideas and fashions connected sentences in which the other has no part.
This hypothesis is admissible, in the light of numerous observations of
double consciousness.[19]
It is applicable to a great number of cases, but not in all. It explains
automatic writing. But, as it stands, it is necessary to stretch it
considerably to make it explain the rappings (for who raps?), and it does
not explain at all the levitations of the table, nor the displacement of
objects of which I have spoken in the first chapter, and I do not very
well see how it can even explain phrases rapped out backwards or by the
strange combinations described above. This hypothesis is admitted and
developed in a more unqualified way by Dr. Pierre Janet in his work
_Psychological Automatism_. This author is one of those who have created a
narrow circle of observation and study, and who not only never emerge from
it, but imagine that they have got the whole universe in their circle. In
going over this kind of reasoning, one thinks involuntarily of that old
quarrel of the two round eyes who saw everything round and of the two
square eyes who saw everything square, and of the history of the
Big-endians and of the Little-endians of _Gulliver's Travels_. An
hypothesis is worthy of attention when it explains something. Its value
does not increase by the attempt to generalize it and make it explain
everything: this is to overpass all reasonable limits.
We may admit that the sub-conscious acts of an abnormal personality,
temporarily grafted upon our normal personality, explain the greater part
of mediumistic writing communications. We can see in these also the
evident effects of auto-suggestion. But these psycho-physiological
hypotheses do not explain all observations. There is something else.
We all have a tendency to want to explain everything by the actual state
of our knowledge. In the face of certain circumstances, we say to-day: "It
is suggestion, it is hypnotism, it is this, it is that." Half a century
ago we would not have talked in this way, these theories not having yet
been invented. People will no longer talk in the same way half a century,
a century, hence, for new words will have been invented. But let us not be
put off with words; let us not be in such a hurry.
We must know how to explain in what way our thoughts--conscious,
unconscious, sub-conscious--can strike blows in a table, move it, lift it.
As this question is rather embarrassing, Dr. Pierre Janet treats it as
"secondary personality," and is obliged to have recourse to the movements
of the toes, to the snapping of the muscles of the fibular tendon, to
ventriloquism and the deceptions of unconscious accomplices.[20] This is
not a sufficient explanation.
As a matter of fact, we do not understand how our thought, or that of
another, can cause raps in a table, by which sentences are formed. But we
are obliged to admit it. Let us call it, if you please, "telekinetsis";
but does that get us any farther along?
There has been talk for some years about unconscious facts, about
sub-consciousness, subliminal consciousness, etc. I fear that in these
things also we are putting ourselves off with words which do not explain
things very much.
I intend some day, if the time is given me, to write a special book on
Spiritualism, studied from the theoretic and doctrinal point of view,
which will form a second volume of my work _The Unknown and Psychic
Problems_, and which has been in preparation since the publication of that
work in 1899. Mediumistic communications, dictations received (notably by
Victor Hugo, Mme. de Girardin, Eugene Nus, and the Phalansterians), will
be the subject of special chapters in this volume,--as well as the
problem, otherwise important, of the plurality of existences.
It is not my intention to enlarge in this place upon the aspects of the
general question. That which I restrict myself to establishing in this
book is that there are in us, about us, unknown forces capable of putting
matter in motion, just as our will does. I ought, therefore, to limit
myself to material phenomena. The range of that class of investigations is
already immense, and the "communications" of which I have just spoken are
really outside the limits of this range. But, as this subject and that of
psychological experiments are continually overlapping, it was necessary to
give a summary of it in this place. Let us return for the present to the
material phenomena produced by mediums and to that which I have myself
ascertained in my experiences with Eusapia Paladino, who unites them
nearly all in her own personality and experiences.