EXPLANATORY HYPOTHESES--THEORIES AND DOCTRINES--CONCLUSIONS OF THE AUTHOR
It is quite in the fashion, as a general thing, to profess absolute
scepticism regarding the phenomena which form the subject of the present
work. In the opinion of three-quarters of the citizens of our planet all
unexplained noises in haunted houses; all displacements without contact of
bodies more or less heavy; all movements of tables, pianos, or other
objects produced in the experiments styled Spiritualistic; all
communications dictated by raps or by unconscious writing; all
apparitions, partial or total, of phantom forms--are illusions,
hallucinations, or hoaxes. No explanation is needed. The only rational
opinion is that all "mediums," professional or not, are imposters, and the
participators in a seance are imbeciles.
Sometimes one of these eminent judges consents, not to cease tipping the
wink and smiling in his royal competency, but to condescend to be present
at a seance. If, as only too frequently happens, no response to the
command of the will is obtained, the illustrious observer retires, firmly
convinced that, by his extraordinary penetration, he has discovered the
cheat and blocked everything by his clairvoyant intuition. He at once
writes to the journals, shows up the fraud, and sheds humanitarian
crocodile tears over the sad spectacle of men, apparently intelligent,
allowing themselves to be taken in by impostures, detected by him at the
first blush.
This first and easy explanation, that everything in the manifestations is
fraud, has been so often exposed, discussed, and refuted during the course
of this work that my readers probably consider it (at least I hope they
do) as entirely, absolutely, and definitely decided and thrown out of the
ring.
However, I advise you not to speak too freely of these things at table, or
in a drawing room if you do not like to have people making fun of you,
more or less discreetly. If you air your views in public, you will produce
the same effect as those eccentric fellows of the time of Ptolemy, who
dared to speak of the movement of the earth and excited such
inextinguishable laughter in respectable society that the echoes ring with
it still in Athens, Alexandria, and Rome. It is only a repetition of what
took place when Galileo spoke of the spots on the sun, Galvani of
electricity, Jenner of vaccine, Jouffroy and Fulton of the steamship,
Chappe of the telegraph, Lebon of gas-lighting, Stephenson of railways,
Daguerre of photography, Boucher de Perthes of the fossil man, Mayer of
thermodynamics, Wheatstone of the transatlantic cable, etc. If we could
gather up all the sarcasms launched at the heads of these "poor
crazy-wits," we should get a fine basket of venerable blunders, moldy as a
remainder biscuit after a voyage.
So let us not speak too much of our mysteries--unless it amuses us, in our
turn, to ask some questions of the prettiest dolls in the company. One of
them inquired in my presence, yesterday evening, what the man named
Lavoisier did, and whether he was dead. Another thought that Auguste Comte
was a writer of songs and asked if any one knew one of them which would
suit a mezzo-soprano voice. Another was astonished that Louis XIV had not
built one of the two railway stations of Versailles nearer the palace.
Moreover, on my balcony, a member of the Institute, who saw Jupiter
shining in the southern sky at the meridian point, over one of the cupolas
of the Observatory, obstinately maintained in my presence that this
luminary was the polar star. I did not dispute the point with him _too_
long!
There are not a few people who believe at once in the value of universal
suffrage and in that of titles of nobility. Of course, we will not force
these Janus-faced wise men to vote upon the admissibility of psychic
phenomena into the sphere of science.
But we will henceforth consider this admissibility as something granted,
and, tossing back to the laughing sceptics, to the habitues of clubs and
cliques, the general opinion of the world, of which I have just spoken,
begin here our logical analysis.
We have had under consideration during the course of this work several
theories by scientific investigators which are worthy of attention. Let us
first of all sum these up.
In the opinion of Gasparin, these unexplained movements are produced
by a _fluid_, emanating from us under the action of our will.
Professor Thury thinks that this fluid, which he calls _psychode_, is
a substance which forms a link between the soul and the body; but
there may also exist certain wills external to ourselves, and of
unknown nature, working side by side with us.
The chemist Crookes attributes the phenomena to psychic force, this
being the agent by which the phenomena are produced; but he adds that
this force may well be, in certain cases, seized upon and directed by
some other intelligence. "The difference between the partisans of
psychic force and those of Spiritualism," he writes, "consists in
this: we maintain that it is not yet _proved_ that there exists a
directing agent other than the intelligence of the medium and that
presence and actions of the spirits of the dead are felt in the
phenomena, while, on the contrary, the Spiritualists accept as an
article of faith, without demanding more proofs thereof, that these
spirits are the sole agents in the production of the observed facts."
Albert de Rochas defines these phenomena as "_an externalization of
motivity_," and considers them to be produced by the fluidic double,
"the astral body" of the medium, a nerve-fluid able to act and
perceive at a distance.
Lombroso declares that the explanation must be sought simply in the
nervous system of the medium, and that we have in the phenomena
_transformation of forces_.
Dr. Ochorowicz affirms that he has not found proofs in favor of the
Spiritualistic hypothesis, any more than he has in favor of the
intervention of external intelligences, and that the cause of the
phenomena is a _fluidic double_ detaching itself from the organism of
the medium.
The astronomer Porro is inclined to admit the possible action of
unknown spirits, of living forms different from our own, not
necessarily the souls of the dead, but psychical entities to be
studied. In a recent letter he wrote me that the theosophic doctrine
appeared to him to approach the nearest to a solution.[82]
Prof. Charles Richet thinks that the Spiritualistic hypothesis is far
from being demonstrated, that the observed facts relate to an entirely
different order of causes, as yet very difficult to disentangle and
that in the present state of our knowledge no final conclusion can be
agreed on.
The naturalist Wallace, Professor Morgan, and the electrician Varley
declare, on the other hand, that sufficient proof has been given them
to warrant them in accepting without reserve the Spiritualistic
doctrine of disembodied souls.
Prof. James H. Hyslop, of the University of Columbia, who has made a
special study of these phenomena, in the Proceedings of the London
Society for Psychical Research, and in his works _Science and a Future
Life_ and _Enigmas of Psychical Research_, thinks that there are not
yet enough severely critical verifications to warrant any theory.
Dr. Grasset, a disciple of Pierre Janet, does not admit displacement
of objects, or levitation, or the greater part of the facts described
in this book as proved, and thinks what is called Spiritualism is a
question of medical biology, of "the physiopathology of the nervous
centres," in which a celebrated cerebral polygon with a musical
conductor named O, plays an automatic role of a very curious
description.
Dr. Maxwell concludes from his observations that the greater part of
the phenomena, the reality of which cannot be doubted, are produced by
a force existing in us, that this force is intelligent, and that the
intelligence manifested comes from the experimenters. This would be a
kind of collective consciousness.
M. Marcel Mangin does not adopt this "collective consciousness," and
declares that it is certain that the being, in the seances, who
asserts that he is a manifestation is "the sub-consciousness of the
medium."
The foregoing are some of the principal opinions. It would take a whole
book to discuss in writing the proposed explanations, but that is not my
object. My aim was to focus the question on what concerns THE
ADMISSIBILITY OF THE PHENOMENA INTO THE SPHERE OF POSITIVE SCIENCE.
However, now that this is done, we cannot but ask ourselves, what
conclusions may be drawn from all these observations.
If we wish to obtain, after this mass of verifications, a satisfactory
rational explanation, it seems to me we must proceed gradually, classify
the facts, analyze them, and only admit them in proportion to their
absolute and demonstrated certainty. We live in a very complex universe,
and the most singular confusion has arisen among phenomena which are very
distinct one from another.
As I said in 1869, at the tomb of Allan Kardec, "The causes in action are
of several kinds, and are more numerous than one would suppose."
Can we explain the observed phenomena, or at least any portion of it? It
is our duty to try. For this purpose I shall classify them in the order of
increasing difficulties. It is always advisable to begin with the
beginning.
May I hope that the reader will have got a clear idea in his mind of the
experiments and observations set forth in the previous pages of this work?
It would be a little insipid to refer every time to the pages where the
phenomena have been described.
1. ROTATION OF THE TABLE, _with contact of the hands of a certain
number of operators_.
This rotation can be explained by an unconscious impulse given to the
table. All that is necessary is that each one push a little in the
same way, and the movement will take place.
2. MOVEMENT OF THE TABLE, _the hands of the experimenters resting upon
it_.
The operators push and the table is led along without their knowing
it, each one acting in a greater or less degree. They think they are
following it, but they are really leading it along. We have in this
only the result of muscular efforts, generally of a rather slight
nature.
3. LIFTING OF THE TABLE _on the side opposite to that upon which the
hands of the principal actor are placed_.
Nothing is more simple. The pressure of the hands upon a centre-table
with three legs suffices to produce the lifting of the leg the
farthest removed, and thus to strike all the letters of the alphabet.
The movement is less easy in the case of a table with four legs; but
it can also be obtained.
These three movements are the only ones, it seems to me, which can be
explained without the least mystery. Still, the third is only
explicable in case the table is not too heavy.
4. IMPARTING LIFE TO THE TABLE.
Several experimenters being seated around the table, and forming the
chain with the desire of seeing it rise, the waves of a kind of
vibrations (light at first) are perceived to be passing through the
wood. Then balancings are noticed, some of which may be due to
muscular impulses. But already something more is now mingled in the
process. The table seems to be set in motion of itself. Sometimes it
rises, no longer as if moved by a lever, or by pressure on one side,
but _under the hands_, as if it were sticking to them. This levitation
is contrary to the law of gravitation. Hence we have here a discharge
of force. This force emanates from our organism. There is no
sufficient reason to seek for anything else. Nevertheless, what we
have detected is a thing of prime importance.
5. ROTATION WITHOUT CONTACT.
The table being in rapid rotation, we can remove our hands from it,
and see it continue the movement. The velocity or momentum acquired
may explain the momentary continuation of this movement and the
explanation given in the case of No. 1 may suffice. But there is more
in it than this. Rotation is obtained by holding the hands at a
distance of some inches above the table, without any contact. A light
layer of flour dusted over the table is found to be untouched by a
single finger. Hence the force emitted by the operators must penetrate
the table.
The experiments prove that we have in us a force capable of acting at
a distance upon matter, a natural force, generally latent, but
developed in different degrees in different mediums. The action of the
force is manifested under conditions as yet imperfectly determined.
(See pp. 81, 248 _et seq._) We can act upon brute matter, upon living
matter, upon the brain and upon the mind. This action of the will is
shown in telepathy. It is shown more simply still by means of a
well-known experiment: at the theatre, in church, when hearing music,
a man accustomed to the exercise of will-power, and sitting several
rows of seats behind a woman, say, compels her to turn around in less
than a minute. A force emanates from us, from our spirit, acting
undoubtedly by means of etherwaves, the point of departure of which is
a cerebral movement.
And there is nothing very mysterious in this. I bring my hand near a
thermometer, and ascertain that something invisible is escaping from
my hand, and, at a certain remove, making the column of mercury rise.
This something else is heat; that is to say, aerial waves in movement.
Then why might not other radiations emanate from our hands and from
our whole being?
But, nevertheless, there is a very important scientific fact to be
established.
This physical force is greater than that of the muscles, as I am going
to prove.
6. LIFTING OF WEIGHTS.
A table is loaded with sacks of sand and with stones weighing
altogether from 165 to 176 pounds. The table lifts each of its three
legs several times in succession. But it succumbs under the load and
is broken. The operators ascertain that their muscular force would not
have sufficed to produce the observed movements. The will acts by a
dynamic prolongation.
7. LIFTINGS WITHOUT CONTACT.
The hands forming the chain some inches above the side of the table
which is to be lifted, and all wills being concentrated on the one
idea, the lifting of each of the legs in succession takes place. The
liftings are more readily obtained than rotations without contact. An
energetic will seems to be indispensable. The unknown force passes
from the experimenters to the table without any contact. If the table
is dusted over with flour, as I said, not the slightest finger-touch
is seen to be imprinted on it.
The will of the sitters is in play. The table is ordered to make such
and such a movement and it obeys. This will seems to be prolonged
beyond the bodies of the operating experimenters in the shape of a
force that is quite intense.
This power is developed by action. The balancings prepare for the
rising and the latter for complete levitation.
8. REDUCING THE WEIGHT OF THE TABLE OR OTHER OBJECTS.
A quadrangular table is suspended by one of its sides to a dynamometer
attached to a cord which is held above by some kind of a hook. The
needle of the dynamometer, which, in a state of rest, indicates 35
kilograms, gradually descends to 3, 2, 1, 0 kilograms.
A mahogany board is placed horizontally, and hung by one end to a
spring balance. This balance (or scales), has a point which touches a
pane of glass blackened by smoke. When this pane of glass is put in
movement, the needle traces a horizontal line. During the experiments,
this line is no longer straight, but marks reductions and increments
of weight, produced without any contact of hands. In the experiments
of Crookes we saw that the weight of a board increased almost 1-1/4
pounds.
The medium places his hands _upon_ the back of a chair and lifts the
chair.
9. AUGMENTATION OF THE WEIGHT OF A TABLE OR OTHER OBJECTS.--PRESSURES
EXERTED.
The dynamometric experiments that we have just recalled themselves go
to show this augmentation.
I have more than once seen, in other circumstances, a table become so
heavy that it was absolutely impossible for two men to lift it from
the floor. When they succeeded in doing so, in a measure, by means of
quick jerks, it still seemed to stick to the floor as if held by glue
or india rubber, which immediately pulled it back to the floor after
it had been slightly displaced.
In all these experiments, there is proof of the action of an unknown
natural force emanating from the chief experimenter or from the
collective powers of the group, an organic force under the influence
of the will. It is not necessary to suppose the presence of superhuman
spirits.
10. THE COMPLETE LIFTING UP, OR LEVITATION OF THE TABLE.
As there may be confusion in applying the word "lifting" to a table
which only rises on one side at a certain angle, while still touching
the floor, it is expedient to apply the word "levitation" to the case
in which it is completely separated from the floor.
Generally, in levitation, it rises from six to eight inches from the
floor, for some seconds only, and then falls back. It moves up in a
balancing, undulating, hesitating way, with effort, and then falls
straight down. While resting our hands upon it, we have the sensation
of a fluid resistance, as of it were in water,--the kind of fluid
sensation we experience when we bring a piece of iron into the field
of force of a magnet.
A table, a chair or other movable article sometimes rises, not merely
a foot or so, but almost to the height of one's head, and even as high
as the ceiling.
The force brought into play is considerable.
11. LEVITATION OF HUMAN BODIES.
This case is of the same order as the preceding. The medium may be
raised with his chair and placed upon the table, sometimes in unstable
equilibrium. He may also be lifted alone (without the chair).[83]
In this case the Unknown Force does not seem to be simply mechanical:
intention is mingled with the act, and ideas of precaution, which,
however may proceed from the mentality of the medium himself, aided
perhaps by that of the sitters. This fact seems to us to contravene
known scientific laws. It is the same case as that of the cat which
knows how to turn of itself, without any outside support or leverage,
when it falls from a roof, and always falls on its feet, a fact
contrary to the principles of mechanics taught in every university in
the world.
12. LIFTING OF VERY HEAVY PIECES OF FURNITURE.
A piano weighing more than 750 pounds rises up off of its two front
legs, and it is ascertained that its weight varies. The force with
which it is animated arises from the proximity of a child eleven years
old, but it is not the conscious will of this child which acts.--A
heavy oak dining-table may rise so high that its under side can be
inspected during the levitation.
13. DISPLACEMENT OF OBJECTS WITHOUT CONTACT.
A heavy easy-chair moves about of its own accord in the room. Heavy
curtains reaching from the ceiling to the floor are forcibly swelled
out as if by a gust of wind, and envelop as with a hood the heads of
persons seated at a table, at a distance of three feet and more. A
centre table persists in _the endeavor_ to climb upon the
experiment-table--and gets there. While a sceptical spectator is
bantering the "spirits," the table about which the experiments are
taking place makes a move towards the incredulous person, drawing the
sitters along with it, and pins him to the wall until he begs for
mercy.
As in the preceding cases, these movements may represent the
expression of the will of the medium, and may not necessarily indicate
the presence of a mind external to his own. Nevertheless--?
14. RAPS AND TYPTOLOGY.
In tables, in pianos, and other pieces of furniture, in the walls, in
the air, raps are heard, and their vibrations perceived by the touch.
They somewhat resemble the sounds obtainable by tapping against a
piece of wood with the joint of the bent finger. The question arises,
Whence come these noises? The question is asked aloud. They are
repeated. The request is made that a certain number of strokes be
rapped. The raps are heard. Well-known airs are accompanied by raps
beaten in perfect time with them and identifiable as the counterpart
of the airs. When bits of music are played, the accompaniment is
rapped out. Things take place as if an invisible being were listening
and acting. But how could a being without acoustic nerve and without a
tympanum hear? The sonorous waves must strike something in order to be
interpreted. Is this a mental transmission?
These raps are made. Who makes them? And how? The mysterious force
emits radiations of wave-lengths inaccessible to our retina, but
powerful and rapid, without doubt more rapid than those of light, and
situated beyond the ultraviolet. Besides, light impedes their action.
In proportion as we advance in the examination of the phenomena, the
psychic, intellectual, mental element is more and more mingled with
the physical and mechanical element. In the case we are considering we
are forced to admit the presence, the action, of a thought. Is this
thought simply that of the medium, of the chief experimenter, or the
resultant of the thoughts of all the sitters united?
Since these raps or those made by the legs of the table, on being
interrogated, dictate words and phrases and express ideas, there is
something more in the matter than a simple mechanical action. The
unknown force, the existence of which we have been obliged to admit in
the preceding observations, is in this case at the service of an
intelligence. The mystery grows complicated.
It is owing to this intellectual element that I proposed (before 1865;
see p. xix) to give the name "_psychic_" to this force, a name
proposed anew by Crookes in 1871. We saw also that, as early as the
year 1855, Thury had proposed the name "_psychode_" and "_ecteneic_"
force. From this on, it would be impossible for us in our examination
not to take into consideration this psychic force.
Up to this point, Gasparin's fluid might suffice, just as unconscious
muscular action sufficed for the first three classes of facts. But
starting from this fourteenth class, the psychic order plainly
manifests itself (and even in the preceding class we begin already to
divine its presence).
15. MALLET-BLOWS.
I have heard--as have all other experimenters--not only sharp light
raps upon a table, like those of which I have just been speaking, but
mallet-blows, or blows of the fist upon a door, capable of knocking
down a man if he had received them. Generally, these tremendous blows
are a protestation against a denial on the part of one of the sitters.
There is in them an intention, a will, an intelligence. They may also
be due to the medium, who is indignant, or who is amusing himself or
herself. The action is not muscular; for the hands and feet of the
medium are held, and the rapping may occur some distance away from him
or her.
16. TOUCHINGS.
Fraud can explain those which take place within the reach of the
medium's hands, for they only occur in the darkness. But they have
been felt at a certain distance beyond this reach as if the hands of
the medium were prolonged.
17. ACTION OF INVISIBLE HANDS.
An accordion in an open-work case, or cage, which keeps any other hand
from touching it, is held in one hand by the end opposite the keys.
Presently the instrument begins to lengthen and shorten of itself and
plays various melodies. An invisible hand with fingers (or something
like them), must therefore be acting. (Experiment of Crookes with
Home.) As the reader has seen I repeated this experiment with Eusapia.
Another time, a music-box, the handle of which was turned by an
invisible hand, played in perfect time with the music movements that
Eusapia was making upon my cheek.
An invisible hand forcibly snatched from my hand a block of paper
which I was holding out with extended arm at the height of my head.
Invisible hands removed from M. Schiaparelli's head his spectacles
(furnished with a spring), which were firmly fastened behind his ears,
and that so nimbly and with such light touch that he did not perceive
it until afterwards.
18. APPARITIONS OF HANDS.
The hands are not always invisible. Sometimes semi-luminous ones are
seen to appear in the dim light,--hands of men, hands of women, hands
of children. Sometimes they have clear-cut outlines. They are
generally firm and moist to the touch, sometimes icy cold. At times
they melt away in the hand. For my part I was never able to grasp one.
It was always the mysterious hand that took mine,--often feeling
through a curtain, or sometimes by nude contact, or pinching my ear,
or running its fingers through my hair with great rapidity.
19. APPARITIONS OF HEADS.
For my part, I have only seen two: the bearded silhouette at
Monfort-l'Amaury, and the head of a young girl with high-arched
forehead, in my drawing-room. In the case of the first I had believed
that there was a mask held at the end of a rod. But at my own home,
there was no possibility of an accomplice, and at present I am not
less sure of the first instance than of the other. Moreover, the
testimony of other observers is so precise and so often given that it
is imperative that it be classed with my own.
20. PHANTOMS.
I have never seen any of these nor photographed them, but it seems to
me impossible to be sceptical about that of Katie King, observed for
three consecutive years by Crookes and others who experimented with
the medium Florence Cook. One can scarcely doubt, also, the reality of
the phantoms seen by the committee of the Dialectical Society of
London. We have seen that trickery plays a frequent role in this sort
of apparitions; but, in the experiments just mentioned, the
observations were really conducted with such perspicacity that they
are safe from all objection, and have on them the stamp of a purely
scientific character.
These phantoms, like the heads and the hands mentioned, seem to be
condensations of fluids produced by the powers of the medium, and do
not prove the existence of independent spirits.
When the hand is stretched out, the rubbing of a beard can be felt
upon it. This happened to me, as well as to others. Did the beard
really exist, or was it only a case of tactual and visual sensations?
The case here immediately following pleads in favor of its reality.
21. IMPRESSIONS OF HEADS AND OF HANDS.
The heads and the hands formed are sufficiently dense to leave a mould
of their features and shape imprinted in the putty or the clay.
Perhaps the most curious thing is that it is not necessary that these
weird formations, these forces, be visible in order to produce
impressions. We have seen a vigorous gesture imprint itself at a
distance in clay.
22. PASSING OF MATTER THROUGH MATTER.--TRANSFERS, OR THE BRINGING IN
OF OBJECTS.
A book has been seen passing through a curtain. A bell has passed from
a library-room, locked with a key, into a drawing-room. A flower has
been seen passing perpendicularly downward through a dining-room
table. Some have thought they had ocular proof of the mysterious
appearance of plants, of flowers, of fruits, and other objects, which
(as the claim went) had passed through walls, ceilings, doors.
The latter phenomenon took place several times in my presence. But I
was never able to get certain proof of it under unimpeachable
conditions; and I have ferreted out many a trick.
The experiments of Zoellner (a wooden ring entering into another wooden
ring, a string tied at the two ends making a knot, etc.) would, of
course, be a thing of exceptional interest if the medium Slade had not
the bad reputation of being just a skilful prestidigitator,--a
reputation probably only too well merited. I should think that there
is good reason to suppose that the experiments of Crookes are
authentic.
Has space only three dimensions? We will set this question aside.
23. MANIFESTATIONS DIRECTED BY AN INTELLIGENCE.
These have been already glimpsed in a certain number of the preceding
cases. The forces in action here are of the psychical as well as the
physical class. The question is to know whether the intellect of the
medium and of the sitters is sufficient to explain everything.
In all the cases I have previously mentioned, this intellect seem to
suffice, but only by attributing to it occult faculties of prodigious
potency.
In the present state of our knowledge, it is impossible for us to
understand the way in which mind, conscious or unconscious, can lift a
table, make raps in wood, form a hand or a head, stamp an imprint. The
_modus operandi_ is absolutely unintelligible to us. Future science
will perhaps discover it. But all these actions never overpass the
limits of man's capacities, and let us admit, the capacity required is
not an extraordinary one.
The hypothesis of spirits of another order than that of living human
beings does not seem to be necessary.
The hypothesis of the doubling of the psychic personality of the
medium is the most simple. Is it sufficient to entirely satisfy us?
Hard blows on the table like those of a fist, contrasting with gentle
taps, may have this origin, in spite of appearance.
It is the same with apparitions of the hands, of heads, of spectral
forms. We cannot declare this origin of the phenomena to be
impossible; and it is more simple than to assume that they are due to
wandering spirits.
The conveying of objects over the heads of the experimenters in
complete darkness, without touching either chandelier or heads, is
scarcely comprehensible. But do we understand any better how a spirit
can have hands? And if it did, might it not amuse itself thus?
Spectacles are taken from a face without the act being perceived; a
handkerchief is removed from the neck, then snatched from between the
teeth that are holding it; a fan is transferred from one pocket to
another. Do latent faculties of the human organism suffice to explain
these intentional actions? It is right for us neither to affirm nor to
deny.
I have thus passed in review the whole series of phenomena to be
explained, at least all those within the limits of the plan of this work.
A first, and obviously safe, conclusion is that man has in himself a
fluidic and psychic force whose nature is still unknown, but which is
capable of acting at a distance upon matter and of moving the same.
This force is the expression of our will, of our desires; I mean as it
appears in the first ten cases of the preceding classifications. For the
other cases we must add the unconscious, the unforeseen, wills different
from our conscious wills.
The force is at once physical and psychical. If the medium puts forth a
force of twelve or fourteen pounds to lift a table, his weight undergoes a
corresponding increase. The hand which we see forming near him is able to
grasp an object. The hand really exists, and is then reabsorbed. Might we
not compare the force which brings it into existence with that
building-force of nature, which reproduces a claw for the lobster and a
tail for the lizard? The intervention of spirits is not all
indispensable.[84]
In mediumistic experiments things happen as if an invisible being were
present, able to transport the different objects through the air, usually
without striking against the heads of the persons who are sitting in
various parts of the room in almost complete darkness; capable also of
acting upon a curtain like a strong wind, pushing it far out, able to
fling this curtain over your head, giving you a Capuchin hood or coiffure,
and pressing strongly against your body, as if with two nervous arms, and
touching you with a warm and living hand. I have perceived these hands in
the most unmistakble way. The invisible being can condense itself
sufficiently to become visible, and I have seen it passing in the air. To
suppose that I, as well as other experimenters, was the dupe of an
hallucination is an hypothesis which cannot be maintained for a single
moment and would simply show that those who entertained the idea were far
more likely to have an hallucination than we were, or else that they
entertained the most inexcusable prepossession and prejudice. We were in
the best possible condition for observing and analysizing any phenomena
whatever and no sceptic will make us believe anything different on this
point.
There is certainly an invisible prolongation of the organism of the
medium. This prolongation may be compared to the radiation which leaps
from the loadstone to reach a bit of iron and put it into movement.
We can also compare it with the effluvium which emanates from electrified
bodies.[85]
I also compared it some pages back to calorific waves.
When a medium makes a gesture of striking the table with his closed fist,
but stops short at a distance of from eight to twelve inches, and when, at
every gesture, a sonorous stroke of the fist echoes in the table, we see
in that the proof of a dynamic prolongation of the arm of the medium.
When she pretends to imitate on my cheek the rotation of the crank of a
music-box, and when this box keeps time with the imitated movement, stops
when the fingers stop, plays the tune faster when the finger accelerates
its circular tracings, goes slower when it goes slower, etc., we have here
again proof of dynamic action at a distance.
When an accordion plays of its own will, when a bell begins to ring of
itself, when a lever indicates such and such a pressure, there is a real
force in action.
We must therefore admit, first of all, this prolongation of the muscular
and nervous force of the subject. I am keenly sensible of the fact that
this is a bold proposition, almost incredible, most strange and
extraordinary; but after all the facts are there, and whether the matter
irks us or not is a small matter.
This prolongation is real, and only extends to a certain distance from the
medium, a distance which can be measured, and which varies according to
circumstances. But is it sufficient to explain all the observed phenomena?
We are forced to admit that this prolongation, usually invisible, and
impalpable, may become visible and palpable; take, especially, the form of
an articulated hand, with flesh and muscles; and reveal the exact form of
a head or a body. The fact is incomprehensible; but after so many
different observations, it seems to me impossible to see in this curious
phenomenon only trickery or hallucination. Logic lays its laws upon us and
commands our respect.
A fluidic and condensable double has therefore the power of gliding
momentarily out from the body of the medium (for his presence is
indispensable).
How can this double, this fluidic body have the consistency of flesh and
of muscles? We do not understand it. But it would neither be wise nor
intelligent to admit only that which we can comprehend. It must be
remembered that, for the greater part of the time, we imagine we
comprehend things because we can give an explanation of them; that is all.
Now this explanation rarely has any intrinsic value. It is only a
framework of words tacked together. Thus you fancy you understand why an
apple falls from the top of the tree, because you say that the earth
attracts it. This is pure simple-mindedness. For in what does the
attraction of the earth consist? You know nothing about it; but you are
satisfied, because the fact is a common one.
When the curtain is inflated as if pushed out by a hand, and when you feel
you are pinched in the shoulder by a hand at the moment the curtain
touches you, you have the impression that you are the dupe of an
accomplice hidden behind the curtain. There is some one there who is
playing a practical joke on you. You draw aside the curtain. Nothing!
Since it is impossible for you to admit a trick of any kind, because you,
and you alone, hung that curtain between the two walls; and since you know
that there is no person behind it because you are close by it and have not
lost it out of your sight; and since the medium is seated near you with
his, or her, hands and legs held, you are forced to admit that a
temporarily materialized being has touched you.
It is certain that these facts may be denied and that they are denied.
Those who have not personally verified them are excusable. It is not a
question of ordinary events which take place every day and which everybody
can observe. It is evident, as a general proposition, that, if we admit
only what we have ourselves seen, we shall not get very far. We admit the
existence of the Philippine Islands without having been there, of
Charlemagne and of Julius Caesar without having seen them, of total
eclipses of the sun, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, etc., as facts of
which we have not ourselves been eye-witnesses. The distance of a star,
the weight of a planet, the composition of one of the heavenly bodies, the
most marvelous discoveries of astronomy, do not excite scepticism, except
in the minds of wholly uncultivated persons, because people in general
appreciate the value of astronomic methods. But undoubtedly, in these
psychical matters, the phenomena are so extraordinary that one is
excusable for not believing them.
Nevertheless, if anyone will give himself the trouble to reason he will
positively be compelled to recognize that, in following on this trail, he
is inevitably brought to a stand in face of the following dilemma: either
the experimenters have been the dupes of the mediums, who have uniformly
cheated, or else these stupefying facts actually exist. Now since the
first hypothesis is eliminated, we are forced to admit the reality of the
occurrences.
A fluidic body is formed at the expense of the medium, emerges from his
organism, moves, acts. What is the intelligent force that directs this
fluidic body and makes it act in such or such a way? Either it is the mind
of the medium, or it is another mind that makes use of this same fluid.
There is no escape from this conclusion. I may remark that the
meteorological conditions, fine weather, agreeable temperature,
cheerfulness, high spirits, favor the phenomena; that the medium is never
wholly out of touch with the manifestations, and frequently knows what is
going to take place; that the cause escapes the mental grasp and is
fugitive and capricious; and that the apparitions fade away like a dream
as silently as they are formed.
Note also that, in important manifestations, the medium suffers,
complains, groans, loses an enormous amount of force, exhibits an
astonishing nervous energy, experiences hyperaesthesia, and at the apogee
of the manifestation, seems for an instant to be absolutely prostrated.
And, in truth, why should not his mind as well as his fluidic force be
haled out of his body and be exhausted in external work? The psychical
force of a living human being is able, then, to create "material"
phenomena--organs, spectral figures.
But what is matter?
My readers know that matter does not exist as it is perceived by our
senses. These only give us incomplete impressions of an _Unknown Reality_.
Analysis shows us that matter is only a form of energy.
In the work called _A Propos d'Eusapia Paladino_, which sums up his
experiments with this medium, M. Guillaume de Fontenay ingeniously tries
to explain the phenomena by the dynamic theory of matter. It is probable
that this explanation is one of those that make the nearest approach to
the truth.
According to this theory, the quality which seems to us characteristic of
matter--solidity, stability--is no more substantial than the light which
strikes our eyes, or the sound which enters our ears. We see; that is to
say, we receive upon the retina rays which affect it. But around and on
every side of the retina undulate countless other rays that leave no
impression upon it. It is the same with the other senses.
Matter, like light, like heat, like electricity, seems to be the result of
a species of movement. Movement of what? Of the primitive monistic
substance, quickened by manifold vibrations.
Most assuredly, matter is not that inert thing that we commonly suppose.
A comparison will aid in comprehending this. Take a carriage-wheel. Place
it horizontally on a pivot. While the wheel is motionless, let a rubber
ball fall between its spokes. This ball will almost always pass through
between the spokes. Now give a slight movement to the wheel. The ball will
be pretty often hit by the revolving spokes, and will rebound. If we
increase the rotation, the ball will now no longer pass through the wheel,
which will have become for it a wholly impenetrable disc.
We can try a similar experiment by arranging the wheel vertically and
shooting arrows through it. A bicycle-wheel will serve the purpose very
well, owing to the slenderness of its spokes. When not in movement, the
arrows will pass through it nine times out of ten. In movement, it will
produce in the arrows deviations more or less marked. With increase in the
speed, it would be made impenetrable, and all the arrows would be broken
as if against the steel plating of an armored ship.
These comparisons allow us to understand how matter is really only a mode
of motion, only an expression of force, a manifestation of energy. It will
disappear (it must be borne in mind) on analysis, which ends by taking
refuge in the intangible, invisible, imponderable, and almost immaterial
atom. The atom itself which was regarded as the basis of matter fifty
years ago, has now disappeared, or rather has been metamorphosed and
reappears as a hypothetical, impalpable vortex.
I will allow myself to repeat here what I have said a hundred times
elsewhere: _The universe is a dynamism_.
The difficulty we have in explaining to ourselves apparitions,
materializations, when we try to apply to them the ordinary conception of
matter, is considerably lessened the moment we conceive that matter is
only a mode of motion.
Life itself, from the most rudimentary cell up to the most complicated
organism, is a special kind of movement, a movement determined and
organized by a directing force. According to this theory, momentary
apparitions would be less difficult to accept and to comprehend. The vital
force of the medium might externalize itself and produce in a point of
space a vibratory system which should be the counterpart of itself, in a
more or less advanced degree of visibility and solidity. These phenomena
can with difficulty be reconciled with the old hypothesis of the
independent and intrinsic existence of matter: They better fit that of
matter as a mode of motion--in a word, simple movement, giving the
sensation of matter.
There is, of course, only one substance, the primitive substance, which
antedates the original nebula--the womb from which all bodies in the
universe have issued. The substances which the chemists take to be simple
bodies--oxygen, hydrogen, azote, iron, gold, silver, etc.--are mineral
elements which have been gradually formed and differentiated, just as,
later, the vegetable and animal species were differentiated. And not only
is the substance of the world one, but it also has the same origin as
energy, and these two forms are mutually interchangeable. Nothing is lost,
nothing is created, everything is transformed.[86]
The unique substance is immaterial and unknowable in its essence. We see
and touch only its condensations, its aggregations, its arrangements; that
is to say, forms produced by movement. Matter, force, life, thought, are
all one.
In reality, there is only one principle in the universe, and it is at once
intelligence, force, and matter, embracing all that is and all that
possibly can be. That which we call matter is only a form of motion. At
the basis of all is force, dynamism, and universal mind, or spirit.
Visible matter, which stands to us at the present moment for the universe,
and which certain classic doctrines consider as the origin of all
things--movement, life, thought--is only a word void of meaning. The
universe is a great organism controlled by a dynamism of the psychical
order. Mind gleams through its every atom.
The environment or atmosphere is psychic. There is mind in every thing,
not only in human and animal life, but in plants, in minerals, in space.
It is not the body which produces life: it is rather life which organizes
the body. Does not the will to live increase the viability of enfeebled
persons, just as the giving up of the wish to live may abridge life and
even extinguish it?
Your heart beats, night and day, whatever be the position of your body. It
is a well-mounted spring. Who or what adjusted this elastic spring?
The embryo is formed in the womb of the mother, in the egg of the bird.
There is neither heart nor brain. At a certain moment the heart beats for
the first time. Sublime moment! It will beat in the child, in the
adolescent, in the man, in the woman, at the rate of about 100,000
pulsations a day, of 36,500,000 a year, of 1,825,000,000 in fifty years.
This heart that has just been formed is going to beat a thousand millions
of pulsations, two thousand millions, three thousand millions, a number
determined by its inherent force; then it will stop and the body will fall
into ruins. Who or what wound up this watch once for all?
Dynamism, the vital energy.
What sustains the earth in space?
Dynamism, the velocity of its movement.
What is it in the bullet that kills?
Its velocity.
Everywhere energy, everywhere the invisible element. It is this same
dynamism that produces the phenomena we have been studying. The question
at present resolves itself into this: Does this dynamism belong wholly to
the experimenters? We have so little real knowledge of our mental nature
that it is impossible for us to know what this nature is capable of
producing, even in certain states of unconsciousness--in fact especially
in these. The directing intelligence is not always the personal, _normal_,
intelligence of the experimenters or of any one whatever among them. We
ask the entity what its name is, and it gives us a name which is not ours;
it replies to our questions, and usually claims to be a discarnate soul,
the spirit of a deceased person. But if we drive the question home, this
entity finally steals away without having given us sufficient proofs of
its identity. There results from this the impression that the "medium," or
principal subject of the experiment, has responded for himself, has
reflected himself, without knowing it.
Moreover, this entity, this personality, this spirit, has his individual
will, his caprices, his cantankerousness, and sometimes acts in opposition
to our own thoughts. He tells us absurd, foolish, brutal, insane things,
and amuses himself with fantastic combinations of letters, real
head-splitting puzzles. It astonishes and stupefies us.
What is this being?
Two inescapable hypotheses present themselves. Either it is we who produce
these phenomena or it is spirits. But mark this well: these spirits are
not necessarily the souls of the dead; for other kinds of spiritual beings
may exist, and space may be full of them without our ever knowing anything
about it, except under unusual circumstances. Do we not find in the
different ancient literatures, demons, angels, gnomes, goblins, sprites,
spectres, elementals, etc? Perhaps these legends are not without some
foundation in fact. Then we cannot but remark that, in our mediumistic
studies and experiments, in order to succeed we always address an
invisible being who is supposed to hear us. If this is an illusion, it
dates from the very origin of Spiritualism, from the raps produced
unconsciously by the Fox sisters in their chambers at Hydesville and at
Rochester in 1848. But once more, this personification may pertain to our
own being or it may represent a mind external to ourselves.
In order to admit the first hypothesis we must admit at the same time that
our mental nature is not simple, that there are in us several psychic
elements, and that one at least of these elements may act unknown to
ourselves, make raps in a table, move any piece of furniture, lift a
weight, touch us with a hand that seems real, play an instrument, create a
spectral figure, read hidden words, answer questions, act with a personal
will--and all this, I repeat, without our own knowledge.
This is tolerably complicated; but it is not impossible.
That there are in us psychic elements, obscure, unconscious, capable of
acting outside of the sphere of our normal consciousness, this is
something we can notice every night in our dreams; that is to say, during
a quarter, or a third part of our life. Scarcely has sleep closed our
eyes, our ears, all our senses, than our thoughts begin to work just the
same as during the day, though without rational direction, without logic,
under the most incoherent forms, freed from our customary conceptions of
space and time, in a world entirely different from the normal world. The
physiologists and psychologists have for centuries been trying to
determine the mechanism of the dream without having yet obtained any
satisfactory solution of the problem. But the proved fact that we see
sometimes, in our dreams, occurrences which take place at a distance,
proves that we have in us unknown powers.
Again, it is not rare for each of us to experience, sometimes (all our
faculties being on the alert), the play of an interior power, distinct
from our dominant reason. We are on the point of pronouncing words that
are not a part of our habitual vocabulary, and ideas suddenly traverse and
arrest the course of our thoughts. During the reading of a book which
seemed interesting to us, our soul spreads her wings and flies to other
realms, while our eyes continue in vain the mechanical act of reading. We
are discussing certain projects in our mind, as if we were so many judges;
and then, one would like to know in all simplicity, whence comes this
distraction?
In his tireless researches, the great investigator of psychic phenomena,
Myers, to whom we owe synthetic studies upon the subliminal consciousness,
reached the conviction, with Ribot, that "the _me_ is a co-ordination."
These supernormal phenomena (writes this competent and learned
inquirer) are due not to the action of the spirits of deceased
persons, as Wallace believes, but, for the most part, to the action of
an incarnate spirit, either that of the subject himself or of some
agent or other.[87]
The word "subliminal" means what is beneath the threshold (_limen_) of
the consciousness,--the sensations, the thoughts, the memories, which
remain at the bottom, and seem to represent a kind of sleeping _me_. I
do not pretend to affirm (adds the author) that there always exists in
us two _me's_ correlative and parallel: I denote rather by the
subliminal _me_ that part of the _me_ which ordinarily remains latent,
and I admit that there may be not merely co-operation between these
two quasi-independent currents of thoughts, but also changes of level
and alternations of personality.[88] Medical observation (Felida,
Alma) proves that there is in us a rudimentary supernormal faculty,
something which is probably useless to us, but which indicates the
existence, beneath the level of our consciousness, of a reserve of
latent unsuspected faculties.[89]
What is it that is active in us in telepathic phenomena? We may recall
the case of Thomas Garrison (_Society for Psychical Research_, VIII, p.
125) who, while sitting with his wife at a religious service, suddenly
gets up in the middle of the sermon, goes out of the church, and, as if
impelled by an irresistible impulse, walks twenty miles afoot to go to see
his mother, whom he finds dead on his arrival, although he did not know
that she was ill and although she was relatively young (fifty-eight
years). I have a hundred observations similar to this in writing before
me. It is not our normal habitual nature that is in action in such a case
as this.
There is probably in us, more or less sentient, a sub-conscious nature,
and it is this which seems to be at work in mediumistic experiences. I am
pretty much of the opinion Myers expresses in the following paragraph:[90]
Spiritualists attribute the movement and the dictations at their
seances to the action of disembodied intelligences. But if a table
execute movements without being touched, there is no reason to
attribute these movements to the intervention of my deceased
grandfather, rather than to my own proper intervention; for if I do
not see how I could have done it myself, it is not clear to me how the
effect could have been produced by the action of my grandfather. As
for dictations, the most plausible explanation seems to me to be for
us to admit that they do not come from the conscious _me_, but from
that profound and hidden region where fragmentary and incoherent
dreams are elaborated.
This explanatory hypothesis is held, with an important modification, by a
distinguished savant to whom also we owe long and patient researches into
the obscure phenomena of normal psychology; I mean Dr. Geley, who thus
sums up his own conclusions:
A certain amount of the force, intelligence, and matter of the body
may perform work outside of the organism,--act, perceive, organize,
and think without the collaboration of muscles, organs, senses and
brain. It is nothing less than the uplifted sub-conscious portion of
our being. It constitutes, in truth, an externalizable sub-conscious
nature, existing in the _me_ with the normal conscious nature.[91]
This sub-conscious nature does not seem to depend upon the organism. It is
probably anterior to it, and will survive it. It seems to be superior to
it, endowed with powers and acquirements very different from the powers
and acquirements of the normal, supernormal, and transcendent
consciousness.
Assuredly, there is in this view of the case more than one mystery still,
were it only the feat of performing a material act at a distance, and that
(not less strange) of apparently having nothing to do with that kind of an
act.
The first rule of the scientific method is first to seek explanations in
the known before having recourse to the unknown, and we should never fail
to comply with this rule. But if this method of sailing does not bring us
to port, it is our duty to confess it.
I very much fear that that is what is the matter here. We are not
satisfied. The explanation is not clear, and is floating a little too much
at random in the waves--and the wavering uncertainty--of the hypothesis.
At the point at which we have now arrived in this chapter of explanations
we are precisely in the position of Alexander Aksakof when he wrote his
great work, _Animism and Spiritualism_, in reply to the book of Dr. von
Hartmann on _Spiritualism_. Hartman claimed to explain all of these
psychical phenomena by the following hypothesis.
A nervous force producing, outside of the limits of the human body,
mechanical and plastic effects.
Duplicate hallucinations of this same nervous force, and producing
also physical and plastic effects.
A latent somnambulistic consciousness, capable (the subject being in
his normal state) of reading in the intellectual background of another
man, his present and his past, and being able to divine the future.
Akaskof tried to see if these hypotheses (the last of which is a pretty
bold one) are sufficient to explain everything, and he concludes that they
are not. That is also my opinion. There is something else. This something
else, this residue at the bottom of the crucible of experiment, is a
psychic element, the nature of which remains still wholly hidden from us.
I think that all the readers of this book will share my conviction.
Anthropomorphic hypotheses are far from explaining everything. Besides,
they are only hypotheses. We must not hide from ourselves that these
phenomena introduce us into another world, into an unknown world, one that
is still to be explored in its whole extent.
As to beings different from ourselves,--what may their nature be? Of this
we cannot form any idea. Souls of the dead? This is very far from being
demonstrated. The innumerable observations which I have collected during
more than forty years all prove to me the contrary. No satisfactory
identification has been made.[92]
The communications obtained have always seemed to proceed from the
mentality of the group, or, when they are heterogeneous, from spirits of
an incomprehensible nature. The being evoked soon vanishes when one
insists on pushing him to the wall and having the heart out of his
mystery. And then my greatest hope has been deceived, that hope of my
twentieth year, when I would so gladly have received celestial light upon
the doctrine of the plurality of worlds. The spirits have taught us
nothing.
Nevertheless, the agents seem sometimes to be independent. Crookes
mentions having seen Miss Fox write automatically a communication for one
of her sitters while another communication upon another subject was given
to her for a _second_ person by means of the alphabet and by raps, and all
the while she was chatting with a _third_ person upon another subject
totally different from the other two. Does this remarkable fact prove with
certainty the action of a spirit other than that of the medium?
The same scientist mentions that, during one of his seances, a little rod
crossed the table, in full light, and came and rapped his hand, giving him
a communication by following the letters of the alphabet spelled out by
him. The other end of the rod rested on the table at a certain distance
from the hand of the medium Home.
This case seems to me, as well as to Crookes, more conclusively in favor
of an exterior spirit, so much the more since the experimenter having
asked that the raps be given by the Morse telegraphic code, another
message was thus rapped out. I also remember that the learned chemist
mentions that the word "however" hidden by his finger, upon a newspaper,
and unknown even to himself, was rapped out by a little rod.
Wallace also mentions a name written upon a piece of paper fastened by him
under the central leg of the experiment table; Joncieres, a water-color
correctly painted in complete darkness, and a musical theme written with a
pencil; M. Castex Degrange, the announcement of a death, and the place
where a lost object might be found. We have also seen sentences dictated
either backwards or in such a way that every other letter only must be
read to get the sense, or else by strange combinations showing the action
of an unknown intellect. We have a thousand examples of this kind.
But if the mind of the medium may liberate itself and appear in an
extra-normal state, why might it not be this mind which acts? Do we not
have several distinct personalities in our dreams? If they could
dynamically appear, would they not act somewhat in this way?
We ought not to lose sight of the fact that these phenomena are of a
_mixed_ character. They are at once physical and psychical, material and
intellectual, are not always produced by our conscious will, and are
rather the subject of _observation_ than _experiment_.
It is expedient to insist on this characteristic. I one day, (January 31,
1901) heard E. Duclaux, member of the Institute, director of the Pasteur
Institute, express the following confused idea (an idea held by so many
physicists and so many chemists), in a company which was yet quite
competent to discuss these phenomena: "There is no scientific fact except
a fact which can be reproduced at will."[93] What a singular reasoning!
The witnesses of the fall of a meteor bring us an aerolite which has just
fallen from the sky and been dug up, all hot, from the hole it had made in
the ground. "Error! illusion!" we ought to reply: "We shall only believe
when you repeat the experiment."
They bring to us the body of a man killed by a stroke of lightning,
stripped of his clothes, and shaved as if with a razor. "Impossible!" we
ought to reply; "pure invention of your deluded senses." A woman sees
appear before her, her husband, who has just died nearly two thousand
miles away. We are asked to believe that this is not so, and will not be
so until the apparition appears a second time.
This confusion between observation and experiment is a very strange thing
as coming from cultivated men.
In psychical phenomena there is a voluntary, capricious, incoherent,
intellectual element.
I repeat, we must learn to comprehend that everything cannot be explained
and resign ourselves to waiting for an extension of our knowledge. There
is intelligence, thought, psychism, mind, in these phenomena. There is
still more in certain communications. Can the observations be confirmed
and justified by assuming the mind of the living merely as the active
agents? Yes, perhaps, but only by attributing to us unknown and
supernormal faculties. Yet it must be remembered that this is only an
hypothesis. The Spiritualistic hypothesis of communication with the souls
of the dead remains also as a working hypothesis.
That souls survive the destruction of the body I have not the shadow of a
doubt. But that they manifest themselves by the processes employed in
seances the experimental method has not yet given us absolute proof. I add
that this hypothesis is not at all likely. If the souls of the dead are
about us, upon our planet, the invisible population would increase at the
rate of 100,000 a day, about 36 millions a year, 3 billions 620 millions a
century, 36 billions in ten centuries, etc.,--unless we admit
re-incarnations upon the earth itself.
How many times do apparitions, or manifestations occur? When illusions,
auto-suggestions, hallucinations, are eliminated, what remains? Scarcely
anything. Such an exceptional rarity as this pleads against the reality of
apparitions.
We may suppose, it is true, that all human beings do not survive their
death, and that, in general, their psychical entity is so insignificant,
so wavering, so ineffectual, that it almost disappears in the ether, in
the common reservoir, in the environment, like the souls of animals. But
thinking beings who have the consciousness of their psychical existence do
not lose their personality, but continue the cycle of their evolution. It
would seem natural therefore to see them manifest themselves under certain
circumstances. Persons condemned to death, in consequence of judicial
errors, and executed, should they not return to protest their innocence?
Would it not be reasonable to suppose that persons put to death in such a
way that violence was not suspected would return to accuse the assassins?
Knowing the characters of Robespierre, of Saint-Just, of
Fouquier-Tinville, I should like to have seen them revenge themselves a
little on those who triumphed over them. The victims of '93, should they
not have returned to disturb the sleep of the conquerors? Out of the
twenty thousand citizens shot by fusillades during the time of the Commune
of Paris I should like to have seen a dozen unceasingly harassing the Hon.
M. Theirs, who was really too puffed up and vain-glorious over his having
first permitted the organization of that insurrection and then punished
it.
Why do not children whose death is lamented by their parents ever come to
console them? Why do our dearest attachments seem to disappear forever?
And how about last wills and testaments stolen away, and the last will of
the dead ignored and their intentions purposely misinterpreted?
"It is only the dead that do not return," says an old proverb. This
aphorism is not of absolute application, perhaps; but apparitions are
rare, very rare, and we do not understand their precise nature. Are they
actual apparitions of the dead? It is not yet demonstrated.
Up to this day, I have sought in vain for certain proof of personal
identity through mediumistic communications. And then one does not see why
spirits, if they exist around us, should have need of mediums at all, in
order to manifest themselves. They surely must form a part of nature, of
the universal nature which includes all things.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the Spiritualistic hypothesis should be
preserved by the same right as those I have summed up in the immediately
preceding pages, for the discussions have not eliminated it.[94]
But why are there manifestations the result of the grouping of five or six
persons around the table? That this should be a _sine qua non_ is not a
very likely thing either.
It may be, it is true, that spirits exist around us, and that it is
normally impossible for them to make themselves visible, audible, or
tangible, not being able to reflect rays of light accessible to our
retina, or to produce sonorous waves, or to effect touches. Therefore,
certain conditions present in mediums might be necessary for their
manifestation. Nobody has the right to deny this. But why so many puzzling
incoherences and solecisms?
I have on a bookshelf before me several thousand communications dictated
by "spirits." In the last analysis, a dim obscurity remains hanging over
the causes. Unknown psychic forces: fugitive entities; vanishing figures;
nothing solid to grasp, even for the thought. These things do not yield us
the consistency of a definition of chemistry or of a theorem in geometry.
A molecule of hydrogen is a granite cliff in comparison.
The greater part of the phenomena observed,--noises, movement of tables,
confusions, disturbances, raps, replies to questions asked,--are really
childish, puerile, vulgar, often ridiculous, and rather resemble the
pranks of mischievous boys than serious bona-fide actions. It is
impossible not to notice this.
Why should the souls of the dead amuse themselves in this way? The
supposition seems almost absurd.
We know that an ordinary man does not change his intellectual or moral
value from day to day, and, if his spirit continues to exist after the
death of his body, we may expect to find it such as it was before. But why
so many oddities and incoherences?
However these things may be, it behooves us not to have any preconceived
idea, and our bounden duty is to seek to prove the facts as they present
themselves to us.
The unknown natural force brought into play for the lifting of a table is
not the exclusive property of mediums. In different degrees it forms a
part of all organisms, with different coefficients, 100 for organisms such
as those of Home, or Eusapia, 80 for others, 50 or 25 for less favored
individuals. But I should hold it as certain that it never drops in any
case to 0. The best proof of this is that, with patience, perseverance,
and the exercise of the will, almost all the groups of experimenters who
have seriously occupied themselves with these researches have succeeded in
obtaining, not merely movements, but also complete levitations, raps, and
other phenomena.
The word "medium" scarcely has any longer a reason for being, since the
existence of an intermediary between the spirits and us is not yet proved.
But still the word may be preserved, logic being the rarest of things in
grammar and in everything else that is human. The word "electricity" has
had no connection for a long time with amber ([Greek: elektron]), nor the
word "veneration" with the genitive case of Venus (_Veneris_), nor the (at
first astrological) term "disaster" with _aster_ (star), nor the word
"tragedy" with _goat-song_ ([Greek: tragos ode]). But this does not hinder
these words from being understood in their habitual sense.[95]
As respects explanatory hypotheses, I repeat, the field is open to all. It
is to be noted that communications dictated are closely related to the
condition of mind, the ideas, the opinions, the beliefs, the knowledge,
and even the literary culture, of the experimenters. They are like a
reflection, or counterpart, of this ensemble of ideas and faculties.
Compare the communications noted down in the house of Victor Hugo in
Jersey, those of the Phalansterian Society of Eugene Nus, those of
astronomical meetings, those of religious believers,--Catholics,
Protestants, etc.
If the hypothesis were not so bold as to seem unacceptable to us, I should
dare to think that the concentration of the thoughts of psychic
experimenters creates a momentary intellectual being who replies to the
questions asked and then vanishes.
_Reflection, reflex action?_ That is perhaps the true expression.
Everybody has seen his image reflected in a mirror, and nobody is
astonished by it. However, analyse the thing. The more you look at this
optical being moving there behind the mirror, the more remarkable the
image appears to you. Now suppose looking-glasses had not been invented.
If we had not knowledge of those immense mirrors which reflect whole
apartments and the visitors in them, if we had never seen anything of the
kind, and if someone should tell us that images and reflections of living
persons could thus manifest themselves and thus move, we should not
comprehend, and should not believe it.
Yes, the ephemeral personification created in Spiritualistic seances
sometimes recalls the image that we see in a mirror, which has nothing
real in itself, but which yet exists and reproduces the original. The
image fixed by the photograph is of the same kind, only durable. The
potential image formed at the focus of the mirror of a telescope,
invisible in itself, but which we can receive on a level mirror and study,
at the same time enlarging it by the microscope of the eye-piece, perhaps
approaches nearer to that which seems to be produced by the concentration
of the psychical energy of a group of persons. We create an imaginary
being, we speak to it, and in its replies it almost always reflects the
mentality of the experimenters. And just as with the aid of mirrors we can
concentrate light, heat, ether-waves, electric waves, in a focus, so, in
the same way, it seems sometimes as if the sitters added their psychic
forces to those of the medium, of the dynamogen, condensing the waves, and
helping to produce a sort of fugitive being more or less material.
The sub-conscious nature, the brain of the medium, or his astral body, the
fluidic mind, the unknown powers latent in sensitive organisms, might we
not consider these as the mirror which we have just imagined? And might
this mirror also not receive and reproduce impressions, or influence, from
a soul at a distance?
But we must not generalize partial conclusions which we have already had
much trouble in defining.
I do not say that spirits do not exist: on the contrary, I have reasons
for admitting their existence. Even certain sensations expressed by the
animals,--by dogs, by cats, by horses,--plead in favor of the unexpected
and impressive presence of invisible beings or agents. But, as a faithful
servant of the experimental method, I think that we ought to exhaust all
the simple, natural hypotheses, already known, before having recourse to
others.
Unfortunately, a large number of Spiritualists prefer not to go to the
bottom of things, or analyse anything, but to be the dupes of nervous
impressions. They resemble certain worthy women who tell their beads while
believing that they have before them Saint Agnes or Saint Filomena. There
is no harm in that, says some one. But it is an illusion. Let us not be
its dupes.
If the elementals, the _elementaires_, the spirits of the air, the gnomes,
the spectres of which Goethe speaks (following Paracelsus in this), exist,
they are natural and not supernatural. They are in nature, for nature
includes all things. The supernatural does not exist. It is then the duty
of science to study this question as it studies all others.
As I have already remarked, there are in these different phenomena several
causes in action. Among these causes the ones that supposes the action to
proceed from disembodied spirits, the souls of the dead, is a plausible
hypothesis which ought not to be rejected without examination. It seems
sometimes to be the most logical; but there are weighty objections to it,
and it is of the highest importance to be able to demonstrate it with
certainty. Its partisans _ought to be the first to approve the severity of
the scientific methods which we apply in our studies of the phenomena_,
for Spiritualism will receive thereby so much the more solid a foundation
and will have so much the more value. The illusions and the artless faith
of simple souls cannot give it any more solid and substantial basis. The
religion of the future will be the religion of science. There is only one
kind of truth.
Sometimes authors are made to say that which they have never said. For my
part, I have had frequent proof of this, notably in the case of
Spiritualism. I should not be surprised if certain interpretations of the
pages which precede should come to light, shaped into the opinion that I
do not believe in the existence of spirits. Yet it will be impossible to
find any affirmation of this kind in this work, or in any other published
by me. What I say is that the physical phenomena studied in these pages
_do not prove_ the existence of spirits, and may probably be explained
without them,--that is, by unknown forces emanating from the
experimenters, and especially from mediums. But these phenomena indicate,
at the same time, the existence of a psychical atmosphere or environment.
What is this environment? It is indeed very difficult to get a true idea
of it, since we are not able to apprehend it by any of our senses. It is
also very difficult not to admit it in view of the multitude of psychical
phenomena. If we admit the survival of individual souls, what becomes of
these souls? Where are they? It may be replied that the conditions of
space and of time in which our material senses exist do not represent the
real nature of space and time, that our estimates and our measures are
essentially relative, that the soul, the spirit, the thinking entity, does
not occupy space. Still, we may consider also that pure spirit does not
exist, that it is attached to a substance occupying a certain point. We
may also consider that all souls are not equal; that there is a superior
and inferior class; that certain human beings are scarcely conscious of
their existence; that superior souls, being self-conscious, as well after
death as during life, preserve their entire individuality, have the power
of continuing their evolution, of voyaging from world to world and adding
to their moral and intellectual growth by successive reincarnations. But
the others, the unconscious souls, are they more advanced the day after
death than the day before? Why should death bestow upon them any
perfection? Why should it make a genius out of an imbecile? How could it
make a good man out of a bad one? Why should it turn an ignoramus into a
wise man? How could it make a shining light out of an intellectual nobody?
These unconscious souls,--that is to say, the multitude,--do they not
disappear at death into the surrounding ether, and do they not constitute
a kind of psychic atmosphere, in which a subtle analysis can discover
spiritual as well as material elements? If the psychic force performs an
action in the existing order of things, it is as worthy of consideration
as the different forms of energy in operation in the ether.
Without, then, admitting the existence of spirits to be demonstrated by
the phenomena, we feel that these do not all belong to a simply material
order,--physiological, organic, cerebral,--but that there is _something
else_ involved, something else inexplicable in the actual state of our
knowledge.
But a something else of the psychical order. Perhaps we shall be able to
go a little farther, some day, in our independent impartial researches,
guided by the experimental scientific method, denying nothing in advance,
but admitting whatever is proved by sufficient observation.
* * * * *
To sum up: _In the actual state of our knowledge it is impossible to give
a complete, total, absolute, final explanation of the observed phenomena_.
The Spiritualistic hypothesis ought not to be dismissed. Still, we may
admit the survival of the soul without necessarily admitting a physical
communication between the dead and the living. But then all the observed
facts leading up to the affirmation of this communication are worthy of
the most serious attention of the philosopher.
One of the chief difficulties in the way of these communications seems to
be the condition itself of the soul freed from bodily senses. It would
have other ways of perceiving. It would not see, hear, touch. How then can
it enter into relation with our senses?
There is a whole problem in that which is not to be neglected in the study
of any psychical manifestations whatever.
We take our ideas to be realities. This is a mistake. For example, to our
senses the air is not a solid body; we pass through it without effort,
while we cannot pass through an iron door. The converse is true of
electricity: it passes through iron, and finds the air to be a solid
impassible body. To the electrician, a wire is a canal leading electricity
across the solid rock of the air. Glass is opaque to electricity and
transparent to magnetism. The flesh is transparent to the X-rays, while
glass is opaque, etc.
We feel the need of explaining everything, and we are driven to admit only
the phenomena of which we have had an explanation; but that does not prove
that our explanations are valid. Thus for example, if some one had
affirmed the possibility of instantaneous communication between Paris and
London, before the invention of the telegraph, people would have regarded
the assertion as utopian. Later it would not have been admitted, except on
condition of the existence of a wire between the two stations, and any
communication without the medium of an electric wire would have been
declared impossible. Now that we have wireless telegraphy we can apply
this discovery to the explanation of the phenomena of telepathy. But it is
not yet proved that this explanation is the true one.
Why do we wish to explain these phenomena at all hazards? Because we
naively imagine that we are able to do so in the present state of our
knowledge.
The physiologists who claim to see daylight in this matter are like
Ptolemy persisting in accounting for the movements of the heavenly bodies
by holding to the idea of the immobility of the earth; or Galileo
explaining the attraction of amber by the rarefaction of the surrounding
air; or Lavoisier seeking (with the common people) the origin of aerolites
in thunder storms or denying their existence; or Galvani, who saw in his
frogs a _special_ organic electricity. I put my physiologists in good
company, surely, and they have nothing of which to complain. But who does
not feel that this natural propensity to explain everything is not
justified, that science progresses from age to age, that what is not known
to-day will be known later, and that we ought sometimes to know how to
wait?
The phenomena of which we are speaking are manifestations of the universal
dynamism, with which our five senses put us very imperfectly in relation.
We live in the midst of an unexplored world, in which the psychical forces
play a role still very insufficiently investigated.
These forces are of a class superior to the forces usually analyzed in
mechanics, in physics, in chemistry: they are of the psychical order, have
in them something vital and a kind of mentality. They confirm what we know
from other sources,--that the purely mechanical explanation of nature is
insufficient and that there is in the universe something else than
so-called matter. It is not matter that rules the world: it is a dynamic
and psychic element.
What light will the study of these still unexplained forces shed upon the
origin of the soul and upon the conditions of its survival? That is
something that the future has to teach us.
The truth that the soul is a spiritual entity distinct from the body is
proved by other arguments. These arguments are not made for the purpose of
injuring this doctrine; but while confirming it and while putting in clear
light the application of psychic forces, they still do not solve the great
problem by the material proofs that we should like to have.
However, if the study of these phenomena has not yet yielded all that is
claimed for it, nor all that it will in the future yield, we still cannot
help recognizing that it has considerably enlarged the sphere of
psychology, and that the knowledge of the nature of the soul and of its
faculties has been once for all expanded under grander and deeper skies
and wider horizons.
There is in nature, especially in the domain of life, in the manifestation
of instinct in vegetables and animals, in the general soul of things, in
humanity, in the cosmic universe, a psychic element which appears more and
more in modern studies, especially in researches in telepathy, and in the
observation of the unexplained phenomena which we have been studying in
this book. This element, this principle, is still unknown to contemporary
science. But, as in so many other cases, it was divined by the ancients.
Besides the four elements fire, water, air and earth, the ancients
admitted a fifth, belonging to the material order, which they named
_animus_, the soul of the world, the animating principle, ether.
"Aristotle" (writes Cicero, _Tuscul. Quaest._ I. 22), "after having
mentioned the four kinds of material elements, believes that we ought to
admit a fifth kind from which the soul proceeds; for, since the soul and
the intellectual faculties cannot reside in any of the material elements,
we must admit a fifth kind, which had not yet received a name and which he
styles _entelechy_; that is to say, eternal and continued movement." The
four material elements of the ancients have been dissected by modern
analysis. The fifth is perhaps more fundamental.
Citing the philosopher Zeno, the same orator adds that this wise man did
not admit this fifth principle, which might be compared to fire. But, from
all the evidence, fire and thought are two distinct things.
Virgil has written in the _AEneid_ (Book VI) these admirable verses which
are known to everybody: