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THE UNKNOWN GUEST
BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
INTRODUCTION
1
My Essay on Death[1] led me to make a conscientious enquiry into
the present position of the great mystery, an enquiry which I
have endeavoured to render as complete as possible. I had hoped
that a single volume would be able to contain the result of these
investigations, which, I may say at once, will teach nothing to
those who have been over the same ground and which have nothing
to recommend them except their sincerity, their impartiality and
a certain scrupulous accuracy. But, as I proceeded, I saw the
field widening under my feet, so much so that I have been obliged
to divide my work into two almost equal parts. The first is now
published and is a brief study of veridical apparitions and
hallucinations and haunted houses, or, if you will, the phantasms
of the living and the dead; of those manifestations which have
been oddly and not very appropriately described as
"psychometric"; of the knowledge of the future: presentiments,
omens, premonitions, precognitions and the rest; and lastly of
the Elberfeld horses. In the second, which will be published
later, I shall treat of the miracles of Lourdes and other places,
the phenomena of so called materialization, of the divining-rod
and of fluidic asepsis, not unmindful withal of a diamond dust of
the miraculous that hangs over the greater marvels in that
strange atmosphere into which we are about to pass.
[1] Published in English, in an enlarged form, under the title of
Our Eternity (London and New York, 1913)--Translator's Note.
2
When I speak of the present position of the mystery, I of course
do not mean the mystery of life, its end and its beginnings, nor
yet the great riddle of the universe which lies about us. In this
sense, all is mystery, and, as I have said elsewhere, is likely
always to remain so; nor is it probable that we shall ever touch
any point of even the utmost borders of knowledge or certainty.
It is here a question of that which, in the midst of this
recognized and usual mystery, the familiar mystery of which we
are almost oblivious, suddenly disturbs the regular course of our
general ignorance. In themselves, these facts which strike us as
supernatural are no more so than the others; possibly they are
rarer, or, to be more accurate, less frequently or less easily
observed. In any case, their deep-seated cause, while being
probably neither more remote nor more difficult access, seem
to lie hidden in an unknown region less often visited by our
science, which after all is but a reassuring and conciliatory
espression of our ignorance. Today, thanks to the labours of the
Society for Psychical Research and a host of other seekers, we
are able to approach these phenomena as a whole with a certain
confidence. Leaving the realm of legend, of after-dinner stories,
old wives' tales, illusions and exaggerations, we find ourselves
at last on circumscribed but fairly safe ground. This does not
mean that there are no other supernatural phenomena besides those
collected in the publications of the society in question and in a
few of the more weighty reviews which have adopted the same
methods. Notwithstanding all their diligence, which for over
thirty years has been ransacking the obscure corners of our
planet, it is inevitable that a good many things escape their
notice, besides which the rigour of their investigations makes
them reject three fourths of those which are brought before them.
But we may say that the twenty-six volumes of the society is
Proceedings and the fifteen or sixteen volumes of its Journal,
together with the twenty-three annuals of the Annales des
Sciences Psychiques, to mention only this one periodical of
signal excellence, embrace for the moment the whole field of the
extraordinary and offer some instances of all the abnormal
manifestations of the inexplicable. We are henceforth able to
classify them, to divide and subdivide them into general, species
and varieties. This is not much, you may say; but it is thus that
every science begins and furthermore that many a one ends. We
have therefore sufficient evidence, facts that can scarcely be
disputed, to enable us to consult them profitably, to recognize
whither they lead, to form some idea of their general character
and perhaps to trace their sole source by gradually removing the
weeds and rubbish which for so many hundreds and thousands of
years have hidden it from our eyes.
3
Truth to tell, these supernatural manifestations seem less
marvelous and less fantastic than they did some centuries ago;
and we are at first a little disappointed. One would think that
even the mysterious has its ups and downs and remains subject to
the caprices of some strange extra mundane fashion; or perhaps,
to be more exact, it is evident that the majority of those
legendary miracles could not withstand the rigorous scrutiny of
our day. Those which emerge triumphant from the test and defy our
less credulous and more penetrating vision are all the more
worthy of holding our attention. They are not the last survivals
of the riddle, for this continues to exist in its entirety and
grows greater in proportion as we throw light upon it; but we can
perhaps see in them the supreme or else the first efforts of a
force which does not appear to reside wholly in our sphere. They
suggest blows struck from without by an Unknown even more unknown
than that which we think we know, an Unknown which is not that of
the universe, not that which we have gradually made into an
inoffensive and amiable Unknown, even as we have made the
universe a son of province of the earth, but a stranger arriving
from another world, an unexpected visitor who comes in a rather
sinister way to trouble the comfortable quiet in which we were
slumbering, rocked by the firm and watchful hand of orthodox
science.
4
Let us first be content to enumerate them. We shall find that we
have table-turning, with its raps; the movements and
transportations of inanimate objects without contact; luminous
phenomena; lucidite, or clairvoyance; veridical apparitions or
hallucinations; haunted houses; bilocations and so forth;
communications with the dead; the divining-rod; the miraculous
cures of Lourdes and elsewhere; fluidic asepsis; and lastly the
famous thinking animals of Elberfeld and Mannheim. These, if I be
not mistaken, after eliminating all that is in, sufficiently
attested, constitute the residue or caput mortuum of this
latter-day miracle.
Everybody has heard of table-turning, which may be called the A B
C of occult science. It is so common and so easily produced that
the Society for Psychical Research has not thought it necessary
to devote special attention to the subject. I need hardly add
that we must take count only of movements or "raps" obtained
without the hands touching the table, so as to remove every
possibility of fraud or unconscious complicity. To obtain these
movements it is enough, but it is also indispensable that those
who form the "chain" should include a person endowed with
mediumistic faculties. I repeat, the experiment is within the
reach of any one who cares to try it under the requisite
conditions; and it is as incontestable as the polarization of
light or as crystallization by means of electric currents.
In the same group may be placed the movement and transportation
of objects without contact, the touches of spirit hands, the
luminous phenomena and materialization. Like table-turning, they
demand the presence of a medium. I need not observe that we here
find ourselves in the happy hunting-ground of the impostor and
that even the most powerful mediums, those possessing the most
genuine and undeniable gifts, such as the celebrated Eusapia
Paladino, are upon occasion--and the occasion occurs but too
often--incorrigible cheats. But, when we have made every
allowance for fraud, there nevertheless remains a considerable
number of incidents so rigorously attested that we most needs
accept them or else abandon all human certainty.
The case is not quite the same with levitation and the wonders
performed, so travelers tell us, by certain Indian jugglers.
Though the prolonged burial of a living being is very nearly
proved and can doubtless be physiologically explained, there are
many other tricks on which we have so far no authoritative
pronouncement. I will not speak of the "mango-tree" and the
"basket-trick," which are mere conjuring; but the "fire-walk" and
the famous "rope-climbing trick" remain more of a mystery.
The fire-walk, or walk on red-hot bricks or glowing coals, is a
sort of religious ceremony practiced in the Indies, in some of
the Polynesian islands, in Mauritius and elsewhere. As the result
of incantations uttered by the high priest, the bare feet of the
faithful who follow him upon the bed of burning pebbles or brands
seem to become almost insensible to the touch of fire. Travelers
are anything but agreed whether the heat of the surface traversed
is really intolerable, whether the extraordinary power of
endurance is explained by the thickness of the horny substance
which protects the soles of the natives' feet, whether the feet
are burnt or whether the skin remains untouched; and, under
present conditions, the question is too uncertain to make it
worth while to linger over it.
"Rope-climbing" is more extraordinary. The juggler takes his
stand in an open space, far from any tree or house. He is
accompanied by a child; and his only impedimenta are a bundle of
ropes and an old canvas sack. The juggler throws one end of the
rope up in the air; and the rope, as though drawn by an invisible
hook, uncoils and rises straight into the sky until the end
disappears; and, soon after, there come tumbling from the blue
two arms, two legs, a head and so on, all of which the wizard
picks up and crams into the sack. He next utters a few magic
words over it and opens it; and the child steps out, bowing and
smiling to the spectators.
This is the usual form taken by this particular sorcery. It is
pretty rare and seems to be practised only by one sect which
originated in the North-West Provinces. It has not yet perhaps
been sufficiently investigated to take its place among the
evidence mentioned show. If it were really as I have described,
it could hardly be explained save by some strange hallucinatory
power emanating from the juggler or illusionist, who influences
the audience by suggestion and makes it see what he wishes. In
that case the suggestion or hallucination covers a very extensive
area. In point of fact, onlookers, Europeans, on the balconies of
houses at some distance from the crowd of natives, have been
known to experience the same influence. This would be one of the
most curious manifestations of that "unknown guest" of which we
shall speak again later when, after enumerating its acts and
deeds, we try to investigate and note down the eccentricities of
its character.
Levitation in the proper sense of the word, that is to say, the
raising, without contact, and floating of an inanimate object or
even of a person, might possibly be due to the same hallucinatory
power; but hitherto the instances have not been sufficiently
numerous or authentic to allow us to draw any conclusions. Also
we shall meet with it again when we come to the chapter treating
of the materializations of which it forms part.
THE UNKNOWN GUEST
CHAPTER I. PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
1
This brings us without any break to the consideration of
veridical apparitions and hallucinations and finally to haunted
houses. We all know that the phantasms of the living and the dead
have now a whole literature of their own, a literature which owes
its birth to the numerous and conscientious enquiries conducted
in England, France, Belgium and the United States at the instance
of the Society for Psychical Research. In the presence of the
mass of evidence collected, it would be absurd to persist in
denying the reality of the phenomena themselves. It is by this
time incontestable that a violent or deep emotion can be
transmitted instantaneously from one mind to another, however
great the distance that separates the mind experiencing the
emotion from the mind receiving the communication. It is most
often manifested by a visual hallucination, more rarely by an
auditory hallucination; and, as the most violent emotion which
man can undergo is that which grips and overwhelms him at the
approach or at the very moment of death, it is nearly always this
supreme emotion which he sends forth and directs with incredible
precision through space, if necessary across seas and continents,
towards an invisible and moving goal. Again, though this occurs
less frequently, a grave danger, a serious crisis can beget and
transmit to a distance a similar hallucination. This is what the
S. P. R. calls "phantasms of the living." When the hallucination
takes place some time after the decease of the person whom it
seems to evoke, be the interval long or short, it is classed
among the "phantasms of the dead."
The latter, the so-called "phantasms of the dead," are the
rarest. As F. W. H. Myers pointed out in his Human Personality, a
consideration of the proportionate number of apparitions observed
at various periods before and after death shows that they
increase very rapidly for the few hours which precede death and
decrease gradually during the hours and days which follow; while
after about a year's time they become extremely rare and
exceptional.
However exceptional they may be, these apparitions nevertheless
exist and are proved, as far as anything can be proved, by
abundant testimony of a very precise character. Instances will be
found in the Proceedings, notably in vol. vi., pp. 13-65, etc.
Whether it be a case of the living, the dying, or the dead, we
are familiar with the usual form which these hallucinations take.
Indeed their main outlines hardly ever vary. Some one, in his
bedroom, in the street, on a journey, no matter where, suddenly
see plainly and clearly the phantom of a relation or a friend of
whom he was not thinking at the time and whom he knows to be
thousands of miles away, in America, Asia or Africa as the case
may be, for distance does not count. As a rule, the phantom says
nothing; its presence, which is always brief, is but a sort of
silent warning. Sometimes it seems a prey to futile and trivial
anxieties. More rarely, it speaks, though saying but little after
all. More rarely still, it reveals something that has happened, a
crime, a hidden treasure of which no one else could know. But we
will return to these matters after completing this brief
enumeration.
2
The phenomenon of haunted houses resembles that of the phantasms
of the dead, except that here the ghost clings to the residence,
the house, the building and in no way to the persons who inhabit
it. By the second year of its existence, that is to say, 1884,
the Committee on Haunted Houses of the S. P. R. had selected and
made an analysis of some sixty-five cases out of hundreds
submitted to it, twenty-eight of which rested upon first-hand and
superior evidence.[1] It is worthy of remark, in the first place,
that these authentic narratives bear no relation whatever to the
legendary and sensational ghost-stories that still linger in many
English and American magazines, especially in the Christmas
numbers. They mention no winding-sheets, coffins, skeletons,
graveyards, no sulphurous flames, curses, blood-curdling groans,
no clanking chains, nor any of the time-honoured trappings that
characterize this rather feeble literature of the supernatural.
On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be
really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not
to say dull and commonplace. The ghosts are quite unpretentious
and go to no expense in the matter of staging or costume. They
are clad as they were when, sometimes many years ago, they led
their quiet, unadventurous life within their own home. We find in
one case an old woman, with a thin grey shawl meekly folded over
her breast, who bends at night over the sleeping occupants of her
old home, or who is frequently encountered in the hall or on the
stairs, silent, mysterious, a little grim. Or else it is the
gentleman with a lacklustre eye and a figured dressing-gown who
walks along a passage brilliantly illuminated with an
inexplicable light. Or again we have another elderly lady,
dressed in black, who is often found seated in the bay window of
her drawing-room. When spoken to, she rises and seems on the
point of replying, but says nothing. When pursued or met in a
corner, she eludes all contact and vanishes. Strings are fastened
across the staircase with glue; she passes and the strings remain
as they were. The ghost--and this happens in the majority of
cases--is seen by all the people staying in the house: relatives,
friends, old servants and new. Can it be a matter of suggestion,
of collective hallucination? At any rate, strangers, visitors who
have had nothing said to them, see it as the others do and ask,
innocently: "Who is the lady in mourning whom I met in the
dining-room?"
[1] Proceedings, vol. i., pp. 101-115; vol. ii., pp. 137-151;
vol. viii., pp. 311, 332, etc.
If it is a case of collective suggestion, we should have to admit
that it is a subconscious suggestion emitted without the
knowledge of the participants, which indeed is quite possible.
Though they belong to the same order, I will not here mention the
exploits of what the Germans call the Poltergeist, which take the
form of flinging stones, ringing bells, turning mattresses,
upsetting furniture and so forth. These matters are always open
to suspicion and really appear to be nothing but quaint frolics
of hysterical subjects or of mediums indulging their sense of
humour. The manifestations of the Poltergeist are fairly numerous
and the reader will find several instances in the Proceedings and
especially in the Journal of the S. P. R.
As for communications with the dead, I devoted a whole chapter to
these in my own essay entitled Our Eternity and will not return
to them now. It will be enough to recall and recapitulate my
general impression, that probably the dead did not enter into any
of these conversations. We are here concerned with purely
mediumistic phenomena, more curious and mere subtle than those of
table-rapping, but of the same character; and these
manifestations, however astonishing they may be, do not pierce
the terrestrial sphere wherein we are imprisoned.
3
Setting aside the religious hypotheses, which we are not
examining here, for they belong to a different order of ideas,[1]
we find, as an explanation of the Majority of these phenomena, or
at least as a means of avoiding an absolute and depressing
silence in regard to them, two hypotheses which reach the unknown
by more or less divergent paths, to wit, the spiritualistic
hypothesis and the mediumistic hypothesis. The spiritualists, or
rather the neospiritualists or scientific spiritualists, who must
not be confused with the somewhat over-credulous disciples of
Allan Kardec, maintain that the dead do not die entirely, that
their spiritual or animistic entity neither departs nor disperses
into space after the dissolution of the body, but continues an
active though invisible existence around us. The
neospiritualistic theory, however, professes only very vague
notions as to the life led by these discarnate spirits. Are they
more intelligent than they were when they inhabited their flesh?
Do they possess a wider understanding and mightier faculties than
ours? Up to the present, we have not the unimpeachable facts that
would permit us to say so. It would seem, on the contrary, if the
discarnate spirits really continue to exist, that their life is
circumscribed, frail, precarious, incoherent and, above all, not
very long. To this the objection is raised that it only appears
so to our feeble eyes. The dead among whom we move without
knowing it struggle to make themselves understood, to manifest
themselves, but dash themselves against the inpenetrable wall of
our senses, which, created solely to perceive matter, remain
hopelessly ignorant of all the rest, though this is doubtless the
essential part of the universe. That which will survive in us,
imprisoned in our body, is absolutely inaccessible to that which
survives in them. The utmost that they can do is occasionally to
cause a few glimmers of their existence to penetrate the fissures
of those singular organisms known as mediums. But these vagrant,
fleeting, venturous, stifled, deformed glimmers can but give us a
ludicrous idea of a life which has no longer anything in common
with the life--purely animal for the most part- which we lead on
this earth. It is possible; and there is something to be said for
the theory. It is at any rate remarkable that certain
communications, certain manifestations have shaken the scepticism
of the coldest and most dispassionate men of science, men utterly
hostile to supernatural influences. In order to some extent to
understand their uneasiness and their astonishment, we need only
read--to quote but one instance among a thousand--a disquieting
but unassailable article, entitled, Dans les regions inexplorees
de la biologic humaine. Observations et experiences sur Eusapia
Paladino, by Professor Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological
Institute of the University of Naples.[2] Seldom have experiments
in the domain of mediums or spirits been conducted with more
distrustful suspicion or with more implacable scientific
strictness. Nevertheless, scattered limbs, pale, diaphanous but
capable hands, suddenly appeared in the little physiological
laboratory of Naples University, with its doors heavily padlocked
and sealed, as it were, mathematically excluding any possibility
of fraud; these same hands worked apparatus specially intended to
register their touches; lastly, the outline of something black,
of a head, uprose between the curtains of the mediumistic
cabinet, remained visible for several seconds and did not retire
until itself apparently frightened by the exclamations of
surprise drawn from a group of scientists who, after all, were
prepared for anything; and Professor Bottazzi confesses that it
was then that, to quote his own words--measured words, as beseems
a votary of science, but expressive--he felt "a shiver all
through his body."
[1] On the same grounds, we will also leave on one side the
theosophical hypothesis, which, like the others, begins by
calling for an act of adherence, of blind faith. Its
explanations, though often ingenious, are no more than forcible
but gratuitous asservations and, as I said in Our Eternity, do
not give us the shadow of the commencement of a proof.
[2] Annales des Sciences Psychiques: April November 1907.
It was one of those moments in which a doubt which one had
thought for ever abolished grips the most unbelieving. For the
first time, perhaps, he looked around him with uncertainty and
wondered in what world he was. As for the faithful adherents of
the unknown, who had long understood that we must resign
ourselves to understanding nothing and he prepared for every sort
of surprise there was here, all the same, even for them, a
mystery of another character, a bewildering mystery, the only
really strange mystery, more torturing than all the others
together, because it verges upon ancestral fears and touches the
most sensitive point of our destiny.
4
The spiritualistic argument most worthy of attention is that
supplied by the apparitions of the dead and by haunted houses. We
will take no account of the phantasms that precede, accompany or
follow hard upon death: they are explained by the transmission of
a violent motion from one subconsciousness to another; and, even
when they are not manifested until several days after death, it
may still he contended that they are delayed telepathic
communications. But what are we to say of the ghosts that spring
up more than a year, nay, more than ten years after the
disappearance of the corpse? They are very rare, I know, but
after all there are some that are extremely difficult to deny,
for the accounts of their actions are attested and corroborated
by numerous and trustworthy witnesses. It is true that here
again, where it is in most cases a question of apparitions to
relations or friends, we may be told that we are in the presence
of telepathic incidents or of hallucinations of the memory. We
thus deprive the spiritualists of a new and considerable province
of their realm. Nevertheless, they retain certain private
desmesnes into which our telepathic explanations do not penetrate
so easily. There have in fact been ghosts that showed themselves
to people who had never known or seen them in the flesh. They are
more or less closely connected with the ghosts in haunted houses,
to which we must revert for a moment.
As I said above, it is almost impossible honestly to deny the
existence of these houses. Here again the telepathic
interpretation enforces itself in the majority of cases. We may
even allow it a strange but justifiable extension, for its limits
are scarcely known. It has happened fairly often, for instance,
that ghosts come to disturb a dwelling whose occupiers find, in
response to their indications, bones hidden in the walls or under
the floors. It is even possible, as in the case of William
Moir,[1] which was as strictly conducted and supervised as a
judicial enquiry, that the skeleton is buried at some distance
from the house and dates more than forty years back. When the
remains are removed and decently interred, the apparitions cease.
[1] Proceedings, vol. vi., pp. 35-41.
But even in the case of William Moir there is no sufficient
reason for abandoning the telepathic theory. The medium, the
"sensitive," as the English say, feels the presence or the
proximity of the bones; some relation established between them
and him--a relation which certainly is profoundly
mysterious--makes him experience the last emotion of the deceased
and sometimes allows him to conjure up the picture and the
circumstances of the suicide or murder, even as, in telepathy
between living persons, the contact of an inanimate object is
able to bring him into direct relation with the subconsciousness
of its owner. The slender chain connecting life and death is not
yet entirely broken; and we might even go so far as to say that
everything is still happening within our world.
But are there cases in which every link, however thin, however
subtle we may deem it, is definitely shattered? Who would venture
to maintain this? We are only beginning to suspect the
elasticity, the flexibility, the complexity of those invisible
threads which bind together objects, thoughts, lives, emotions,
all that is on this earth and even that which does not yet exist
to that which exists no longer. Let us take an instance in the
first volume of the Proceedings: M, X. Z., who was known to most
of the members of the Committee on Haunted Houses, and whose
evidence was above suspicion, went to reside in a large old
house, part of which was occupied by his friend Mr. G--. Mr. X.
Z. knew nothing of the history of the place except that two
servants of Mr. G--'s had given him notice on account of strange
noises which they had heard. One night--it was the 22nd of
September--Mr. X. Z., on his way up to his bedroom in the dark,
saw the whole passage filled with a dazzling and uncanny light,
and in this strange light he saw the figure of an old man in a
flowered dressing-gown. As he looked, both figure and light
vanished and he was left in pitch darkness. The next day,
remembering the tales told by the two servants, he made enquiries
in the village. At first he could find out nothing, but finally
an old lawyer told him that he had heard that the grandfather of
the present owner of the house had strangled his wife and then
cut his own throat on the very spot where Mr. X. Z. had seen the
apparition. He was unable to give the exact date of this double
event; but Mr. X. Z. consulted the parish register and found that
it had taken place on a 22nd of September.
On the 22nd of September of the following year, a friend of Mr.
G--'s arrived to make a short stay. The morning after his
arrival, he came down, pale and tired, and announced his
intention of leaving immediately. On being questioned, he
confessed that he was afraid, that he had been kept awake all
night by the sound of groans, blasphemous oaths and cries of
despair, that his bedroom door had been opened, and so forth.
Three years afterwards, Mr. X. Z. had occasion to call on the
landlord of the house, who lived in London, and saw over the
mantelpiece a picture which bore a striking resemblance to the
figure which he had seen in the passage. He pointed it out to his
friend Mr. G--, saying:
"That is the man whom I saw."
The landlord, in reply to their questions, said that the painting
was a portrait of his grandfather, adding that he had been "no
credit to the family."
Evidently, this does not in any way prove the existence of ghosts
or the survival of man. It is quite possible that, in spite of
Mr. X. Z.'s undoubted good faith, imagination played a subtle but
powerful part in these marvels. Perhaps it was set going by the
stories of the two servants, insignificant gossip to which no
attention was paid at the time, but which probably found its way
down into the weird and fertile depths of the subconsciousness.
The image was next transmitted by suggestion to the visitor
frightened by a sleepless night. As for the recognition of the
portrait, this is either the weakest or the most impressive part
of the story, according to the theory that is being defended.
It is none the less certain that there is some unfairness in
suggesting this explanation for every incident of the kind. It
means stretching to the uttermost and perhaps stretching too far
the elastic powers of that amiable maid-of-all-work, telepathy.
For that matter, there are cases in which the telepathic
interpretation is even more uncertain, as in that described by
Miss R. C. Morton in vol. viii. of the Proceedings.
The story is too long and complicated to be reproduced here. It
is unnecessary to observe that, in view of the character of Miss
Morton, a lady of scientific training, and of the quality of the
corroborative testimony, the facts themselves seem incontestable.
The case is that of a house built in 1860, whose first occupier
was an Anglo-Indian, the next tenant being an old man and the
house then remaining unlet for four years. In 1882, when Captain
Morton and big family moved in, there had never, so far as they
knew, been any question of its being haunted. Three months
afterwards, Miss Morton was in her room and on the point of
getting into bed, when she heard some one at the door and went to
it, thinking that it might be her mother. On opening the door,
she found no one there, but, going a few steps along the passage,
she saw a tall lady, dressed in black, standing at the head of
the stair. She did not wish to make the others uneasy and
mentioned the occurrence to no one except a friend, who did not
live in the neighborhood.
But soon the same figure dressed in black was seen by the various
members of the household, by a married sister on a visit to the
house, by the father, by the other sister, by a little boy, by a
neighbour, General A--, who saw a lady crying in the orchard and,
thinking that one of the daughters of the house was ill, sent to
enquire after her. Even the Mortons' two dogs on more than one
occasion clearly showed that they saw the phantom.
It was, as a matter of fact very harmonious: it said nothing; it
wanted nothing; it wandered from room to room, without any
apparent object; and, when it was spoken to, it did not answer
and only made its escape. The household became accustomed to the
apparition; it troubled nobody and inspired no terror. It was
immaterial, it could not be touched, but yet it intercepted the
light. After making enquiries, they succeeded in identifying it
as the second wife of the Anglo-Indian. The Morton family had
never seen the lady, but, from the description which they gave of
the phantom to those who had known her, it appeared that the
likeness was unmistakable. For the rest, they did not know why
she came back to haunt a house in which she had not died. After
1887, the appearances became less frequent, distinct, ceasing
altogether in 1889.
5
Let us assume that the facts as reported in the Proceedings are
certain and indisputable. We have very nearly the ideal case,
free from previous or ambient suggestion. If we refuse to believe
in the existence of ghosts, if we are absolutely positive that
the dead do not survive their death, then we must admit that the
hallucination took birth spontaneously in the imagination of Miss
Morton, an unconscious medium, and was subsequently trained by
telepathy to all those around her. In my opinion, this
explanation, however arbitrary and severe it may be, is the one
which it behooves us to accept, pending further proofs. But it
must be confessed that, in thus extending our incredulity, we
render it very difficult for the dead to make its existence
known.
We possess a certain number of cases of kind, rigorously
investigated, cases probably representing but an infinitesimal
part of those which might be collected. Is it possible that they
one and all elude the telepathic explanation? It would be
necessary to make a study of them, conducted with the most
scrupulous and unremitting attention; for the question is not
devoid of interest. If the existence of ghosts were
well-established, it would mean the entrance into this world,
which we believe to be our world, of a new force that would
explain more than one thing which we are still far from
understanding. If the dead interfere at one point, there is a
reason why they should not interfere at every other point. We
should no longer be alone, among ourselves, in our
hermetically-closed sphere, as we are perhaps only too ready to
imagine it. We should have to alter more than one of our physical
and moral laws, more than one of our ideas; and it would no doubt
be the most important and the most extraordinary revelation that
would be expected in the present state of our knowledge and since
the disappearance of the old positive religions. But we are not
there yet: the proof of all this is still in the nursery-stage;
and I do not know if it will ever get beyond that. Nevertheless
the fact remains that, in these impenetrable regions of mystery
which we are now exploring, the one weak spot lies here, the one
wall in which there seems to be a chink--a strange one
enough--giving a glimpse into the other world. It is narrow and
vague and behind it there is still darkness; but it is not
without significance and we shall do well not to lose sight of
it.
6
Let us observe that this survival of the dead, as the
neospiritualists conceive it, seems much less improbable since we
have been studying more closely the manifestations of the
extraordinary and incontestable spiritual force that lies hidden
within ourselves. It is not dependent in our thought, nor on our
consciousness, nor on our will; and very possibly it is not
dependent either on our life. While we are still breathing on
this earth it is already surmounting most of the great obstacles
that limit and paralyse our existence. It acts at a distance and
so to speak without organs. It passes through matter,
disaggregates it and reconstitutes it. It seems to possess, the
gift of ubiquity. It is not subject to the laws of gravity and
lifts weights out of all proportion with the real and measurable
strength of the body whence it is believed to emanate. It
releases and removes itself from that body; it comes and goes
freely and takes to itself substances and shapes which it borrows
all around it; and therefore it is no longer so strange to see it
surviving for a time that body to which it does not appear to be
as indissolubly bound as is our conscious existence. Is it
necessary to add that this survival of a part of ourselves which
we hardly know and which besides seems incomplete, incoherent and
ephemeral is wholly without prejudice to nor fate in the eternity
of the worlds? But this is a question which we are not called
upon to study here.
I shall perhaps be asked:
"If it is becoming increasingly difficult for all these
facts--and there are more of them accumulating every day--to be
embraced in the telepathic or psychometric theory, why not
frankly accept the spiritualistic explanation, which is the
simplest, which has an answer for everything and which is
gradually encroaching on all the others?"
That is true: it is the simplest theory, perhaps too simple; and,
like the religious theory, it dispenses as from all effort or
seeking. We have nothing to set against it but the mediumistic
theory, which doubtless does not account exactly for a good many
things, but which at least is on the same side of the hill of
life as ourselves and remains among us, upon our earth, within
reach of our eyes, our hands, our thoughts and our researches.
There was a time when lightning, epidemics and earthquakes were
attributed without distinction to the wrath of Heaven. Nowadays,
when we are more or less familiar with the source of the great
infectious diseases, the hand of Providence knows them no more;
and, though we are still ignorant of the nature of electricity
and the laws that regulate seismic shocks, we no longer dream,
while waiting to learn more about them, of looking for their
causes in the judgment or anger of an imaginary Being. Let us act
likewise in the present case. It behooves us above all to avoid
those rash explanations which, in their haste, leave by the
roadside a host of things that appear to be unknown or unknowable
only because the necessary effort has not yet been made to know
them. After all, while we must not eliminate the spiritualistic
theory, neither must we content ourselves with it. It is even
preferable not to linger over it until it has supplied us with
decisive arguments, for it is the duty of this theory which
sweeps us roughly out of our sphere to furnish us with such
arguments. For the present, it simply relegates to posthumous
regions, phenomena that appear to occur within ourselves; it adds
superfluous mystery and needless difficulty to the mediumistic
mystery whence it springs. If we were concerned with facts that
had no footing in this world, we should certainly have to turn
our eyes in another direction; but we see a large number of
actions performed which are of the same nature as those
attributed to the spirits and equally inexplicable, actions with
which, however, we know that they have nothing to do. When it is
proved that the dead exercise some intervention, we will bow
before the fact as willingly as we bow before the mediumistic
mysteries: it is a question of order, of internal policy and of
scientific method much more than of probability, preference or
fear. The hour has not yet come to abandon the principle which I
have formulated elsewhere with respect to our communications with
the dead, namely, that it is natural that we should remain at
home, in our own world, as long as we can, as long as we are not
violently driven from it by a series of irresistible and
incontrovertible proofs coming from the neighbouring abyss. The
survival of a spirit is no more improbable than the prodigious
faculties which we are obliged to attribute to the mediums if we
deny them to the dead. But the existence of mediums is beyond
dispute, whereas that of spirits is not; and it is therefore for
the spirits or for those who make use of their name to begin by
proving that they must. Before turning towards the mystery beyond
the grave, let us first exhaust the possibilities of the mystery
here on earth.