CROSS CORRESPONDENCE
1
This is where things stood when, of late years, the mediums, the
spiritualists, or, rather, it appears, the spirits themselves—for one
cannot tell exactly with whom we have to do—perhaps dissatisfied at not
being more definitely recognized and understood, invented, for a more
effectual proof of their existence, what has been called “cross
correspondence.” Here, the position is reversed: it is no longer a
question of various and more or less numerous spirits revealing
themselves through the agency of one and the same medium, but of a
single spirit manifesting itself almost simultaneously through several
mediums often at great distances from one another and without any
preliminary understanding among themselves. Each of these messages,
taken alone, is usually unintelligible and yields a meaning only when
laboriously combined with all the others.
As Sir Oliver Lodge says:
“The object of this ingenious and complicated effort clearly is to prove
that there is some definite intelligence underlying the phenomena,
distinct from that of any of the automatists, by sending fragments of a
message or literary reference which shall be unintelligible to each
separately—so that no effective mutual telepathy is possible between
them—thus eliminating or trying to eliminate what had long been
recognized by all members of the Society for Psychical Research as the
most troublesome and indestructible of the semi-normal hypotheses. And
the further object is evidently to prove as far as possible, by the
substance and quality of the message, that it is characteristic of the
one particular personality who is ostensibly communicating, and of no
other.”[13]
The experiments are still in their early stages; and the most recent
volumes of the _Proceedings_ are devoted to them. Although the
accumulated mass of evidence is already considerable, there is no
conclusion to be drawn from it as yet; and, in any case, whatever the
spiritualists may say, the suspicion of telepathy seems to me to be in
no way removed. The experiments form a rather fantastic literary
exercise, one much superior, intellectually, to the ordinary
manifestations of the mediums; but, up to the present, there is no
reason for placing their mystery in the other world rather than in this.
Men have tried to see in them a proof that somewhere, in time or space,
or else beyond both, there is a sort of immense cosmic reserve of
knowledge upon which the spirits go and draw freely. But, if the reserve
exist, which is very possible, nothing tells us that it is not the
living rather than the dead who repair to it. It is very strange that
the dead, if they really have access to the immeasurable treasure,
should bring back nothing from it but a kind of ingenious child’s
puzzle, although it ought to contain myriads of lost or forgotten
notions and acquirements, heaped up during thousands and thousands of
years in abysses which our mind, weighed down by the body, can no longer
penetrate, but which nothing seems to close against the investigations
of freer and more subtle activities. They are evidently surrounded by
innumerable mysteries, by unsuspected and formidable truths that loom
large on every side. The smallest astronomical or biological revelation,
the least secret of olden time, such as that of the temper of copper,
possessed by the ancients, an archæological detail, a poem, a statue, a
recovered remedy, a shred of one of those unknown sciences which
flourished in Egypt or Atlantis: any of these would form a much more
decisive argument than hundreds of more or less literary reminiscences.
Why do they speak to us so seldom of the future? And for what reason,
when they do venture upon it, are they mistaken with such disheartening
regularity? One would think, rather, that, in the sight of a being
delivered from the trammels of the body and of time, the years, whether
past or future, ought all to lie outspread on one and the same
plane.[14] We may, therefore, say that the ingenuity of the proof turns
against it.
All things considered, as in the other attempts and notably those of the
famous medium Stainton Moses, there is the same characteristic inability
to bring us the veriest particle of truth or knowledge of which no
vestige could be found in a living brain or in a book written on this
earth. And yet it is inconceivable that there should not somewhere exist
a knowledge that is not as ours and truths other than those which we
possess here below.
The case of Stainton Moses, whose name we have just mentioned, is a very
striking one in this respect. This Stainton Moses was a dogmatic,
hard-working clergyman, whose learning, Myers tells us, in the normal
state, did not exceed that of an ordinary schoolmaster. But he was no
sooner “entranced” before certain spirits of antiquity or of the middle
ages, who are hardly known save to profound scholars, among others St.
Hippolytus, Bishop of Ostia, Plotinus, Athenodorus, the tutor of
Augustus, and, more particularly, Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus, took
possession of his person and manifested themselves through his agency.
Now Grocyn, for instance, furnished certain information about Erasmus
which was at first thought to have been gathered in the other world, but
which was subsequently discovered in forgotten, but nevertheless
accessible books. On the other hand, Stainton Moses’ integrity was never
questioned for an instant by those who knew him; and we may therefore
take his word for it when he declares that he had not read the books in
question. Here again, the mystery, inexplicable though it be, seems
really to lie hidden in the midst of ourselves. It is unconscious
reminiscence, if you will, suggestion at a distance, subliminal reading,
but, no more than in cross correspondence, is it indispensable to have
recourse to the dead and to drag them by main force into the riddle,
which, seen from our side of the grave, is dark and impassioned enough
as it is. Furthermore, we must not insist unduly on this cross
correspondence. We must remember that the whole thing is in its earliest
stages and that the dead appear to have no small difficulty in grasping
the requirements of the living.
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Footnote 13:
_The Survival of Man_, Chap. xxv, p. 325.
Footnote 14:
In this connexion, however, we find two or three rather perturbing
facts, a remarkable one being, at a spiritualistic meeting held by the
late W. T. Stead, the prediction of the murder of King Alexander and
Queen Draga, described with the most circumstantial details. A
verbatim report of this prediction was drawn up and signed by some
thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to beg the Servian minister
in London to warn the king of the danger that threatened him. The
event took place, as announced, a few months later. But “precognition”
does not necessarily require the intervention of the dead; moreover,
every case of this kind, before being definitely accepted, would call
for prolonged investigation in every particular.
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2
In regard to this subject, as to the others, the spiritualists are fond
of saying:
“If you refuse to admit the agency of spirits, the majority of these
phenomena are absolutely inexplicable.”
Agreed; nor do we pretend to explain them, for hardly anything is to be
explained upon this earth. We are content simply to ascribe them to the
incomprehensible power of the mediums, which is no more improbable than
the survival of the dead and has the advantage of not going outside the
sphere which we occupy and of bearing relation to a large number of
similar facts that occur among living people. Those singular faculties
are baffling only because they are still sporadic and because but a very
short time has elapsed since they received scientific recognition.
Properly speaking, they are no more marvellous than those which we use
daily without marvelling at them: our memory, for instance, our
understanding, our imagination and so forth. They form part of the great
miracle that we are; and, having once admitted the miracle, we should be
surprised not so much at its extent as at its limits.
Nevertheless, to close this chapter, I am not at all of opinion that we
must definitely reject the spiritualistic theory: that would be both
unjust and premature. Hitherto, everything remains in suspense. We may
say that things are still very little removed from the point marked by
Sir William Crookes, in 1874, in an article which he contributed to the
_Quarterly Journal of Science_:
“The difference between the advocates of Psychic Force and the
Spiritualists consists in this—that we contend that there is as yet
insufficient proof of any other directing agent than the Intelligence of
the Medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of Spirits of the Dead;
while the Spiritualists hold it as a faith, not demanding further proof,
that Spirits of the Dead are the sole agents in the production of all
the phenomena. Thus the controversy resolves itself into a pure question
of _fact_, only to be determined by a laborious and long-continued
series of experiments and an extensive collection of psychological
_facts_, which should be the first duty of the Psychological Society,
the formation of which is now in progress.”
Meanwhile, it is saying a good deal that rigorous scientific
investigations have not utterly shattered a theory which so radically
confounds the idea which we were wont to form of death. We shall see
presently why, in considering our destinies beyond the grave, we need
have no reason to linger too long over these apparitions or these
revelations, even though they should really be incontestable and to the
point. They would seem, all told, to be but the incoherent and
precarious manifestations of a transitory state. They would at best
prove, if we were bound to admit them, that a reflexion of ourselves, an
after-vibration of the nerves, a bundle of emotions, a spiritual
silhouette, a grotesque and forlorn image, or, more correctly, a sort of
truncated and uprooted memory can, after our death, linger and float in
a space where nothing remains to feed it, where it gradually becomes wan
and lifeless, but where a special fluid, emanating from an exceptional
medium, succeeds, at moments, in galvanizing it. Perhaps it exists
objectively, perhaps it subsists and revives only in the recollection of
certain sympathies. It would, after all, be not unlikely that the memory
which represents us during our life should continue to do so for a few
weeks or even a few years after our decease. This would explain the
evasive and deceptive character of those spirits which, possessing but a
mnemonic existence, are naturally able to interest themselves only in
matters within their reach. Hence their irritating and maniacal energy
in clinging to the slightest facts, their sleepy dulness, their
incomprehensible indifference and ignorance and all the wretched
absurdities which we have noticed more than once.
But, I repeat, it is much simpler to attribute these absurdities to the
special character and the as yet imperfectly-recognized difficulties of
telepathic communication. The unconscious suggestions of the most
intelligent among those who take part in the experiment are impaired,
disjointed and stripped of their main virtues in passing through the
obscure intermediary of the medium. It may be that they stray, make
their way into certain forgotten corners which the intelligence no
longer visits and thence bring back more or less surprising discoveries;
but the intellectual quality of the aggregate will always be inferior to
that which a conscious mind would yield. Besides, once more, it is not
yet time to draw conclusions. We must not lose sight of the fact that we
have to do with a science which was born but yesterday and which is
groping for its implements, its paths, its methods and its aim in a
darkness denser than the earth’s. The boldest bridge that men have yet
undertaken to throw across the river of death is not to be built in
thirty years. Most sciences have centuries of thankless efforts and
barren uncertainties behind them; and there are, I imagine, few among
the younger of them that can show from the earliest hour, as this one
does, promises of a harvest which may not be the harvest of their
conscious sowing, but which already bids fair to yield much unknown and
wondrous fruit.[15]
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Footnote 15:
To exhaust this question of survival and of communications with the
dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s recent investigations, made
with the assistance of the mediums Smead and Chenoweth (communications
with William James). I ought also to mention Julia’s famous “bureau”
and, above all, the extraordinary sittings of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet
medium, who not only obtains communications in which the dead speak
languages of which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises
apparitions said to be extremely disturbing. I ought, lastly, to
examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano and M.
Rozanne and many other things besides, for spiritualistic
investigation and literature are already piling volume upon volume.
But it was not my intention nor my pretension to make a complete study
of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential point
and to give a general, but accurate idea of this posthumous atmosphere
which no really new and decisive fact has come to unsettle since the
manifestations of which we have spoken.
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