We are told that there are stars which photography alone can reveal, and which, possessing a color imperceptible to our eye, are invisible to us. Then there are the gases through which a human body pa.s.ses without experiencing resistence. Who will say then, that there are not around us invisible beings?

And look at the instinct of the child, of the woman, of feeble beings in general. They fear darkness; isolation makes them afraid. This sentiment is instinctive, irrational. Is it not due to an intuitive perception of the presence of these invisible personages, or forces, against which they are helpless? That is pure hypothesis on my part, but after all it seems to me defensible. As to the number of the invisible beings, I believe they are legion.

2. You ask me whether I have been able to establish their ident.i.ty.

I answer that they sign some name or other, choosing in preference names of ill.u.s.trious persons, in whose mouths they sometimes put the most stupid sort of expressions.

Furthermore the writing frequently ceases abruptly, as if an electric current has just been interrupted, and that without any appreciable reason. Then the writing changes, and sometimes sensible things end in absurdities, etc.

How explain this tangle of contradictions? I was so chafed and fretted by these incoherent results that I had for a long time abandoned the study of psychic forces, when your alluring researches came to wake in me my old self.

If the unconscious doubling of the personality of the individual (his externalization) can, in an extreme case, be sometimes admitted, it seems to me that there are cases in which this explanation becomes possible.

But I will explain. If, as respects the facts which happened to me personally, and _the authenticity of which I affirm to you upon my honor_, there are some in which this externalization could have been possible, there are others in which it seems to me impossible.

Yes, strictly speaking, I might have been able, without suspecting it, to externalize myself, or, rather, unknown to myself, to be influenced by my friend Dolard when, in my own presence, he mentally asked me what had become of the soul of a deceased sister of whose name and very existence I was ignorant; yes, the same thing may, strictly speaking, explain the responses I made to the lady who questioned me on the subject of a marriage and her father, although it would in that case be necessary to suppose that she dictated to me the words that I was writing; yes, my friend Boucaud, who was hunting letters, might, at the moment when he was asking me about them, have thought of that oven, of the existence of which I was ignorant; yes, all of that is (in the last a.n.a.lysis) possible, although it would need a large amount of good will to admit it.

Yes, once more I say--and always with much good will--a table may be under the unconscious domination of a musician present and dictate a musical phrase. But, as it stands, it is difficult to admit the same phenomenon in the case of Victor Hugo, whose curious seances you have just described to the public. Why, just look at this great poet who, when he is asked by the table to put one or more questions _in verse_, and, not feeling that he is man enough, in spite of his genius, to improvise something pa.s.sable, asks for a breathing spell to prepare his questions, and brings them in next day!--and yet you would wish that, on this same next day, a part of himself should perform its functions, _unknown to himself_, and compose _illico_, without any preparation, verses at least as fine as those which he took an entire day to create!--verses of a pitiless logic and more profound than his own!

Yet let us admit even that. You see, dear sir, that I have all the good will possible, and that I have the most profound respect for the scientific method. But can you explain by externalization the case of finding a lost object when one is even ignorant of the way in which the apartment is arranged where it has been lost? or the ability to know, two days in advance, of the death of a person about whom one was not thinking at all? A possible coincidence, you will tell me, but at least very strange.

And those inverted dictations? and those in which we are obliged to skip every other letter?

No, I believe that we need not give ourselves so much trouble and rack our brains, for it seems to me that it is like looking for mid-day at two o'clock in the afternoon. It would require the labor of all the devils to explain how this phenomenon can take place in our nature without the knowledge of the proprietor. I do not like to see a part of my personality scampering away, and then housing itself again without my knowing anything about it.

As to what concerns the production of this externalization in a way which I may call voluntary--when a person who feels himself dying thinks intensely about those whom he loves and whose absence he deplores, yes, it may be that his will, even unknown to himself, suggesting the absent person produces the phenomena of telepathy; but, in the phenomena of which we are speaking, that explanation seems to me more than doubtful.

I find much more simple the explanation that the phenomena are caused by the presence and the action of an independent being,--a spirit, phantasm, or elemental.

In fine what are we all seeking? The proof of the survival of the ego, of _the individuality_ after death. _To be or not to be_--it is all in that. For I frankly confess to you if I am going to dissolve away again into the great All, I should just as soon be annihilated. That is perhaps a weakness; but it cannot be helped. I hold above everything else to my individuality; not that I set a great value on it, but the feeling is instinctive and I believe that at bottom everybody is of this opinion. This then is the goal or end, which at all epochs has powerfully interested man and interests him still to-day.

One of the weightiest proofs of the survival of the individual being that I have ever met with is, in my opinion, the vision which my aunt had _several days_ after the death of a friend of hers who, in order to give her a proof of the reality of her apparition, inspired in her by mental suggestion the power of seeing her in the dress she had on in her coffin, _a costume which my aunt had never seen_.

This is one of the fine and rare arguments in favor of the survival of the soul, so far as my experience goes. Many things are explained by this survival,--above all, what is apparently the frightful injustice of this world.

To these important observations of M. Castex-Degrange, I should like to add those of a distinguished scientist, who has also for a long time now devoted himself to the a.n.a.lysis and synthesis of these phenomena. I mean M. Goupil. Some of his studies are yet in ma.n.u.script form, and I am indebted to this savant for permission to use them. Others have been reprinted in a curious brochure (_Pour et Contre_, Tours, 1893). But in citing such a large number of instances and experiments, I am abusing the kindness of my readers, even the most curious and the most eager for knowledge. However, I will at least point out the conclusions drawn by M.

Goupil from his personal experiences. They are to be found in the work of which I have just spoken, and are as follows:

Table-turning seances yield very insignificant results, regarded as pure science obtained from the spirits; but they are not lacking in interest from the point of view of the a.n.a.lysis of the facts and of the science to be established in accordance with the causes and the laws which govern these phenomena.

I believe that I can draw the conclusion from these phenomena that two theories (the _reflex_ and the _Spiritualistic_) may be drawn from the facts. It seems to me impossible to maintain that an intelligent agent other than that of the experimenters is not operative in them. What is this intelligence? I believe it is very hazardous to express a confident opinion on this point in view of the incongruity of all these communications.

It is also undeniable that the intellects of the operators enter into the phenomena to a great extent, and that in many cases they alone seem to act.

I should perhaps be sufficiently near the truth if I gave the following definition of the phenomenon:

_Functions external to the animistic principle of the operators, and above all of the medium, and governed by their intellects, but sometimes a.s.sociated with an intellect unknown and relatively independent of man._

Experimenters have maintained that communications obtained from the so-called spirits through mediums never show more intellectual capacity than is possessed by the most intelligent person among the sitters. This a.s.sertion is generally justified, but it is not absolute.

I will mention, in connection with this point, some seances which took place at my house. The medium was Mme. G., whose life I had been familiar with for twenty-seven years, day by day, and consequently had an intimate acquaintance with her character, her manners, temperament and education.

The communications which were obtained through mediumistic writing in these seances extended over a period of more than fifteen months.

Mme. G. had the sense of a kind of _mental_, rather than auricular, psychical rather than physical, audition which dictated to her what she had to write in bits of sentences one after another; and this impression was accompanied by a strong desire to write, somewhat like the intense longing that a woman with child experiences.

If this medium gave her attention to the sense of the writing during the composition, the current of power was shut off, and everything resumed the state of ordinary composition. Her condition was that of a clerk writing unconcernedly and mechanically under the dictation of a superior. It resulted from this that the writings, executed at the maximum speed of the subject, and generally without r.e.t.a.r.dation or stoppage after the questions, were in one long string, without punctuation or paragraphs, and full of mistakes in spelling, resulting from the fact that the medium was acquainted with the sense of the writing only when she had read it over, at least in the case of rather long communications.

The gist or substance of the _writings_ seems very frequently to be drawn from our ideas, our conversation, our reading, or our thoughts; but there are certain plainly marked exceptions.

While Mme. G. was writing, I applied myself to other occupations,--calculations, music, etc., or I walked up and down in the room; but I only examined the replies when she had stopped writing.

Nothing indicated that the physical and physiological condition of the medium during these writings was in any way different from that of her ordinary condition. Mme. G. could interrupt her writing at will and apply herself to other occupations or make responses about things unconnected with the seance, and it never happened that she found herself short of an answer.

There is no parallelism between these writings and the mental endowments of Mme. G., either in promptness of repartee, in breadth of view, or in philosophic depth.

In 1890 I bought Flammarion's _Uranie_, which Mme. G. did not read until 1891. I found in it doctrines absolutely similar to those which I had deduced from my experiments and from our communications. Any one who should compare these mediumistic writings with the philosophical works of the French astronomer would be led to believe that Mme. G.

had previously read them.

Psychic phenomena have this peculiarity, that identical a.s.sertions are made in far distant places through mediums who have never known each other,--a fact which would tend to demonstrate that, running through many declarations which apparently contradict each other, there is a certain uniformity of action on the part of the intelligent occult power.

In 1890 I also read the work of Dr. Antoine Cros, _The Problem_, in which I also found astonishing agreements between the ideas of this author and those of our Unknown Inspirer,--among others this: that man himself creates his Paradises and becomes that to which he has aspired.

We should always seek the simplest explanation of the facts, without desiring to find the occult in them, and above all without looking for spirits everywhere, but also without wishing, under any circ.u.mstances, to reject the intervention of unknown agents and deny the facts when they cannot be explained.

It is rather curious to remark that if we compare the dictations given by the tables and the other so-called mediumistic phenomena with observations made in conditions of natural or hypnotic somnambulism, we find the same phases of incoherence, hesitation, error, lucidity and supernormal excitation of the faculties.

On the other hand, the supernormal excitation of the faculties neither explains the cases of prediction nor the citation of unknown facts. In the case of many telepathic or other phenomena every explanation limps that excludes the intervention of external intelligences. But it is still impossible to formulate a theory. There exists a gap to be filled by new discoveries.[79]

I will add to these conclusions two short extracts from a letter which M.

Goupil wrote me on the 13th of April, 1899, and from another one on the 1st of June, in the same year.

1. Replying to the request which you address to your readers, I will say that I have never observed telepathic cases, but that I have for a long time been experimenting with the phenomena _called_ Spiritualistic, of which I was a simple a.n.a.lyst. I have come to no conclusions as to explanatory theories. However, I consider it _probable_ that there exists powerful intelligences other than human that intervene under certain circ.u.mstances. My opinion is based upon a large number of very curious personal occurrences. In my opinion, we have not in these phenomena the appearance of simple coincidences, but of circ.u.mstances willed, foreseen, and produced by an intelligent _x_.

2. Of the ensemble--of all that I have seen--there is simultaneously the reflex action of the experimenters and an independent personality.

This hypothesis seems to me true, while I should make at the same time this reservation, that the personality or spirit is not a finished being, with limitations of form, such as an invisible man would have, going, coming and executing commissions for human beings. I have glimpses of a grander and vaster system.

Take a handful of the ocean, and you have _water_.

Take a handful of the atmosphere, and you have _air_.

Take a handful of s.p.a.ce, and you have _mind_.

That is the way I interpret it. That is why mind is always present, ready to respond when it finds in any place a stimulus that incites it, and an organism which permits it to manifest itself.

Let us confess that the problem is complex and that it is good to compare all the hypotheses.[80]