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 Inst.i.tute, director of the Pasteur Inst.i.tute, 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 a.s.suming 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 ent.i.ty 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 a.s.sa.s.sins?

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 hara.s.sing 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 ident.i.ty 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. n.o.body 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 a.n.a.lysis, a dim obscurity remains hanging over the causes. Unknown psychic forces: fugitive ent.i.ties; 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 n.o.body is astonished by it. However, a.n.a.lyse 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-gla.s.ses 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 a.n.a.lyse 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 mult.i.tude 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 s.p.a.ce and of time in which our material senses exist do not represent the real nature of s.p.a.ce and time, that our estimates and our measures are essentially relative, that the soul, the spirit, the thinking ent.i.ty, does not occupy s.p.a.ce. 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 cla.s.s; 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 n.o.body?

These unconscious souls,--that is to say, the mult.i.tude,--do they not disappear at death into the surrounding ether, and do they not const.i.tute a kind of psychic atmosphere, in which a subtle a.n.a.lysis 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.