Mysterious Psychic Forces
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Title: Mysterious Psychic Forces
Author: Camille Flammarion
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MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC FORCES
MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC FORCES
AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR'S INVESTIGATIONS
IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, TOGETHER WITH
THOSE OF OTHER EUROPEAN SAVANTS
BY CAMILLE FLAMMARION
_Director of Observatory of Jovisy,
France. Author of "The Unknown,"
"The Atmosphere," etc._
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
1909
_Copyright, 1907_,
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & CO.
_All rights reserved._
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
_He who pronounces anything to be "impossible," outside of the field of
pure mathematics, is wanting in prudence._
FRANCOIS ARAGO.
_A learned pedant who laughs at the possible comes very near being an
idiot. To purposely shun a fact, and turn one's back upon it with a
supercilious smile, is to bankrupt Truth._
VICTOR HUGO.
_Science is under bonds, by the eternal principles of honor, to look
fearlessly in the face every problem that is presented to her._
SIR WILLIAM THOMPSON.
PREFACE
The subject treated in the following pages has made great progress in the
course of forty years. Now what we are concerned with in psychical studies
is always unknown forces, and these forces must belong to the natural
order, for nature embraces the entire universe, and everything is
therefore under the sway of her sceptre.
I do not conceal from myself, however, that the present work will excite
discussion and bring forth legimate objections, and will only satisfy
independent and unbiased investigators. But nothing is rarer upon our
planet than an independent and absolutely untrammelled mind, nor is
anything rarer than a true scientific spirit of inquiry, freed from all
personal interest. Most readers will say: "What is there in these studies,
anyway? The lifting of tables, the moving of various pieces of furniture,
the displacement of easy-chairs, the rising and falling of pianos, the
blowing about of curtains, mysterious rappings, responses to mental
questions, dictations of sentences in reverse order, apparitions of hands,
of heads, or of spectral figures,--these are only common place
trivialities or cheap hoaxes, unworthy to occupy the attention of a
scientist or scholar. And what would it all prove even if it were true?
That kind of thing does not interest us."
Well, there are people upon whose heads the sky might tumble without
causing them any unusual emotion.
But I reply: What! is it nothing to know, to prove, to see with one's own
eyes, that there are unknown forces around us? Is it nothing to study our
own proper nature and our own faculties? Are not the mysterious problems
of our being such as are worthy to be inscribed on the program of our
investigation, and of having devoted to them laborious nights and days? Of
course, the independent seeker gets no thanks from anybody for his toil.
But what of that? We work for the pleasure of working, of fathoming the
secrets of nature, and of instructing ourselves. When, in studying the
double stars at the Paris Observatory and cataloguing these celestial
twins, I established for the first time a natural classification of those
distant orbs; when I discovered stellar systems, composed of several
stars, swept onward through immensity by one common impulse; when I
studied the planet Mars and compared all the observations made during two
hundred years in order to obtain at once an analysis and a synthesis of
this next-door neighbor of ours among the planets; when, in examining the
effect of solar radiations I created the new branch of physics to which
has been given the name "radioculture" and caused variations of the most
radical and sweeping nature in the dimensions, the forms, and the colors
of certain plants; when I discovered that a grasshopper, eviscerated and
kept in straw did not die, and that these insects can live for a fortnight
after having had their heads cut off; when I planted in a conservatory of
the Museum of Natural History, in Paris, one of the ordinary oaks of our
woods (_quercus robur_), thinking that, if withdrawn from the changes of
seasons, it would always have green leaves (a thing which everybody can
prove),--when I was doing these things I was working for my own personal
pleasure; but that is no reason why these studies have not been useful in
the developing work of science, and no reason for their not being admitted
within the scope of the practical work of specialists.
It is the same with these psychical studies of ours; only there is a
little more passion and prejudice connected with them. On the one hand,
the sceptics cleave fast to their denials, convinced that they know all
the forces of nature, that all mediums are humbugs, and all experimenters
imbeciles. On the other hand, there are the credulous Spiritualists, who
imagine they always have spirits at their beck and call in a centre-table,
who evoke, with the utmost sang-froid, the spirits of Plato, Zoroaster,
Jesus Christ, St. Augustine, Charlemagne, Shakespeare, Newton, or
Napoleon, and who set about stoning me for the tenth or twentieth time,
affirming that I am sold to the Institute on account of a deep-seated and
obstinate ambition, and that I dare not declare myself in favor of the
identity of the spirits for fear of annoying my illustrious friends. The
individuals of this class refuse to be satisfied just as much as the first
class.
So much the worse for them! I insist on only saying what I know; but I do
say this.
And if what I know is displeasing, so much the worse for the prejudices,
the general ignorance, and the good breeding of these distinguished
gentry, in whose eyes the maximum of happiness consists in an increase of
their fortune, the pursuit of lucrative places, sensual pleasures,
automobile-racing, a box at the Opera, or five-o'clock teas at a
fashionable restaurant, and whose lives are frittered away along paths
that never cross those of the rapt idealist, and who never know the pure
satisfaction of his mind and heart, or the pleasures of thought and
feeling.
As for me, a humble student of the prodigious problem of the universe, I
am only a seeker. What are we? We have scarcely shed a ray more of light
on this point than at the time when Socrates laid down, as a principle,
the maxim, _Know thyself_,--notwithstanding we have measured the distances
of the stars, analyzed the sun, and weighed the worlds of space. Does it
stand to reason that the knowledge of ourselves should interest us less
than that of the macrocosm, the external world? It is not credible. Let
us therefore study on, convinced that all sincere research will further
the progress of humanity.
_Juvisy Observatory, December, 1906._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER
I. On Certain Unknown Natural Forces 1
II. My First Seances In The Allen Kardec Group, And With
The Mediums Of That Epoch 24
III. My Experiments With Eusapia Paladino 63
IV. Other Seances With Eusapia Paladino 135
V. Frauds, Tricks, Deceptions, Impostures, Feats Of
Legerdemain, Mystifications, Impediments 194
VI. The Experiments Of Count De Gasparin 229
VII. The Researches Of Professor Thury 266
VIII. The Experiments Of The Dialectical Society Of London 289
IX. The Experiments Of Sir William Crookes 306
X. Sundry Experiments And Observations 352
XI. My General Inquiry Respecting Observations Of
Unexplained Phenomena 376
XII. Explanatory Hypotheses--Theories And Doctrines--
Conclusions Of The Author 406
INDEX 455
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate I. Complete Levitation of a Table in Professor
Flammarion's Salon through Mediumship of Eusapia
Paladino _Facing page_ 8
Plate II. House of Zoroastre of Jupiter from
Somnambulistic Drawing by Victorien Sardou _After page_ 26
Plate III. Animals' Quarters. House of Zoroastre
of Jupiter from Somnambulistic Drawing by Victorien
Sardou _After page_ 26
Figure 1. The Inclination of the System of Uranus _Page_ 54
Figure 1_a_. Orbits of Satellites of Uranus as Seen
from the Earth _Page_ 56
Plate IV. Plaster Cast of Imprint Made in Putty
without Contact by the Medium Eusapia Paladino _After page_ 76
Plate V. Eusapia Paladino, Showing Resemblance to
the Imprint in Putty _After page_ 76
Plate VI. Photographs Taken by M. G. de Fontenay of
an Experiment in Table Levitation _Facing page_ 82
Plate VII. Plaster Casts of Impressions in Clay
Produced by an Unknown Force _Facing page_ 138
Plate VIII. Drawing from Photograph, Showing Method
of Control by Professors Lombroso and Richet of
Eusapia. Table Completely Raised _Facing page_ 154
Plate IX. Photographs of Levitation of Table
Accompanying Colonel De Rochas' Report _Facing page_ 174
Plate X. Scales Used in Professor Flammarion's
Experiments _Facing page_ 200
Plate XI. Method Used by Eusapia to Surreptitiously
Free her Hand _Facing page_ 206
Plate XII. Cage of Copper Wire, Electrically Charged,
Used by Professor Crookes in the Home Accordion
Experiment _Facing page_ 308
Figure 3. Board and Scale Experiment of Sir William
Crookes _Page_ 312
Figures 4 and 5. Instruments Used in Scale Experiment
by Sir William Crookes _Page_ 5
Figure 6. Glass Vessel Used by Home _Page_ 318
Figure 7. Automatically Registered Chart of Unknown
Force Generated by Mr. Home _Page_ 317
Figures 8, 9, 10. Charts from Sir William Crookes
Instruments Used in Experiments with Mr. Home _Page_ 321
Figures 11 and 12. Third Instrument Devised by Sir
William Crookes for Recording Automatically the
Unknown Force Generated by Home _Page_ 322
Figure 13. Charts Made by Third Instrument _Page_ 323
Figures 14 and 15. Charts Made by Third Instrument _Page_ 324
Plate XIII. Instantaneous Photograph Taken by M. de
Fontenay of Table Levitation Produced by the Medium
Auguste Politi _Facing page_ 368
INTRODUCTION
As long ago as 1865 I published, under the title, _Unknown Natural
Forces_, a little monograph of a hundred and fifty pages which is still
occasionally found in the book-shops, but has not been reprinted. I
reprint here (pp. xiii-xxiii), what I wrote at that time in this critical
study "apropos of the phenomena produced by the Davenport brothers and
mediums in general." It was published by Didier & Co., book-sellers to the
Academy, who had already issued my first two works, _The Plurality of
Inhabited Worlds_ and _Imaginary Worlds and Real Worlds_.
"France has just been engaged in an exciting debate, where the sound of
voices was drowned in a great uproar, and out of which no conclusion has
emerged. A disputation more noisy than intelligent has been raging around
a whole group of unexplained facts, and so completely muddled the problem
that, in place of illuminating it, the debate has only served to shroud it
in deeper darkness.
"During the discussion a singular remark was frequently heard, to the
effect that those who shouted the loudest in this court of assize were the
very ones who were least informed on the subject. It was an amusing
spectacle to see these persons in a death-grapple with mere phantoms.
Panurge himself would have laughed at it.
"The result of the matter is that less is known to-day upon the subject in
dispute than at the opening of the debates.
"In the mean time, seated upon neighboring heights were certain excellent
old fellows who observed the writs of arrest issued against the more
violent combatants, but who remained for the most part grave and silent,
though they occasionally smiled, and withal did a deal of hard thinking.
"I am going to state what weight should be given to the opinions of those
of us who do not rashly affirm the impossibility of the facts now put
under the ban and who do not add their voices to the dominant note of
opposition.
"I do not conceal from myself the consequences of such sincerity. It
requires a good deal of boldness to insist on affirming, _in the name of
positive science_, the POSSIBILITY of these phenomena (wrongly styled
supernatural), and to constitute one's self the champion of a cause
apparently ridiculous, absurd, and dangerous, knowing, at the same time,
that the avowed adherents of said cause have little standing in science,
and that even its eminent partisans only venture to speak of their
approval of it with bated breath. However, since the matter has just been
treated momentarily in fugitive writings by a group of journalists whose
exacting labors wholly forbid a study of the psychic and physical forces;
and since, of all this multitude of writers, the greater part have only
heaped error upon error, puerility upon extravagance; and since it appears
from every page they have written (I hope they will pardon me) that not
only are they ignorant of the very _a, b, c_ of the subject they have so
fantastically treated, but their opinions upon this class of facts rest
upon no basis whatever,--therefore I have thought it would serve a purpose
if I should leave, as a souvenir of the long wrangle, a piece of writing
better based and buttressed than the lucubrations of the above-mentioned
gentlemen. As a lover of truth, I am willing to face a thousand
reproaches. Be it distinctly understood that I do not for a moment deem my
judgment superior to that of my confreres, some of whom are in other
respects highly gifted. The simple fact is that they are not familiar with
this subject, but are straying in it at random, wandering through a
strange region. They misunderstand the very terminology, and imagine that
facts long ago well authenticated are impossible. By way of contrast, the
writer of these lines will state that for several years he has been
engaged in discussions and experiments upon the subject. (I am not
speaking of historical studies.)
"Moreover, although the old saw would have us believe that 'it is not
always desirable to state the truth,' yet, to speak frankly, I am so
indignant at the overweening presumption of certain polemical opponents,
and at the gall they have injected into the debate, that I do not hesitate
to rise and point out to the deceived public that, _without a single
exception_, all the arguments brought up by these writers, and upon which
they have boldly planted their banner of victory, prove absolutely
_nothing_, NOTHING, against the possible truth of the things which they,
in the fury of their denial, have so perverted. Such a snarl of opinions
must be analyzed. In brief, the true must be disentangled from the false.
_Veritas, veritas!_"
"I hasten to anticipate a criticism on the part of my readers by apprising
them, on the threshold of this plea, that I am not going to take the
Davenport brothers as my subject, but only as the ostensible motive or
pretext of the discussion,--as they have been, for that matter, of the
majority of the discussions. I shall deal in these pages with _the facts_
brought to the surface again by these two Americans,--facts inexplicable
(which they have put on the stage at Herz Hall here in Paris, but which
none the less existed before this _mise-en-scene_, and which none the less
will exist even should the Davenport brothers' representations prove to be
counterfeit),--things which others had already exhibited, and still
exhibit with as much facility and under much better conditions;
occurrences, in short, which constitute the domain of the unknown forces
to which have been given, one after another, five or six names explaining
nothing. These forces, mind you, are as real as the attraction of
gravitation, and as invisible as that. It is about facts that I here
concern myself. Let them be brought to the light by Peter or by Paul, it
concerns us little; let them be imitated by Sosie[1] or parodied by
Harlequin, still less does it concern us. The question is, Do these facts
exist, and do they enter into the category of known physical forces?
"It amazes me, every time I think of it, that the majority of men are so
densely ignorant of the psychic phenomena in question, considering the
fact that they have been known, studied, valued, and recorded for a good
long time now by all who have impartially followed the movement of thought
during the last few lustrums.
"I not only do not make common cause with the Davenport brothers, but I
ought furthermore to add that I consider them as placed in a very
compromising situation. In laying to the account of the supernatural
matters in occult natural philosophy which have a tolerable resemblance to
feats of prestidigitation, they appear to a curious public to add
imposture to insolence. In setting a financial value upon their talents,
they seem to the moralist, who is investigating still unexplained
phenomena, to place themselves on the level of mountebanks. Whatever way
you look at them, they are to blame. Accordingly, I condemn at once both
their grave error in assuming to be superior to the forces of which they
are only the instruments and the venal profit they draw from powers of
which they are not master and which it is no merit of theirs to possess.
In my opinion, it is a piece of exaggeration to draw conclusions from
these unhappy semblances of truth; and it is to abdicate one's right of
private judgment to make one's self but the echo of the vulgar herd who
hiss and shout themselves hoarse before the curtain rises. No, I am not
the advocate of the two brothers, nor of their personal claims. For me,
individual men do not exist. That which I defend is the superiority of
nature to us: that which I fight against is the conceited silliness of
certain persons.
"You satirical gentlemen will have the frankness, I hope, to confess with
me that the different reasons pleaded by you in explanation of these
problems are not so solid as they appear to be. Since you have discovered
nothing, let us admit, between ourselves, that your explanations explain
nothing.
"I do not doubt that, at the point in the discussion which we have
actually reached, you would like to change roles with me, and, stopping me
here, constitute yourselves in turn my questioners.
"But I hasten to anticipate your proposal. As for me, gentlemen, I am not
sufficiently well informed to explain these mysteries. I pass my life in a
retired garden belonging to one of the nine Muses, and my attachment to
this fair creature is such that I have scarcely ever quitted the
approaches to her temple. It is only at intervals, in moments of
relaxation or curiosity, that I have allowed my eyes to wander, from time
to time, over the landscapes which surround it. Therefore ask me nothing.
I am making a sincere confession. I know nothing of the cause of these
phenomena.
"You see how modest I am. All I wanted in undertaking this examination was
to have the opportunity of saying this:
"You know nothing about it.
"Neither do I.
"If you acknowledge this, we can shake hands. And, if you are tractable, I
will tell you a little secret.
"In the month of June, 1776 (few among us remember it), a young man
twenty-five years old, named Jouffroy, was making a trial trip on the
river Doubs of a new steamboat forty feet in length and six feet in
breadth. For two years he had been calling the attention of scientific
authorities to his invention; for two years he had been stoutly asserting
that there is a powerful latent energy in steam,--at that time a neglected
asset. All ears were deaf to his words. His only reward was to be
completely isolated and neglected. When he passed through the streets of
Baume-les-Dames, his appearance was the signal for jests innumerable. He
was dubbed 'Jouffroy, the Steam Man' ('_Jouffroy-la-Pompe_'). Ten years
later, having built a pyroscaphe [literally, fireboat] which had ascended
the Saone from Lyons to the island of Barbe, he presented a petition to
Calonne, the comptroller-general of finance, and to the Academy of
Sciences. They would not look at his invention!
"On August 9, 1803, Fulton went up the Seine in a new steamboat at the
rate of about four miles an hour. The members of the Academy of Sciences
as well as government officials were present on the occasion. The next day
they had forgotten all about it, and Fulton went to make the fortunes of
Americans.
"In 1791 an Italian at Bologna, named Galvani, having hung on the iron
railing outside his window some skinned frogs which had been used in
making a bouillon for his wife, noted that they moved automatically,
although they had been killed since the evening before. The thing was
incredible, so everybody to whom he told it opposed his statement. Men of
sense would have thought it beneath their dignity to take the trouble to
verify the story, so convinced were they of its impossibility. But Galvani
had noted that the maximum of effect was attained when he joined the
lumbar nerves and the ends of the feet of a frog by a metallic arc of tin
and copper. The frog's muscles then jerked convulsively. He believed it
was due to a nervous fluid, and so lost the fruit of his investigations.
It was reserved for Volta to discover electricity.
"And to-day the globe is threaded with a network of trains drawn by
flame-breathing dragons. Distances have disappeared, annihilated by
improvements in the locomotive. The genius of man has contracted the
dimensions of the earth; the longest voyages are but excursions over
definite lines (the curved paths of the 'ocean lanes'); the most gigantic
tasks are accomplished by the tireless and powerful hand of this unknown
force. A telegraphic despatch flies in the twinkling of an eye from one
continent to another; a man can talk with a citizen of London or St.
Petersburg without getting out of his arm-chair. And these wonders attract
no special notice. We little think through what struggles, bitter
disappointments and persecutions they came into being! We forget that the
impossible of yesterday is the accomplished fact of to-day. So it comes to
pass that we still find men who come to us saying: 'Halt there, you little
fellows! We don't understand you, therefore you don't know what you're
talking about.'
"Very well, gentlemen. However narrow may be your opinions, there is no
reason for thinking that your myopia is to spread over the world. You are
hereby informed that, in spite of you and in spite of your obscurantism
and obstruction tactics, the car of human progress will roll on and
continue its triumphal march and conquest of new forces and powers. As in
the case of Galvani's frog, the laughable occurrences that you refuse to
believe reveal the existence of new unknown forces. There is no effect
without a cause. Man is the least known of all beings. We have learned
how to measure the sun, cross the deeps of space, analyze the light of the
stars, and yet have not dropped a plummet into our own souls. Man is
dual,--_homo duplex_; and this double nature remains a mystery to him. We
think: what is thought? No one can say. We walk: what is that organic act?
No one knows. My will is an immaterial force; all the faculties of my soul
are immaterial. Nevertheless, if I _will_ to move my arm, my will moves
matter. How does it act? What is the mediator between mind and muscle? As
yet no one can say. Tell me how the optic nerve transmits to the thinking
brain the perception of outward objects. Tell me how thought is born,
where it resides, what is the nature of cerebral action. Tell me--but no,
gentlemen: I could question you for ten years on a stretch, and the most
eminent of you could not answer the least of my interrogatories.
"We have here, as in the preceding cases, the unknown element in a
problem. I am far from claiming that the force that comes into play in
these phenomena can one day be financially exploited, as in the case of
electricity and steam. Such an idea has not the slightest interest for me.
But, though differing essentially from these forces, the mysterious
psychic force none the less exists.
"In the course of the long and laborious studies to which I have
consecrated many a night, as a relief or by-play in more important work, I
have always observed in these phenomena the action of a force the
properties of which are to us unknown. Sometimes it has seemed to me
analogous to that which puts to sleep the magnetized subject under the
will of the hypnotizer (a reality this, also slighted even by men of
science). Again, in other circumstances, it has seemed to me analogous to
the curious freaks of the lightning. Still, I believe I can affirm it to
be a force distinct from all that we know, and which more than any other
resembles intelligence.
"A certain savant with whom I am acquainted, M. Fremy, of the Institute,
has recently presented to the Academy of Science, apropos of spontaneous
generation, substances which he has called _semi-organic_. I believe I am
not perpetrating a neologism bolder than this when I say that the force of
which I am speaking has seemed to me to belong to the _semi-intellectual_
plane.
"Some years ago I gave these forces the name _psychic_. That name can be
justified.
"But words are nothing. They often resemble cuirasses, hiding the real
impression that ideas should produce in us. That is the reason why it is
perhaps better not to name a thing that we are not yet able to define. If
we did, we should find ourselves so shackled afterwards as not to have
perfect freedom in our conclusions. It has often been seen in history that
a premature hypothesis has arrested the progress of science, says Grove:
'When natural phenomena are observed for the first time, a tendency
immediately arises to relate them to something already known. The new
phenomenon may be quite remote from the ideas with which one would compare
it. It may belong to a different order of analogies. But this distinction
cannot be perceived, since the necessary data or co-ordinates are
lacking.' Now the theory originally announced is soon accepted by the
public; and when it happens that subsequent facts, different from the
preceding, fail to fit the mould, it is difficult to enlarge this without
breaking it, and people often prefer to abandon a theory now proved
erroneous, and silently ignore the intractable facts. As to the special
phenomena in question in this little volume, I find them implicitly
embodied in three words uttered nearly twenty centuries ago,--MENS AGITAT
MOLEM (mind acting on matter gives it life and motion); and I leave the
phenomena embedded in these words, like fire in the flint. I will not
strike with the steel, for the spark is still dangerous. '_Periculosum est
credere et non credere_' ('It is dangerous to believe and not to
believe'), says the ancient fabulist Phaedrus. To deny facts _a priori_ is
mere conceit and idiocy. To accept them without investigation is weakness
and folly. Why seek to press on so eagerly and prematurely into regions to
which our poor powers cannot yet attain? The way is full of snares and
bottomless pits. The phenomena we are treating in these pages do not
perhaps throw new light upon the solution of the great problem of
immortality, but they invite us to remember that there are in man elements
to study, to determine, to analyze,--elements still unexplained, and which
belong to the psychic realm.
"There has been much talk about Spiritualism in connection with these
phenomena. Some of its defenders have thought to strengthen it by
supporting it on so weak a basis as that. The scoffers have thought they
could positively ruin the creed of the psychics, and, hurling it from its
base, bury it under a fallen wardrobe (_l'eboulement d'une armoire_).[2]
Now the first-named have rather compromised than assisted the cause: the
others have not overturned it after all. Even if it should be proved that
Spiritualism consists only of tricks of legerdemain, the belief in the
existence of souls separate from the body would not be affected in the
slightest degree. Besides, the deceptions of mediums do not prove that
they are always tricky. They only put us on our guard, and induce us to
keep a stern watch upon them.
"As to the psychological question of the soul and the analysis of
spiritual forces, we are just where chemistry was at the time of Albert
the Great: we don't know.
"Can we not then keep the golden mean between negation, which denies all,
and credulity, which accepts all? Is it rational to deny everything that
we cannot understand, or, on the contrary, to believe all the follies that
morbid imaginations give birth to, one after another? Can we not possess
at once the humility which becomes the weak and the dignity which becomes
the strong?
"I end this plea, as I began it, by declaring that it is not for the sake
of the brothers Davenport, nor of any sect, nor of any group, nor, in
short, of any person whatever, that I have entered the lists of
controversy, but solely for the sake of facts the reality of which I
ascertained several years ago, without having discovered their cause.
However, I have no reason to fear that those who do not know me will take
a fancy to misrepresent my thought; and I think that those who are
acquainted with me know that I am not accustomed to swing a censer in any
one's honor. I repeat for the last time: I am not concerned with
individuals. My mind seeks the truth, and recognizes it wherever it finds
it. '_Gallus escam quaerens margaritam reperit._'"[3]
A certain number of my readers have been for some time kindly expressing a
wish for a new edition of this early book. But strictly speaking I could
not do this without considerably enlarging my original plan and composing
an entirely new work. The daily routine of my astronomical labors has
constantly hindered me from devoting myself to that task. The starry
heaven is a vast and absorbing field of work, and it is difficult to turn
aside (even for a relaxation in itself scientific) from the exacting
claims of a science which goes on developing unceasingly at a most
prodigious rate.
Still, the present work may be considered as, in a sense, an enlarged
edition of the earlier one. The foregoing citation of a little book
written for the purpose of proving the existence of unknown forces in
nature has seemed to me necessary here; useful in this new volume, brought
out for the same purpose after more than forty years of study, since it
may serve to show the continuity and consistent development of my thought
on the subject.
MYSTERIOUS PSYCHIC FORCES
CHAPTER I
ON CERTAIN UNKNOWN NATURAL FORCES
I purpose to show in this book what truth there is in the phenomena of
table-turnings, table-movings, and table-rappings, in the communications
received therefrom, in levitations that contradict the laws of gravity, in
the moving of objects without contact, in unexplained noises, in the
stories told of haunted houses,--all to be considered from the physical
and mechanical point of view. Under all the just mentioned heads we can
group material facts produced by causes still unknown to science, and it
is with these physical phenomena that we shall specially occupy ourselves
here; for the first point is to definitely prove, by sufficient
observations, their real existence. Hypotheses, theories, doctrines, will
come later.
In the country of Rabelais, of Montaigne, of Voltaire, we are inclined to
smile at everything that relates to the marvellous, to tales of
enchantment, the extravagances of occultism, the mysteries of magic. This
arises from a reasonable prudence. But it does not go far enough. To deny
and prejudge a phenomenon has never proved anything. The truth of almost
every fact which constitutes the sum of the positive sciences of our day
has been denied. What we ought to do is to admit no unverified statement,
to apply to every subject of study, no matter what, the experimental
method, without any preconceived idea whatever, either for or against.
We are dealing here with a great problem, which touches on that of the
survival of human consciousness. We may study it, in spite of smiles.
When we consecrate our lives to an idea, useful, noble, exalted, we should
not hesitate for a moment to sacrifice personalities; above all, our own
self, our interest, our self-esteem, our natural vanity. This sacrifice is
a criterion by which I have estimated a good many characters. How many
men, how many women, put their miserable little personality above
everything else!
If the forces of which we are to treat are real, they cannot but be
natural forces. We ought to admit, as an absolute principle, that
everything is in nature, even God himself, as I have shown in another
work. Before any attempt at theory, the first thing to do is to
scientifically establish the real existence of these forces.
Mediumistic experiences might form (and doubtless soon will form) a
chapter in physics. Only it is a kind of transcendental physics which
touches on life and thought, and the forces in play are pre-eminently
living forces, psychic forces.
I shall relate in the following chapter the experiments I made between the
years 1861 and 1865, previous to the penning of the protest, reprinted in
the long citation above given (in the Introduction). But, since in certain
respects they are summed up in those I have just had, in 1906, I will
begin by describing the latter in this first chapter.
In fact, I have recently renewed these investigations with a celebrated
medium,--Mme. Eusapia Paladino, of Naples, who has been several times in
Paris; namely, in 1898, 1905, and, very recently, in 1906. The things I am
going to speak of happened in the salon of my home in Paris,--the last
ones in full light without any preparation, very simply, as if during
after-dinner talks.
Let me add that this medium came to Paris during the first months of the
year, 1906, at the invitation of the Psychological Institute, several
members of which have been recently engaged in researches begun long ago.
Among these savants I will mention the name of the lamented Pierre Curie,
the eminent chemist, with whom I had a conversation a few days before his
unfortunate and terrible death. My mediumistic experiences with Mme.
Paladino formed for him a new chapter in the great book of nature, and he
also was convinced that there exist hidden forces to the investigation of
which it is not unscientific to consecrate one's self. His subtle and
penetrating genius would perhaps have quickly determined the character of
these forces.
Those who have given some little attention to these psychological studies
are acquainted with the powers of Mme. Paladino. The published works of
Count de Rochas, of Professor Richet, of Dr. Dariex, of M. G. de Fontenay,
and notably the _Annales des sciences psychiques_, have pointed them out
and described them in such detail that it would be superfluous to recur to
them at this point. Farther on we shall find a place for discussing them.
Running underneath all the observations of the above-mentioned writers,
one dominant idea can be read as if in palimpsest; namely, the imperious
necessity the experimenters are constantly under of suspecting tricks in
this medium (Mme. Paladino). But all mediums, men and women, have to be
watched. During a period of more than forty years I believe that I have
received at my home nearly all of them, men and women of divers
nationalities and from every quarter of the globe. One may lay it down as
a principle that all professional mediums cheat. But they do not always
cheat; and they possess real, undeniable psychic powers.
Their case is nearly that of the hysterical folk under observation at the
Salpetriere or elsewhere. I have seen some of them outwit with their
profound craft not only Dr. Charcot, but especially Dr. Luys, and all the
physicians who were making a study of their case. But, because hysteriacs
deceive and simulate, it would be a gross error to conclude that hysteria
does not exist. And, because mediums frequently descend to the most
brazen-faced imposture, it would not be less absurd to conclude that
mediumship has no existence. Disreputable somnambulists do not forbid the
existence of magnetism, hypnotism, and genuine somnambulism.
This necessity of being constantly on our guard has discouraged more than
one investigator, as the illustrious astronomer Schiaparelli, director of
the Observatory of Milan, specially wrote me, in a letter which will
appear farther on.
Still, we have got to endure this evil.
The words "fraud" (_supercherie_) and "trickery" (_tricherie_) have in
this connection a sense a little different from their ordinary meaning.
Sometimes the mediums deceive purposely, knowing well what they are doing,
and enjoying the fun. But oftener they unconsciously deceive, impelled by
the desire to produce the phenomena that people are expecting.
They help on the success of the experiment when that success is slow in
its appearance. Mediums who deal with objective phenomena are gifted with
the power of causing objects at a distance to move, of lifting tables,
etc. But they usually appear to apply this power at the ends of their
fingers, and the objects to be moved have to be within reach of their
hands or feet, a very regrettable thing, and one which furnishes fine
sport for the prejudiced sceptics. Sometimes the mediums act like the
billiard player, who continues for an instant the gesture of hand and arm,
holding his cue pointed at the rolling ivory ball, and leaning forward as
if by his will he could push it to a carom. He knows very well that he has
no further power over the fate of the ball, which his initial stroke
alone impels; but he guides its course by his thought and his gesture.
It may not be superfluous to caution the reader that the word "medium" is
employed in these pages without any preconceived idea, and not in the
etymological sense in which it took its rise at the time of the first
Spiritualistic theories, which affirmed that the man or the woman endowed
with psychic powers is an inter_mediary_ between spirits and those who are
experimenting. The person who has the power of causing objects to move
contrary to the laws of gravity (even sometimes without touching them), of
causing sounds to be heard at a distance and without any exertion of
muscular force, and of bringing before the eyes various apparitions, has
not necessarily, on that account, any bond of union with disembodied minds
or souls. We shall keep this word "medium," however, now so long in use.
We are concerned here only with facts. I hope to convince the reader that
these things really exist, and are neither illusions nor farces, nor feats
of prestidigitation. My object is to prove their reality with absolute
certainty, to do for them what (in my volume _The Unknown and the Psychic
Problems_) I have done for telepathy, the apparitions of the dying,
premonitory dreams, and clairvoyance.
I shall begin, I repeat, with experiments which I have recently renewed;
namely, during four seances on March 29, April 5, May 30, and June 7, of
1906.
1. Take the case of the levitation of a round table. I have so often seen
a rather heavy table lifted to a height of eight, twelve, sixteen inches
from the floor, and I have taken such undeniably authentic photographs of
these; I have so often proved to myself that the suspension of this
article of furniture by the imposition _upon it_ of the hands of four or
five persons produces the effect of a floating in a tub full of water or
other elastic fluid, that, for me, the levitation of objects is no more
doubtful than that of a pair of scissors lifted by the aid of a magnet.
But one evening when I was almost alone with Eusapia, March 29, 1906
(there were four of us altogether), being desirous of examining at leisure
how the thing was done, I asked her to place her hands with mine upon the
table, the other persons remaining at a distance. The table very soon rose
to a height of fifteen or twenty inches _while we were both standing_. At
the moment of the production of the phenomenon the medium placed one of
her hands on one of mine, which she pressed energetically, our two other
hands resting side by side. Moreover, on her part, as on mine, there was
an act of will expressed in words of command addressed to "the spirit":
"Come now! Lift the table! Take courage! Come! Try now!" etc.
We ascertained at once that there were two elements or constituents
present. On the one hand, the experimenters address an invisible entity.
On the other hand, the medium experiences a nervous and muscular fatigue,
and her weight increases in proportion to that of the object lifted (but
not in exact proportion).
We are obliged to act as if there really were a being present who is
listening. This being appears to come into existence, and then become
non-existent as soon as the experiment is ended. It seems to be created by
the medium. Is it an auto-suggestion of hers or of the dynamic ensemble of
the experimenters that creates a special force? Is it a doubling of her
personality? Is it the condensation of a psychic _milieu_ in the midst of
which we live? If we seek to obtain proofs of actual and permanent
individuality, and above all of the identity of a particular soul called
up in our memory, we never obtain any satisfaction. There lies the
mystery.
Conclusion: we have here an unknown force of the psychic class, a living
force, the life of a moment only.
May it not be possible that, in exerting ourselves, we give rise to a
detachment of forces which acts exteriorly to our body? But this is not
the place, in these first pages, to make hypotheses.
The experiment of which I have just spoken was repeated three times
running, _in the full light_ of a gas chandelier, and under the same
conditions of complete proof in each case. A round table weighing about
fourteen pounds is lifted by this unknown force. A table of twenty-five or
fifty pounds or more requires a greater number of persons. But they will
get no result if one at least among them is not gifted with the
mediumistic power.
And let me add, on the other hand, that there is in such an experiment so
great an expenditure of nervous and muscular energy that such an
extraordinary medium as Eusapia, for instance, can obtain scarcely any
results six hours, twelve hours, even twenty-four hours, after a seance in
which she has so lavishly expended her psychic energy.
I will add that quite often the table continues to rise even after the
experimenters have ceased to touch it. This is _movement without contact_.
This phenomenon of levitation is, to me, absolutely proved, although we
cannot explain it. It is like what would happen if one had his hands
gloved with loadstone, and, placing them on a table of iron, should lift
it from the ground. But the action is not so simple as that: it is a case
of psychic activity exterior to ourselves, momentarily in operation.[4]
Now how are these levitations and movements produced?
How is it that a stick of sealing-wax or a lamp-chimney, when rubbed,
attracts bits of paper or elder pith?
How is it that a particle of iron grips so firmly to the loadstone when
brought near it?
How is it that electricity accumulates in the vapor of water, in the
molecules of a cloud, until it gives rise to the thunder, the thunderbolt,
the lightning flash, and all their formidable results?
How is it that the thunderbolt strips the clothes from a man or a woman
with its characteristic nonchalance?
And (to take a simple instance), without departing from our common and
normal condition of life, how is it that we raise our arm?
2. Take now a specimen of another group of cases. The medium places one of
her hands upon that of some person, and with the other beats the air, with
one, two, three, or four strokes or raps. The raps are heard in the table,
and you feel the vibrations at the same time that you hear them,--sharp
blows which make you think of electric shocks. It is superfluous to state
that the feet of the medium do not touch those of the table, but are kept
at a distance from them.
The medium next places her hands with ours upon the table, and the taps
heard in the table are stronger than in the preceding case.
[Illustration: PLATE I. COMPLETE LEVITATION OF A TABLE IN PROFESSOR
FLAMMARION'S SALON THROUGH MEDIUMSHIP OF EUSAPIA PALADINO.]
These taps audible in the table, this "typtology" well known to
Spiritualists, have been frequently attributed to some kind of trickery or
another, to a cracking muscle or to various actions of the medium. After
the comparative study I have made of these special occurrences I believe I
am right in affirming that this fact also is not less certain than the
first. Rappings, as is well known, are obtained in all kinds of rhythms,
and responses to all questions are obtained through simple conventions, by
which it is agreed, for instance, that three taps shall mean "yes" and two
mean "no," and that, while the letters of the alphabet are being read,
words can be dictated by taps made as each letter is named.
3. During our experiments, while we four persons are seated around a table
asking for a communication which does not arrive, an arm-chair, placed
about twenty-four inches from the medium's foot (upon which I have placed
my foot to make sure that she cannot use hers),--an arm-chair, I say,
begins to move, and comes sliding up to us. I push it back; it returns. It
is a stuffed affair (_pouf_), very heavy, but easily capable of gliding
over the floor. This thing happened on the 29th of last March, and again
on April 5th.
It could have been done by drawing the chair with a string or by the
medium putting her foot sufficiently far out. But it happened over and
over again (five or six times), automatically moving, and that so
violently that the chair jumped about the floor in a topsy-turvy fashion
and ended by falling bottom side up without anybody having touched it.
4. Here is a fourth case re-observed this year, after having been several
times verified by me, notably in 1898.
Curtains near the medium, but which it is impossible for her to touch,
either with the hand or the foot, swell out their whole length, as if
inflated by a gusty wind. I have several times seen them envelop the
heads of the spectators as if with cowls of Capuchin monks.
5. Here is a fifth instance, authenticated by me several times, and always
with the same care.
While I am holding one hand of Eusapia in mine, and one of my astronomical
friends, tutor at the Ecole Polytechnique, is holding the other, we are
touched, first one and then the other, upon the side and on the shoulders,
as if by an invisible hand.
The medium usually tries to get together her two hands, held separately by
each of us, and by a skilful substitution to make us believe we hold both
when she has succeeded in disengaging one. This fraud being well known by
us, we act the part of forewarned spectators, and are positive that we
have each succeeded in holding her hands apart. The touchings in this
experiment seem to proceed from an invisible entity and are rather
disagreeable. Those which take place in the immediate vicinity of the
medium _could_ be due to fraud; but to some of them this explanation is
inapplicable.
This is the place to remark that, unfortunately, the extraordinary
character of the phenomena is in direct ratio with the absence of light,
and we are continually asked by the medium to turn down the gas, almost to
the vanishing point: "_Meno luce! meno luce!_" ("Less light, less light").
This, of course, is advantageous to all kinds of fraud. But it is a
condition no more obligatory than the others. There is in it no
implication of a threat.
We can get a large number of mediumistic phenomena with a light strong
enough for us to distinguish things with certainty. Still, it is a fact
that light is unfavorable to the production of phenomena.
This is annoying. Yet we have no right to impose the opposite condition.
We have no right to demand of nature conditions which happen to suit us.
It would be just as reasonable to try to get a photographic negative
without a dark room, or to draw electricity from a rotating machine in the
midst of an atmosphere saturated with moisture. Light is a natural agent
capable of producing certain effects and of opposing the production of
others.
This aphorism calls to my mind an anecdote in the life of Daguerre,
related in the first edition of this book.
One evening this illustrious natural philosopher meets an elegant and
fashionable woman in the neighborhood of the Opera House, of which he was
at that time the decorator. Enthusiastic over his progress in natural
philosophy, he happens to speak of his photogenic studies. He tells her of
a marvellous discovery by which the features of the face can be fixed upon
a plate of silver. The lady, who is a person of plain common sense,
courteously laughs in his face. The savant goes on with his story, without
being disconcerted. He even adds that it is possible for the phenomenon to
take place instantaneously when the processes become perfected. But he has
his pains for his trouble. His charming companion is not credulous enough
to accept such an extravagance. Paint without colors and without a brush!
design without pen or crayon! as if a portrait could get painted all by
itself, etc. But the inventor is not discouraged, and, to convince her,
offers to make her portrait by this process. The lady is unwilling to be
thought a dupe and refuses. But the skilful artist pleads his cause so
well that he overcomes her objections. The blond daughter of Eve consents
to pose before the object-glass. But she makes one condition,--only one.
Her beauty is at its best in the evening, and she feels a little faded in
the garish light of day.
"If you could take me in the evening--"
"But, madame, it is impossible--"
"Why? You say that your invention reproduces the face, feature by
feature. I prefer my features of the evening over those of the
morning."
"Madame, it is the light itself which pencils the image, and without
it I can do nothing."
"We will light a chandelier, a lamp, do anything to please you."
"No, madame, the light of day is imperative."
"Will you please tell me why?"
"Because the light of the sun exhibits an intense activity, sufficient
to decompose the iodide of silver. So far, I have not been able to
take a photograph except in full sunlight."
Both remained obstinate, the lady maintaining that what could be done at
ten o'clock in the morning could also easily be done at ten o'clock in the
evening. The inventor affirmed the contrary.
So, then, all you have to do, gentlemen, is to forbid the light to blacken
iodine, or order it to blacken lime, and condemn the photographer to
develop his negative in full light. Ask Electricity why it will pass
instantaneously from one end to the other of an iron wire a thousand miles
long and why it refuses to traverse a thread of glass half an inch long.
Beg the night-blooming flowers to expand in the day, or those that only
bloom in the light not to close at dusk. Give me the explanation of the
respiration of plants, diurnal and nocturnal, and of the production of
chlorophyll and how plants develop a green color in the light; why they
breathe in oxygen and exhale carbonic acid gas during the night, and
reverse the process during the day. Change the equivalents of simple
substances in chemistry, and order combinations to be produced. Forbid
azotic acid to boil at the freezing temperature, and command water to boil
at zero. You have only to ask these accommodations and nature will obey
you, gentlemen, depend upon it.
A good many phenomena of nature only occur in obscurity. The germs of
plants, animals, man, in forming a new being, work their miracle only in
the dark.
Here, in a flask, is a mixture of hydrogen and chlorine in equal volumes.
If you wish to preserve the mixture, you must keep the flask in the dark,
whether you want to or not. Such is the law. As long as it remains in the
dark, it will retain its properties. But suppose you take a schoolboy
notion to expose the thing to the action of light. Instantly a violent
explosion is heard; the hydrogen and the chlorine disappear, and you find
in the flask a new substance,--chloridic acid. There is no use in your
finding fault: darkness respects the two substances, while light explodes
them.
If we should hear a malignant sceptic of some clique or other say, "I will
only believe in jack-o'-lanterns when I see them in the light of day,"
what should we think of his sanity? About what we should think if he
should add that the stars are not certainties, since they are only seen at
night.
In all the observations and experiments of physics there are conditions to
be observed. In those of which we are speaking a too strong light seems to
imperil the success of the experiment. But it goes without saying that
precautions against deception ought to increase in direct ratio with the
decrease of visibility and other means of verification.
Let us return to our experiments.
6. Taps are heard in the table, or it moves, rises, falls back, raps with
its leg. A kind of interior movement is produced in the wood, violent
enough, sometimes, to break it. The round table I made use of (with
others) in my home was dislocated and repaired more than once, and it was
by no means the pressure of the hands upon it that could have caused the
dislocations. No, there is something more than that in it: there is in
the actions of the table the intervention of mind, of which I have already
spoken.
The table is questioned, by means of the conventional signs described a
few pages back, and it responds. Phrases are rapped out, usually banal and
without any literary, scientific, or philosophical value. But, at any
rate, words are rapped out, phrases are dictated. These phrases do not
come of their own accord, nor is it the medium who taps
them--consciously--either with her foot or her hand, or by the aid of a
snapping muscle, for we obtain them in seances held without professional
mediums and at scientific reunions where the existence of trickery would
be a thing of the greatest absurdity. The mind of the medium and that of
the experimenters most assuredly have something to do with the mystery.
The replies obtained generally tally the intellectual status of the
company, as if the intellectual faculties of the persons present were
exterior to their brains and were acting in the table wholly unknown to
the experimenters themselves. How can this thing be? How can we compose
and dictate phrases without knowing it. Sometimes the ideas broached seem
to come from a personality unknown to the company, and the hypothesis of
spirits quite naturally presents itself. A word is begun; some one thinks
he can divine its ending; to save time, he writes it down; the table
parries, is agitated, impatient. It is the wrong word; another was being
dictated. There is here, then, a psychic element which we are obliged to
recognize, whatever its nature may be when analyzed.
The success of experiments does not always depend on the will of the
medium. Of course that is the chief element in it; but certain conditions
independent of her are necessary. The psychical atmosphere created by the
persons present has an influence that cannot be neglected. So the state of
health of the medium is not without its influence. If he is fatigued,
although he may have the best will in the world, the value of the results
will be affected. I had a new proof of this thing, so often observed, at
my house, with Eusapia Paladino, on May 30, 1906. She had for more than a
month been suffering from a rather painful affection of the eyes; and
furthermore her legs were considerably swollen. We were seven, of whom two
lookers-on were sceptics. The results were almost nil; namely, the
lifting, during scarcely two seconds of time, of a round table weighing
about four pounds; the tipping up of one side of a four-legged table; and
a few rappings. Still, the medium seemed animated by a real wish to obtain
some result. She confessed to me, however, that what had chiefly paralyzed
her faculties was the sceptical and sarcastic spirit of one of the two
incredulous persons. I knew of the absolute scepticism of this man. It had
not been manifested in any way; but Eusapia had at once divined it.
The state of mind of the by-standers, sympathetic or antipathetic, has an
influence upon the production of the phenomena. This is an incontestable
matter of observation. I am not speaking here merely of a tricky medium
rendered powerless to act by a too close critical inspection, but also of
a hostile force which may more or less neutralize the sincerest volition.
Is it not the same, moreover, in assemblies, large or small, in
conferences, in salons, etc.? Do we not often see persons of baleful and
antipathetic spirit defeat at their very beginning the accomplishment of
the noblest purposes.
Here are the results of another sitting of the same medium held a few days
afterwards.
On the 7th of June, 1906, I had been informed by my friend Dr. Ostwalt,
the skilled oculist, who was at that time treating Eusapia, that she was
to be at his house that evening and that perhaps I would be able to try a
new experiment. I accepted with all the more readiness because the
mother-in-law of the doctor, Mme. Werner, to whom I had been attached by a
friendship of more than thirty years, had been dead a year, and had many a
time promised me, in the most formal manner, to appear after her death for
the purpose of giving completeness to my psychical researches by a
manifestation, if the thing was possible. We had so often conversed on
these subjects, and she was so deeply interested in them, that she had
renewed her promise very emphatically a few days before her death. And at
the same time she made a similar promise to her daughter and to her
son-in-law.
Eusapia, also, on her part, grateful for the care she had received at the
doctor's hands and for the curing of her eye, wished to be agreeable to
him in any way she could.
The conditions, then, were in all respects excellent. I agreed with the
doctor that we had before us four possible hypotheses, and that we should
seek to fix on the most probable one.
_a._ What would take place might be due to fraud, conscious or
unconscious.
_b._ The phenomena might be produced by a physical force emanating from
the medium.
_c._ Or by one or several invisible entities making use of this force.
_d._ Or by Mme. Werner herself.
We had on that evening some movements of the table and a complete lifting
of the four feet to a height of about eight inches. Six of us sat around
the table,--Eusapia, Madame and Monsieur Ostwalt, their son Pierre,
sixteen years old, my wife and myself. Our hands placed above the table
scarcely touched it, and were almost wholly detached at the moment it rose
from the floor. No fraud possible. Full light.
The seance then continued in the dark. The two portieres of a great
double-folding door, against which the medium was seated, her back to the
door, were blown about for nearly an hour, sometimes so violently as to
form something like a monk's hood on the head of the doctor and that of
his wife.
This great door was several times shaken violently, and tremendous blows
were struck upon it.
We tried to obtain words by means of the alphabet, but without success. (I
will remark in this connection that Eusapia knows neither how to read nor
to write.)
Pierre Ostwalt was able to write a word with the pencil. It seemed as if
an invisible force was guiding his hand. The word he pencilled down was
the first name of Mme. Werner, _well known to him_.
In spite of all our efforts, we were unable to obtain a single proof of
identity. Yet it would have been very easy for Mme. Werner to find one, as
she had so solemnly promised us to do.
In spite of the announcement by raps that an apparition would appear which
we would be permitted to see, we were only able to perceive a dim white
form, devoid of precise outline, even when we manipulated the light so as
to get almost complete darkness. From this new sitting the following
conclusions are deduced:
_a._ Fraud cannot explain the phenomena, especially the levitation of the
table, the violent blows and shakings given to the door, and the
projection of the curtain into the room.
_b._ These phenomena are certainly produced by a force emanating from the
medium, for they all occur in her immediate neighborhood.
_c._ This force is intelligent. But it is possible that this intelligence
which obeys our requests is only that of the medium.
_d._ Nothing proves that the spirit evoked had any influence.
These propositions, however, will be examined and developed one by one in
the pages that follow.
All the experiments described in this first chapter reveal to us unknown
forces in operation. It will be the same in the chapters that follow.
These phenomena are so unexplained, so inexplicable, so incredible, that
the simplest plan is to deny them, to attribute them all to fraud or to
hallucination, and to believe that all the participators are sand-blind.
Unfortunately for our opponents, this hypothesis is inadmissible.
Let me say here that there are very few men--and above all, women--whose
spirit is completely _free_; that is, in a condition capable of accepting,
without any preconceived idea, new or unexplained facts. In general,
people are disposed to admit only those facts or things for which they are
prepared by the ideas they have received, cherished, and maintained.
Perhaps there is not one human being in a hundred who is capable of making
a mental record of a new impression, simply, freely, exactly, with the
accuracy of a photographic camera. Absolute independence of judgment is a
rare thing among men.
A single fact accurately observed, even if it should contradict all
science, is worth more than all the hypotheses.
But only the independent minds, free from the classic leading-strings
which tie the dogmatists to their chairs, dare to study extra-scientific
facts or consider them possible.
I am acquainted with erudite men of genius, members of the Academy of
Sciences, professors at the university, masters in our great schools, who
reason in the following way: "Such and such phenomena are impossible
because they are in contradiction with the actual state of science. We
should only admit what we can explain."
They call that scientific reasoning!
Examples.--Frauenhofer discovers that the solar spectrum is crossed by
dark lines. These dark lines could not be explained in his time. Therefore
we ought not to believe in them.
Newton discovers that the stars move _as if_ they were governed by an
attractive force. This attraction could not be explained in his time. Nor
is it explained to-day. Newton himself takes the pains to declare that he
does not wish to explain it by an hypothesis. "_Hypotheses non fingo_" ("I
do not make hypotheses"). So, after the reasoning of our pseudo-logicians,
we ought not to admit universal gravitation. Oxygen combined with hydrogen
forms water. How? We don't know. Hence we ought not to admit the fact.
Stones sometimes fall from the sky. The Academy of Sciences of the
eighteenth century, not being able to divine where they came from, simply
denied the fact, which had been observed for thousands of years. They
denied also that fish and toads can fall from the clouds, because it had
not then been observed that waterspouts draw them up by suction and
transport them from one place to another. A medium places his hand upon a
table and seems actually to transmit to it independent life. It is
inexplicable, therefore it is false. Yet that is the predominant method of
reasoning of a great number of scholars. They are only willing to admit
what is known and explained. They declared that locomotives would not be
able to move, or, if they did succeed, railways would introduce no change
in social relations; that the transatlantic telegraph would never transmit
a despatch; that vaccine would not render immune; and at one time they
stoutly maintained (this was long ago) that the earth does not revolve.
It seems that they even condemned Galileo. _Everything_ has been denied.
Apropos of facts somewhat similar to those we are here studying,--I mean
the stigmata of Louise Lateau,--a very famous German scholar, Professor
Virchow, closed his report to the Berlin Academy with this dilemma: _Fraud
or Miracle_. This conclusion acquired a classic vogue. But it was an
error, for it is now known that stigmata are due neither to fraud nor
miracle.
Another rather common objection is presented by certain persons apparently
scientific. Confounding experience with observation, they imagine that a
natural phenomenon, in order to be real, ought to be able to be produced
at will, as in a laboratory. After this manner of looking at things, an
eclipse of the sun would not be a real thing, nor a stroke of lightning
which sets fire to a house, nor an aerolite that falls from the sky. An
earthquake, a volcanic eruption, are phenomena of observation, not of
experiment. But they none the less exist, often to the great damage of the
human race. Now, in the order of facts that we are studying here, we can
almost never experiment, but only observe, and this reduces considerably
the range of the field of study. And, even when we do experiment, the
phenomena are not produced at will: certain elements, several of which we
have not yet been able to get hold of, intervene to cross, modify, and
thwart them, so that for the most part we can only play the role of
observers. The difference is analogous to that which separates chemistry
from astronomy. In chemistry we experiment: in astronomy we observe. But
this does not hinder astronomy from being the most exact of the sciences.
Mediumistic phenomena that come directly under the observation, notably
those I have described some pages back, have for me the stamp of absolute
certainty and incontestability, and amply suffice to prove that unknown
physical forces exist outside of the ordinary and established domain of
natural philosophy. As a principle, moreover, this is an unimpeachable
tenet.[5]
I could adduce still other instances, for example the following:
7. During seance experiments, phantoms often appear,--hands, arms, a head,
a bust, an entire human figure. I was a witness of this thing, especially
on July 27, 1897, at Montfort-l'Amaury (see Chapter III). M. de Fontenay
having declared that he perceived an image or spirit over the table,
between himself and me (we were sitting face to face, keeping watch over
Eusapia, he holding one of her hands, and I the other), and I seeing
nothing at all, I asked him to change places with me. And then I, too,
perceived this spirit-shadow, the head of a bearded man, rather vaguely
outlined, which was moving like a silhouette, advancing and retiring in
front of a red lantern placed on a piece of furniture. I had not been able
to see at first from where I sat, because the lantern was then behind me,
and the spectral appearance was formed between M. de Fontenay and me. As
this dark silhouette remained rather vague, I asked if I could not touch
its beard. The medium replied, "Stretch out your hand." I then felt upon
the back of my hand the brushing of a very soft beard.
This case did not have for me the same _absolute certainty_ as the
preceding. There are degrees in the feeling of security we have in
observations. In astronomy, even, there are stars at the limit of
visibility. And yet in the opinion of all the participators in the seance
there was no trick. Besides, on another occasion, at my own home, I saw
another figure, that of a young girl, as the reader will see in the third
chapter.
8. That same day, at Montfort, in the course of the conversation, some one
recalled the circumstance that the "spirits" have sometimes impressed on
paraffin or putty or clay the print of their head or of their hands,--a
thing that seems in the last degree absurd. But we bought some putty at a
glazier's and fixed up in a wooden box a perfectly soft cake. At the end
of the seance there was the imprint of a head, of a face, in this putty.
In this case, no more than in the other, am I _absolutely certain_ there
was no trickery. We will speak of it farther on.
Other manifestations will be noted in subsequent pages of this book.
Stopping right here, for the present, at the special point of view of the
proved existence of unknown forces, I will confine myself to the six
preceding cases, regarding them as incontestable, in the judgment of any
man of good faith or of any observer. If I have considered these
particular cases so early in the work, it is in response to readers of my
works who have been begging me for a long time to give my _personal_
observations.
The simplest of these manifestations--that of raps, for example--is not a
negligible asset. There is no doubt that it is one or another of the
experimenters, or their dynamic resultant, that raps in the table without
knowing how. So, even if it should be a psychic entity unknown to the
mediums, it evidently makes use of them, of their physiological
properties. Such a fact is not without scientific interest. The denials of
scepticism prove nothing, unless it be that the deniers themselves have
not observed the phenomena.
I have no other aim in this first chapter than to give a preliminary
summary of the observed facts.
I do not desire to put forth in these first pages any explanatory
hypothesis. My readers will themselves form an opinion from the narratives
that follow, and the last chapter of the volume will be devoted to
theories. Yet I believe it will be useful to call attention at once to
the fact that matter is not, in reality, what it appears to be to our
vulgar senses,--to our sense of touch, to our vision,--but that it is
identical with energy, and is only a manifestation of the movement of
invisible and imponderable elements. The universe is a dynamism. Matter is
only an appearance. It will be useful for the reader to bear this truth in
mind, as it will help him to comprehend the studies we are about to make.
The mysterious forces we are here studying are themselves manifestations
of the universal dynamism with which our five senses put us very
imperfectly into relation.
These things belong to the psychical order as well as to the physical.
They prove that we are living in the midst of an unexplored world, in
which the psychic forces play a role as yet very imperfectly studied.
We have here a situation analogous to that in which Christopher Columbus
found himself on the evening of the day when he perceived the first hints
of land in the New World. We are pushing our prow through an absolutely
unknown sea.
CHAPTER II
MY FIRST SEANCES IN THE ALLAN KARDEC GROUP AND WITH THE MEDIUMS OF THAT
EPOCH
One day in the month of November, 1861, under the Galeries de l'Odeon,[6]
I spied a book, the title of which struck me,--_Le Livre des Esprits_
("The Book of Spirits"), by Allan Kardec. I bought it and read it with
avidity, several chapters seeming to me to agree with the scientific bases
of the book I was then writing, _The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds_. I
hunted up the author, who proposed that I should enter, as a free
associated member, the Parisian Society for Spiritualistic Studies, which
he had founded, and of which he was president. I accepted, and by chance
have just found the green ticket signed by him on the fifteenth day of
November, 1861. This is the date of my debut in psychic studies. I was
then nineteen, and for three years had been an astronomical pupil at the
Paris Observatory. At this time I was putting the last touches to the book
I just mentioned, the first edition of which was published some months
afterwards by the printer-publisher of the Observatory.
The members came together every Friday evening in the assembly room of the
society, in the little passageway of Sainte Anne, which was placed under
the protection of Saint Louis. The president opened the seance by an
"invocation to the good spirits." It was admitted, as a principle, that
invisible spirits were present there and revealed themselves. After this
invocation a certain number of persons, seated at a large table, were
besought to abandon themselves to their inspiration and to write. They
were called "writing mediums." Their dissertations were afterwards read
before an attentive audience. There were no physical experiments of
table-turning, or tables moving or speaking. The president, Allan Kardec,
said he attached no value to such things. It seemed to him that the
instructions communicated by the spirits ought to form the basis of a new
doctrine, of a sort of religion.
At the same period, but several years earlier, my illustrious friend
Victorien Sardou, who had been an occasional frequenter of the
Observatory, had written, as a medium, some curious pages on the
inhabitants of the planet Jupiter, and had produced picturesque and
surprising designs, having as their aim to represent men and things as
they appeared in this giant of worlds. He designed the dwellings of people
in Jupiter. One of his sketches showed us the house of Mozart, others the
houses of Zoroaster and of Bernard Palissy, who were country neighbors in
one of the landscapes of this immense planet. The dwellings are ethereal
and of an exquisite lightness. They may be judged of by the two figures
here reproduced (Pl. II and III). The first represents a residence of
Zoroaster, the second "the animals' quarters" belonging to the same. On
the grounds are flowers, hammocks, swings, flying creatures, and, below,
intelligent animals playing a special kind of ninepins where the fun is
not to knock down the pins, but to put a cap on them, as in the cup and
ball toy, etc.
These curious drawings prove indubitably that the signature "Bernard
Palissy, of Jupiter," is apocryphal and that the hand of Victorien Sardou
was not directed by a spirit from that planet. Nor was it the gifted
author himself who planned these sketches and executed them in accordance
with a definite plan. They were made while he was in the condition of
mediumship. A person is not magnetized, nor hypnotized, nor put to sleep
in any way while in that state. But the brain is not ignorant of what is
taking place: its cells perform their functions, and act (doubtless by a
reflex movement) upon the motor nerves. At that time we all thought
Jupiter was inhabited by a superior race of beings. The spiritistic
communications were the reflex of the general ideas in the air. To-day,
with our present knowledge of the planets, we should not imagine anything
of the kind about that globe. And, moreover, spiritualistic seances have
never taught us anything upon the subject of astronomy. Such results as
were attained fail utterly to prove the intervention of spirits. Have the
writing mediums given any more convincing proofs of it than these? This is
what we shall have to examine in as impartial a way as we can.
I myself tried to see if I, too, could not write. By collecting and
concentrating my powers and allowing my hand to be passive and
unresistant, I soon found that, after it had traced certain dashes, and
_o_'s, and sinuous lines more or less interlaced, very much as a
four-year-old child learning to write might do, it finally did actually
write words and phrases.
In these meetings of the Parisian Society for Spiritualistic Studies, I
wrote for my part, some pages on astronomical subjects signed "Galileo."
The communications remained in the possession of the society, and in 1867
Allan Kardec published them under the head _General Uranography_, in his
work entitled _Genesis_. (I have preserved one of the first copies, with
his dedication.) These astronomical pages taught me nothing. So I was not
slow in concluding that they were only the echo of what I already knew,
and that Galileo had no hand in them. When I wrote the pages, I was
in a kind of waking dream. Besides, my hand stopped writing when I began
to think of other subjects.
[Illustration: PLATE II. HOUSE OF ZOROASTRE OF JUPITER FROM SOMNAMBULISTIC
DRAWING BY VICTORIEN SARDOU.]
[Illustration: PLATE III. ANIMALS' QUARTERS. HOUSE OF ZOROASTRE OF JUPITER
FROM SOMNAMBULISTIC DRAWING BY VICTORIEN SARDOU.]
I may quote here what I said on this subject in my work, _The Worlds of
Space_ (_Les Terres du Ciel_), in the edition of 1884, p. 181:--
The writing medium is not put to sleep, nor is he magnetized or
hypnotized in any way. One is simply received into a circle of
determinate ideas. The brain acts (by the mediation of the nervous
system) a little differently from what it does in its normal state.
The difference is not so great as one might suppose. The chief
difference may be described as follows:
In the normal state we think of what we are going to write _before_
the act of writing begins. There is a direct action of the will in
causing the pen, the hand, and the fore-arm to move over the paper. In
the abnormal state, on the other hand, we do not think before writing;
we do not move the hand, but let it remain inert, passive, free; we
place it upon the paper, taking care merely that it shall meet with
the least possible resistance; we think of a word, a figure, a stroke
of the pen, and the hand of its own volition begins to write. But the
writing medium must _think_ of what he is doing, not beforehand, but
continuously; otherwise the hand stops. For example, try to write the
word "ocean," not _voluntarily_ (the ordinary way), but by simply
taking a lead-pencil, and letting the hand rest lightly and freely
upon the paper, while you think of your word and observe carefully
whether the hand will write. Very good; it does begin to move over the
paper, writing first an _o_, then a _c_, and the rest. At least that
was my experience when I was studying the new problems of spiritualism
and magnetism.
I have always thought that the circle of science is not a closed one,
and that there are many things for us still to learn. In the
mediumistic writing experiments it is very easy to deceive ourselves
and to believe that the hand is under the influence of another mind
than our own. The most probable conclusion regarding these experiences
has been that the theory of the action of foreign spirits is not
necessary for the explanation of such phenomena. But this is not the
place to enter into details upon a subject which, up to the present
time, has been only slightly examined by scientific criticism, having
more often been exploited by speculators than studied by scientists.
So I wrote in 1884; and I will indorse every word I then wrote, just as it
stands.
In these first experiences with Spiritualists, of which I have just been
speaking, I soon had the entree of the chief Parisian circles devoted to
these matters, and for a couple of years I even took the position of
honorary secretary of one of them. A natural or necessary result of this
was that I did not miss a single seance.
Three different methods were employed to receive communications: (1)
writing with the hand; (2) the use of the planchette to which a
lead-pencil was attached, and on which the hands were placed; and (3)
table-rapping (or table-moving), operated by the alphabetic code, these
raps or the movements of the table marking the desired letter as the
alphabet was read aloud by one of those present.
The first of these methods was the only one employed at the Society for
Spiritualistic Studies, of which Allan Kardec was president. It was the
one which permitted the margin for the most doubt. In fact, at the end of
two years of investigations of this kind, which I had varied as much as
possible, and which I had entered upon without any preconceived idea for
or against, and with the most ardent desire to arrive at the truth, I came
to the positive conclusion that not only are the signatures of these
papers not authentic, but that the intervention of another mind from the
spirit world is not proved at all, the fact being that we ourselves are
the more or less conscious authors of the communications by some cerebral
process which yet remains to be investigated. The explanation is not so
simple as it seems, and there are certain reservations to be made in the
general statement above.
When writing in the exalted and abnormal state of mind of the medium, we
do not, as I have just said, form our phrases as in the normal condition;
rather we wait for them to be produced. But all the same our own mind
mingles in the process. The subject treated follows the lines of our own
customary thoughts; the language employed is our native tongue, and, if we
are uncertain about the spelling of certain words, errors will appear.
Furthermore, so intimately are our own mental processes mingled with what
is being written that, if we allow our thoughts to wander to another
topic, the hand either stops writing or produces incoherent words and
scrawls. This is the mental state of the writing medium,--at least that
which I have observed in myself. It is a kind of auto-suggestion. I hasten
to add, however, that this opinion only binds me to the extent of my own
personal experiences. I am assured that there are mediums who act in an
absolutely mechanical way, knowing nothing of the nature of what they are
writing (see further on, pp. 58, 59), who treat subjects of which they are
ignorant, and also even write in foreign languages. Such cases would be
different from that of which I have just been speaking, and would indicate
either a special cerebral state or great keenness of intellect, or a
source of ideas exterior to the medium; _i.e._, if it were once proved
that our mind cannot divine that of which it is ignorant. But now the
transference of thought from one brain to another, from one mind to
another, is a fact proved by telepathy. We could conceive, then, that a
medium might write under the influence of some one near by--or even at a
distance. Several mediums have also composed (in successive seances)
genuine romances, such as The _History of Joan of Arc, Written by
Herself_, or certain voyages to other planets,--seeming to indicate that
there is a kind of doubling of the personality of the subject, a secondary
personality. But there is no authentication of this. There is also a
psychic _milieu_, of which I shall speak farther on. At present I must
concern myself only with the subject of this chapter, and say with Newton,
"_Hypotheses non fingo_."
Allan Kardec died on the 30th of March, 1869, and, when the Society of
Spiritualists came to ask me to deliver a funeral oration at his tomb, I
took occasion, during this discourse, to direct the attention of the
Spiritualists to the scientific character of investigations of this class
and to the manifest danger of allowing ourselves to be drawn into
mysticism.
I will reproduce at this point a few paragraphs taken from this address:
I wish I could impress upon you who hear me, as well as upon the
millions of men throughout Europe and in the New World who are
studying the still mysterious problem of spiritualism, what a deep
scientific interest and what a philosophic future there is in the
study of these phenomena, to which, as you know, many of our most
eminent living scholars have given their time and attention. I wish I
could present to your imagination and theirs the new and vast horizons
we shall see opening up before us in proportion as we broaden our
scientific knowledge of the forces of nature at work around us; and I
would that I could show both you and them that such conquests of the
mind are the most efficacious antidote to the leprosy of atheism which
seems to be particularly the malignant degenerative element in this
our epoch of transition.
What a salutary thing it would be could I but prove here, before this
eloquent tomb, that the methodical examination of the phenomena
erroneously called supernatural, far from calling back the spirit of
superstition, and weakening the energy of the reason, serves, on the
contrary, to banish the errors and illusions of ignorance, and assists
the progress of truth much more than do the irrational negations of
those who will not take the trouble to look at the facts.
It is high time now that this complex subject of study should enter
upon its scientific period. Enough stress has not been laid upon the
physical side of the subject, which should be critically studied; for
without rigid scientific experiment no proof is valid. This objective
_a priori_ method of investigation, to which we owe the glory of
modern progress and the marvels of electricity and steam, should take
up the still unexplained and mysterious phenomena with which we are
acquainted, to dissect them, measure them, and to define them.
For, gentlemen, _spiritualism is not a religion, but a science_, a
science of which we as yet scarcely know the _a, b, c_. The age of
dogma is past. Nature includes the Universe; and God himself, who was
in old times conceived of as a being of similar shape and form as man,
cannot be considered by modern metaphysics as other than _Mind in
Nature_.
The supernatural does not exist. The manifestations obtained by the
agency of mediums, such as those of magnetism and somnambulism, belong
to the order of nature and ought to be inexorably submitted to the
test of experiment. There are no more miracles. We are witnessing the
dawning of a new science. Who is there so bold as to predict whither
the scientific study of the new psychology will lead, and what the
results will be?
The limitations of human vision are such that the eye only sees things
between narrow bounds, and beyond these limits, on this side and on
that, it sees nothing. The body may be compared to a harp of two
chords,--the optic nerve and the auditory nerve. One kind of
vibrations excites the first and another kind the second. That is the
whole story of human sensation, which is even inferior to that of many
of the lower animals; certain insects, for example, in whom the nerves
of vision and of hearing are more delicate than in man.
Now there are in nature, not two, but ten, a hundred, a thousand kinds
of movement or vibration. We learn, then, from physical science, that
we are living in the midst of a world invisible to us, and that it is
not impossible that there may be living upon the earth a class of
beings, also invisible to us, endowed with a wholly different kind of
senses, so that there is no way by which they can make themselves
known to us, unless they can manifest themselves in acts and ways that
can come within the range of our own order of sensations.
In the presence of such truths as these, which have as yet only been
barely announced, how absurd and worthless seems mere blind denial!
When we compare the little that we know and the narrow limits of our
range of perception with the vast extent of the field of knowledge, we
can scarcely refrain from the conclusion that we know nothing and that
everything yet remains to be known. With what right do we pronounce
the word "impossible" in the presence of facts which we prove to be
genuine without yet being able to discover their causes?
It is by the scientific study of effects that we arrive at the
determination of causes. In the class of investigations which we group
under the general head "Spiritualism," FACTS EXIST. But no one
understands the method of their production. Their existence,
nevertheless, is just as true as the phenomena of electricity.
But, as for understanding them--why, gentlemen, nobody understands
biology, physiology, psychology. What is the human body? What is the
brain? What is the absolute action of the soul or mind? We do not
know. And, neither do we know anything whatever of the essence of
electricity or the essence of light. It is prudent, then, to observe
with unbiased judgment all such matters as these, and to try to
determine their causes, which are perhaps of different kinds and more
numerous than has ever been supposed up to the present time.[7]
It will be seen that what I publicly uttered as I stood on the hillock
above the grave into which Allan Kardec's coffin had just been lowered
differs not at all from the purely scientific program of the present work.
I have just said that there were three methods employed in our spiritistic
experiments. I have given my opinion of the first (writing mediums),
basing it on my personal observations, and without desiring to weaken
other proofs, if there are any. As to the second (planchette), I became
familiar with it more especially by the seances of Mme. de Girardin, at
the home of Victor Hugo in the Isle of Jersey. It works more independently
than the first method; but it is still only a prolongation, as it were, of
the hand and the brain. The third method--table-rapping, or typtology; I
mean taps in the table--seems to me still more emphatically an extension
of the hand and brain, and some forty-five years ago I often made use of
this form of experiment.
Rappings made on the floor by one foot of the table, as letters are
spelled out, have no special value. The least pressure can produce these
see-saw movements. The chief experimenter himself makes the responses,
sometimes without suspecting it.
Several persons group themselves about a table, place their hands upon it,
and wait for something to happen. At the end of five, ten, fifteen, twenty
minutes, the time depending on the psychic atmosphere[8] and the faculties
of the experimenters, raps are heard in the table, or the sitters help in
the movements of the table, which seems possessed. Why choose a table?
Because it is the only article of furniture around which folks usually
sit. Sometimes the table is lifted on one or more of its feet and is
gently rocked to and fro. Sometimes it comes up as if glued to the hands
placed on it, remaining suspended in the air two, three, five, ten,
twenty seconds. Again, it is nailed to the floor with such force that it
seems to have double or triple its usual weight. At other times, and
usually on demand, it gives forth the sound of a saw, of a hatchet, of a
lead-pencil writing, etc. We have here material results coming under
direct observation, and they prove irrefragably the existence of an
unknown force.
This force is a material force in the psychic class. If we confined our
attention to blind senseless movements of one kind or another, in relation
only with the volitions of the experimenters, and not capable of being
explained by the mere imposition of their hands, we might see proof of the
existence of a new unknown force, explicable as a transformation of
nervous force, of organic electricity; and that would be much in itself.
But the raps made in the table, or by the feet of it, are made in reply to
questions asked. Since we know the table is only a piece of wood, when we
ask it questions, we are really addressing some mental agent who hears and
replies. It was in this class of phenomena that modern Spiritualism took
its rise; namely, in the United States, in 1848, when the Fox sisters
heard sounds in their chamber,--raps in the walls and in the furniture.
Their father, after several months of vexatious investigation, finally had
recourse to the traditional theory of ghosts, and, addressing his
questions to the wall, demanded some kind of an explanation from the
invisible _thing_ therein. This thing responded by conventional taps to
the questions asked, and declared that it was the spirit of the former
proprietor once assassinated in this his very home. The spirit asked for
prayers and the burial of its body. (From this time on the replies were so
arranged that one rap in response to a question signified _yes_, two meant
_no_ while three meant an emphatic _yes_.)
I hasten to remark at once that the tapped replies prove nothing, and
could have been made unconsciously by the Fox sisters themselves, whom we
can not consider to have been playing a little comedy since the raps
produced by them in the walls astounded and overwhelmed them more, indeed,
than they did any one else. The hypothesis of jugglery and mystification,
dear to certain critics, has not the least application to this case,
although I admit that rappings and movements are often produced as
practical jokes by waggish persons.
There is, of course, an unseen cause that originates these rappings. Is it
within us or outside of us? Is it possible that we might be capable of
doubling our personality in some way without knowing it, of acting by
mental suggestion, of answering our own questions without suspecting it,
of producing material results without being conscious of it? Or does there
exist, around and about us, an intelligent medium or atmosphere, a kind of
spiritual cosmos? Or, again, is it possible that we are surrounded by
invisible non-human beings,--gnomes, spirits, and hobgoblins (there may be
an unknown world about us)? Or, finally, is it possible that the spirits
of the dead may survive, and wander to and fro, and hold communication
with us? All these hypotheses present themselves to our minds, nor have we
the scientific absolute right to reject any one of them.
The lifting of a table, the displacement of an object, may be attributed
to an unknown force developed by our nervous system or otherwise. At least
these movements do not prove the existence of a mind extraneous to that of
the subject. But when some one is naming the letters of the alphabet or
pointing them out on a sheet of pasteboard, and the table, either by raps
in the wood or by levitations, puts together an intelligible sentence, we
are forced to attribute this intelligent effect to an intelligent cause.
This cause may be the medium himself; and the simplest way is, evidently,
to suppose that he himself raps out the letters. But experiments can be
arranged in such a way that he cannot possibly do this, even
unconsciously. Our first duty is, in reality, to make fraud impossible.
Those who have sufficiently studied the subject know that fraud does not
explain what they have observed. To be sure, in fashionable Spiritualistic
soirees people sometimes amuse themselves. Especially when the seances
take place in the dark, and the alternation of the sexes is provided for
so as to "reinforce the fluids," it is not altogether an unheard of thing
for the gentlemen to profit by the temptation to temporarily forget the
object of the meeting and break the established chain of hands in order to
begin another on their own account. The ladies and the young girls like
these changes in the program, and scarcely a complaint is heard. On the
other hand, apart from fashionable soirees, to which everybody is invited
for their amusement, the more serious reunions are frequently no safer;
for the medium, who is, in one way or another, an interested person, is
anxious to give the most he can--and something to boot.
Upon the leaf of an old note-book of mine which has just turned up, I
classed Spiritualistic soirees in the following order, which is doubtless
a slightly original one:--
1. Amorous caresses. (A similar reproach was made against the ancient
Christian love-feasts or _agapes_.)
2. Charlatanry of mediums, abusing the credulity of the sitters.
3. _Some_ serious inquirers.
At the time of which I was just now speaking (1861-63) I took part, as
secretary, in experiments conducted regularly once a week, in the salon of
a well-known medium,--Mlle. Huet, of Mont-Thabor Street. Mediumship was,
in a way, her trade, and she had more than once been flagrantly detected
in some most remarkable trickery. Accordingly, it may be imagined that
she would quite often give the raps herself by hitting the table-legs with
her feet. But quite often we also obtained noises of sawing, of planing,
of drum-beating, and torrents of rain, which it would have been impossible
for her to imitate. Neither could the holding fast of the table to the
floor be the work of fraud. As to the levitations of the table, I said
awhile ago that, when one of us showed an inclination to resist with his
hand the upward movement, he received an impression as if the table were
floating on a fluid. Now it is hard to see how the medium could produce
this result. Everything took place in broad daylight.
The communications received at the very many seances (several hundred) at
which I have been present, both at that time and since, have always shown
me that the results were in direct ratio with the cultivation of mind of
the participants. I naturally asked a great many questions on astronomy.
The replies never taught us anything new whatever; and, to be perfectly
loyal to the truth, I must say that if, in these experiments, there are
spirits, or beings independent of us in action, they know no more than we
do about the other worlds.
A distinguished poet, P. F. Mathieu, was usually present at the reunions
at the Mont-Thabor salon, and hence we sometimes obtained very pretty bits
of verse, which I am sure he did not himself consciously produce; for,
like all of us, he was there to learn. M. Joubert, vice-president of the
civil tribunal of Carcassonne, has published a work, entitled _Various
Fables and Poems, by a Spirit-rapper_, which bears on its face evidence
that it is but the reflex of his customary thoughts. We had Christian
philosophers with us at our reunions. Accordingly, the table dictated to
us fine thoughts signed "Pascal," "Fenelon," "Vincent de Paul," and
"Sainte Therese." One spirit, who signed himself "Balthasar Grimod de la
Reyniere," dictated funny dissertations on the art of cooking. His
specialty was to make the heavy table dance about in all kinds of
contortions. Rabelais sometimes appeared, still loving the perfumes of
savory viands as of old. Some of the spirits took pleasure in making
_tours de force_ in cryptology (secret writing). The following are
specimens of these table-rapping communications. The first is from the
vulgate version of the Bible, the Gospel of John iii. 8:
"Spiritus ubi vult spirat; et vocem ejus audis, sed nescis unde veniat
aut quo vadat. Sic est omnis qui natus est ex spiritu." ("The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but
canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is every one
that is born of the Spirit.")
"Dear little sister, I am here, and see that you are as good as ever.
You are a medium. I will go to you with great happiness. Tell my
mother her dear daughter loves her from this world.[9]
"LOUISA."
Some one asked one of the spirits if he could indicate by taps the words
engraved inside of her ring. The response was:
"I love that one should love me as I love when I love."
A member of the company suspected that the table around which we were
sitting might conceal a piece of mechanism for producing the raps.
Accordingly, one of the sentences was dictated by raps made _in the air_.
Here is another series:
"Je suis ung ioyeux compaignon qui vous esmarveilleray avecques mes
discours, je ne suis pas ung Esperict mateologien, je vestiray non
liripipion et je diray: Beuvez l'eaue de la cave, poy plus, poy moins,
serez content.
"ALCOFRIBAZ NAZIER."
("I am a jollie blade who will astonie you by my speech. I am not a
vaine-babbling sperit. I will wear my graduate's hood and saie: Drinke
ye water of ye cellar [wine],--no more, no less. Be content.
"FRANCOIS RABELAIS.")[10]
A rather lively discussion arose upon the subject of this unexpected
visit,--and of the language, which some erudite persons present thought
not to be pure Rabelaisian. Whereupon the table rapped:
"Bons enfants estes de vous esgousiller a ceste besterie. Mieux vault
que beuviez froid que parliez chaud."
"Rabelais."
("Ye're regular babies to bawle yourselves hoarse over this selynesse.
It is bettaire to drinke cauld than to speak warme.)
"Liesse et Noel! Monsieur Satan est defun, et de male mort. Bien
marrys sont les moynes, moynillons, bigotz et cagotz, carmes chaulx et
dechaulx, papelards et frocards, mitrez et encapuchonnez: les vecy
sans couraige, les Esperictz les ont destrosnez. Plus ne serez roustiz
et eschaubouillez ez marmites monachales et roustissoires diaboliques;
foin de ces billevesees papales et clericquales. Dieu est bon, iuste
et plein de miserichorde; it dict a ses petits enfancts: aimez-vous
les ungs les autres et it pardoint a la repentance. Le grand dyable
d'enfer est mort; vive Dieu!"
("Hurrah for a merry life! Maister Satan is dead, dead as a door-nail.
The monks and the poor-devil friars are married,--bigots and fanatics,
Carmelites shod and unshod, the hypocrites and the cowled fellows,
the mitres and the hoods. There they stand trembling in their tracks;
the Spirits have dethroned them. Gone are the roastings and
soup-makings in the Devil's Dutch ovens and in monastic kettles. A
plague of these trashy tales of pope and priest! God is good, just,
and full of pity. He says to his little children, 'Love one another';
and he pardons the repentant. The great devil in hell is dead. Hurrah
for God!")
Here is still another series:
"Suov ruop eretsym nu sruojuot tnores emem srueisulp; erdnerpmoc ed
simrep erocne sap tse suov en li uq snoitseuq sed ridnoforppa ruop
tirpse'l sap retnemruot suov en. Liesnoc nob nu zevius."
"Suov imrap enger en edrocsid ed tirpse'l siamaj euq."
"Arevele suov ueid te sererf sov imrap sreinred sel zeyos; evele ares
essiaba's iuq iulec essiaba ares evele's iuq iulec."
These sentences must be read backwards, beginning at the end. Some one
asked, "Why have you dictated thus?" The reply was:
"In order to give you new and unexpected proofs."
Read backwards, these Russian-like sentences are as follows:
"Celui qui s'eleve sera abaisse, celui qui s'abaisse sera eleve; soyez
les derniers parmi vos freres et Dieu vous elevera."
"Que jamais l'esprit de discorde ne regne parmi vous."
"Suivez un bon conseil. Ne vous tourmenter pas l'esprit pour
approfondir des questions qu'il ne vous est pas encore permis de
comprendre; plusieurs meme seront toujours un mystere pour vous."
("Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth
himself shall be exalted! Be the least among your brethren, and God
will exalt you."
"Never let the spirit of discord reign among you."
"Follow good counsel. Do not torment your mind in attempting to fathom
questions that it is not yet permitted you to comprehend: several of
these will always be a mystery to you.")
Here is another of a different kind:
"Acmairsvnoouussevtoeussbaoinmsoentsfbiideenlteosuss."
"Sloeysepzruintissaeinndtieetuesnudrrvaosuessmaairlises."
I asked the meaning of this bizarre and portentous conglomeration of
letters. The reply was:
"To conquer your doubts, read by skipping every other letter."
This arrangement using the skipped letters in their turn for the second
and fourth lines gives the four following verses:
"Amis, nous vous aimons bien tous,
Car vous etes bons et fideles.
Soyez unis en Dieu: sur vous
L'Esprit-Saint etendra ses ailes."
("Friends, we love you all,
For you are good and faithful.
Be united in God: over you
The Holy Spirit will spread his wings.")
This is innocent enough, surely and without any great poetic pretensions.
But it must be admitted that this method of dictating is rather
difficult.[11]
Some one spoke of human plans. The table dictated as follows:[12]
"When the shining sun scatters the stars, know ye, O mortal men,
whether ye will see the evening of that day? And, when the sombre
curtains of night are let fall from the sky, can you tell whether you
will see the dawn of another morn?"
Another person asked, "What is faith?"
"Faith? 'Tis a blessed field that breeds a superb harvest, and every
laborer may therein reap and garner to his heart's content, and carry
home his sheaves."
Here are three prose dictations:
"Science is a forest where some are laying out roads, where many lose
their way, and where all see the bounds of the forest recede as fast
as they go forward."
"God does not illuminate the world with the lightning and the meteors.
He guides peacefully in their courses the stars of the night, which
fill the sky with their light. So the divine revelations succeed one
another in order, reason, and harmony."
"Religion and Friendship are twin companions, who aid us to traverse
the painful path of life."
I cannot forego the pleasure of inserting here, at the close of this
chapter, a fable, dictated like the others by table-rappings, and sent to
me by M. Joubert, vice-president of the civil tribunal of Carcassonne.[13]
The sentiment of it may be queried by some; but is not the central
principle applicable to all epochs and to all governments: Do not the
"_arrivistes_"[14] belong to all times?
THE KING AND THE PEASANT
A king who had profaned the public liberties, who for twenty years had
slaked his thirst in the blood of heretics; awaiting the quiet peace
of the hangman in his declining days; decrepit, surfeited with
adulterous amours; this king, this haughty monster of whom they had
made a great man,--Louis the Fourteenth, in short, if I must name
him,--was one day airing under the leafy arches of his vast gardens
his Scarron, his infamy and his troubles. The noble band of court
flunkeys came along. Each one at once lost at least six inches of his
height. Pages, counts, marquises, dukes, princes, marshals, ministers,
bowed low before insulting rivals, the creatures of the king. Grave
magistrates made their deep reverences, each humbler than a suitor
asking for audience. 'Twas pleasant to see how the ribbons, crosses
and decorations on their embroidered coats went ever backwards. Always
and always that ignoble bowing and scraping and cringing. I should
like to wake up some morning an emperor, that I might sting with my
whip the backbone of a flatterer. But see! alone, confronting the
despot, yet without abasing his head, forging along with slow steps on
his own way, modest, clad in coarse homespun garments, comes one who
seems a peasant, perhaps a philosopher, and passes by the groups of
insolent courtiers. "Oh," cries the king, in great surprise, "why do
you alone confront me without bending the knee?" "Sire," said the
unknown, "must I be frank? It is because I alone here expect nothing
from you."
If we stop to think how these sentences and phrases and different bits of
literature were produced, letter by letter, rap by rap, following the
alphabet as it was read out, we shall appreciate the difficulty of the
thing. The rappings are made either in the interior of the wood of the
table (the vibrations of which are perceptible) or in some other piece of
furniture, or even in the air. The table, as I have already said, is
alive, pregnant with a kind of momentary vitality. Melodies of well-known
airs, sounds of sawing and of the workshop, and the report of fusillades
can be drawn from it. Sometimes it becomes so light that it floats for a
moment in the air, then so heavy that two men can scarcely lift it from
the floor or budge it in any way. You must have a distinct picture in your
mind of all these manifestations,--often puerile, no doubt, sometimes
vulgar and grotesque, yet striking in their method of operation,--if you
would accurately understand the phenomena, and realize that you are in the
presence of an unknown element which jugglery and prestidigitation cannot
explain.
Some folks can move their toes separately and crack the joints. If we
should grant that the dictations, by combinations of letters (quoted
above), were arranged in advance, learned by heart, and thus rapped, the
matter would be simple enough. But this particular faculty is very rare,
and it does not explain the noises in the table, the vibrations of which
are felt by the hands. Again, one could fancy the medium tapping the
table-legs with his foot, and thus constructing such sentences as he
pleases. But it would require a wonderful memory in the medium to enable
him to remember the precise arrangement of letters (for he has no
memorandum before him), and, further, these curious dictations have been
secured just the same in select companies where no one would cheat.
As to the theory that the spirits of eminent men are in communication with
the experimenters the mere statement of the hypothesis shows its
absurdity. Imagine a table-rapper calling up from the vasty deep the
spirits of Paul or Saint Augustine, Archimedes or Newton, Pythagoras or
Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci or William Herschel, and receiving their
dictations from the interior of a table!
We were speaking, a few pages back, of the seance drawings and
descriptions of Jupiter made by Victorien Sardou. This is the proper place
to insert a letter written by him to M. Jules Claretie, and published by
the latter in _Le Temps_ at the date when that learned Academician was
putting on the boards his drama _Spiritisme_. The letter is here appended:
... As to Spiritualism, I could better tell you verbally in three
words what I think of it than I could write here in three pages. You
are half right and half wrong. Pardon my freedom of speech. There are
two things in Spiritualism,--(1) curious facts, inexplicable in the
present state of our knowledge, and yet authenticated; and (2) the
folks who explain them.
The facts are real. Those who explain them belong to three categories:
there are, first, Spiritualists who are imbecile, ignorant, or mad,
the chaps who call up Epaminondas and whom you justly make fun of, or
who believe in the intervention of the devil; those, in short, who end
in the lunatic asylum in Charenton.
_Secundo_, there are the charlatans, commencing with D.; impostors of
all sorts, prophets, consulting mediums, such as A. K., and _tutti
quanti_.
Finally, there are the scholars and scientists, who think they can
explain everything by juggleries, hallucination, and unconscious
movements, men like Chevreul and Faraday, who, while they are right
about some of the phenomena described to them, and which really are
jugglery or hallucination, are yet wrong about the whole series of
original facts, which they will not take the trouble to look at,
though they are highly important. These men are much to blame; for, by
their plea-in-bar against earnest investigators (such as Gasparin, for
example) and by their insufficient explanations, they have left
Spiritualism to be exploited by charlatans of all kinds, and at the
same time authorized serious amateurs to no longer waste their time
over these studies.
Last of all, there are observers like myself (there are not many of
us) who are incredulous by nature, but who have been obliged to admit,
in the long run, that Spiritualism concerns itself with facts which
defy any _present_ scientific explication, but who do not despair of
seeing them explained some day, and who therefore apply themselves to
the study of the facts, and are trying to reduce them to some kind of
classification which may later prove to be law. We of this persuasion
hold ourselves aloof from every coterie, from every clique, from all
the prophets, and, satisfied with the convictions to which we have
already attained, are content to see in Spiritualism the dawn of a
truth, as yet very obscure, which will some day find its Ampere, as
did the magnetic currents, and who grieve to see this truth choked out
of existence by a dual foe,--excess of credulous ignorance which
believes everything and excess of incredulous science which believes
nothing.
We find in our conviction and our conscience the wherewithal to brave
the petty martyrdom of ridicule inflicted upon us for the faith we
profess, a faith exaggerated and caricatured by the mass of follies
people never fail to attribute to us, nor do we deem that the myth in
which they dress us up merits even the honor of a refutation.
Similarly, I have never had any desire to prove to anybody whatever
that the influence of either Moliere or Beaumarchais cannot be
detected in my plays. It seems to me that that is more than evident.
Respecting the dwellings of the planet Jupiter, I must ask the good
folks who suppose that I am convinced of the real existence of these
things whether they are well persuaded that Gulliver believed in
"Lilliput,"[15] Campanella in the "City of the Sun," and Sir Thomas
More in his "Utopia."
What is true, however, is that the design of which you speak [Pl.
III.] was made in less than ten hours. As to its origin, I would not
give a penny to know about that; but the fact of its production is
another matter
V. SARDOU.
Scarcely a year passes that mediums do not bring me drawings of plants and
animals in the Moon, in Mars, Venus, Jupiter, or certain of the stars.
These designs are more or less pretty, and more or less curious. But there
is nothing in them that leads us to admit their actual resemblance to
real things in other worlds. On the contrary, everything proves that they
are the products of imagination, essentially terrestrial, both in look and
shape, not even tallying what we know to be the vital possibilities of
those worlds. The designers of them are the dupes of illusion. These
plants and animal are metamorphoses (sometimes elegantly conceived and
drawn) of terrestrial organisms. Perhaps the most curious thing of all is
that they have a family resemblance in the manner of their execution, and
have stamped on them, in some way or other, the mediumistic hall-mark.
To return to my own experiences. When I took the role of writing-medium, I
generally produced astronomical or philosophical dissertations signed
"Galileo." I will quote but one of them as a sample. It is taken from my
notebooks of 1862.
SCIENCE.
The human intellect holds in its powerful grasp the infinite universe
of space and time; it has penetrated the inaccessible domain of the
Past, sounded the mystery of the unfathomable heavens, and believes
that it has explained the riddle of the universe. The objective world
has unrolled before the eyes of science its splendid panorama and its
magnificent wealth of forms. The studies of man have led him to a
knowledge of truth; he has explored the universe, discovered the
inexorable reign of law, and the application of the forces that
sustain all things. If it has not been permitted to him to see the
First Cause face to face, at least he has attained a true mathematical
idea of the series of secondary causes.
In this latest century, above all, the experimental _a priori_ method,
the only really scientific one, has been put into practice in the
natural sciences, and by its aid man has freed himself from the
prejudices of the old school of thought, one by one, and from
subjective or speculative theories, and confined himself to a careful
and intelligent study of the field of observation.
Yes, human science is firmly based and pregnant with possibility,
worthy of our homage for its difficult and long-proved past, worthy of
our sympathy for its future, big with the promise of useful and
profitable discoveries. For nature is henceforth to be a book
accessible to the bibliographical researches of the studious, a world
open to the investigations of the thinker, a fertile region which the
human mind has already visited, and in which we must needs advance
boldly, holding in our hand experience as our compass....
An old friend of my terrestrial life recently spoke to me as follows.
One of our wanderings had brought us back to the Earth, and we were
making a new moral study of this world. My companion remarked that man
is to-day familiar with the most abstract laws of mechanics, physics,
chemistry, ... that the applications of knowledge to industry are not
less remarkable than the deductions of pure science, and that it seems
as if the entire universe, wisely studied by man, was to be his royal
appanage. As we pursued our journey beyond the bounds of this world, I
answered him in the following terms:
"A feeble atom, lost to sight in an imperceptible point of the
infinite, man has believed he could embrace in the sweep of his vision
the whole expanse of the universe, whereas he can scarcely pass beyond
the region he inhabits; he has thought he could study the laws of all
nature, and his investigations have scarcely reached the forces in
action about him; he has thought he could determine the grandeur of
the starry heaven, and he exhausted his powers in the study of a grain
of dust. The field of his researches is so small that, once lost to
view, the mind seeks in vain to recover it; the human heaven and earth
are so small that scarcely has the soul in its flight had time to
spread its wings before it has reached the last regions accessible to
the observation of man; for the immeasurable Universe surrounds us on
all sides, unfolding beyond the limits of our heavens its unknown
riches, putting its inconceivable forces into play, and reaching
forward into immensity in the splendor of its life.
"And the mere flesh-worm, the miserable mite, blind and wingless,
whose wretched existence is passed upon the leaf where it was born,
would presume (because forsooth it has taken a few steps upon this
leaf shaken in the wind) to have the right to speak of the immense
tree to which it belongs, of the forest of which this tree forms a
part, and to sagely descant upon the nature of the vegetation
developed thereon, of the beings that inhabit it, of the distant sun
whose rays bring to it movement and life? In very truth, man is
strangely presumptuous to desire to measure infinite greatness by the
foot-rule of his infinite littleness.
"Therefore be this truth well impressed on his mind,--if the arid
labors of past ages have acquired for him an elementary knowledge of
things, if the progress of thought has placed him at the vestibule of
knowledge, still he has not yet spelled out more than the first page
of the Book, and, like a child, liable to be deceived by every word,
far from claiming the right to authoritatively interpret the work, he
ought to content himself with humbly studying it, page by page, line
by line. Happy, however, those who are able to do this!"
GALILEO.
These were my customary thoughts. They are the thoughts of a student of
nineteen or twenty who has acquired the habit of thinking. There can be no
doubt that they were wholly the product of my own intellect, and that the
illustrious Florentine astronomer had nothing whatever to do with them.
Besides, this would have been a collaboration to the last degree
improbable.
It has been the same with all the communications of the astronomical
class: they have not led the science forward a single step. Nor has any
obscure, mysterious, or illusive point in history been cleared up by the
spirits. We only write that which we know, and even chance has given us
nothing. Still, certain unexplained thought-transferences are to be
discussed. But they belong to the psychological or human sphere.
In order to reply at once to objections that certain Spiritualists have
sent to me apropos of this result of my observations, I will take as an
example the case of the satellites of Uranus, since it is the chief one
always brought forward as a _proof_ of scientific discoveries imparted by
spirits. Furthermore, I received several years ago from divers sources a
pressing invitation to examine an article by General Drayson, published in
the journal named _Light_, in 1884, under the title of _The Solution of
Scientific Problems by Spirits_, in which it is asserted that the spirits
made known the true orbital movement of the satellites of Uranus. Pressing
engagements had always hindered me from making this examination; but the
case having been recently promulgated in several Spiritualistic works as
decisive, and I being so persistently importuned to discuss it, I believe
it will prove of some use if I now examine the case.
To my great regret there is an error in their communication, and the
spirits have taught us nothing. Here is one instance, wrongly selected as
a demonstration. The Russian writer Aksakof sets it forth in the following
terms (_Animism and Spiritualism_, p. 341):
The case of which we are about to give an account seems to be of such
a nature as to settle all objections. It was communicated by
Major-General A. W. Drayson and published under the title _The
Solution of Scientific Problems by Spirits_. I append a translation:
"Having received from M. Georges Stock a letter asking me if I could
mention, were it only as an instance, that, during the holding of a
seance, a spirit had solved one of those scientific problems which
have always embarrassed scientists, I have the honor to communicate to
you the following circumstance, which I witnessed with my own eyes:
"In 1781 William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus and its
satellites. He observed that these satellites, contrary to all the
other satellites of the solar system, traversed their orbits from east
to west. Sir John Herschel says in his _Outlines of Astronomy_:
"'The orbits of these satellites present peculiarities altogether
unexpected and exceptional, contrary to the general laws which govern
the other bodies of the solar system. The planes of their orbits are
almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, making an angle of 70 deg. 58',[16]
and they travel with a retrograde movement; that is to say, their
revolution about the centre of their planet takes place from east to
west in place of following the inverse course.'
"When Laplace broached his theory that the sun and all the planets
were formed at the expense of a nebulous matter, these satellites were
an enigma to him.
"Admiral Smyth mentions in his _Celestial Cycle_ that the movement of
these satellites, to the stupefaction of all astronomers, is
retrograde, contrary to that of all the other bodies observed up to
that time.
"All the astronomical works published before 1860 contain the same
reasoning on the subject of the satellites of Uranus. For my part, I
did not find any explanation for this peculiarity: to me it was a
mystery as much as for the writers whom I have cited.
"In 1858 I had as a guest in my house a lady who was a medium, and we
arranged daily seances. One evening she said to me that she saw at my
side a spirit who claimed to have been an astronomer during his life
on earth.
"I asked this person if he was wiser at present than when he lived on
the earth. 'Much wiser,' he said. I had the idea of asking this
so-called spirit a question the object of which was to test his
knowledge. 'Can you tell me,' I asked him, 'why the satellites of
Uranus make their revolution from east to west and not from west to
east?' I received at once the following reply:
"'The satellites of Uranus do not move in their orbits from east to
west: they circle about their planet from west to east, in the same
way that the moon moves around the earth. The error comes from the
fact that the south pole of Uranus was turned toward the earth at the
moment of the discovery of this planet. In the same way that the sun,
seen from our southern hemisphere, seems to run its daily course from
right to left and not from left to right, so the satellites of Uranus
were moving at that time from left to right, though this does not mean
they were moving in their orbit from east to west.'
"In reply to another question which I asked, my interlocutor added:
'As long as the south pole of Uranus was turned toward the earth, in
relation to a terrestrial observer, the satellites seemed to move from
left to right, and it was erroneously concluded from this that they
were going from east to west: this state of things lasted for about
forty-two years. When the north pole of Uranus is turned toward the
earth, his satellites run their course from right to left, but, in
either case, always from the west to the east.'
"I thereupon asked him how it happened that the error had not been
detected forty-two years after William Herschel's discovery of Uranus.
He replied, 'It is because people repeat that which the authorities
who have preceded them have said. Dazzled by the results obtained by
their predecessors, they do not take the trouble to think.'"
Such is the "revelation" of a spirit on the system of Uranus, published by
Drayson and presented by Aksakof and other authors as an undeniable proof
of the intervention of a spirit in the solution of this problem.
The following is the result of an impartial discussion of this very
interesting subject. The reasoning of the "spirit" is false. The system of
Uranus is almost perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. It is the direct
opposite of that of the satellites of Jupiter, which turn almost in the
plane of their orbit. The inclination of the plane of the satellites to
the ecliptic is 98 deg., and the planet ascends almost in the plane of the
ecliptic. This is a fundamental consideration in the picture which we
ought to make to ourselves of the aspect of this system seen from the
earth.
Let us, however, adopt for the method of movement of these satellites
around their planet the projection upon the plane of the ecliptic, as has
always been the custom. The author maintains that, "when the north pole of
Uranus is turned toward the earth, his satellites run their course from
right to left, that is to say from west to east"; he indorses the
communication of the spirit to the effect that the astronomers are in
error and that the satellites of Uranus really revolve around their planet
from west to east, in the same way that the moon revolves around the
earth.
In order to give ourselves an exact account of the position and of the
method of the movements of this system, let us construct a special
geometrical figure, clear and precise. Let us represent upon a plane the
appearance of the orbit of Uranus and of its satellites seen from the
northern hemisphere of the celestial sphere (Fig. A). The part of the
orbit of the satellites above the plane of the orbit of Uranus has been
drawn with heavy lines and hatching, the lower part in dotted lines only.
It is easily seen by the direction of the arrows that the revolution of
the satellites, projected upon the plane of the orbit, is entirely
retrograde. All dogmatic affirmations to the contrary are absolutely
erroneous.
These satellites turn like the hands of a watch,--from left to right,
looking at the upper part of the circles.
The error of General Drayson's medium comes from the fact that she
maintained that the south pole of Uranus was turned toward us at the date
of its discovery. Now, in 1781, the system of Uranus occupied relatively
to us almost the same situation as in 1862, since the time of its
revolution is eighty-four years. It is evident from the figure that, at
that moment, the planet presented to us the pole most elevated above the
ecliptic; that is, its north pole.
General Drayson allowed himself to be led into error when he adopted
without verification these paradoxical premises. As a matter of fact, if
Uranus had presented to us its south pole in 1781, the movement of the
satellites would have been direct. But the observations of the angle of
position of the orbits at the time of their passage of the nodes gives us
abundant evidence that it was really the north pole which was at that
moment turned toward the sun and the earth,--a fact which renders direct
movement impossible, retrograde movement certain.
[Illustration: Fig. 1--The inclination of the system of Uranus. Aspects
seen from the earth at the four extreme positions.]
For greater clearness, I have placed outside of the orbit, in Fig 1, the
aspect of the system of Uranus seen from the earth at the four principal
epochs of the revolution of this distant planet. It is evident that the
apparent method of the revolution was analogous to that of the hands of a
watch in 1781 and 1862, the opposite in 1818 and 1902. At these dates the
apparent orbits of the satellites are almost circles, while during the
passage of the nodes, in 1798, 1840, and 1882, they are reduced to
straight lines.
Figure 1a completes these data by presenting the aspect of the orbits and
the method of revolution for all the positions of the planet, even down to
our own epoch.
I have desired to completely elucidate this question, which is a little
technical. _To my great regret_, the spirits have taught us nothing, and
this example, to which so much importance is attached, is seen to be an
error.[17]
Aksakof cites, in this same chapter (p. 343), the discovery of the two
satellites of Mars, also made by Drayson through a medium, in 1859; that
is to say, 18 years before their discovery, in 1877. This discovery, not
having been published at the time, remains doubtful. Furthermore, after
Kepler had pointed out its probability, this subject of the two satellites
of Mars was several times discussed, notably by Swift and Voltaire (see my
_Popular Astronomy_, p. 501). This is not, then, to be set down as an
undeniable instance of a discovery made by the spirits.
The immediately foregoing instances are facts actually observed at
Spiritualistic seances. I will not treat them under a generalization
foreign to their proper setting. They do not prove that, in certain
circumstances, thinkers, poets, dreamers, investigators, may not be
inspired by influences emanating from others, from loved ones, from
departed friends. That is another question, a topic quite apart from
experiments which we are giving an account of in this book.
[Illustration: Fig. 1a.--Orbits of the satellites of Uranus as seen from
the earth at different dates since the time of their discovery (1781).]
The same author, otherwise generally very judicious, cites several
examples of foreign tongues spoken by mediums. I have not been able to
verify them, and I am asked not to say here anything but what I am
absolutely sure of.
According to my personal observations, these experiments bring us
constantly into the presence of ourselves, our own minds. I could cite a
thousand examples of this.
One day I received an "aerolite" discovered in a forest in the environs of
Etrepagny (Eure). Mme. J. L., who kindly sent it to me, added that she
consulted a spirit about its origin and that he replied to her that it
came from a star named Golda. Now in the first place there is no star of
this name; and, secondly, this is not an aerolite at all, but a piece of
slag from an old forge. (See Section 662 of my Inquiry of 1899. The first
of these sections, relating to telepathy, have been published in my work
_The Unknown_.)
A lady reader of mine wrote me from Montpellier:
Your conclusions would perhaps diminish the prestige of Spiritualism
in the eyes of certain persons. But, as prestige may produce
superstition, it is well to clear up matters. For my part, that which
you have observed agrees with what I have myself observed. This is the
method which I have employed, aided by a friend:
I took a book and, opening it, retained in my mind the number of the
right-hand page. Suppose it was 132. I said to the table, which had
been put in movement by the little manoeuvre ordinarily used, "Does a
spirit desire to communicate?"
Reply--"Yes."
Question--"Can you see the book which I have just been looking at?"
Reply--"Yes."
"How many numbers are there on the page that I have been looking at?"
"Three."
"Indicate the number of hundreds."
"One."
"Indicate the value of the tens."
"Three."
"Indicate the value of the units."
"Two."
The amounts indicated in these statements are of course 132. It was
enchanting.
Then, taking the closed book and, without opening it, sliding the
paper-knife between the pages, I resumed the conversation, and the
result with this last method was always inexact.
I frequently repeated this little experience (curious at any rate);
and, every time, I had exact replies when I knew them, inexact when I
was ignorant of them. (Section 657 of my Inquiry.)
These examples might be multiplied _ad infinitum_. Everything leads us to
think that it is we who are the actors in these experiments. But it is not
so simple as one might suppose, and there is something else in it as well
as ourselves. Certain unexplained things take place.
In his remarkable work, _Intelligence_, Taine explains Spiritualistic
communications by a sort of unconscious duplication of our mind, as I said
above.
The more singular a fact is [he writes[18]] the more instructive it
is. In this respect, Spiritualistic manifestations themselves point
the way to discoveries by showing us the coexistence at the same
moment in the same individual of two thoughts, two wills, two distinct
actions, the one conscious, the other unconscious; the latter he
attributes to invisible beings. The brain is, then, a theatre on the
stage of which several pieces are being played at once, upon several
planes, of which only one is not subliminal. Nothing is more worthy of
study than this plurality of the _me_. I have seen a person who, while
speaking or singing, writes, without regard to the paper, consecutive
sentences and even entire pages, without any knowledge of what she is
writing. In my eyes her sincerity is perfect. Now she declares that at
the end of a page she has no idea of what she has written on the
paper. When she reads it, she is astonished, sometimes alarmed. The
handwriting is different from her ordinary handwriting. The movement
of the fingers and of the pencil is stiff and seems automatic. The
writing always ends with a signature, that of a deceased person, and
bears the mark of intimate thoughts, of a secret and inner reserve of
ideas which the author would not like to divulge. Certainly there is
proof here of a doubling of the _me_, the coexistence of two parallel
and independent trains of thought, of two centres of action, or, if
you wish, of two moral persons existing in the same brain, each one
doing his work, and each one a different work, the one upon the stage
and the other behind the scenes, the second as complete as the first,
since, alone and unwitting of the other, it constructs consecutive
ideas and fashions connected sentences in which the other has no part.
This hypothesis is admissible, in the light of numerous observations of
double consciousness.[19]
It is applicable to a great number of cases, but not in all. It explains
automatic writing. But, as it stands, it is necessary to stretch it
considerably to make it explain the rappings (for who raps?), and it does
not explain at all the levitations of the table, nor the displacement of
objects of which I have spoken in the first chapter, and I do not very
well see how it can even explain phrases rapped out backwards or by the
strange combinations described above. This hypothesis is admitted and
developed in a more unqualified way by Dr. Pierre Janet in his work
_Psychological Automatism_. This author is one of those who have created a
narrow circle of observation and study, and who not only never emerge from
it, but imagine that they have got the whole universe in their circle. In
going over this kind of reasoning, one thinks involuntarily of that old
quarrel of the two round eyes who saw everything round and of the two
square eyes who saw everything square, and of the history of the
Big-endians and of the Little-endians of _Gulliver's Travels_. An
hypothesis is worthy of attention when it explains something. Its value
does not increase by the attempt to generalize it and make it explain
everything: this is to overpass all reasonable limits.
We may admit that the sub-conscious acts of an abnormal personality,
temporarily grafted upon our normal personality, explain the greater part
of mediumistic writing communications. We can see in these also the
evident effects of auto-suggestion. But these psycho-physiological
hypotheses do not explain all observations. There is something else.
We all have a tendency to want to explain everything by the actual state
of our knowledge. In the face of certain circumstances, we say to-day: "It
is suggestion, it is hypnotism, it is this, it is that." Half a century
ago we would not have talked in this way, these theories not having yet
been invented. People will no longer talk in the same way half a century,
a century, hence, for new words will have been invented. But let us not be
put off with words; let us not be in such a hurry.
We must know how to explain in what way our thoughts--conscious,
unconscious, sub-conscious--can strike blows in a table, move it, lift it.
As this question is rather embarrassing, Dr. Pierre Janet treats it as
"secondary personality," and is obliged to have recourse to the movements
of the toes, to the snapping of the muscles of the fibular tendon, to
ventriloquism and the deceptions of unconscious accomplices.[20] This is
not a sufficient explanation.
As a matter of fact, we do not understand how our thought, or that of
another, can cause raps in a table, by which sentences are formed. But we
are obliged to admit it. Let us call it, if you please, "telekinetsis";
but does that get us any farther along?
There has been talk for some years about unconscious facts, about
sub-consciousness, subliminal consciousness, etc. I fear that in these
things also we are putting ourselves off with words which do not explain
things very much.
I intend some day, if the time is given me, to write a special book on
Spiritualism, studied from the theoretic and doctrinal point of view,
which will form a second volume of my work _The Unknown and Psychic
Problems_, and which has been in preparation since the publication of that
work in 1899. Mediumistic communications, dictations received (notably by
Victor Hugo, Mme. de Girardin, Eugene Nus, and the Phalansterians), will
be the subject of special chapters in this volume,--as well as the
problem, otherwise important, of the plurality of existences.
It is not my intention to enlarge in this place upon the aspects of the
general question. That which I restrict myself to establishing in this
book is that there are in us, about us, unknown forces capable of putting
matter in motion, just as our will does. I ought, therefore, to limit
myself to material phenomena. The range of that class of investigations is
already immense, and the "communications" of which I have just spoken are
really outside the limits of this range. But, as this subject and that of
psychological experiments are continually overlapping, it was necessary to
give a summary of it in this place. Let us return for the present to the
material phenomena produced by mediums and to that which I have myself
ascertained in my experiences with Eusapia Paladino, who unites them
nearly all in her own personality and experiences.
CHAPTER III
MY EXPERIMENTS WITH EUSAPIA PALADINO.
In the earlier pages of this volume some of my later experiments with the
Neapolitan medium, Eusapia Paladino, have been described. We shall now
revert to the earlier ones.
My first experimental seance with this remarkable medium took place on the
27th of July, 1897. In response to the invitation of an excellent and
honorable family,--that of Blech,--the name of which has for a long time
been happily associated with modern researches in theosophy, occultism,
and psychological studies, I betook myself to Montfort-l'Amaury, to make
the personal acquaintance of this medium, whose case had already been
studied in several particulars by MM. Lombroso, Charles Richet,
Ochorowicz, Aksakof, Schiaparelli, Myers, Lodge, A. De Rochas, Dariex, J.
Maxwell, Sabatier, De Watteville, and a great number of other scholars and
scientists of high standing. Mme. Paladino's gifts had even been made the
subject of a work by Count de Rochas upon _The Externalization of
Motivity_, as well as of innumerable articles in the special reviews.
The impression that results from the reading of all the official reports
is not altogether satisfactory, and besides leaves us with our curiosity
entirely ungratified. On the other hand, I can say, as I have already had
occasion to remark, that, during the last forty years, almost all the
celebrated mediums have been present at one time or another in my salon in
the avenue l'Observatoire in Paris, and that I have detected them nearly
all in trickery. Not that they always deceive: those who affirm this are
wrong. But, consciously or unconsciously, they bring with them an element
of trouble against which one is obliged to be constantly on guard, and
which places the experimenter in conditions diametrically opposed to those
of scientific observation.
Apropos of Eusapia I had received from my illustrious colleague, M.
Schiaparelli, director of the observatory at Milan, to whom science is
indebted for so many important discoveries, a long letter from which I
will quote a few passages:
During the autumn of 1892 I was invited by M. Aksakof to be present at
a certain number of Spiritualistic seances held under his direction
and care, for the purpose of meeting the medium Eusapia Paladino, of
Naples. I saw a number of very surprising things, a part of which, to
tell the truth, could be explained by very ordinary means. But there
are others the production of which I should not know how to explain by
the known principles of natural philosophy. I add, without any
hesitation, that, if it had been possible to entirely exclude all
suspicion of deceit, one would have had to recognize in these facts
the beginning of a new science pregnant with consequences of the
highest importance. But it must be admitted that these experiments
have been made in a manner little calculated to convince impartial
judges of their sincerity. Conditions were always imposed that
hindered the right comprehension of what was really taking place. When
we proposed modifications in the program suited to give to the
experiments the stamp of clearness and to furnish evidence that was
lacking, the medium invariably declared that, if we did so, the
success of the seance would thereby be made impossible. In fine, we
did not _experiment_ in the true sense of the word: we were obliged to
be content with _observing_ that which occurred under the unfavorable
circumstances imposed by the medium. Even when mere observation was
pushed a little too far, the phenomena were no longer produced or
lost their intensity and their marvellous nature. Nothing is more
offensive than these games of hide-and-seek to which we are obliged to
submit
All that kind of thing excites distrust. Having passed all my life in
the study of nature, which is always sincere in its manifestations and
logical in its processes, it is repugnant to me to turn my thoughts to
the investigation of a class of truths, which it seems as if a
malevolent and disloyal power was hiding from us with an obstinacy the
motive of which we cannot comprehend. In such researches it is not
sufficient to employ the ordinary methods of natural philosophy, which
are infallible, but very limited in their action. We must have
recourse to that other critical method, more subject to error, but
more audacious and more powerful, of which police officers and
examining magistrates make use when they are trying to bring out a
truth in the midst of disagreeing witnesses, a part at least of whom
have an interest in hiding that truth.
In accordance with these reflections, I cannot say that I am convinced
of the reality of the things which are comprised under the ill-chosen
name of Spiritualism. But neither do I believe in our right to deny
everything; for, in order to have a good basis for denial, it is not
sufficient to _suspect_ fraud, it is necessary to _prove it_. These
experiments, which I have found very unsatisfactory, other
experimenters of great confidence and of established reputation have
been able to make in more favorable circumstances. I have not enough
presumption to oppose a dogmatic and unwarranted denial to proofs in
which scientists of great critical ability, such as MM. Crookes,
Wallace, Richet, Oliver Lodge, have found a solid basis of fact and
one worthy their examination, to such an extent that they have given
to it years of study. And we should deceive ourselves if we believed
that men convinced of the truth of Spiritualism are all fanatics.
During the experiments of 1892 I had the pleasure of knowing some of
these men. I was obliged to admire their sincere desire to know the
truth; and I found, in the case of several of them, philosophic ideas
very sensible and very profound, joined to a moral character
altogether worthy of esteem.
That is the reason why it is impossible for me to declare that
Spiritualism is a ridiculous absurdity. I ought, then, to abstain from
pronouncing any opinion whatever: my mental state on this subject may
be defined by the word "agnosticism."
I have read with much attention all that the late Professor Zoellner
has written on this subject. His explanation has a purely material
basis,--that is to say, it is the hypothesis of the objective
existence of a fourth dimension of space, an existence which cannot be
comprised within the scope of our intuition, but the possibility of
which cannot be denied on that ground alone. Once grant the reality of
the experiments which he describes, and it is evident that his theory
of these things is the most ingenious and probable that can be
imagined. According to this theory, mediumistic phenomena would lose
their mystic or mystifying character and would pass into the domain of
ordinary physics and of physiology. They would lead to a very
considerable extension of the sciences, an extension such that their
author would deserve to be placed side by side with Galileo and
Newton. Unfortunately, these experiences of Zoellner were made with a
medium of poor reputation. It is not only the sceptics who doubt the
good faith of M. Slade: it is the Spiritualists themselves. M.
Aksakof, whose authority is very great in similar matters, told me
himself that he had detected him in trickery. You see by this that
these theories of Zoellner lose any support they might have derived
from the exact demonstration of experiment, at the same time that they
remain very beautiful, very ingenious, and quite possible.
Yes, quite possible in spite of everything; in spite of the lack of
success that I had when I tried to reproduce them with Eusapia. On the
day when we shall be enabled to make, with absolute sincerity, _a
single one_ of these experiments, the matter will have made great
progress; from the hands of charlatans it will have passed into those
of physicists and physiologists.
Such is the communication made to me by M. Schiaparelli. I found his
reasoning to be without defect, and it was in a state of mind entirely
analogous to his that I arrived at Monfort-l'Amaury (with all the more
interest because Slade was one of the mediums of whom I was just now
speaking).
Eusapia Paladino was introduced to me. She is a woman of very ordinary
appearance, a brunette, her figure a little under the medium height. She
was forty-three years old, not at all neurotic, rather stout. She was born
on January 21, 1854, in a village of La Pouille; her mother died while
giving birth to the child; her father was assassinated eight years
afterward, in 1862, by brigands of southern Italy. Eusapia Paladino is her
maiden name. She was married at Naples to a merchant of modest means named
Raphael Delgaiz, a citizen of Naples. She manages the petty business of
the shop, is illiterate, does not know how to either read or write,
understands only a little French. I conversed with her, and soon perceived
that she has no theories and does not burden herself by trying to explain
the phenomena produced by her.
The salon in which we are going to conduct our experiments is a room on
the ground floor, rectangular, measuring twenty feet in length by nineteen
in breadth; there are four windows, an outside entrance door and another
in the vestibule.
Before the sitting, I make sure that the large doors and windows are
closely shut by window-blinds with hooks and by wooden blinds on the
inside. The door of the vestibule is simply locked with a key.
In an angle of the salon, at the left of the large entrance door, two
curtains of a light color have been stretched on a rod, joining in the
middle and forming thus a little cabinet. In this cabinet there is a sofa,
and leaning against this a guitar; on one side is a chair, on which have
been placed a music-box and a bell. In the recess of the window which is
included in the cabinet there is a music-rack, upon which has been placed
a plate containing a well-smoothed cake of glazier's putty, and under
which, on the floor, is a huge tray containing a large smoothed cake of
the same. We have prepared these plaques of putty because the annals of
Spiritualism have often shown the imprint of hands and of heads produced
by the unknown beings whom it is our business in this work to investigate.
The large tray weighs about nine pounds.
Why this dark cabinet? The medium declares it is necessary to the
production of the phenomena "that relate to the condensation of fluids."
I should prefer that there should be nothing of the kind. But the
conditions must be accepted, though we must have an exact understanding
about them. Behind the curtain the stillness of the aerial waves is at its
maximum, the light at its minimum. It is curious, strange, infinitely
regrettable that light prohibits certain effects. Undoubtedly, it would
not be either philosophic or scientific to oppose this condition. It is
possible that the radiations, the forces, which act may be the rays of the
invisible end of the spectrum, I have already had occasion to remark, in
the first chapter, that he who would seek to make photographs without a
dark chamber would cloud over his plate and obtain nothing. The man who
would deny the existence of electricity because he had been unable to
obtain a spark in a damp atmosphere would be in error. He who would not
believe in the existence of stars because we only see them at night would
not be very wise. Modern progress in natural philosophy has taught us that
the radiations that impinge on the retina represent only the smallest
fraction of the totality. We can then admit the existence of forces which
do not act in the full light of day. But, in accepting these conditions,
the essential point is not to be their dupe.
Hence, before the seance, I examined carefully the narrow corner of the
room before which the curtain was stretched, and I found nothing except
the objects mentioned above. Nowhere in the room was there any sign
whatever of concealed mechanism, no electric wires or batteries or
anything of the kind, either on the floor or in the walls. Moreover, the
perfect sincerity of M. and Mme. Blech is beyond all suspicion.
Before the seance, Eusapia was undressed and dressed before Mme. Zelma
Blech. Nothing suspicious was found.
The sitting was begun in full light, and I constantly laid stress upon
obtaining the largest number of phenomena we could in the full light of
day. It was only gradually, according as the "spirit" begged for it, that
the light was turned down. But I obtained the concession that the darkness
should never be absolute. At the last limit, when the light had to be
entirely extinguished, it was replaced by one of the red lanterns used by
photographers.
The medium sits _before_ the curtain, turning her back to it. A table is
placed before her,--a kitchen table, made of spruce, weighing about
fifteen pounds. I examined this table and found nothing in it suspicious.
It could be moved about in every direction.
I sit at first on the left of Eusapia, then at her right side. I make sure
as far as possible of her hands, her legs, and her feet, by personal
control. Thus, for example, to begin with, in order to be sure that she
should not lift the table either by her hands or her legs, or her feet, I
take her left hand in my left hand, I place my right open hand upon her
knees, and I place my right foot upon her left foot. Facing me, M.
Guillaume de Fontenay, no more disposed than I to be duped, takes charge
of her right hand and her right foot.
There is full light,--a big kerosene lamp with a wide burner and a light
yellow shade, besides two lighted candles.
At the end of three minutes the table begins to move, balancing itself,
and rising sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left. A minute
afterwards it is _lifted entirely from the floor_, to a height of about
nine inches, and remains there two seconds.
In a second trial, I take the two hands of Eusapia in mine. A notable
levitation is produced, nearly under the same conditions.
We repeat the same experiments thrice, in such a way that five levitations
of the table take place in a quarter of an hour, and for several seconds
the four feet are completely lifted from the floor, to the height of about
nine inches. During one of the levitations the experimenters did not touch
the table at all, but formed the chain above it and in the air; and
Eusapia acted in the same way.
So then it seems that an object can be lifted, in opposition to the law of
gravity, without the contact of the hands which have just been acting upon
it. (Proof already given above, pp. 5-8, 16.)
A round centre table placed at my right comes forward without contact
towards the table, always in full light, be it understood, as if it would
like to climb up on it, and falls down. Nobody has moved aside or
approached the curtain, and no explanation of this movement can be given.
The medium has not yet entered into a trance and continues to take part in
the conversation.
Five raps in the table indicate, according to a convention arranged by the
medium, that the unknown cause asks for less light. This is always
annoying: I have already said what I think of this. The candles are blown
out, the lamp turned down, but the light is strong enough for us to see
very distinctly everything that takes place in the salon. The round table,
which I had lifted and set aside, approaches the table and tries several
times to climb up on it. I lean upon it in order to keep it down, but I
experience an elastic resistance and am unable to do so. The free edge of
the round table places itself on the edge of the rectangular table, but,
hindered by its triangular foot, it does not succeed in clearing itself
sufficiently to climb upon it. Since I am holding the medium, I ascertain
that she makes no effort of the kind that would be needed for this style
of performance.
The curtain swells out and approaches my face. It is at this moment that
the medium falls into a trance. She utters sighs and lamentations and only
speaks now in the third person, saying that she is John King, a psychic
personality who claims to have been her father in another existence and
who calls her "my daughter" (_mia figlia_). This is an auto-suggestion
proving nothing as to the identity of the force.
Five new taps ask for still _less light_, and the lamp is most completely
turned down, but not extinguished. The eyes, growing accustomed to the
clare-obscure, still distinguish pretty well what is taking place.
The curtain swells out again, and I feel that I am touched on the
shoulder, through the stuff of the curtain, as if by a closed fist. The
chair in the cabinet, upon which are placed the music-box and the bell, is
violently shaken, and the objects fall to the floor. The medium asks again
for _less light_, and a red photographic lantern is placed upon the piano,
the light of the lamp being extinguished. The control is rigorously kept
up, the medium agreeing to it with the greatest docility.
For about a minute the music-box plays intermittent airs behind the
curtain, as if it was turned by some hand.
The curtain moves forward again toward me, and a rather strong hand seizes
my arm. I immediately reach forward to seize the hand, but I grasp only
the empty air. I then press the two legs of the medium between mine and I
take her left hand in my right. On the other side, her right hand is
firmly held in the left hand of M. de Fontenay. Then Eusapia brings the
hand of the last named toward my cheek, and imitates upon the cheek, with
the finger of M. de Fontenay, the movement of a little revolving crank or
handle. The music-box, which has one of these handles, _plays at the same
time behind the curtain in perfect synchronism_. The instant that
Eusapia's hand stops, the music stops: all the movements correspond, just
as in the Morse telegraphic system. We all amused ourselves with this. The
thing was tried several times in succession, and every time the movement
of the finger tallied the playing of the music.
I feel several touches in the back and on the side. M. de Fontenay
receives a hard slap on the back that everybody hears. A hand passes
through my hair. The chair of M. de Fontenay is violently pulled, and a
few moments afterwards he cries, "I see the silhouette of a man passing
between M. Flammarion and me, above the table, shutting out the red
light!"
This thing is repeated several times. I do not myself succeed in seeing
this silhouette. I then propose to M. de Fontenay that I take his place,
for, in that case, I should be likely to see it also. I soon distinctly
perceive a dim silhouette passing before the red lantern, but I do not
recognize any precise form. It is only an opaque shadow (the profile of a
man) which advances as far as the light and retires.
In a moment, Eusapia says there is some one behind the curtain. After a
slight pause she adds:
"There is a man by my side, on the right: he has a great soft forked
beard." I ask if I may touch this beard. In fact, while lifting my hand,
I feel a rather soft beard brushing against it.
A block of paper is put on the table with a lead-pencil, with the hope of
getting writing. This pencil is flipped clear across the room. I then take
the block of paper and hold it in the air: it is snatched violently from
me, in spite of all my efforts to retain it. At this moment, M. de
Fontenay, with his back turned to the light, sees a hand (a white hand and
not a shadow), the arm showing as far as the elbow, holding the block of
paper; but all the others declare that they only see the paper shaking in
the air.
I did not see the hand snatch the packet of paper from me; but only a hand
could have been able to seize it with such violence, and this did not
appear to be the hand of the medium, for I held her right hand in my left,
and the paper with arm extended in my right hand, and M. de Fontenay
declared that he did not let go of her left hand.
I was struck several times in the side, touched on the head, and my ear
was smartly pinched. I declare that after several repetitions I had enough
of this ear pinching; but during the whole seance, in spite of my
protestations, somebody kept hitting me.
The little round table, placed outside of the cabinet, at the left of the
medium, approaches the table, climbs clear up on it and lies across it.
The guitar in the cabinet is heard moving about and giving out sounds. The
curtain is puffed out, and the guitar is brought upon the table, resting
upon the shoulder of M. de Fontenay. It is then laid upon the table, the
large end toward the medium. Then it rises and moves over the heads of the
company without touching them. It gives forth several sounds. The
phenomenon lasts about fifteen seconds. It can readily be seen that the
guitar is floating in the air, and the reflection of the red lamp glides
over its shining surface. A rather bright gleam, pear-shaped, is seen on
the ceiling in the other corner of the room.
The medium, who is tired, asks for rest. The candles are lighted. Mme.
Blech returns the objects to their places, ascertains that the cakes of
putty are intact, places the smallest upon the little round table and the
large one upon the chair in the cabinet, behind the medium. The sitting is
resumed by the feeble glimmer of the red lantern.
The medium, whose hands and feet are carefully controlled by M. de
Fontenay and myself, breathes heavily. Above her head the snapping of
fingers is heard. She still pants, groans, and sinks her fingers into my
hand. Three raps are heard. She cries, "It is done" ("_E fatto_"). M. de
Fontenay brings the little dish beneath the light of the red lantern and
discovers the impression of four fingers in the putty, in the position
which they had taken when she gripped my hand.
Seats are taken, the medium asks for rest, and a little light is turned
on.
The sitting is soon resumed as before, by the extremely feeble light of
the red lantern. John is spoken of as if he existed, as if it was he whose
head we perceived in silhouette; he is asked to continue his
manifestations, and to show the impression of his head in the putty, as he
has already several times done. Eusapia replies that it is a difficult
thing and asks us not to think of it for a moment, but to go on speaking.
These suggestions of hers are always disquieting, and we redouble our
attention, though without speaking much. The medium pants, groans,
writhes. The chair in the cabinet on which the putty is placed is heard to
move. The chair comes forward and places itself by the side of the medium,
then it is lifted and placed upon the head of Mme. Z. Blech, while the
tray is lightly placed in the hands of M. Blech, at the other end of the
table. Eusapia cries that she sees before her a head and a bust, and
says, "_E fatto_" ("It is done"). We do not believe her, because M. Blech
has not felt any pressure on the dish. Three violent blows as of a mallet
are struck upon the table. The light is turned on, and a human profile is
found imprinted upon the putty.
Mme. Z. Blech kisses Eusapia upon both cheeks, for the purpose of finding
out whether her face has not some odor (glazier's putty having a very
strong odor of linseed oil which remains for some time upon the fingers).
She discovers nothing abnormal.
This discovery of a "spirit head" in the putty is so astonishing, so
impossible to admit without sufficient verification, that it is really
still more incredible than all the rest. It is not the head of the man
whose profile I perceived, and the beard I felt on my hand is not there.
The imprint has a resemblance to Eusapia's face. If we supposed she
produced it herself, that she was able to bury her nose up to the cheeks
and up to the eyes in that thick putty, we should still have to explain
how that large and heavy tray was transported from the other end of the
table and gently placed in the hands of M. Blech.
The resemblance of the imprint to Eusapia was undeniable. I reproduce both
the print and the portrait of the medium.[21] Every one can assure himself
of it. The simplest thing, evidently, is to suppose the Italian woman
imprinted her face in the putty.
But how?
We are in the dark as to this, or nearly so. I sit at the right hand of
Eusapia, _who rests her head upon my left shoulder_, and whose right hand
I am holding. M. de Fontenay is at her left, and has taken great care not
to let go of the other hand. The tray of putty, weighing nine pounds, has
been placed upon a chair, twenty inches behind the curtain, consequently
behind Eusapia. She cannot touch it without turning around, and we have
her entirely in our power, our feet on hers. Now the chair upon which was
the tray of putty has drawn aside the hangings, or portieres, and moved
forward to a point above the head of the medium, who remained seated and
held down by us; moved itself also over our heads,--the chair to rest upon
the head of my neighbor, Mme. Blech, and the tray to rest softly in the
hands of M. Blech, who is sitting at the end of the table. At this moment
Eusapia rises, declaring that she sees upon the table another table and a
bust, and cries out, "_E fatto_" ("It is done"). It was not at this time,
surely, that she would have been able to place her face upon the cake, for
it was at the other end of the table. Nor was it before this, for it would
have been necessary to take the chair in one hand and the cake with the
other, and she did not stir from her place. The explanation, as can be
seen, is very difficult indeed.
Let us admit, however, that the fact is so extraordinary that a doubt
remains in our mind, because the medium rose from her chair almost at the
critical moment. And yet her face was immediately kissed by Mme. Blech,
who perceived no odor of the putty.
[Illustration: PLATE IV. PLASTER CAST OF IMPRINT MADE IN PUTTY WITHOUT
CONTACT BY THE MEDIUM EUSAPIA PALADINO.]
[Illustration: PLATE V. EUSAPIA PALADINO, SHOWING RESEMBLANCE TO THE
IMPRINT IN PUTTY.]
Dr. Ochorowicz writes as follows apropos of these prints of faces and of
the study which he made of them at Rome:[22]
The imprint of this face was obtained in darkness, yet at a moment
when I held the two hands of Eusapia, while my arms were entirely
around her. Or, rather, it was she who clung to me in such a way that
I had accurate knowledge of the position of all her limbs. Her head
rested against mine, and even with violence. At the moment of the
production of the phenomenon a convulsive trembling shook her whole
body, and the pressure of her head on my temples was so intense that
it hurt me.
At the moment when the strongest convulsion took place, she cried,
"_Ah, che dura!_" ("Oh, how severe!") We at once lighted a candle and
found a print, rather poor in comparison with those which other
experimenters have obtained,--a thing due, perhaps, to the bad quality
of the clay which I used. This clay was placed about twenty inches to
the right of the medium, while her head was inclined to the left. Her
face was not at all soiled by the clay, which was yet so moist as to
leave traces upon the fingers when touched. Moreover, the contact of
her head with mine made me suffer so much that I am absolutely sure it
was not intermitted for a single moment. Eusapia was very happy when
she saw a verification made under conditions in which it was
impossible to suspect her good faith.
I then took the tray of clay, and we passed into the dining-room in
order to better examine the imprint, which I placed on a large table
near a big kerosene lamp. Eusapia, who had fallen into a trance,
remained for some moments standing, her hands resting upon the table,
motionless and as if unconscious. I did not lose sight of her, and she
looked at me without seeing anything. Then, with an uncertain step,
she moved backward toward the door and passed slowly into the chamber
which we had just left. We followed her, observing her all the while,
and leaving the clay behind upon the table. We had already got into
the chamber when, leaning against one of the halves of the double
door, she fixed her eyes upon the tray of clay which had been left
upon the table. The medium was in a very good light: we were separated
from her by a distance of from six to ten feet, and we perceived
distinctly all the details. All of a sudden Eusapia stretched her hand
out abruptly toward the clay, then sank down uttering a groan. We
rushed precipitately towards the table and saw, side by side with the
imprint of the head, a new imprint, very marked, of a hand which had
been thus produced under the very light of the lamp, and which
resembled the hand of Eusapia. I have, myself, obtained head prints a
dozen times, but always rather poor, owing to the quality of the clay,
and often broken while the experiment was going on.
The Chevalier Chiaia, of Naples, who first obtained these fantastic
pictures through the agency of Eusapia, wrote as follows, in this
connection, to Count de Rochas:
I have imprints in boxes of clay weighing anywhere between fifty-five
and sixty-five pounds. I mention the weight in order to let you see
the impossibility of lifting and transporting _with one hand alone_ so
heavy a tray, even upon the supposition that Eusapia might, unknown to
us, free one of her hands. In almost every case, in fact, this tray,
placed upon a chair _three feet behind the medium_, was brought
forward and placed very gently upon the table about which we were
seated. The transfer was made with such nicety that the persons who
formed the chain and held firmly the hands of Eusapia did not hear the
least noise, did not perceive the least rustling. We were forewarned
of the arrival of the tray upon the table by seven taps, which,
according to our conventional arrangement, John struck in the wall to
inform us that we could turn on the light. I did so at once by turning
the cock of the gas-fixture which was suspended above the table. (We
had never completely extinguished it.) We then found the tray upon the
table, and, upon the clay, the imprint which we supposed must have
been made before its transfer, and while it was behind Eusapia, in the
cabinet where John usually materializes and manifests himself.
The totality of these observations (which are very numerous) leads us to
the thought that, in spite of the improbability of the thing, these
imprints are produced at a distance by the medium.
However, some days after the seance at Montfort-l'Amaury I wrote as
follows:
These different manifestations are not to me equally authentic. I am
not sure of all of them, for the phenomena were not all produced
under the same conditions of certainty. I should wish to class the
facts in the following order of decreasing certainty:
1. Levitations of the table.
2. Movements of the round table without contact.
3. Mallet blows.
4. Movements of the curtain.
5. Opaque silhouette passing before the red lamp.
6. Sensation of a beard upon the back of the hand.
7. Touchings.
8. Snatching of the block of paper.
9. Throwing of the lead-pencil.
10. Transference of the round table to the top of the other table.
11. Music from the little box.
12. Transfer of the guitar to a point above the head.
13. Imprints of a hand and of a face.
The first four events, having taken place in full light, are
incontestable. I should put almost in the same rank Nos. 5 and 6. No.
7 may perhaps be due very often to fraud. The last in the list, having
been produced toward the end of the seance, at a time when attention
was necessarily relaxed, and being still more extraordinary than all
the others, I confess that I cannot admit it with certainty, although
I can not understand how it could have been due to fraud. The four
others seem genuine; but I should like to observe them anew; a man
could wager ninety-nine to one hundred that they are true. I was
absolutely sure of them during the seance. But the vividness of the
impressions grows weak, and we have a tendency to listen only to the
voice of plain common sense,--the most reasonable and the most
deceptive of our faculties.
The first impression we get upon the reading of these reports is that
these different manifestations are rather vulgar, altogether banal, and do
not tell us anything about the other world--or about other worlds. Surely
it does not seem probable that any _spiritual being_ would take part in
such performances. For these phenomena are of an absolutely material
class.
On the other hand, however, it is impossible not to recognize the
existence of unknown forces. The simple fact, for example, of the
levitation of a table to a height of six and one-half, eight, sixteen
inches from the floor is not banal at all. It seems to me, speaking for
myself alone, so extraordinary that my opinion is very well expressed when
I say that I do not dare to admit it without having seen it myself, with
my own eyes: I mean that which is called seeing, in full light and under
such conditions that it would be impossible to suspect. While we are very
sure that we have proved it, we are at the same time sure that in such
experiments there emanates from the human body a force that may be
compared with the magnetism of the loadstone, able to act upon wood, upon
matter (somewhat as the loadstone acts upon iron), and counterbalancing
for some moments the action of gravity. From the scientific point of view,
that is a weighty fact in itself. I am absolutely certain that the medium
did not lift that weight of fifteen pounds either by her hands or by her
legs, or by her feet, and, furthermore, no one of the company was able to
do it. The table was lifted by its upper surface. We are, therefore,
certainly in the presence of an unknown force here which emanates from the
persons present, and above all from the medium.
A rather curious observation ought to be made here. Several times during
the course of this seance, and during the levitation of the table, I said,
"There is no spirit." Every time I said this two violent blows of
protestation were struck in the table. I have already remarked that,
generally, we are supposed to admit the Spiritualistic hypothesis and to
ask a spirit to exert himself in order that we may obtain the phenomena.
We have here a psychological matter not without importance. Still, it does
not seem to me, for all that, to prove the real existence of spirits, for
it might happen that this idea was necessary to the concentration of the
forces present and had a purely subjective value. Religious zealots who
believe in the efficacy of prayer are the dupes of their own imagination;
and yet no one can doubt that certain of these petitions appear to have
been granted by a beneficent deity. The Italian or Spanish girl who goes
to beg of the Virgin Mary that she will punish her lover for an infidelity
may be sincere, and never suspects the strangeness of her request. In
dreams we all converse every night with imaginary beings. But there is
something more here: the medium really duplicates herself.
I take the point of view solely of the physicist whose business is to
observe, and I say, whatever may be the explanatory hypothesis you may
adopt, there exists an invisible force derived from the organism of the
medium, and having the power to emerge from him and to act outside of him.
That is the fact: what is the best hypothesis to explain it? 1. Is it the
medium who herself acts, in an unconscious manner, by means of an
invisible force emanating from her? 2. Is it an intelligent cause apart
from her, a soul that has already lived upon this earth, who draws from
the medium a force which it needs in order to act? 3. Is it another kind
of invisible beings? Nothing authorizes us to affirm that there may not
exist, side by side with us, living, invisible forces. There you have
three very different hypotheses, none of which seems to me, as far as my
personal experience goes, to be as yet conclusively proved.
But there certainly emanates from the medium an invisible force; and the
participants, by forming the psychic chain and by uniting their
sympathetic wills, increase this force. This force is not immaterial. It
may be a substance, an agent emitting radiations of wave-lengths which
make no impression on our retina, and which are nevertheless very
powerful. In the absence of light rays it is able to condense itself,
take shape, affect even a certain resemblance to the human body, to act as
do our organs, to violently strike a table, or touch us.
It acts as if it were an independent being. But this independence does not
really exist; for this transitory being is intimately connected with the
organism of the medium, and its apparent existence ceases when the
conditions of its production themselves cease.
While writing these monstrous scientific heresies, I feel very deeply that
it is difficult to accept them. Still, after all, who can trace the limits
of science? We have all learned, especially during the last quarter of a
century, that our knowledge is not a very colossal affair, and that, apart
from astronomy, there is as yet no exact science founded upon absolute
principles. And then, when all is said, there are the _facts_ to be
explained. Doubtless it is easier to deny them. But it is not decent or
civil. He who has merely failed to find what satisfies him has no right to
deny. The best he can do is simply to say, "I know nothing about it."
The fact is that, as yet, we have not elementary data enough to enable us
to characterize these forces; but we ought not to lay the blame upon those
who study them.
To sum up, I believe that I am able to go a little farther than M.
Schiaparelli and affirm the certain existence of unknown forces capable of
moving matter and of counterbalancing the action of gravity. There is a
complex totality, as yet difficult to disentangle, of psychic and physical
forces. But such facts, however extravagant they may appear, are worthy of
coming within the sphere of scientific observation. It is even probable
that they tend powerfully to elucidate the problem (a matter of supreme
importance to us) of the nature of the human soul.
After the end of that seance of the 27th of July, 1897, as I desired to
see again the levitation of a table in full light, the chain was formed
_standing_, the hands lightly placed upon the table. The latter began to
oscillate, then rose up to a height of nine inches from the floor,
remained there several seconds (all the participators remaining on their
feet), and fell heavily back again.[23]
[Illustration: PLATE VI
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE TABLE RESTING ON THE FLOOR.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SAME TABLE RAISED TO A HEIGHT OF TWENTY-FIVE
CENTIMETRES. MADE BY M. G. DE FONTENAY.]
M. G. de Fontenay succeeded in getting several photographs by the
magnesium light. I reproduce two of them here (Pl. VI.). There are five
experimenters who are, from left to right, M. Blech, Mme. Z. Blech,
Eusapia, myself, Mlle. Blech. In the first photograph the table rests upon
the floor. In the second it floats in air, coming up as high as the arms,
at a height of about ten inches on the left and eight inches on the right.
I hold my right foot resting upon Eusapia's feet and my right hand upon
her knees. With my left hand I hold her left hand. The hands of all the
others are upon the table. It is therefore altogether impossible for her
to employ any muscular action. This photographic record confirms that of
Pl. I., and it seems to me difficult not to recognize its undeniable
documentary value.[24]
After this seance my most ardent desire was to see the same experiments
reproduced at my own house. In spite of all the care I took with my
observations, several objections can be taken to the absolute certainty of
the phenomena. The most important arises from the existence of the little
dark cabinet. Personally, I was sure of the perfect probity of the
honorable Blech family, and I am unable to accept the idea of any trickery
whatever on the part of any of its members. But the opinion of readers of
the formal report may not be so well assured. It was not _impossible_
that, even unknown to the members of the family, some one, with the
connivance of the medium, glided into the room, favored by the dim light,
and produced the phenomena. An accomplice entirely clothed in black and
walking barefoot would have been able to hold the instruments up in the
air, put them in movement, make the touches, and cause the black mask to
move at the end of a rod, etc.
This objection could be verified or quashed by renewing the experiments at
my house, in a room of my own, where I should be absolutely certain that
no confederate could enter. I should myself arrange the curtain, I should
place the chairs, I should be certain that Eusapia would come alone to my
apartments, she would be asked to undress and dress in the presence of two
lady examiners, and every supposition of fraud alien to her proper
personality would thus be annihilated.
At this epoch (1898) I was preparing, for _l'Annales politiques et
litteraires_, some articles upon psychic phenomena, which, revised and
amplified, afterwards formed my work, _The Unknown_. The eminent and
sympathetic editor of the review showed himself assiduous in examining
with me the best means of realizing this scheme of personal experiences.
Upon our invitation, Eusapia came to Paris to pass the month of November,
1898, and to devote eight soirees especially to us--namely, the 10th,
12th, 14th, 16th, 19th, 21st, 25th, and 28th of November. We had invited
several friends to be present. Each one of these seances was the subject
of a formal report by several of those who were present, notably by MM.
Charles Richet, A. de Rochas, Victorien Sardou, Jules Claretie, Adolphe
Brisson, Rene Baschet, Arthur Levy, Gustave Le Bon, Jules Bois, Gaston
Mery, G. Delanne, G. de Fontenay, G. Armelin, Andre Bloch, etc.
We met in my salon in the avenue de l'Observatoire, in Paris. There were
no special arrangements, except the stretching of two curtains in one
corner, before the angle of two walls, thus forming a kind of triangular
cabinet, the walls about which are there unbroken, without door or window.
The front of the cabinet was closed by these two curtains, reaching from
the ceiling to the floor and meeting in the middle.
It is before this kind of cabinet that the reader will please imagine the
medium to be seated, with a white wooden table (kitchen table) before her.
Behind the curtain, upon the plinth of the projection of a bookcase and
upon a table, we placed a guitar, also a violin, a tambourine, an
accordion, a music-box, cushions, and several small objects, which were to
be shaken, seized, thrown about by the unknown force.
The first result of these seances in Paris, at my house, was absolutely to
establish the fact that the hypothesis of a confederate is inadmissible
and ought to be entirely eliminated. Eusapia acts alone.
The fifth seance led me, moreover, to think that the phenomena take place
(at least a certain number) when the hands of Eusapia are closely held by
two controllers, that it is not generally with her hands that she acts, in
spite of certain possible trickeries; for it would be necessary to admit
(an abominable heresy!) that a third hand could be formed in organic
connection with her body!
Before every seance Eusapia was undressed and dressed again in the
presence of two ladies charged with seeing that she did not hide any
tricking apparatus under her clothes.
It would be a little long to go thoroughly into the details of these eight
sittings, and it would be partly to go over what has already been
described and commented upon in the first chapter, as well as in the
preceding pages. But it will not be uninteresting to give here the
estimate of several of the sitters, by reproducing some of the reports.
I will begin with that of M. Arthur Levy, because he describes very fully
the installation, the impression produced upon him by a medium, and the
greater part of the facts observed.
Report of M. Arthur Levy
(_Seance of November 16_)
That which I am going to relate I saw yesterday at your house. I saw
it with distrust, closely observing all that might have resembled
trickery; and, after I had seen it, I found it so far beyond the
things that we are accustomed to conceive that I still ask myself if I
really saw it. Yet I must confess that I have not been dreaming.
When I arrived at your salon, I found the furniture and all the other
arrangements as usual. On entering, only a single change could be
remarked at the left, where two thick curtains of gray and green rep
concealed a little corner. Eusapia was to perform her wonders before
this kind of alcove. This was the mysterious corner: I examined it
very minutely. It had in it a little round uncovered table, a
tambourine, a violin, an accordion, castanets, and one or two
cushions. After this precautionary visit, I was certain that in this
place at least there was no preparation, and that no communication
with the outside was possible.
I hasten to say that from this moment up to the end of the experiments
we did not leave the room for a single minute, and that, so to speak,
we had our eyes constantly fixed upon this corner, the curtains of
which, however, were always partly open.
Some moments after my examination of the cabinet Eusapia arrives,--the
famous Eusapia. As almost always happens, she looks quite different
from what I had anticipated. Where I had expected to see--I do not
well know why, indeed--a tall thin woman with a fixed look, piercing
eyes, with bony hands, and abrupt movements, agitated by nerves
incessantly trembling under perpetual tension, I find a woman in the
forties, rather plump, with a tranquil air, soft hand, simple in her
manners, and slightly shrinking. Altogether, she has the air of an
excellent woman of the people. Yet two things arrest the attention
when you look at her. First, her large eyes, filled with strange fire,
sparkle in their orbits, or, again, seem filled with swift gleams of
phosphorescent fire, sometimes bluish, sometimes golden. If I did not
fear that the metaphor was too easy when it concerns a Neapolitan
woman, I should say that her eyes appear like the glowing lava fires
of Vesuvius, seen from a distance in a dark night.
The other peculiarity is a mouth with strange contours. We do not know
whether it expresses amusement, suffering, or scorn. These
peculiarities impress themselves on the mind almost simultaneously,
without our knowing on which one to fix the attention. Perhaps we
should find in these features of her face an indication of forces
which are acting in her, and of which she is not altogether the
mistress.
She takes a seat, enters into all the commonplaces of the
conversation, speaking in a gentle, melodious voice, like many women
of her country. She uses a language difficult for herself and not less
difficult for others, for it is neither French nor Italian. She makes
painful efforts to make herself understood, and sometimes does this by
mimicry (or sign-language) and by willing to obtain that which she
wants. However, a persistent irritation of the throat, like a pressure
of blood returning at short intervals, forces her to cough, to ask for
water. I confess that these paroxysms, in which her face became deeply
flushed, caused me great anxiety. Were we going to have the inevitable
indisposition of the rare tenor, on the day when he was to be heard on
the stage? Happily, nothing of the kind took place. It was rather a
sign of the contrary, and seemed like a forerunner of the extreme
excitement which was going to take possession of her on that evening.
In fact, it is very remarkable that from the moment when she put
herself--how shall I say it?--in condition for work, the cough, the
irritation of the throat, completely disappeared.
When her fingers were placed on black wool,--to be frank, upon the
trousers cloth of one of the company,--Eusapia called our attention to
the kind of diaphanous marks made upon them (the fingers), a
distorted, elongated second contour. She tells us that that is a sign
that she is going to be given great power to-day.
While we are talking some one puts a letter-weigher on the table.
Putting her hands down on each side of the letter-weigher, and at a
distance of four inches, she causes the needle to move to No. 35
engraved on the dial plate of the weigher. Eusapia herself asked us to
convince ourselves, by inspection, that she did _not_ have a hair
leading from one hand to the other, and with which she could
fraudulently press upon the tray of the letter-weigher. This little
by-play took place when all the lamps of the salon were fully lighted.
Then commenced the main series of experiments.
We sit around a rectangular table of white wood, the common kitchen
table. There are six of us. Close to the curtains, at one of the
narrow ends of the table, sits Eusapia; at her left, also near the
curtains, is M. Georges Mathieu, an agricultural engineer at the
observatory in Juvisy; next comes my wife; M. Flammarion is at the
other end, facing Eusapia; then Mme. Flammarion; finally myself. I am
thus placed at the right hand of Eusapia, and also against the
curtain. M. Mathieu and myself each hold a hand of the medium resting
upon his knee, and, furthermore, Eusapia places one of her feet upon
ours. Consequently, no movements of her legs or arms can escape our
attention. Note well, therefore, that this woman has the use only of
her head and of her bust, which latter is of course without the use of
the arms, and is in absolute contact with our shoulders.
We rest our hands on the table. In a few moments it begins to
oscillate, stands on one foot, strikes the floor, rears up, rises
wholly into the air,--sometimes twelve inches, sometimes eight inches,
from the ground. Eusapia utters a sharp cry, resembling a cry of joy,
of deliverance; the curtain behind her swells out, and, all inflated
as it is, comes forward upon the table. Other raps are heard in the
table, and simultaneously in the floor at a distance of about ten feet
from us. All this in full light.
Already excited, Eusapia asks in a supplicating voice and broken words
that we lessen the lights. She cannot endure the dazzling glare in her
eyes. She affirms that she is tortured, wants us to hurry; "for," she
adds, "you shall see fine things." After one of us has placed the lamp
on the floor behind the piano, in the corner opposite the place where
we are (at a distance of about twenty-three feet), Eusapia no longer
sees the light and is satisfied; but we can distinguish faces and
hands. Let it not be forgotten that M. Mathieu and I each have a foot
of the medium on ours, and that we are holding her hands and knees,
that we are pressing against her shoulders.
The table is always shaking and makes sudden jolts. Eusapia calls to
us to look. Above her head appears a hand. It is a small hand, like
that of a little girl of fifteen years, the palm forward, the fingers
joined, the thumb projecting. The color of this hand is livid; its
form is not rigid, nor is it fluid; one would say rather that it is
the hand of a big doll stuffed with bran.
When the hand moves back from the brighter light, as it
disappears,--is it an optical illusion?--it seems to lose its shape,
as if the fingers were being broken, beginning with the thumb.
M. Mathieu is violently pushed by a force acting from behind the
curtain. A strong hand presses against him, he says. His chair is also
pushed. Something pulls his hair. While he is complaining of the
violence used upon him, we hear the sound of the tambourine, which is
then quickly thrown upon the table. Next the violin arrives in the
same manner, and we hear its strings sound. I seize the tambourine and
ask the Invisible if he wishes to take it. I feel a hand grasping the
instrument. I am not willing to let it go. A struggle now ensues
between myself and a force which I judge to be considerable. In the
tussle a violent effort pushes the tambourine into my hand, and the
cymbals penetrate the flesh. I feel a sharp pang, and a good deal of
blood flows. I let go of the handle. I just now ascertain, by the
light, that I have a deep gash under the right thumb nearly an inch
long. The table continues to shake, to strike the floor with redoubled
strokes, and the accordion is thrown upon the table. I seize it by
its lower half and ask the Invisible if he can pull it out by the
other end so as to make it play. The curtain comes forward, and the
bellows of the accordion is methodically moved back and forth, its
keys are touched, and several different notes are heard.
Eusapia utters repeated cries, a kind of rattling in the throat. She
writhes nervously, and, as if she were calling for help, cries, "_La
catena! la catena!_" ("The chain! the chain!"). We thereupon form the
chain by taking hold of hands. Then, just as if she was defying some
monster, she turns, with inflamed looks, toward an enormous divan,
which thereupon _marches up to us_. She looks at it with a satanic
smile. Finally she blows upon the divan, which goes immediately back
to its place.
Eusapia, faint and depressed, remains relatively calm. Yet she is
dejected; her breast heaves violently; she lays her head on my
shoulder.
M. Mathieu, tired of the blows which he is constantly receiving, asks
to change places with some one. I agree to this. He changes with Mme.
F., who then sits at the right of Eusapia, while I am at her left.
Mme. F. and I never cease to hold the feet, hands, and knees of the
medium. M. F. sets a water bottle and a glass in the middle of the
table. The latter's brisk, jolting movements overturn the water
bottle, and the water is spilled over its surface. The medium
imperatively requires that the liquid be wiped up; the water upon the
table blinds her, tortures, paralyzes her, she says. M. F. asks the
Invisible if he can pour water into the glass. After some moments the
curtain advances, the carafe is grasped, and the glass seems to be
half full. That takes place several different times.
Mme. F., being no longer able to endure the blows given her through
the curtain, exchanges seats with her husband.
I put my repeating watch upon the table. I ask the Invisible if he can
sound the alarm. (The mechanism of the alarm is very difficult to
understand, delicate to operate, even for me, doing it every day. It
is formed by a little tube cut in two, one half of which glides
smoothly over the other. In reality, there is only a projection of
one-fiftieth of an inch of thickness of tube, upon which it is
necessary to press with the finger-nail and give quite a push in order
to start up the alarm.) In a moment the watch is taken by the
"spirit." We hear the stem-winder turning. The watch comes back upon
the table without having been sounded.
Another request is made for the alarm to sound. The watch is again
taken; the case is heard to open and shut. (Now I cannot open this
case with my hands: I have to pry it open with a tool like a lever.)
The watch comes back once more without having sounded.
I confess that I experienced a disenchantment. I felt that I was going
to doubt the extent of the occult power, which had, nevertheless,
manifested itself very clearly. Why could it not sound the alarm of
this watch? In making my request, had I overstepped the limits of its
powers? Was I going to be the cause of all the well-proved phenomena
of which we have had testimony losing the half of their value? I said
aloud:
"Am I to show how the alarm is operated?"
"No, no!" Eusapia warmly replies, "it will do it."
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