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 cla.s.sification 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce 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 compa.s.s....
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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 cla.s.s: 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 Ura.n.u.s, 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 t.i.tle of _The Solution of Scientific Problems by Spirits_, in which it is a.s.serted that the spirits made known the true orbital movement of the satellites of Ura.n.u.s. 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 t.i.tle _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 embarra.s.sed scientists, I have the honor to communicate to you the following circ.u.mstance, which I witnessed with my own eyes:
"In 1781 William Herschel discovered the planet Ura.n.u.s 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 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 Ura.n.u.s. 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 Ura.n.u.s make their revolution from east to west and not from west to east?" I received at once the following reply:
""The satellites of Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s.
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 Ura.n.u.s, 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 Ura.n.u.s is almost perpendicular to the plane of its...o...b..t. 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, 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s was turned toward us at the date of its discovery. Now, in 1781, the system of Ura.n.u.s 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 Ura.n.u.s 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 pa.s.sage 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1--The inclination of the system of Ura.n.u.s. 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 Ura.n.u.s seen from the earth at the four princ.i.p.al epochs of the revolution of this distant planet. It is evident that the apparent method of the revolution was a.n.a.logous 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 pa.s.sage 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.