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 circ.u.mstances, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1a.--Orbits of the satellites of Ura.n.u.s 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 superst.i.tion, 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 overpa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 embarra.s.sing, 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociated 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.sages:
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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 p.r.o.nouncing any opinion whatever: my mental state on this subject may be defined by the word "agnosticism."