The soul, demonstration of its reality, deduced from the study of the effects of chloroform and curare on the animal organism, by Mr. Ramon de la Sagra, corresponding member of the Institut de France (Academy of moral and political sciences), Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands, etc.
[1] We said, in an article above, that the researches of science, even with views of an exclusively material study, would lead to spiritualism, by the inability to explain certain effects using only the laws of matter; on the other hand, we have repeatedly said that in catalepsy, lethargy, anesthesia
[2] by chloroform or other substances, natural somnambulism, ecstasy and certain pathological states, the soul is revealed by an independent action of the organism, and gives, by its isolation, the positive proof of its existence. We are not talking about magnetism, or artificial somnambulism, or double sight, or Spiritist manifestations that official science has not yet recognized, but phenomena with which it is able to experiment every day.
Science has searched the soul with the scalpel and the microscope in the brain and the nerve ganglia and has not found it; analysis of these substances only provided oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, from which science concluded that the soul was not distinct from matter. If science does not find it, the reason is quite simple: it has a preconceived, fixated idea of the soul; it believes the soul endowed with the properties of tangible matter; it is in such a form that science seeks it, and naturally it could not recognize it even when it had it in front of its eyes. From the fact that certain organs are the instruments of the manifestations of thought, that by destroying these organs, it stops the manifestation, science draws a not very philosophical consequence that it is the organs that think, absolutely like a person who would have cut the telegraph wire and interrupted the transmission of a dispatch, claiming to have destroyed the person who sent it.
The telegraph device offers us, by comparison, an exact picture of the functioning of the soul in the organism. Suppose that an individual receives a dispatch, and that, ignoring its origin, he engages in the following searches. He follows the transmitting wire to its starting point; he seeks his sender along the wire and does not find him; the wire leads him to Paris, to the office, to the device; he says: "
It was from there that the dispatch left, I have no doubt; it is a materially demonstrated fact;" He explores the apparatus, dismantles it, moves it to look for its sender, and finding there only wood, copper, and a wheel, he says to himself: "
Since the dispatch left from here, and I don't find anybody, it is this mechanism that conceived the dispatch; this is demonstrated to me not less materially." In the meantime, another individual, standing next to the device, begins to repeat the dispatch word for word, and says to him: "
How can you suppose, you man of intelligence, that this mechanism composed of inert, destructible matter, could have conceived the thought of the dispatch that you received, and know the fact that this dispatch conveyed to you? If matter had the faculty of thinking, why shouldn't iron, stone, wood have ideas? If this faculty depends on the order and arrangement of the parts, why shouldn't man build thinking machines? Has it ever occurred to you to believe that these dolls that say: mommy, daddy, are aware of what they are doing? Have you not, on the contrary, admired the intelligence of the author of this ingenious mechanism?"
Here, the new speaker is the soul that conceives the thought; the apparatus is the brain where it is concentrated and formulated; electricity is the fluid directly impregnated with the thought and responsible for carrying it far away, as the air carries sound; the metallic wires are the nerve cords intended for the transmission of the fluid; the first individual is the scientist, in pursuit of the soul, who follows the nerve cords, seeks it in the brain, and not finding it there, concludes that it is the brain that thinks; he does not hear the voice that cries to him: “
You persist in looking for me inside, while I am outside; look aside and you will see me; the nerves, the brain and the fluids do not think more than the metallic wire, the telegraph apparatus and the electricity; they are only the instruments of the manifestation of thought, ingeniously combined by the inventor of the human machine."
At all times, quite frequent spontaneous phenomena, such as catalepsy, lethargy, natural somnambulism, and ecstasy, have shown the soul acting outside the organism; but science has disdained them from that point of view. Now, here is a new discovery, anesthesia by chloroform, of indisputable utility in surgical operations, and of which, for that very reason, we are forced to study the effects, makes science witness to this phenomenon on a daily basis, by exposing, so to speak, the soul of the patient; it is the voice that cries: “
Look outside, and not inside, and you will see me;” but there are people who have eyes and cannot see, ears and cannot hear.
Among the many facts of this kind, the following occurred in the practice of Mr. Velpeau:
“
A lady that had shown no signs of pain while I was removing a large tumor from her, woke up smiling and said, I know it's over; let me come back altogether and I will explain this to you… I did not feel anything at all, she soon added, but this is how I knew I had been operated on. In my sleep, I had gone to visit a lady I knew, to talk to her about a poor child that we had to shelter. While we were chatting, this lady said to me: You think you are at my place right now, don't you? Well! my dear friend, you are completely wrong, for you are at home, in your bed, where the operation is being performed on you right now. Far from alarming me with that language, I naively answered her: Ah! if so, I ask your permission to extend my visit a little longer, so that it is all over when I get home. And that's how, by opening my eyes, even before I was fully awake, I was able to tell you that I had been operated on."
The use of chloroform offers thousands of examples just as conclusive as this one.
In communicating this fact and others analogous to the Academy of Sciences, on March 4
th, 1850, Mr. Velpeau said: "
What a fruitful source for psychology and physiology, that these acts that go so far as to separate the spirit from matter, or intelligence from the body! "
Mr. Velpeau therefore saw the soul function outside the organism; he was able to ascertain its existence through its independence; he heard the voice saying to him: I am outside and not inside; why then has he supported materialism? He has said, since he entered the spiritual world: "
Pride of the scientist, who did not want to deny himself." However, he was not afraid to withdraw certain erroneous scientific opinions that he had publicly professed. In his
Treatise on Operative Medicine, published in 1839, Volume I, page 32, he said: “
Avoiding pain in operations is a chimera that cannot be continued today. Sharp instrument and pain, in operative medicine, are two words that do not present themselves one without the other, to the minds of patients, and whose association must necessarily be admitted.” The chloroform came to give him a denial on this point, as on the question of the soul. Why then did he accept one and not the other? Mystery of human weaknesses!
If, in his lessons, M. Velpeau had said to his students: "
Gentlemen, you are told that you will not find the soul at the end of your scalpel, and they are right, because it is not there, and you would seek it there in vain as I did myself; but study the intelligent manifestations in the phenomena of anesthesia, and you will have incontestable proof of its existence; that is where I found it, and any bona fide observer will find it. In the presence of such facts, it is no longer possible to deny it, since we can ascertain its action independent of the organism, and we can isolate it, so to speak, at will.” By speaking like that, he would only have completed the thought that he had expressed before the Academy of Sciences. With such language, supported by the authority of his name, he would have made a revolution in the art of medicine. It is a glory that he repudiated, and that he bitterly regrets today, but that others will inherit.
Such is the thesis that has just been developed with remarkable talent by Mr. Ramon de la Sagra, in the work that is the subject of this article. The author describes, with method and clarity, from the point of view of pure science, with which he is familiar, all the phases of anesthesia by chloroform, ether, curare
[3], and other agents, according to his own observations, and those of the most accredited authors, such as Velpeau, Gerdy, Bouisson, Flourens, Simonin, etc. The technical and scientific part occupies a large place, but that was necessary for a rigorous demonstration. It contains numerous facts from which we have drawn the reported above. We also borrowed the following conclusions:
"
Since it is a fact perfectly established by the anesthetic phenomena, that the ether extinguishes the life of the nerves, that conduct the impressions of the senses, while leaving the intellectual faculties free, it also becomes incontestable that these faculties do not depend essentially on the senses of the nervous system. Now, as the organs of the senses, that provide impressions, act only through the nerves, it is certain that the latter being paralyzed, the whole organism of animal life, of the life of relation, remains annihilated, for these intellectual faculties that nevertheless work. It is therefore necessary to admit that their existence, or rather their reality, does not depend essentially on the organism, and that, consequently, they proceed from a different principle, independent of it, being able to function without it and in outside of it. Here then is the reality of the soul, rigorously demonstrated, incontestably established, without any physiological observation being able to affect it. We can see like jets of light coming out of this conclusion that illuminate distant horizons, that we will not discuss, however, because this kind of study goes beyond the framework that we have established for ourselves. The psychological point of view from which we have just presented the effects of anesthetic substances, in the animal body, and the consequences that we have deduced from them, in favor of the reality of the existence of the soul, must suggest the hope that a similar method, applied to the study of other analogous phenomena of life, might lead to the same result. No inference would be more correct, for the physiological and psychological effects that show themselves during alcoholic intoxication, pathological delirium, natural and magnetic sleep, ecstasy and even madness, bear the greatest resemblance, in many points, with the effects of the anesthetic substances that we have just studied in this work. Such a concordance of various phenomena, proceeding from different causes, in favor of an identical conclusion, should not surprise us. It is only the consequence of what we have proved: the reality of the existence of an essence distinct from matter in the human organism, and to which are delegated the intellectual functions that matter alone could never fulfill. This would be the place to examine another issue, to make an incursion into the field of animal magnetism, that supports the permanence of sensory faculties outside the senses, that is of vision, of hearing. of taste, of smell, during the complete paralysis of the organs that, in the normal state, provide these impressions. But such doctrine, of which we neither want to dispute nor to support the truth, is not accepted by physiological science, being enough for us to eliminate it from our current research.” This last paragraph proves that the author has done, for the demonstration of the soul, what Mr. Flammarion has done for that of God; that is to say, he insisted on placing himself on the very ground of experimental science, and that he wanted to draw only from the officially recognized facts the proof of his thesis. He promises us another book, that cannot fail to be of great interest, in which will be studied, from the same point of view, the various phenomena that he only mentions, having been limited to those of anesthesia by chloroform. This proof is certainly not necessary to strengthen the conviction of the Spiritists, nor of the spiritualists; but since after God, being the existence of the soul the fundamental basis of Spiritism, we must consider as eminently useful to the doctrine any work that tends to demonstrate its fundamental principles. Now, the demonstration of the action of the soul, apart from the organism, is a starting point that, like the plurality of existences and the perispirit, step by step and by logical deduction, leads to all the consequences of Spiritism.
Indeed, the example reported above is of pure Spiritism in the first place, that Mr. Velpeau hardly suspected when he published it, and if we had been able to quote them all, we would have seen that the anesthetic phenomena prove, not only the reality of the soul, but that of Spiritism. It is thus that everything contributes, as it has been announced, to clear the way for the new doctrine; we get there through a multitude of outcomes that converge towards a common center, and a crowd of people contribute with their share, some consciously, others unwillingly. The book by Mr. Ramon de la Sagra is one of those whose publication we are happy to applaud, because, although Spiritism is ignored in it, it can be considered like
God in the nature, by Mr. Flammarion, and the
Plurality of Existences, by Mr. Pezzani, like monographs of the fundamental principles of the Doctrine to which they give the authority of science.
[1] One vol. in-12, price 2.50 francs; by post 2.75 francs. At Germer-Baillière, libr., 17, rue de l'École-de-Médecine
.[2] Anesthesia, from the Greek suspension of sensitivity
[3] Curare is an eminently poisonous substance that the savages of the Orinoco remove from certain plants, and with which they moisten the tips of arrows that produce fatal wounds.
