The newspaper
La Solidarité, of which we spoke in the Spiritist Review of June 1868, continues to deal with Spiritism, with the tone of serious discussion that characterizes this eminently philosophical paper.
With the title
Psychological research on Spiritism, the July 1
st issue contains an article from which we extract the following passages:
“There are very few newspapers that can claim to be independent. I mean a true independence, that makes it possible to treat a subject without concerns of party, Church, school, faculty, academia; better than that: without concern of the public, with its own audience of readers and subscribers, and only caring about seeking and telling the truth. La Solidarité has this very rare advantage of facing even churns - for it only lives on sacrifices - and for being placed too high up in the regions of thought to have to fear the arrows of ridicule. In dealing with Spiritism, we knew that we would satisfy no one, neither the believers, nor the unbelievers; nobody, except perhaps the people who have no bias in the issue. These know that they do not know. They are the wise ones, and they are few.” The author then describes the material phenomenon of the turning tables, that he explains by human electricity, declaring that he sees nothing there that accuses a foreign intervention. That is what we said from the beginning. He keeps on:
“As long as we only have to explain the automatic movement of objects, we don't need to go beyond what is learned in the physical sciences. But the difficulty increases when it comes to phenomena of an intellectual nature. The table, after having just danced, soon began to answer questions. Therefore, how can we doubt that there was intelligence there? The vague belief in Spirits had given rise to the movement of material objects because it is obvious that, without this a priori, they would never have dared to turn the tables. This belief, finding itself confirmed by appearances, was to lead to a further step. Given that the Spirit is the cause of the movement of the tables, one had to think of questioning it. “The first intelligent manifestations,” says Mr. Allan Kardec, “took place by means of tables rising and kicking with one foot a fixed number of knocks, and thus answering yes or no, according to the convention, to a framed question. We then obtained more developed answers by the letters of the alphabet: the mobile object striking several hits, corresponding to the sequential number of each letter, they thus succeeded in forming words and sentences answering formulated questions. The correctness of the answers, and their correlation, aroused astonishment. The mysterious being who answered that, questioned about his nature, declared that he was a Spirit or Genius, gave himself a name and provided various information on his account." This means of correspondence was long and inconvenient, as Mr. Allan Kardec quite rightly remarks. It was not long before it was replaced by the basket, then the planchette. Today, these means are generally abandoned, and believers rely on what the hand of the medium mechanically writes by the dictation of the Spirit. It is difficult to know what the medium's share is in products somewhat inspired of his pen; it is not easy either to determine the degree of automatism of a basket or a planchette, when these objects are placed under living hands. But if the correspondence by the table is slow and inconvenient, it makes it possible to note the passivity of the instrument. For us, the intellectual communication by means of the table is as well established as that of the telegraphic correspondence. The fact is real. It is only a question of knowing if the correspondent from beyond the grave exists. Is there a Spirit, an invisible being with whom one corresponds, or are the operators the victims of an illusion and are they only in contact with themselves? That is the question. We have attributed to the electricity emitted by the human machine the mechanical movements of the tables; we do not have to look elsewhere other than the human soul for the agent that gives these movements a character of intelligence. By imagining electricity as an elastic fluid of extreme subtlety, imposed between the molecules of the bodies, and surrounding them as in an atmosphere, we can very well understand that the soul, thanks to this envelope, makes its action on all parts of the body, without occupying a determined place there, and that the unity of the self is everywhere at the same time, where its atmosphere can reach. The action by contact then goes beyond the periphery of the body, and the ethereal or fluidic vibrations, by communicating from one atmosphere to another, can produce between the beings in relation, effects at a distance. There is a whole world to study here. The forces are influenced and are transformed there according to the dynamic laws known to us, but their effects vary with the rhythm of the molecular movements, and according to whether these movements are exerted by vibration, undulation, or oscillation. But whatever the case may be with these theories that are far from having attained the positivity necessary to take rank in science, nothing prevents us from viewing the human self as extending to the table the action of spontaneity, using it as an appendage to one’s nervous system to manifest voluntary movements. What is most often misleading in these kinds of telegraphic correspondence is that the self of each of the assistants can no longer recognize oneself in the resultant of the collectivity. The subjective representation that is made in the mind of the medium by the aid of this kind of photography may not resemble any of the assistants, although most of them undoubtedly provided some feature; However, it is rare, if we observe carefully, that we no longer particularly find the image of one of the operators who was the passive instrument of the collective force. It is not an ultra-mundane Spirit speaking in the room, it is the spirit of the medium, but the spirit of the medium perhaps doubled by the spirit of such and such an assistant who often dominates him without them both knowing it, and exalted by forces that come to him, such as various electromagnetic currents, from the support given by the assistants.[1] We have seen many times the personality of the medium betrayed by spelling mistakes, by historical or geographical errors that he usually made, and that could not be attributed to a Spirit truly distinct from his own person. One of the most common things in phenomena of this nature is the revelation of secrets that the interrogator does not believe known to anyone; but he forgets that these secrets are known to the interrogator, and that the medium can read his mind. This requires a certain mental relationship; but this relation is established by a derivation of the nervous current that envelops every individual, much like one could deflect the electric spark by intercepting the telegraph line and substituting it for a new conducting wire. Such a faculty is much less rare than one might think. Communication of thought is a fact admitted by all those who have been concerned with magnetism, and it is easy for everyone to be convinced of the frequency and the reality of the phenomenon. We are forced to slip on these very imperfect explanations. They are not sufficient, we know, to invalidate the belief in Spirits among those who believe they have sensible evidence of their intervention. We cannot confront them with evidence of the same nature. There is nothing irrational about belief in spiritual individualities, but we consider it entirely natural. Our deep conviction, as we know, is that the human self persists in its identity after death, and that it is recovered after its separation from the earthly organism, with all its previous acquisitions. That the human person is then clothed with an organism of an ethereal nature is what seems perfectly probable to us. The perispirit of these gentlemen, therefore, does not repel us. What is it that separates us? Nothing fundamental. Nothing, except the insufficiency of their proofs. We do not believe that the Spiritist relationships between the dead and the living are attested by the movements of the tables, by correspondence, by dictations. We believe that physical phenomena can be explained physically, and that psychic phenomena are caused by the forces inherent to the soul of the operators. We speak of what we have seen and studied with great care. We do not know of anything so far among the inspirations of mediums that could not have been produced by a living brain, without the aid of any celestial force, and most of their productions are below the intellectual level of the environment in which we live. In a future article, we will examine the philosophical and religious doctrines of Spiritism, and particularly those for which Mr. Allan Kardec presented the synthesis in his last book, entitled Genesis according to Spiritism.” There would be undoubtedly a lot of things to answer on this article; however, we will not refute it, because it would be repeating what we have written many times on the same subject. We are happy to recognize, with the author, that the distance that still separates him from us is small: it is only the material fact of the direct relations between the visible world and the invisible world; and yet this little thing is a great deal in its consequences.
As a matter of fact, it should be noted that, if he does not admit these relationships, he does not deny them absolutely either; it is not even averse to his reason to conceive the possibility of it; indeed, this possibility follows quite naturally from what he admits. What he lacks, he says, is evidence from communications. Well! Sooner or later this proof will come to him; he will find them either in the careful observation of the circumstances that accompany certain mediumistic communications, or in the innumerable variety of spontaneous manifestations, that occurred before Spiritism, and still occur with people who do not know it or do not believe it, and consequently one cannot admit the influence of a preconceived idea among them. It would be necessary to ignore the first elements of Spiritism to believe that the fact of the manifestations occurs only among the followers.
In the meantime, and even though his conviction should end there, it would be desirable that all materialists were at this point; we must therefore congratulate ourselves on counting on him among the righteous men, at least sympathetic to the general idea, and to see a commendable journal, by its serious character and its independence, fighting with us the absolute skepticism in matters of spirituality, as well as the abuse that has been carried out to the spiritual principle. We walk to the same goal by different routes but converging towards a common point and approaching more and more through the ideas; a few dissents on questions of detail should not prevent us from reaching out to each other.
In this time of effervescence and aspiration towards a better state of things, each one brings his stone to the building of the new world; each works on his own, with his own means; Spiritism brings its contingent that is not yet complete; but as it is not exclusive, it does not reject any support; it accepts the good that can serve the great cause of humanity, from wherever it comes, even from its adversaries.
As we said at the beginning, we will not undertake to refute the theory set out in
La Solidarité on the source of intelligent manifestations; we will only say a few words about it.
This theory, as we can see, is only one of the first systems hatched at the origin of Spiritism, when experience had not yet clarified the question; however, it is well known that this opinion is today reduced to a few rare individuals. If it were right, why would it not have prevailed? How could that be that millions of Spiritists who have been experimenting for fifteen years, all over the world and in all languages, who are recruited for the most part from the enlightened class, who have in their ranks men of knowledge and of incontestable value, such as doctors, engineers, magistrates, etc., noted the reality of the demonstrations, if it did not exist? Can we reasonably admit that all have deluded themselves? That there were not among them men endowed with sufficient good sense and perspicacity to recognize the true cause? This theory, as we have said, is not new, and it has not gone unnoticed among the Spiritists; on the contrary, it has been seriously thought of and explored by them, and it is precisely because it has been found contradicted by the facts, powerless to explain them all, that it has been abandoned.
It is a serious mistake to believe that the Spiritists came with the preconceived idea of the intervention of the Spirits in the manifestations; if it was so with some, the truth is that the majority did not come to belief until after having passed through doubt or skepticism.
It is also a mistake to believe that, without the
a priori belief in Spirits, we would never have dared to turn the tables. The phenomenon of turning and talking tables was known in Tertullian time, and in China from ancient time. In Tartary and Siberia, flying tables
[2] were known. In some provinces of Spain, sieves held in suspension by the tips of scissors are used. Do those who interrogate believe that it is Spirits who are answering? Not at all. Ask them what it is, they know nothing about it: it is the table, the sieve endowed with an unknown power; they question these movements like those of the divinatory wand, without going beyond the material fact.
Modern Spiritist phenomena did not begin with turning tables, but with spontaneous knocks struck on walls and furniture; these noises caused astonishment, surprise; there was something unusual about their beating pattern, an intentional character, a persistence that seemed to call attention to a specific point, like when someone knocks to call attention. The first movements of tables or other objects were also spontaneous, as they are still today in certain individuals who have no knowledge of Spiritism. It is the same here with most natural phenomena that occur daily, and nevertheless go unnoticed, or whose cause remains unknown, until the time when serious and more enlightened observers pay their attention, study, and explore them.
Thus, of two contrary theories, born at the same time, one grows with time as a result of experience, becomes generalized, while the other dies out; in favor of which is there a presumption of truth and survival? We are not giving this as proof, but as a fact that deserves consideration.
Mr. Fauvety relies on that he has found nothing in mediumistic communications that is beyond the reach of the human brain; this is again an old objection a hundred times refuted by the Spiritist doctrine itself. Has Spiritism ever said that the Spirits are beings outside of humanity? On the contrary, it comes to destroy the prejudice that makes them exceptional beings, angels or demons, intermediaries between man and the divinity, species of semi-gods.
It is based on this principle that the Spirits are none other than men stripped from their material envelope, that the visible world flows incessantly into the invisible world through death, and the latter into the corporeal world through births.
Since the Spirits belong to mankind, why would anyone want them to have superhuman language? We know that some of them do not know more, and often much less than certain men, since they learn with the latter; those who were incapable of making masterpieces during their lifetime, will not do more like Spirits; the Spirit of an ignorant will not speak like a scholar, and the Spirit of a scholar, who is only a human being, will not speak like a god.
It is therefore not in the eccentricity of their ideas and their thoughts, in the exceptional superiority of their style, that we must seek proof of the spiritual origin of the communications, but in the circumstances that attest, in a multitude of cases, that the thought cannot come from an incarnate, even if it is most trivial.
From these facts emerges the proof of the existence of the invisible world in the middle of which we live, and for that the Spirits of the lowest level prove it just as well as the most elevated ones. Now, the existence of the invisible world in our midst, an integral part of earthly humanity, the spillway of discarnate souls, and source of the incarnate, is a fundamental, immense fact; it is a whole revolution in beliefs; it is the key to man's past and future, that all philosophies have sought in vain, just as scientists have uselessly sought the key to astronomical mysteries, before knowing the law of gravitation. Let them follow the chain of the forced consequences of this single fact: the existence of the invisible world around us, and they will arrive at a complete, inevitable transformation of ideas, with the destruction of prejudices and the abuses that result from it, and consequently, a modification of social relationships.
Spiritism leads to that. Its doctrine is the development, the deduction of the consequences of the main fact, whose existence it has just revealed; these consequences are innumerable, because, step by step, they affect all branches of the social order, physical as well as moral. This is understood by all those who have taken the trouble of studying it seriously, and what they will understand even better later, but not those who, having only seen the surface, imagine that it is entirely in a rotating table or in puerile questions about the identity of Spirits.
For further development on some of the questions dealt with in this article, we refer to the first chapter of Genesis: Character of the Spiritist revelation.
[3]
[1] See, for the response to several propositions contained in this article, The Book of Mediums, chapter IV, Systems. Introduction of The Spirits’ Book. - What is Spiritism? chapter. I, Small conference.
[2] Spiritist Review, October 1859
[3] Published in a separate brochure; price 15 cents; by mail, 20 cents.
