Proofs of the spirit world (On ne meurt pas)

Front matter

THE LIBRARY

Gift

Professor J. Larsen,,

Contents

CHAPTEB PAQB

I. The Great Problem 1

II. Telepathy 16

Chapter I The Great Problem

The Study of the human soul as a psychic and physical entity, will be the science of to-morrow. Camille Flammariok.

Do we really die? Few persons know what answer, based upon discovered facts, may to-day be made to this important question. Many, indeed, believe that there is no longer room for doubt — that immortality of the human soul is a fallacy condemned by science.

Because thinkers and philosophers have not been able in the course of the centuries to agree upon any one conception of immortality, the spiritualistic idea is considered visionary; and curiously, few believe that science, which has already solved so many problems, can also solve this, the one most deeply significant to mankind.

Religions give us no certain knowledge, and science, accepting only demonstration, does not comprehend the language of Faith.

With respect for old philosophic and religious concepts, we desire to offend no conviction ; but let those who believe that they receive light from above be willing, at least, to regard without scorn those who are seeking a solution from Nature; and who dig the soil hoping to encounter there a solid base upon which they may build.

It is the year 1916 ; we have seen mankind at work; murder, theft and rape have incited no awakening of conscience in the neutral nations; the frightful storm which scatters death upon Europe has revealed many powers, many weaknesses. Something seems lacking in the guidance of humanity.

Nineteenth Century Science committed this violence upon reason and denied all that makes for the moral grandeur of mankind. It accepted the lie that there is nothing else in the universe but matter such as we know it: there is no soul, no intelligence; there are only reactions. The great scientific dogma was therefore that the cause of all things exists in this matter, which is reduced by a last analysis to the indivisible, indissoluble, eternal atom. To-day the dissolution of atoms must be admitted, and as it is vain to suppose that the dispersed matter is destroyed, we may affirm that the separation of the atoms is their passage into a beyond of which science knows nothing.

There are, therefore, other physical possibilities than those admitted by or known to science.

As for spiritualistic doctrines, they are insufficient; happy are those who have the faith, but we in our researches cannot enter the domain of mysticism; we must attack the problem from the earth. Studying faculties and manifestations of the human soul we foUow its deviations and aberrations, in order to show clearly that its essence is spiritual and that materialism cannot furnish its key.

We do not die! This is the certainty that we may acquire solely by observation applied to facts which are accessible to us. Knowledge may replace faith. There exists to-day a certain class of facts acquired by observation, which prove definitely that the soul exists in itself, that it exists before the creation of the body, and survives the destruction of its mortal abode.

Many scholars are aware of this ; certain of the most illustrious have carefully explored the strange region of the soul and affirm that by wholly scientific methods they have reached assurances of which the world at large is ignorant.

There exists a certain class of facts acquired by science, which prove that in the living being exists an invisible substance endowed with faculties which cannot be explained in relation to matter. This also the world does not know.

Finally, we have a class of facts, more difficult to observe scientifically, which, submitted to minute examinations, have established that under certain conditions, deceased persons have been able to appear in the world of living beings.

The body dies, it is true. But we will begin by proving that the body is not all, and that we have possibilities of survival in a material substratum which never fails us; in other words, that we possess at the present time an invisible body which you perhaps do not know, and of which we shall speak.

Some may say, "I want to see before I believe," to which we may reply, "You believe in forces . . . have you ever seen them,'"'

Yet the undisturbed somnambulist sees the magnetic emanations, and sees also the psychic body. As for us, we cannot see even the oxygen, which is materially the most indispensable element to us, since it is nourishment of life and much more essential than food.

However, little more than a century ago men lived in absolute ignorance of this element so necessary to life, just as we live to-day in ignorance of this psychic element, the true body of the soul, indispensable to feeling and action.

Invisibility has nothing to do with the supernatural. The materialists of fifty years ago, who believed that visibility or impenetrability was the essential condition of the material, were really superstitious.

Scientific spiritualism is established upon material bases, which are the foundations of a metapsychology of the invisible world. Associated with its observations are scholars well qualified to give the facts an indisputable value.

Unfortunately, many men, led astray by the sarcasm of a press utterly ignorant of the present state of investigation, imagine that the spirits are guardians or doorkeepers of the beyond, ready to answer at the first summons if somebody or other's grandfather is among the tenants of the dwelling. There is large opportunity for wit in presenting the facts of spiritualism, which delights free thinkers.

Therefore, we must rise above vain mockery and have the courage to endure ridicule; the triumph of fools will be brief.

We must, first of all, study animism, which is at once a dogma and an established fact.

As a dogma, it holds that the soul is the animating principle of the body ; as a fact, it is the exterior manifestation of forces called animic.

Materialists oppose animism to spiritualism. But this word animism can have no meaning upon their lips, since they will not admit the soul as a principle and reject as a fact the exteriorization of the sensory, motive and intellectual faculties of sensation acting outside of the human body.

Thus they acknowledge the letter and not the spirit. It is therefore inconsequent to them to explain anything by animism.

But animism is a fact that they cannot deny; therefore it is stubbornness on their part to stand fast in their conception of physiology, while, on the other side, they combat the spiritualistic conception in the name of the animic theory, which for them cannot exist.

The spiritualists teach that without animism there could be no possible relation between mind and matter. Without animism, there could be no phenomenon of inspiration, no presentiment, none of those phenomena which make possible communication between us and the departed.

The possibility of spirit manifestation is subordinate to this very question of animism.

Fifty years ago, animism was not scientifically accredited. That is why science discarded the question a priori. To a Biichner and his disciples^ who mistook laws for causes, the question could not even be presented. Relying upon the known laws of physiology, Biichner declared blindly that they implied the rejection, pure and simple, of all action from a distance. The reasons for his conclusion were pitiable.

The antiquity of man, he wrote, destroyed the tradition of the almanac of Mathieu de la Drome for him — when it asserts that God had not created man 2000 years before the deluge, spiritualism breaks down. All the arguments of Biichner are of this stamp.

To him, thought-transmission would be a miracle ; but this action is normally manifested in our organisms, and to-day it is no longer possible to deny that it is shown outside of organisms. However, people surrender reluctantly, giving up as little as may be, ceding as slowly as possible the ground that spiritualistic science is winning, and justifying this attitude by donning the hypocritical mask of scientific prudence.

There are those who, though convinced of the reality of abnormal manifestations, still declare a tardy intention of regarding these facts only under a conventional aspect. They declare that they must study the simplest phenomena before going on to the more complex. They forget, however, that before pronouncing a judgment, all phases of a phenomenon must be studied.

Those who have, so regretfully, conceded the reality of movement without contact, pretend to study only the physical side of the manifestation, without taking into account the intellectual, of which movement it is often but the expression. This is called, limiting the field of experiments; in other words, forbidding the search for causes.

Those who wish thus to dictate to us the course to follow, assure us that the independent pioneers impede and confuse them in their experiments. Let us therefore explain this.

It would be absurd pretension to hold to an explanation which explains only the simplest facts,

THE GREAT PROBLEM T

while other facts of the same order contradict this explanation.

A fact is a fact, and no one has the right to eliminate one, however exceptional it may seem. That fact, even, which escapes our present comprehension, is all the more valuable, because it increases the limits of the possible and will serve as a basis for future discoveries.

I dare even to say that the more exceptional a fact is, the less chance there is of seeing it repeated often, and it becomes more necessary since definite proof exists to give it publicity.

The world must know that such a proof exists, lest it be forgotten and the limitation affect a new fact.

We do not find astronomers neglecting even an isolated observation and taking no further account of a comet's appearance because it has ceased to appear. We do not hear them declare that it is unnecessary to observe the nebulje, when there is so much more to be observed in a nearer field. That, however, is the method which they wish to recommend, when they say we must not overflow into the subject of communication with the beyond, until we shall have completely exhausted that of hypnotism.

Yet who knows which of these two subjects will shed its light upon the other.'* The same physiological process can produce similar automatic results, while the motive agents are different. If M. Pierre Janet is able to use hypnotism to produce, in an unconscious subject, an automatism of a spiritist appearance, he has simply proved that any mind could deposit in the lower strata of the organism a suggestion of similar nature. Whether the suggestlon be true or false matters little; M. Pierre Janet has created an illusion, let us say. But he could, also, have used the same means to convey a real message. It is only in looking towards spiritism that certain cases become explicable.

According to the simplest method, we should have to conclude that, because one automatism may be explicable by spontaneous cellular activities, no other automatic action can be attributed to a higher source. But observation contradicts, absolutely, this conclusion.

We will not say much concerning table moving. That popular phenomenon is sufficiently well known.

As four or five persons are rarely found who are disposed to gather around a table for serious experiments and it is very difficult to arouse a common sympathy among them, only futile results, for the most part, are recorded, and indefinite observers pronounce definitely a verdict of condemnation.

Experimentation is difficult, yet we need but to study those who have observed seriously, to gain an idea of the communications obtained by the lifting of objects without contact.

Here we find again the proof of the fluidic element in communication with the brain of the audience, made manifest to our senses.

Therefore, there is round a table something like a field of force, created by the fluidic exteriorization of all the persons present. There already is soul, thinking and acting. This is an animic manifestation.

In the exteriorizable element is a sensitive faculty that brings it into relation with the will. There is soul everyw^here; there is, everywhere, a motive faculty, capable of feeling an influence and of performing mechanically what the will dictates.

Man's soul seems so bound to his body that physiologists ascribe to the body itself movements which are determined by the soul.

It is as if we were to attribute to the telegraph wire the production of the electric current whose results are visible to us. Indeed, certain accidents have definitely established that the soul is not identical with the functions of the body, as the materialists believe.

Magnetism and hypnosis alone, already tend to prove the action of a psychic force independent of the organism. After Mesmer, Puysegur and Deleuze. Baron du Potet penetrated far into the mystery, but the time was not ripe for understanding.

Charcot saw very clearly the depth of the abyss, and dared not face it. "Hypnotism," he declared, "is a world wherein one encounters palpable, material, gross facts, side by side with other facts, absolutely extraordinary, and inexplicable at present, following no phj^siological law and wholly strange and surprising. I will address myself to the first and leave the latter untouched."

To-day, however, the hour to study these latter facts has come. Facts accumulate, extraordinary cases are recorded by competent persons, and they prove in a most evident manner, that the bonds which unite the soul and the senses are not indissoluble. For example, long distance sight, reading without the use of the eyes, inversion of senses, etc.

As early as 1886, Durand de Gros, a learned doctor, and, as rarely happens, also a profound philosopher, had written in his Physiologie philosophique: "If the retina were developed upon the spiral blade of the cochlea sonorous vibrations would replace light and sounds would be seen. Reciprocally, if the acoustic nerve should spread its fibers into the eye, Iwmmous rays would become sounds."

This statement, which was for the most part an intuition of genius in Dr. Durand, has been confirmed by experience, but it is in the invisible organism, the psychic body that such inversions may be produced, since of course the optic and acoustic nerves cannot be substituted one for the other experimentally. Yet these nerves are only conductors and it is due to their purely conductive faculty that the strange transposition imagined by Durand de Gros can be accomplished.

However unlikely that may seem, it is true nevertheless, and we are able to quote a competent authority. Here is the testimony of Lombroso:

"In 1891 I had to contend in my medical practice with one of the most curious phenomena ever presented to me. I was called upon to care for the daughter of a high official of my native city. This young person was often seized with paroxysms of hysteria, with accompanying symptoms, which neither pathology nor physiology could explain. At times, her eyes lost their sight, and by inversion, the sick girl saw with her ears. With bandaged eyes, she was able to read several printed lines held before her ear. We placed a magnifying glass between her ear and the sunlight, and she felt a burning sensation, crying out that she was being blinded. She prophesied in detail, with mathematical exactitude, everything that would happen to her.

^'Although these facts were not new, they were nevertheless extremely singular. I confess that to me, at least, they seemed inexplicable by physiological or pathological theories as developed up to that time. ... It was then that it occurred to me that perhaps spiritism might aid me in reaching the truth." '

In short, the conception of a soul independent of the body, an active and no longer a function soul, alone might solve this problem to which no materialistic conception could offer a solution.

When a fact of this kind is encountered, there is but one path to follow — abandon the obsolete conceptions and declare frankly that physiology, such as taught by dogmatic materialism, will always be unable to explain vital movement.

This is what Lombroso did in repudiating the old error.

Why then do so many others close their eyes that they may not see? We must confess, it is because our official scholars are very timid — they are afraid of having a soul.

Others are bravely mistaken. They receive the evidence of the fact, but are hampered by a preconceived notion at the very basis of their scientific education. The facts are absurd in the face of their materialistic faith; they are absurd, inasmuch as the soul's existence is judged absurd. But the hypothesis of the soul makes these facts natural and explicable, shows the bonds which unite them, and strange to say, the facts thus interpreted accord with all that we know of experimental science; agree with all

1 From the Italian magazine L' Arena, translated into French by Dr. Dusart, La Revue Scientifique Morale du Spiritisme, Aug., 1907.

scientific observations which they admirably explain and complete.

It does not appertain to science to judge matters of the soul or of spiritualistic philosophy. These are questions beyond its province, but the soul gives rise to phenomena of animism, which at the present time allude every theory applicable to physical phenomena. Therefore it is the part of science to discover in what realm, ethereal or other, and by what theory, undulatory or inductive, might be explained the phenomena of action at a distance and of thought-transference.

Above all, science should make the amends honorable to the animistic fact which implies the existence of a force which science has always denied; for one cannot admit the exteriorization of sensorial, motive, or intellectual faculties, without being converted to some spiritualistic idea.

Materialists understood it in this way when they opposed every phenomenon of action at a distance with the argument of impossibility, for reasons which, they said, they alone were capable of appreciating.

Action at a distance — they would say to us, pitying our ignorance — simply shows us that and your name will go down in history, more renowned than Kepler or Newton.

Impossibility has become proof. The names of those who have demonstrated it have not become great in history, but the fact has become familiar, and has been christened Animism.

Animism, so called, is simply the manifestation of the psychic body, an intermediary agency between mind and matter.

We cannot state that it acts according to physical laws, since it is manifested under a form still unknown to science. But it is made manifest, and that is the essential.

The data we shall give concerning telepathy are the resume of forty years' experiments; those who have carried them on are scholars of the highest order. The facts which are the basis of our demonstrations have been verified or accepted by them after serious investigations.

Leaving out all that pertains to history, tradition and legend, we shall endeavor to show that the simple statement of observations of material phenomena rests upon the word of absolutely competent and credible authorities. Then we shall see how the organic machine conducts itself in face of these strange phenomena; how this delicate instrument is responsive to influences of inward or outward thought. It is this sensitiveness which opens the door to certain means of occult communication and makes possible a belief in the efficacy of prayer and in inspiration.

Without making personal hypotheses, we shall set forth those statements which have been formulated upon animistic polyzoism.

They seem to correspond strikingly to the problems of the constitution of the human soul and the evolution of beings, at the same time according with all that we know concerning phylogenesis, ontogenesis and embryology.

Finally we shall demonstrate how we may acquire the certainty of after life.

This conviction scientifically reached cannot but contribute to the raising of morale, need of which is everywhere felt. In scientific research lies our sole port of refuge. Science, accepting only demonstrations, does not hear, does not comprehend the language of faith. The facts that we set forth demonstrate after life.

Briefly, the rational basis of morale would be in absolute knowledge of the after life; science cannot reach this, but it can attain a relative knowledge, quite sufficient to prove the presence of soul in nature; and that there are not only forces but also psychic organisms.

This is enough to cure us of that mental malady which causes us to teach that in the human body there is naught else but the functions of nutrition, circulation and respiration. It is not the activity of the liver and the spleen which causes us to love the true, the good and the beautiful, which incites indignation and arouses enthusiasm — these are indeed psychic forces. They so truly exist that, throughout the history of humanity, they have always triumphed over the satanic forces of matter — it is these forces that won the battle of the Marne.

Let us then seek in the empiric experiments of animism, clairvoyance and telepathy, the scientific weapon with which we may combat the barbarous conception of materialism that was leading us to decadence. This study suffices to reinstate spiritistic teaching. Man is so constituted that he is insensible to arguments that do not touch him personally; he can only adopt a morality based upon knowledge of his destiny, since this alone will overcome his incurable egoism.

He must know that his happiness or unhappiness is but a natural consequence of the direction he himself has chosen. He must know that the simple telepathic law will subject him, in the Beyond, to the severe ordeal of confronting the lucidity of a throng of clairvoyant souls who will read him like an open book. A man's evil actions will then become the instrument of his own torture. When he can no longer endure this he will have to flee the society of these clairvoyant souls, seeking solitude and shadows. His final escape will be a return — a new incarnation, which will be a new ordeal.

Here is something to move our egoism. If we are able to demonstrate that, justly, the happiness of each is jointly and severally concerned in the general progress, if we are all responsible, then the strong should labor to raise the weak; it will serve no end to hate them. Thus we come, by simple knowledge of the laws of evolution, under the great law of Christ: there is no other issue save to love one another and to live each for the other. That is the true scientific revelation, which gives us the key to a solid, practical and rational moral teaching.

Chapter II Telepathy

The action of one being upon another at a distance, is a scientific fact, as certain as the existence of Paris, Napoleon, oxygen or Sirius.

C. Flammarion.

About 1882, a committee of well-known Englishmen, who were more interested in intellectual facts than in the physical phenomena previously studied by Sir William Crookes and Russel Wallace, resolved to devote scientific study to thought-transference. With this in view, they founded the Society for Psychical Research. Having taken all precautions to eliminate any possibility of a code of ingenious signals being used, they were convinced of the reality of thought-transference.

In the first volume of the organ of this society. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, will be found the reports of these experiments, with drawings and diagrams that give an idea of the results obtained.

In 1883 and 1884, in Liverpool, Mr. Malcolm Guthrie discovered two sensitive subjects among the employees of a large woolen house, and began a series of experiments with which the great physician. Sir Oliver Lodge, was associated. J Telepathic action is to-day a verified fact, but it is also true that it remains indefinable. This action from a distance requires an intermediary, but no one is able to say whether this intermediary is of a physical order. The inner life of the soul rises from a region unknown to science, a region which by hypothesis or for convenience of speech we may call the psychic element. Yet despite this, and whatever it may be, it is quite certain that the soul cannot be made manifest to this material world except by means of a physical expression.

Telepathic action would be incomprehensible and even inconceivable if there were not, in the ether, a dynamic element that holds all being in its embrace.

It is only by the intermediary of this element that the relations between body and soul may be explained, more especially the telepathic communications which experience and repeated observations have forced us to admit.

^/'I'elepathy is the universal phenomenon diffused throughout the world, the one phenomenon uniting all human beings and reaching as well to matter in which it calls forth life.

Existent in the cosmos is an element which is to the life of the soul, what oxygen is to physical life. The effects of this upon ourselves we shall observe.

The first experimenters declared that, if spontaneous telepathy gave the results of which we have many witnesses, there must be some faculty in man, even if it be but a germ, which it must be possible to control.

It was M. Charles Richet, I believe, who first endeavored to establish the matter mathematically by applying the experiments to the divinations of numbers in the mind of another ; he obtained only rather inconclusive resvdts.

In 1886, the Misses Wingfield used Dr. Richet's method, but limited the experiment to a number consisting of two figures, from ten to ninety-nine. Two thousand, six hundred and fourteen trials gave two hundred and seventy-five successful results ; the average probability would have been only twentynine.

Four hundred trials of another series, whose probability would have been four, gave twenty-seven successful results.

Enlarging the field of experiments, Mr. Guthrie of Liverpool conceived the idea of trying the transference of sensations of taste, smell and touch. Messrs. Gurney and Myers tasted, smeUed and touched while the mediums R and E diagnosed their sensations.

But the most decisive result obtained was recorded through visual sensations. The first trials in this class were due, I believe, to the initiative of Mr. Rawson. They consisted in obtaining the graphic reproduction of a very simple design, such as a triangle, ring or flower. These experiments were successfully taken up by Mr. Guthrie, repeated on the Avenue de Villiers by M. SchmoU and observed anew by Lombroso and many other psychologists ; briefly, they are now incontestable.

In all these trials, the drawings have been reproduced with an exactitude that leaves no doubt of the transmission of picture. Nevertheless it is certain that the percipient does not always see the picture traced upon the model, but that he is struck by the idea sent to him by the Agent; this is perception of an active thought.

In this way a ring traced flat upon the papeij was drawn in perspective; a foot drawn bare was represented with a shoe in the replica; a hand is indeed reproduced, but not in the same position, etc. Therefore we cannot attribute these results to the sensitiveness of lower centers.

It is the normal and conscious sensitiveness which registers this kind of perception ; also the experiment demands a severe effort upon the part of the percipient and greatly fatigues him.

We would also mention the attempts of Commandant Darget which tended to prove that the emission of a thought would have enough objective force to make an impression upon a photographic plate. He has made many communications upon this subject to the Academy of Sciences. All psychists know of the films representing the bottles photographed by Commandant Darget's thoughtradiation.

But let us return to telepathy. Images perceived by the brain are often rather vague ; those are much clearer which are obtained when the agent succeeds in influencing the lower organs, whose response, in this case, becomes purely automatic. Yet this kind of experimentation cannot be undertaken except with the aid of specially endowed subjects. We have valuable examples of it in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

In 1871, during a period of eight months, Mr. Newnham carried on a series of experiments through the mediumship of his wife, with whom he was able to communicate automatically.

An exchange of questions and replies was made by the indirect way of a motive center, which set in movement Mrs. Newnham's hand, without her having the least consciousness of the questions addressed to her or the answers which she made. Her husband's questions were never formulated, even in a low voice; he wrote them with a pencil well out of reach of her glances.

In the course of his long experiments the replies were always in accord with the questions and we must note the important fact that five or six questions were often put, one after the other, without Mrs. Newnham's knowing of what they treated.

Thus, there was no communication of thought — only movement was communicated. Mr. Newnham made three hundred and nine of these experiments. We will cite the following:

"At that time," recounts Mr. Newnham, "I had a young man studying with me as a private pupil. On the 12th of February he returned from his vacation, having heard of our experiments, and expressed his incredulity in a rather rough fashion. I told him that he might try whatever proof he desired, with this reserve alone, that I should see the question he put.

*'In consequence of this, Mrs. Newnham took her place in my study in her accustomed armchair while we retired into the living room and closed the door behind us. That done, the young man wrote upon a piece of paper, 'Wliat is my eldest sister's first name.?' We returned immediately to the desk where the answer already awaited us — 'Mina.' It is the familiar abbreviation of the name Wilhelmina. I assure you this was completely unknown to me."