Psychism; analysis of things existing

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Introduction

Under the cover of scientific conservatism it is the general tendency of men who have attained a certain position in universities and scientific societies to bar the way to any matters too strikingly diverging — according to their views — from the ordinary trend of observation. This is especially true of psychic phenomena. Although the latter may safely be placed at the head of the most interesting subjects soliciting man's attention, yet they do not appear to have attained the required degree of respectability for their introduction to the scientific societies and journals where the gentlemen alluded to, exercise their pontifical functions.

For this reason the investigator who is convinced of having matters of interest to communicate, must, in order to force his way to the attention of the public — general and special — resort to the publication of a book, wherein he may at liberty, on his own responsibility and to the full extent of his thought, if he so chooses, state aught which he considers worth writing. This is precisely the raison d'Ure of the present book.

In 1886 the author (who then held an official position in one of the highest scientific Government institutions in Paris) published the result of his first researches in Experimental Psychology (Spiritisme ou Fakirisme occidental). The book, which had a fair amount of success among the general public, was not, we must say, received as well in the so-called scientific spheres. Its author's reward was the general disfavor with which he met among his superiors and colleagues. Since then, opinions have changed, ideas progressed, and the same writer has had the pleasure of seeing his work quoted, even by former opponents, and so to say, become classical.

Encouraged by this result — which he had foreseen — the author, who refrained for some time from expressing opinions or theories relative to the psychic facts which he had been, and is still, observing daily, has gone a step further and writes on that which, in his opinion, may be the rationale of these phenomena. He sees in the latter the possible explanation of the Universe, and the Life which animates it. It is the summary of his reflections and investigations of fifteen years, through hypnotic subjects and mediums, which is now submitted to the appreciation of the English speaking

public (i).

* * *

Most of the pages found in this volume have been written twelve years before their publication in English. This delay was due to personal reasons, and the manuscript quietly remained waiting until the author deemed the time auspicious to put it in print.

When these essays were written, the subject of which they treat was still strongly contested; indeed, it is yet, but in a much lesser degree, and the time is fast approaching when a lack of knowledge of its tenor will be considered as gross ignorance. It is the opinion of the author that this is a matter with which, through force of circumstances, every one will be familiar before the twentieth century attains its period of adolescence. A great many scientists are cognizant of the question; the clergy becomes more and more interested in it, and several have held dissertations on it

(1) The subject has been treated in French, under the title of Analyse des Glioses, by the author.

from the pulpit. Now, it must be stated that psychical matters are of such a nature that they may be compared to a set of powerful cog-wheels in motion ; once the fingers are caught in the teeth, the whole body is drawn in. The movement cannot be stopped at present, and scientists, clergymen, and philosophers of all schools will soon be bound to come, volens nolens, to an understanding with regard to psychic phenomena. It is true that the question would be advanced some twenty-five years or more if it had not been for the numerous frauds which have kept many experimenters from investigating and publishing the results of their researches. But it behooves us to sift the grain from the chaff, i. e., the genuine from the spurious, in order to bring truth from its hidden recesses.

It has been said above, that in psychic phenomena a possible explanation of the Universe might be foreseen. Is this not too rash an assertion, and is not the expression of this expectation by far too unscientific? We think not, for the aim of science, as pointed out by Huxley and other savants of his school, is nothing short of a complete explanation of the Universe, although they admit the goal beyond the reach of human entendement limited to its present attributes.

It may seem preposterous to bring the name of the god-father of Agnosticism in the defense of a theory apparently so distant from that doctrine. Again, we deny it: Agnosticism and Evolutionism are two divinities ordinarily worshipped on the same altar, and the agnostic must be ready to see his store of admissions constantly modified, enlarged, according to the evolution of knowledge. Agnosticism, in fact, is but a state of mind in which convictions are based on knowledge and not on faith. This is the ground on which we claim to stand. Of course, imagination is a faculty through which we are entitled to build a temporary scaffolding for a working hypothesis; still, the latter must be erected on solid ground. Again, this is what we claim to be doing.

In reality, neither Huxley (2) nor Tyndall (3) were consistent with their teachings in denying the existence of, and scorning psychic phenomena, a subject which they had not in-

(2) Science and Hebrew Tradition, p. 12.

(3) Science and the Spirits. (Fragments of Science, Vol. I.) Belfast Address. The Rev. J. Martineau and the Belfast Address. (Fragments of Science, Vol. II.)

vestigated. They failed to steer their bark according to their own beacon. They did not hold to that which Huxley termed "that scientific ars artium, the art of saying "I don't know" (4), and the facts are the reefs on which the inconsistency of their attitude was wrecked ; for facts exist.

"Psychism" is a relatively new branch of science, which consists in the study of the manifestations of the soul ( ipvxv ) before and after death. We wrote "relatively new branch of science," for we have never had the pretention of presenting a new ism. As Mephistopheles says: "He but a fool or ignoramus who fancies himself the originator of an idea."

This book has no pretence to be didactic; it may be considered as a collection of thoughts and reflections, in short, essays arranged in chapters. The only aim of the author, in publishing it, is to promulgate the cause of good and to be instrumental in upholding a scientific truth which, in the light of his experience as physician and philosopher, he considers as the most capable of elevating the nature of man.

(4) Geological Contemporaneity.

Chapter I

Summary: The path to be followed in the study of things. — Study of the Macrocosm. — Periodical Cataclysms. — Movements of waters and ice from one to the other hemisphere. — Deluges. — A comparison between the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. — Alternative layers of marine fossils separated by fossils of the aerial existence. — What is matter? — The unextended atom. — Energy. — The law of indestructibility of matter. — Atoms are fluid elements. — Penetrability of matter. — The prodigiously energetic motions of molecules. — Atoms. — Vortices. — The Universe tends towards absolute repose. — According to a number of modern scientists the philosophical analysis of matter, assisted by experiments, shows that it is but compacted energy in a transitory form. — The most powerful form of illusion is termed reality.

This book bears as its title, "Psychism. — Analysis of Things Existing." It is a heading passing great, encompassing fields most vast, and may appear pretentious for so small a volume; but we hope to justify it, and will endeavor to sketch clearly, yet succinctly, an analysis of our subject — the Universe — of which we form a part.

Let him who all unmindful of the great problems of life and death, whose soul has never risen above common places, pursue the even tenor of his way; this book is not for him, nor yet has it been written for those who place the boundary of science according to the line of their own limited knowledge; but for the few who ask of themselves: "Why are we living on this planet, and by what force have we been brought to it ?" We beg of the latter to concentrate thought, to isolate it so far as possible from external objects, to abmaterialize it, as it were, in order to pursue the flight we are about to take.

Our itinerary will be as follows: Casting aside the power of attraction which binds us to Earth, and, while leaving our planet, we will, with the mind's eye, make a cursory examination of its surface. First, we will take a portion of the substance of which it is formed and endeavor to discern its component parts. In a word, we will start from the atom and with gigantic strides scale the immensity which leads to the Macrocosm. Returning to our planetisphere, we will seek the epitome of the Universe, or so-called Microcosm, and, in studying its anatomy and physiology, compare it with that of its model. While making our titanic excursion through the boundless realms of Ether, we shall pause for a moment and seek the third principle, the true Being, which, with Matter and Energy, constitutes the animated Universe. This principle in man, which is the proof of his independence and continuance outside of matter, will be the chief object

of our work.

* * *

We are aware that certain scientists hold that each earthly period of twenty-five thousand and some hundred years, periods which are determined by the astronomical phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, witnesses the most fearful cataclysms. They base their belief partly upon the shape of the earth and oceans, as well as upon certain traditions of engulfed continents. These occurrences, as we may see in our soarings through space, interest only the races inhabiting this earth, for we well understand they are totally unperceived by even our nearest planetary neighbors, the inhabitants of Mars, unless indeed their knowledge of optical science is more advanced than ours. The manner in which these cataclysms are supposed to occur is as follows: by reason of the change of inclination of the polar axis, the earth presents itself before its great magnet, the Sun, so as to displace its own center of attraction, which then passes from one side of the terrestrial equator to the other hemisphere. This results in the disturbance of waters which, by reason of their fluidity, have a natural tendency to run towards the point to which they are most strongly attracted, in an all overpowering tidal wave.

If this were all there might not follow such terrible devastation. As the level of the waters diminishes at the uplifted pole as well as elsewhere, the huge ice-cap which covers it is rent, being no longer upheld by the waters. These accumulations of ice at either the arctic or antarctic pole, which may tower miles in height, are overthrown owing to the withdrawal of the waters, and a stupendous breaking up follows; blocks of ice as large as empires, as colossal as so many Himalayas, tumble over each other, fall and drive away the waters rushing with them, tearing away continents, and carrying along masses of boulders which man later on calls erratic. The salt sea submerges everything except, perhaps, a few lofty summits and plateaux. And after, when the great silence has become established over ancient continents, buried at the bottom of the briny seas with all that they bear, new lands spring up, muddy, covered with a salty ooze and foreign weeds, like unto hideous marine monsters, which suddenly emerge from the bosom of troubled floods and show themselves in full sight of the awe-stricken skies.

Thus these new lands present themselves to those who have survived the general fate, the memory of which will be traditional and handed down, through stories of deluges that one may find in all sacred books of ancient religions.

Cast your eye upon the earthly globe, say the partisans of this diluvian theory, and behold how greatly the southern differs from the northern hemisphere. In the latter you see nought but lands, while toward the south waters are predominant; they are accumulated thither. High plateaux and mountain tops under the form of islands are seen there in numbers. Moreover, all the continents, both Americas, Africa and the great Indo-Chinese peninsulas end in a point toward the south pole to which the waters have retired. And the Atlantis, which Plato illustrated, the remembrance of which has been carried along through ages, what has become of it if it has not, like other continents, been swallowed up by the sea? What, add they, do these alternating and superposed layers of marine and telluric fossils which we find in our fields and even on the mountain tops prove if not that the sun once shone at the same point in successive aeons upon life-teeming ocean and continent?

Thus is briefly stated, the catastrophe theory of cataclysms through which some geological changes have been explained. However, we know that modern science, without denying the possibility and even the existence of local or partial catastrophism, holds that it must be admitted that for ages the changes, traces of which are observed in the crust of the earth, have taken place much in the same manner as we now witness, i. e., slowly, insensibly but continuously. (Evolutionism.) Reality, at first though less impressive, nevertheless is still fuller of grandeur, if we consider the stupendous amount of time required for the evolution of such extensive phenomena (6).

But let us put aside this subject, which is of lesser import from our standpoint, and, as

(6) In modern times Kant, in his Sdmmtliche Werke (1775), was the first to call attention to the fact that sea and land had alternately occupied the same points of earth.

As Huxley (Discourses Biological and Geological) points out, Kant was not only a great metaphysician, but also a scientist of vast erudition. Geologically, h« was the first to hold the theory of evolution.

thought now floats, as it were, above the terrestrial surface, we have nothing to fear from the great periodical diluvian cataclysms; for these cannot trouble us in our search for the Absolute, and we can well understand how Archimedes, fearless and withdrawn by thought from the paltry things which surrounded him, allowed himself to be slain by a brutish Roman soldier.

Let us then begin our study of the Macrocosm. Philosophical analysis and the atomic theory, as well as that of equivalents, having been deduced from the determined and constant proportions which bodies bear among themselves in their combinations, lead us to consider Matter as being composed of exceedingly minute elements, grouped together in various ways. These elements are called molecules. But analysis goes further; these molecules, however small we may imagine them, are themselves made up of a number of other indivisible elements, as is indicated by their name; these elements of the molecules are called atoms. If to the question, "What is matter?" we answer that it is something- which we can touch and see, but which is formed of parts that have materially no existence. We believe many would be astonished at our reply. And yet, this is the definition given and sustained by men most eminent, who are upholders of the theory known as that of the unextended atom.

We are not positive whether this subject has been discussed by the ancient philosophers of Greece, but it is found, symbolically expressed, in the Hindoo philosophies. Be that as it may, we know that it was advanced about the middle of the last century by Father Boscowitch and by such scientists as Ampere, Faraday, Cauchy and others. Among the philosophers who have championed this theory may be mentioned Dugald-Stewart, Victor Cousin and Vacherot (7). The unextended atom theory must not be confounded with the one advanced and sustained by Hume, Berkeley Hamilton, Stuart Mill, Coyteux and others, according to

(7) See Revue des Deux Mondes, August, 1876.

which nothing exists. Georgias of Leontium, the celebrated sophist, taught the doctrine of the non-existence of things, more than four hundred years before our era.

What is the atom, then? A mathematical fiction? No, but the elements of Matter seem to be one and similar for all bodies; so say alchemists who are seeking transmutation. It may be that at such a degree of minuteness Matter loses, as it were, its materiality and is merged into Energy. To this subject we will return later.

Whatever be its nature, according to the great law of conservation of Matter, as definitely established by Lavoisier, the atom does not change nor does it perish ; notwithstanding its movements and perpetual migrations it is indestructible and invariable. It is naught but a fluid, cyclical, gyratory element of the universal fluid whereof matter is formed. (Helmoltz, William Thomson, Tait.)

Is energy, which animates atoms with a motion so rapid that imagination cannot grasp it, the real agent which establishes the molecule, and does the latter represent aught but compacted Energy? Pure theory! At any rate, the physicists now agree in considering the hardest bodies as presenting in appearance only a continuous surface: for example, if we take a hollow silver sphere filled with water,, hermetically sealed, the water will escape through all the pores of the metal if the sphere is struck with a hammer on an anvil. At every stroke of the hammer the water will form in tiny pearls at the surface of the metal. (Experiment of the Florentine Academicians.) Other facts prove to us that the idea of the impenetrability of matter is absolutely false. . . . Without speaking of two equal parts of water and alcohol, which, when mixed together, result in a quantity of liquid less in volume than the combined quantities of the two liquids taken separately (for it may be that in this case there is a variety of combination), we may also mention here the strange, mysterious but no less persistent facts of penetrability produced under the influence of psychic force, such as two rings, one of glass, the other of ivory, that may be rudely linked together without the trace of a solution of continuity. It is in the existence of these phenomena produced in his presence that Zoellner saw a possible demonstration of the fourth dimension of space. These facts, we repeat, ably prove the penetrability of bodies, and also their "demolecularization" and their possible reconstitution ad integrum, under the influence of certain forces which science will shortly make one of its principal objects of investigation.

The volume of molecules can at the most be counted in millionth part of a millimeter, and even if we take into account the relatively extended space which separates them from each other, it would be by trillions, quintillions and sextillions that we could calculate the number contained in a cubic millimeter. They are in a state of agitation, of projection, of violent shocks or energetic attractions and repulsions of which the motion of microscopical particles doubtless gives us but a faint picture. One may form an idea of their amazing whirling when one sees that hydrogen, at the ordinary pressure and temperature, shows a speed of its molecules of about two thousand meters per second (Joule), and that each one suffers on the part of its neighbors about seventeen billion shocks during the same period. (Clausius, Maxwell, Boltzmann.) "It is the bombardment operated by this multitude of small projectiles against the surrounding bodies which constitutes the tension of gases," says Mr. Jouffret, in a remarkable work (8) on the nature of matter.

Each molecule formed of a multitude of atom-vortices is now considered by scientists, as it was long ago by the "initiated" of India and Egypt, viz., as a planetary system with all its complications of motion and life, a life directed, according to the pundits of the India of to-day, by the elementary intelligences of an inferior nature (elementals). The bodies, which are accumulations of molecules, would therefore be analogous to the milky way and the resolvable nebulae.

In short, if we take a microscopical particle

(8) Jouffret, Introduction a V Etude de VEnergie. Paris, 1883. Gauthier-Villars, pub.

of matter, and divide it in thought many thousand times, we will obtain a molecule which could be seen through our microscopes were their magnifying power intensified a thousandfold. This molecule, as we perceive it, is but an agglomeration of atoms which may be considered as whirling elements, circles of energy, producing by their various movements the divers appearances of matter. A particle of dynamite, wherein is stored an enormous quantity of mechanical energy, may be taken as a rough presentment of the molecule, as it is considered according to scientific theories, vis. : by comparing the mechanical energy of dynamite to the compacted energy of matter, and the gases which are indirectly condensed by chemical processes within the dynamite to the agencied Ether which exists under the form of atoms within the molecule. Hence, matter may be nothing but one of the appearances of energy. In view of the aforegoing analysis of matter and of the results to which it leads us, are we not forced to admit with Hume, Berkeley, Hamilton, Stuart Mill, Coyteux and others that nothing really exists? If there was nothing but matter and energy in the world we would answer in the affirmative, for energy itself, as we shall again see later on, tends not to disappear but to rest "on the Seventh Day," and instead of dynamic to become purely potential. In other words, the Universe leans toward absolute rest.

At the conclusion of this summary study, which has led us, in thought, within the depths of the infinitely small, let us frankly state our opinion. Notwithstanding the disturbance which these conclusions of modern science upon the nature of matter may have brought to our mind, we do not advocate the adoption of the theory of which we have just spoken. However, in the face of these studies which show us things under an aspect so different, we are constrained to admit that we are unceasingly deceived by general appearances. And thus, knowing as we do the imperfection and unreliability of our senses, we may advance as a manner of axiom that the strongest illusion is that which we call reality.

Chapter II

Summary: The general interdependence of things. — The science of the ancients was vast and deep; modern discoveries show it. — Why they did not popularize it. — The necessity of uplifting one's thought in order to obtain a fair idea of things. — What the author means by a lucid zone. — Principle and consequence of the independence of the absolute. — The opinion of Laplace. — Materialization of Energy. — Origin of the worlds. — Formation of the Sun and of the Planets. — Ideas of Laplace upon the plurality of inhabited Worlds.— End of the Worlds.— The Night of Brahma. — What becomes of human conscience among the ruins of the Universe? — Man, a cell of the Great Being. — Rapidity of the translation of the so-called fixed stars.

Before taking up the study of man and the analysis of his essence, the author has deemed it necessary to give an idea of the great All in which each one of the molecules and atoms of which we have just spoken are bound together. From a grain of sand to the immense suns there exist ties, the invisible threads of which are beyond the vision of human eye, but which the mind may grasp and conceive.

In this study of things existing, the ancients were our masters; we cannot render them an homage too great; do not the discoveries of modern science enable us to comprehend many passages in ancient writings which the preceding generation could not clearly understand? Spectral analysis, for instance, showing as it does the analogy which exists in the composition of the stars — those suns which lighten and vivify myriads of earths — and that of our own sun ; this very analysis placing under our hand, so to speak, the identity of composition between the sun and our earth, of which it also indicates its origin, seems to give us an explanation of the lines known as the golden verse of the Pythagorians, written in rythmic prosodia by Lysis, a disciple of Pythagoras:

We must therefore seek to enlighten ourselves through the medium of modern science on the hieroglyphic symbols which have been handed down to us from ancient times. Why did the ancient sacred historians (Heathens, Judeo-

Christians, &c.) harmonize so well and unanimously agree that "God made man after His own image," and, again, that "man is a microcosm," which, from the hermetic standpoint, signifies exactly the same thing? It is because most of the scribes, deeply learned in a science which the ordinary class of men deserved not to know, understood the analogy in the composition of man to that of the Universe; they had experimentally learned that the elements of the "Sacred Tetrad" might be found in man. They had not awaited Bacon to invent the experimental method, nor did they cast to the winds the secrets of which they had robbed nature: sacred, for them, meant that which the vulgar herd was not to know. As they did not wish their discoveries to be entirely lost, they mentioned them in obscure expressions, they veiled them under symbolical figures which might seirve as guides to the memory of their disciples, or as an awakening influence to the intelligence of future able and cultured observers, who would revive their teachings.

In order to understand the essence of Life, it is necessary to make a comparative examination of the Universe and of Man — the Macrocosm and the Microcosm — and even then we cannot have a clear conception of it unless we lift the soul out of the ordinary groove of thought, from whence chiefly are born prejudices, erroneous ideas and delusions upon all that surrounds us ; we must remove, at least for a moment, our mind from the narrow boundaries in which it daily grovels, and from the limited confines to which it has but too great a tendency to mould itself. A conception of the nature of man is one of those things which require such an abstraction of thought.

Spinoza said that we were always to look at things under a character of eternity. We can go further and assert that one must learn to consider all things in their relation to space and time, with eternity and immensity. How many great events, how many grand situations would seem paltry if they were to be submitted to the calculations of such a rule of proportion! But it is an operation not within reach of everybody ; non licet omnibus.

Another condition which it is quite important should not be disregarded, is the need of curbing that pride which too frequently accompanies a meager scientific education, a specialized and perhaps incomplete instruction, as is so often the case at the present day. A number of people well informed on one special point of knowledge, fancy that they are permitted to arbitrarily decide upon everything, and are ready to deny ought that may be new or that shocks the accepted order of their ideas, arguing often for this reason only (which they seldom acknowledge to themselves) that if such and such existed it were impossible for them not to know of it. We have often met with this sort of selfsufficiency among men whose education and studiousness should have preserved from this regrettable moral infirmity had they not been specialists limiting themselves to their specialty. It is a sign of relative inferiority to believe in one's own superiority.

Again, the number of intelligences affected with lacunae is greater than is commonly known. For instance, some minds are utterly unable to pursue the study of music, or mathematics, as many are forbidden entertaining certain trains of thought. Many who have become distinguished in various lines of human occupation, let it be medicine or the grocery business, literature or the weaver's art, would have made a sad failure of their office had they chosen, as do many in this world, a career beyond the pale of what we shall call their Lucid Zone, comparing it to the action of some reflectors which, at night, carry the light within a zone of luminous pencils, outside of which all is shadow and uncertainty. Every human being possesses a lucid zone, whose extent, power and brightness varies with each individual. There are things which remain beyond the grasp and understanding of certain intelligences, being outside the boundary of their lucid zone. We need insist no further; an ill disposed critic might recognize his case in these observations and accuse us, by way of reprisal, of having chosen a subject outside of our own zone. May the gods spare us such a calamity !

Releasing thought from the atomic depths of matter in which we have plunged it, we will transport it to space, and view the macrocosm in immensity; we shall tnen see that the comparison of the molecule to the nebula is not inconsistent. Science is not acquainted with the laws of molecular movements, and while it knows more about those which govern the planets of our own system, it is still unenlightened on the laws of stellar movements. But, considering the law of the independence of the absolute, nothing prevents us from presupposing the movements of the molecule, as we conceive it, as being identically similar to those of the stars and planets. The proportion of time taken by the evolution of the molecule being, of course, in proportionate ratio to the amount of space within which it evolves. And, if upon these small masses there exist intelligent beings, the inhabitants of a size relative to the interatomic planets or earths they occupy, they would not perceive their motion any more than we feel that of our earth, although it carries us along into space at a rate of about thirty kilometers per second; life on these diminutive planets would be shorter than the speed of thought, and would possibly be spent in occupations relatively as numerous and of as long duration, if not as futile as ours too often are. Time for them would have the same valuation and their pride in the achievement and greatness of their work would be no whit less than that of man's. . . . and as legitimate.