2
In regard to this subject, as to the others, the spiritualists are fond of saying:
“If you refuse to admit the agency of spirits, the majority of these phenomena are absolutely inexplicable.”
Agreed; nor do we pretend to explain them, for hardly anything is to be explained upon this earth. We are content simply to ascribe them to the incomprehensible power of the mediums, which is no more improbable than the survival of the dead and has the advantage of not going outside the sphere which we occupy and of bearing relation to a large number of similar facts that occur among living people. Those singular faculties are baffling only because they are still sporadic and because but a very short time has elapsed since they received scientific recognition. Properly speaking, they are no more marvellous than those which we use daily without marvelling at them: our memory, for instance, our understanding, our imagination and so forth. They form part of the great miracle that we are; and, having once admitted the miracle, we should be surprised not so much at its extent as at its limits.
Nevertheless, to close this chapter, I am not at all of opinion that we must definitely reject the spiritualistic theory: that would be both unjust and premature. Hitherto, everything remains in suspense. We may say that things are still very little removed from the point marked by Sir William Crookes, in 1874, in an article which he contributed to the Quarterly Journal of Science:
“The difference between the advocates of Psychic Force and the Spiritualists consists in this—that we contend that there is as yet insufficient proof of any other directing agent than the Intelligence of the Medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of Spirits of the Dead; while the Spiritualists hold it as a faith, not demanding further proof, that Spirits of the Dead are the sole agents in the production of all the phenomena. Thus the controversy resolves itself into a pure question of fact, only to be determined by a laborious and long-continued series of experiments and an extensive collection of psychological facts, which should be the first duty of the Psychological Society, the formation of which is now in progress.”
Meanwhile, it is saying a good deal that rigorous scientific investigations have not utterly shattered a theory which so radically confounds the idea which we were wont to form of death. We shall see presently why, in considering our destinies beyond the grave, we need have no reason to linger too long over these apparitions or these revelations, even though they should really be incontestable and to the point. They would seem, all told, to be but the incoherent and precarious manifestations of a transitory state. They would at best prove, if we were bound to admit them, that a reflexion of ourselves, an after-vibration of the nerves, a bundle of emotions, a spiritual silhouette, a grotesque and forlorn image, or, more correctly, a sort of truncated and uprooted memory can, after our death, linger and float in a space where nothing remains to feed it, where it gradually becomes wan and lifeless, but where a special fluid, emanating from an exceptional medium, succeeds, at moments, in galvanizing it. Perhaps it exists objectively, perhaps it subsists and revives only in the recollection of certain sympathies. It would, after all, be not unlikely that the memory which represents us during our life should continue to do so for a few weeks or even a few years after our decease. This would explain the evasive and deceptive character of those spirits which, possessing but a mnemonic existence, are naturally able to interest themselves only in matters within their reach. Hence their irritating and maniacal energy in clinging to the slightest facts, their sleepy dulness, their incomprehensible indifference and ignorance and all the wretched absurdities which we have noticed more than once.
But, I repeat, it is much simpler to attribute these absurdities to the special character and the as yet imperfectly-recognized difficulties of telepathic communication. The unconscious suggestions of the most intelligent among those who take part in the experiment are impaired, disjointed and stripped of their main virtues in passing through the obscure intermediary of the medium. It may be that they stray, make their way into certain forgotten corners which the intelligence no longer visits and thence bring back more or less surprising discoveries; but the intellectual quality of the aggregate will always be inferior to that which a conscious mind would yield. Besides, once more, it is not yet time to draw conclusions. We must not lose sight of the fact that we have to do with a science which was born but yesterday and which is groping for its implements, its paths, its methods and its aim in a darkness denser than the earth’s. The boldest bridge that men have yet undertaken to throw across the river of death is not to be built in thirty years. Most sciences have centuries of thankless efforts and barren uncertainties behind them; and there are, I imagine, few among the younger of them that can show from the earliest hour, as this one does, promises of a harvest which may not be the harvest of their conscious sowing, but which already bids fair to yield much unknown and wondrous fruit.[[15]]