So that we are all of us spiritual somnambulists, and in dreams commit acts which, according to their varying character, accompany us when we are awake with feelings of satisfaction or an evil conscience and fears of the consequences. And from reasons, which I reserve the right to explain some other time, I believe that the so-called persecution-mania really springs from pains of conscience after evil deeds which one has committed in sleep, and of which vague recollections haunt us. The imaginations of the poet, which prosaic, souls so despise, are realities.
"And what about death?" you ask.
To the brave man who does not set too great a value on life, I would at an earlier stage of my experience have recommended the following experiment, which I have repeatedly made, not without troublesome, but in all cases easily cured, physical results.
After closing windows, doors, and the stove-flue, I place an open bottle containing cyan-kalium on the table and lie down on the bed. The carbonic acid in the air liberates in a little time the cyanic acid in the bottle, and the well-known physical symptoms follow—a slight throbbing of the throat, and an indescribable taste in the mouth, which I might by analogy call "cyanic," paralysis of the biceps-muscle, and pain in the stomach. The deadly effect of cyanic acid remains still a mystery. Different authorities ascribe different methods of operation to this poison. One says, "paralysis of the brain"; another, "paralysis of the heart"; a third, "suffocation as a secondary consequence of the medulla oblongata being attacked," etc.
But since the effect may show itself at once, before absorption has taken place, the method of operation must be regarded much more as psychical, especially when one has regard to the use of cyanic acid in medicine as a quieting remedy in so-called nervous diseases.
As regards the condition of the soul under this experiment, I would say the following: It does not seem to undergo a slow extinction, but rather a dissolution during which the pleasant sensations far outweigh the trifling pains. The mental capacities gain in clearness, exactly contrary to their condition at the approach of sleep; one is in full possession of one's will, and I can break off the experiment by corking the bottle, opening the window, and inhaling chlorine or ammonia.
I do not lay much stress upon it, but supposing that we could obtain satisfactory proofs of the temporary condition of death into which Indian fakirs can throw themselves, the experiment might be prolonged without danger. In case of an accident one must proceed with the various methods which are used to resuscitate a person who has been choked. The fakirs use warm compresses on the brain, the Chinese warm the pit of the stomach and cause sneezing. In his remarkable book, Positive and Negative (1890), Vial relates, following Trousseau and Piloux: "In the year 1825 Carrero stifled and drowned a large number of animals, which he afterwards resuscitated a long time after death by simply inserting needles into their brain."
In my book Inferno, I have spoken of my brother in misfortune the German-American painter, and of the quack Francis Schlatter who was suspected of being his "double." The time has come when I am obliged to compromise my friend with the sole object of helping the investigation into the relation between them.
My friend's name was H., whether real or assumed. When I had returned to Paris in August 1897, I was turning over, one day, the Revue Spirite for the year 1859. I found there an article, headed "My Friend H." Under this title a certain Herr H. Lugner had published in the feuilleton of the Journal des Débats for 26th November 1858 a narrative which he asserted to be fact, and offered to witness to, if necessary, as he himself was a friend of the hero of the adventure. The latter was a young man, aged five and twenty, of irreproachable morals and thoroughly amiable character.