The following, for instance, cannot be explained by the word, "coincidence."
I had succeeded in producing spots of gold on paper, and I wished now to do the same on a large scale in the furnace. A couple of hundred experiments failed, and I laid the blow-pipe aside in despair. One morning, I walked to the Observatory Avenue, where I often used to admire the group of the four quarters of the world, for the secret reason that the most graceful of the female figures resembled my wife. It stood under the armillary sphere and the sign Pisces, and a pair of sparrows had built their nest behind her back. At the foot of the monument I found two pieces of cardboard cut in an oval shape, one stamped with the number 207, the other with the number 28. These are the signs for the atomic weight of lead, and of silicium. I made a note of the discovery, and when I got home began a series of experiments with lead, leaving silicium for another time. As I was aware, from my knowledge of metallurgy, that lead refined in a furnace, fed with bone-ashes, always produces a recognisable amount of silver, and this silver, a little gold, I drew the conclusion that phosphate of lime, being the chief constituent of bone-ashes, must be an important element in the gold produced from lead.
And, as a matter of fact, molten lead poured upon a deposit of chalk containing phosphate of lime, also assumed on its under-side a golden colour. The powers, being unpropitious, did not allow me to finish my experiments. A year later, in Lund, a sculptor, who made experiments in his own potteries, gave me some glaze composed of lead and silicium, by means of which I for the first time produced in the furnace mineralised gold of great beauty. Out of gratitude, I showed him the two pieces of cardboard numbered 207 and 28. Is one to call it "accident" or "coincidence," this sign of an irrefragable logic?
I repeat that I have never been plagued by visions, but actual objects sometimes seem to me to assume a human shape in a grandiose style. Thus, one day the cushion which my head has been pressing during a mid-day siesta, looks like a marble head carved in the style of Michael Angelo. One evening when I return home in the company of the "double" of the American empiric doctor, I discover, in the half-shadow of the alcove where my bed is, what looks like a gigantic Zeus reposing on it. Before this unexpected sight my friend remains seized with an almost religious fear. His artistic eye comprehends at once the beauty of the outline. "There is a great forgotten art," he says, "born again! That is where we ought to learn drawing!"
The more one looks at it, the more lifelike and terrible it appears. Obviously, the spirits have become realists like the rest of us mortals. It is no mere accident, for on certain days the cushion takes the shape of terrible monsters, such as Gothic dragons and serpents; and one night after I have spent a hilarious evening, I am greeted on my return by a mediæval demon, a devil with horned head and other appurtenances. I was not at all frightened; it looked so natural, but it also made on my mind the impression of something abnormal and unearthly.
When I invited my friend the sculptor to look at it, he was not at all astonished, and called me into his studio, where a pencil sketch hanging on the wall surprised me by its grace of outline.
"Where have you got that from?" I asked. "A Madonna, is n't it?
"Yes, a Madonna of Versailles, copied from the floating plants in a Swiss lake!"
A new-discovered art of nature! Naturalistic clairvoyance! Why blame naturalism when it introduces a new art full of capacities of growth and development. The old gods return, and the watchword of the poets and artists, "Back to Pan!" has roused such a strong echo that nature has awoken from her long sleep of centuries. Nothing can exist on earth without the concurrence of the powers. Now naturalism did once exist, therefore it ought to be, and what ought it obviously to be—a new-born harmony of matter and spirit.