In the normal state we think of what we are going to write before the act of writing begins. There is a direct action of the will in causing the pen, the hand, and the fore-arm to move over the paper. In the abnormal state, on the other hand, we do not think before writing; we do not move the hand, but let it remain inert, passive, free; we place it upon the paper, taking care merely that it shall meet with the least possible resistance; we think of a word, a figure, a stroke of the pen, and the hand of its own volition begins to write. But the writing medium must think of what he is doing, not beforehand, but continuously; otherwise the hand stops. For example, try to write the word "ocean," not voluntarily (the ordinary way), but by simply taking a lead-pencil, and letting the hand rest lightly and freely upon the paper, while you think of your word and observe carefully whether the hand will write. Very good; it does begin to move over the paper, writing first an o, then a c, and the rest. At least that was my experience when I was studying the new problems of spiritualism and magnetism.
I have always thought that the circle of science is not a closed one, and that there are many things for us still to learn. In the mediumistic writing experiments it is very easy to deceive ourselves and to believe that the hand is under the influence of another mind than our own. The most probable conclusion regarding these experiences has been that the theory of the action of foreign spirits is not necessary for the explanation of such phenomena. But this is not the place to enter into details upon a subject which, up to the present time, has been only slightly examined by scientific criticism, having more often been exploited by speculators than studied by scientists.
So I wrote in 1884; and I will indorse every word I then wrote, just as it stands.
In these first experiences with Spiritualists, of which I have just been speaking, I soon had the entrée of the chief Parisian circles devoted to these matters, and for a couple of years I even took the position of honorary secretary of one of them. A natural or necessary result of this was that I did not miss a single séance.
Three different methods were employed to receive communications: (1) writing with the hand; (2) the use of the planchette to which a lead-pencil was attached, and on which the hands were placed; and (3) table-rapping (or table-moving), operated by the alphabetic code, these raps or the movements of the table marking the desired letter as the alphabet was read aloud by one of those present.
The first of these methods was the only one employed at the Society for Spiritualistic Studies, of which Allan Kardec was president. It was the one which permitted the margin for the most doubt. In fact, at the end of two years of investigations of this kind, which I had varied as much as possible, and which I had entered upon without any preconceived idea for or against, and with the most ardent desire to arrive at the truth, I came to the positive conclusion that not only are the signatures of these papers not authentic, but that the intervention of another mind from the spirit world is not proved at all, the fact being that we ourselves are the more or less conscious authors of the communications by some cerebral process which yet remains to be investigated. The explanation is not so simple as it seems, and there are certain reservations to be made in the general statement above.
When writing in the exalted and abnormal state of mind of the medium, we do not, as I have just said, form our phrases as in the normal condition; rather we wait for them to be produced. But all the same our own mind mingles in the process. The subject treated follows the lines of our own customary thoughts; the language employed is our native tongue, and, if we are uncertain about the spelling of certain words, errors will appear. Furthermore, so intimately are our own mental processes mingled with what is being written that, if we allow our thoughts to wander to another topic, the hand either stops writing or produces incoherent words and scrawls. This is the mental state of the writing medium,—at least that which I have observed in myself. It is a kind of auto-suggestion. I hasten to add, however, that this opinion only binds me to the extent of my own personal experiences. I am assured that there are mediums who act in an absolutely mechanical way, knowing nothing of the nature of what they are writing (see further on, [pp. 58, 59]), who treat subjects of which they are ignorant, and also even write in foreign languages. Such cases would be different from that of which I have just been speaking, and would indicate either a special cerebral state or great keenness of intellect, or a source of ideas exterior to the medium; i.e., if it were once proved that our mind cannot divine that of which it is ignorant. But now the transference of thought from one brain to another, from one mind to another, is a fact proved by telepathy. We could conceive, then, that a medium might write under the influence of some one near by—or even at a distance. Several mediums have also composed (in successive séances) genuine romances, such as The History of Joan of Arc, Written by Herself, or certain voyages to other planets,—seeming to indicate that there is a kind of doubling of the personality of the subject, a secondary personality. But there is no authentication of this. There is also a psychic milieu, of which I shall speak farther on. At present I must concern myself only with the subject of this chapter, and say with Newton, "Hypotheses non fingo."
Allan Kardec died on the 30th of March, 1869, and, when the Society of Spiritualists came to ask me to deliver a funeral oration at his tomb, I took occasion, during this discourse, to direct the attention of the Spiritualists to the scientific character of investigations of this class and to the manifest danger of allowing ourselves to be drawn into mysticism.
I will reproduce at this point a few paragraphs taken from this address:
I wish I could impress upon you who hear me, as well as upon the millions of men throughout Europe and in the New World who are studying the still mysterious problem of spiritualism, what a deep scientific interest and what a philosophic future there is in the study of these phenomena, to which, as you know, many of our most eminent living scholars have given their time and attention. I wish I could present to your imagination and theirs the new and vast horizons we shall see opening up before us in proportion as we broaden our scientific knowledge of the forces of nature at work around us; and I would that I could show both you and them that such conquests of the mind are the most efficacious antidote to the leprosy of atheism which seems to be particularly the malignant degenerative element in this our epoch of transition.