It is quite in the fashion, as a general thing, to profess absolute scepticism regarding the phenomena which form the subject of the present work. In the opinion of three-quarters of the citizens of our planet all unexplained noises in haunted houses; all displacements without contact of bodies more or less heavy; all movements of tables, pianos, or other objects produced in the experiments styled Spiritualistic; all communications dictated by raps or by unconscious writing; all apparitions, partial or total, of phantom forms—are illusions, hallucinations, or hoaxes. No explanation is needed. The only rational opinion is that all "mediums," professional or not, are imposters, and the participators in a séance are imbeciles.
Sometimes one of these eminent judges consents, not to cease tipping the wink and smiling in his royal competency, but to condescend to be present at a séance. If, as only too frequently happens, no response to the command of the will is obtained, the illustrious observer retires, firmly convinced that, by his extraordinary penetration, he has discovered the cheat and blocked everything by his clairvoyant intuition. He at once writes to the journals, shows up the fraud, and sheds humanitarian crocodile tears over the sad spectacle of men, apparently intelligent, allowing themselves to be taken in by impostures, detected by him at the first blush.
This first and easy explanation, that everything in the manifestations is fraud, has been so often exposed, discussed, and refuted during the course of this work that my readers probably consider it (at least I hope they do) as entirely, absolutely, and definitely decided and thrown out of the ring.
However, I advise you not to speak too freely of these things at table, or in a drawing room if you do not like to have people making fun of you, more or less discreetly. If you air your views in public, you will produce the same effect as those eccentric fellows of the time of Ptolemy, who dared to speak of the movement of the earth and excited such inextinguishable laughter in respectable society that the echoes ring with it still in Athens, Alexandria, and Rome. It is only a repetition of what took place when Galileo spoke of the spots on the sun, Galvani of electricity, Jenner of vaccine, Jouffroy and Fulton of the steamship, Chappe of the telegraph, Lebon of gas-lighting, Stephenson of railways, Daguerre of photography, Boucher de Perthes of the fossil man, Mayer of thermodynamics, Wheatstone of the transatlantic cable, etc. If we could gather up all the sarcasms launched at the heads of these "poor crazy-wits," we should get a fine basket of venerable blunders, moldy as a remainder biscuit after a voyage.
So let us not speak too much of our mysteries—unless it amuses us, in our turn, to ask some questions of the prettiest dolls in the company. One of them inquired in my presence, yesterday evening, what the man named Lavoisier did, and whether he was dead. Another thought that Auguste Comte was a writer of songs and asked if any one knew one of them which would suit a mezzo-soprano voice. Another was astonished that Louis XIV had not built one of the two railway stations of Versailles nearer the palace.
Moreover, on my balcony, a member of the Institute, who saw Jupiter shining in the southern sky at the meridian point, over one of the cupolas of the Observatory, obstinately maintained in my presence that this luminary was the polar star. I did not dispute the point with him too long!
There are not a few people who believe at once in the value of universal suffrage and in that of titles of nobility. Of course, we will not force these Janus-faced wise men to vote upon the admissibility of psychic phenomena into the sphere of science.
But we will henceforth consider this admissibility as something granted, and, tossing back to the laughing sceptics, to the habitués of clubs and cliques, the general opinion of the world, of which I have just spoken, begin here our logical analysis.
We have had under consideration during the course of this work several theories by scientific investigators which are worthy of attention. Let us first of all sum these up.
In the opinion of Gasparin, these unexplained movements are produced by a fluid, emanating from us under the action of our will.