How many times do apparitions, or manifestations occur? When illusions, auto-suggestions, hallucinations, are eliminated, what remains? Scarcely anything. Such an exceptional rarity as this pleads against the reality of apparitions.
We may suppose, it is true, that all human beings do not survive their death, and that, in general, their psychical entity is so insignificant, so wavering, so ineffectual, that it almost disappears in the ether, in the common reservoir, in the environment, like the souls of animals. But thinking beings who have the consciousness of their psychical existence do not lose their personality, but continue the cycle of their evolution. It would seem natural therefore to see them manifest themselves under certain circumstances. Persons condemned to death, in consequence of judicial errors, and executed, should they not return to protest their innocence? Would it not be reasonable to suppose that persons put to death in such a way that violence was not suspected would return to accuse the assassins? Knowing the characters of Robespierre, of Saint-Just, of Fouquier-Tinville, I should like to have seen them revenge themselves a little on those who triumphed over them. The victims of '93, should they not have returned to disturb the sleep of the conquerors? Out of the twenty thousand citizens shot by fusillades during the time of the Commune of Paris I should like to have seen a dozen unceasingly harassing the Hon. M. Theirs, who was really too puffed up and vain-glorious over his having first permitted the organization of that insurrection and then punished it.
Why do not children whose death is lamented by their parents ever come to console them? Why do our dearest attachments seem to disappear forever? And how about last wills and testaments stolen away, and the last will of the dead ignored and their intentions purposely misinterpreted?
"It is only the dead that do not return," says an old proverb. This aphorism is not of absolute application, perhaps; but apparitions are rare, very rare, and we do not understand their precise nature. Are they actual apparitions of the dead? It is not yet demonstrated.
Up to this day, I have sought in vain for certain proof of personal identity through mediumistic communications. And then one does not see why spirits, if they exist around us, should have need of mediums at all, in order to manifest themselves. They surely must form a part of nature, of the universal nature which includes all things.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the Spiritualistic hypothesis should be preserved by the same right as those I have summed up in the immediately preceding pages, for the discussions have not eliminated it.[94]
But why are there manifestations the result of the grouping of five or six persons around the table? That this should be a sine qua non is not a very likely thing either.
It may be, it is true, that spirits exist around us, and that it is normally impossible for them to make themselves visible, audible, or tangible, not being able to reflect rays of light accessible to our retina, or to produce sonorous waves, or to effect touches. Therefore, certain conditions present in mediums might be necessary for their manifestation. Nobody has the right to deny this. But why so many puzzling incoherences and solecisms?
I have on a bookshelf before me several thousand communications dictated by "spirits." In the last analysis, a dim obscurity remains hanging over the causes. Unknown psychic forces: fugitive entities; vanishing figures; nothing solid to grasp, even for the thought. These things do not yield us the consistency of a definition of chemistry or of a theorem in geometry. A molecule of hydrogen is a granite cliff in comparison.
The greater part of the phenomena observed,—noises, movement of tables, confusions, disturbances, raps, replies to questions asked,—are really childish, puerile, vulgar, often ridiculous, and rather resemble the pranks of mischievous boys than serious bona-fide actions. It is impossible not to notice this.