But we must not generalize partial conclusions which we have already had much trouble in defining.
I do not say that spirits do not exist: on the contrary, I have reasons for admitting their existence. Even certain sensations expressed by the animals,—by dogs, by cats, by horses,—plead in favor of the unexpected and impressive presence of invisible beings or agents. But, as a faithful servant of the experimental method, I think that we ought to exhaust all the simple, natural hypotheses, already known, before having recourse to others.
Unfortunately, a large number of Spiritualists prefer not to go to the bottom of things, or analyse anything, but to be the dupes of nervous impressions. They resemble certain worthy women who tell their beads while believing that they have before them Saint Agnes or Saint Filomena. There is no harm in that, says some one. But it is an illusion. Let us not be its dupes.
If the elementals, the élémentaires, the spirits of the air, the gnomes, the spectres of which Goethe speaks (following Paracelsus in this), exist, they are natural and not supernatural. They are in nature, for nature includes all things. The supernatural does not exist. It is then the duty of science to study this question as it studies all others.
As I have already remarked, there are in these different phenomena several causes in action. Among these causes the ones that supposes the action to proceed from disembodied spirits, the souls of the dead, is a plausible hypothesis which ought not to be rejected without examination. It seems sometimes to be the most logical; but there are weighty objections to it, and it is of the highest importance to be able to demonstrate it with certainty. Its partisans ought to be the first to approve the severity of the scientific methods which we apply in our studies of the phenomena, for Spiritualism will receive thereby so much the more solid a foundation and will have so much the more value. The illusions and the artless faith of simple souls cannot give it any more solid and substantial basis. The religion of the future will be the religion of science. There is only one kind of truth.
Sometimes authors are made to say that which they have never said. For my part, I have had frequent proof of this, notably in the case of Spiritualism. I should not be surprised if certain interpretations of the pages which precede should come to light, shaped into the opinion that I do not believe in the existence of spirits. Yet it will be impossible to find any affirmation of this kind in this work, or in any other published by me. What I say is that the physical phenomena studied in these pages do not prove the existence of spirits, and may probably be explained without them,—that is, by unknown forces emanating from the experimenters, and especially from mediums. But these phenomena indicate, at the same time, the existence of a psychical atmosphere or environment.
What is this environment? It is indeed very difficult to get a true idea of it, since we are not able to apprehend it by any of our senses. It is also very difficult not to admit it in view of the multitude of psychical phenomena. If we admit the survival of individual souls, what becomes of these souls? Where are they? It may be replied that the conditions of space and of time in which our material senses exist do not represent the real nature of space and time, that our estimates and our measures are essentially relative, that the soul, the spirit, the thinking entity, does not occupy space. Still, we may consider also that pure spirit does not exist, that it is attached to a substance occupying a certain point. We may also consider that all souls are not equal; that there is a superior and inferior class; that certain human beings are scarcely conscious of their existence; that superior souls, being self-conscious, as well after death as during life, preserve their entire individuality, have the power of continuing their evolution, of voyaging from world to world and adding to their moral and intellectual growth by successive reincarnations. But the others, the unconscious souls, are they more advanced the day after death than the day before? Why should death bestow upon them any perfection? Why should it make a genius out of an imbecile? How could it make a good man out of a bad one? Why should it turn an ignoramus into a wise man? How could it make a shining light out of an intellectual nobody?
These unconscious souls,—that is to say, the multitude,—do they not disappear at death into the surrounding ether, and do they not constitute a kind of psychic atmosphere, in which a subtle analysis can discover spiritual as well as material elements? If the psychic force performs an action in the existing order of things, it is as worthy of consideration as the different forms of energy in operation in the ether.
Without, then, admitting the existence of spirits to be demonstrated by the phenomena, we feel that these do not all belong to a simply material order,—physiological, organic, cerebral,—but that there is something else involved, something else inexplicable in the actual state of our knowledge.
But a something else of the psychical order. Perhaps we shall be able to go a little farther, some day, in our independent impartial researches, guided by the experimental scientific method, denying nothing in advance, but admitting whatever is proved by sufficient observation.