However, it must be admitted that it is very seldom we have the opportunity of experimenting with these, so to speak, ready-made mediums. As a rule we must try on patiently, until the longed-for phœnix has been discovered.
At the same time, I ought to point out that the chances of encountering a medium will be greater if we look for him among nervous people. It seems to me that a certain impressionability—or nervous instability—is a favourable condition for the effervescence of medianity. I use the term ‘nervous instability’ for want of a better, but I do not use it in an ill sense. Hysterical people do not always give clear, decided phenomena; my best experiments have been made with those who were not in any way hysterical.
Neurasthenics generally give no result whatever.
The nervous instability of which I speak is, therefore, neither hysteria, nor neurasthenia, nor any nervous affection whatsoever. It is a state of the nervous system such as appears in hypertension. A lively impressionability, a delicate susceptibility, a certain unequalness of temper, establish analogy between mediums and certain neurotic patients; but they are to be distinguished from the latter by the integrity of their sensibilities, of their reflex movements, and of their visual range. As a rule, they have a lively intelligence, are susceptible to attention, and do not lack energy; their artistic sentiments are relatively developed; they are confiding and unreserved with those who show them sympathy; are distrustful and irritable if not treated gently. They pass easily from sadness to joy, and experience an irresistible need of physical agitation: these two characteristics are just the ones which made me choose the expression of nervous instability.
I say instability, I do not say want of equilibrium. Many mediums whom I have known have an extremely well-balanced mind, from a mental and nervous point of view. My impression is that their nervous system is even superior to that of the average.
This will, no doubt, surprise many well-informed people. Medical men and psychologists, ill-disposed, as a rule, to the study of so-called occult phenomena, have the habit of looking upon all mediums as hysterics. It suffices to read the works of these savants to perceive they have never been in the presence of veritable mediums. M. Paul Janet, for example—in L’Automatisme Psychologique—propounds general theories which cannot be applied to every case. It is a pity such an eminent thinker should not have taken the trouble to make himself better acquainted with the facts. Perhaps he has acted like the celebrated Abbot Vertot.[2] According to M. Janet’s theories, all mediums are on the high road to psychological disintegration: the constituent parts of their personality are dissociated under the influence of the weakening of the normal, personal activity.
I am sure the individuals observed by M. Janet have been very carefully studied by him; but I regret that my learned colleague has not encountered a genuine medium. I share his opinion concerning most spiritistic mediums; I have only found two interesting ones among them; the hundred others which I have observed have only given me automatic phenomena, more or less conscious; nearly all were the puppets of their imagination. It is outside spiritistic circles that I have discovered the best mediums.
M. Janet’s criticisms are only erroneous because they are too sweeping. His conception of psychological disintegration is applicable to the greater number of cases; but it does not apply to all. It is a very different thing to study a crystal-vision, or an automatic writing revealing nothing beyond the tenor of the sensitive’s memory, or to observe a premonitory vision such as has been given me to do. The indication of a future event cannot be explained by Janet’s hypothesis. It reveals especial faculties that I can scarcely consider pathological, unless I consider them as such in the same way as one considers genius to be a sign of degeneration.
It is more reasonable to think that our nervous sensibility will become more and more refined. It is rash to believe that the present human type is the definite end of evolution. Our species is only one link in the series of beings; the causes, which have led up to the improvement of the human race, are still in activity, and it is logical to think there are some natures above as well as below the average. The latter represent ancestral types—a return to cast-off forms; the former are perhaps precursors, possessing faculties which are abnormal to-day, but which may become normal to-morrow.
I must pause, for I see I am forsaking the domain of facts for that of hypotheses; I hasten to return thither. I have pointed out the signs which permit us to suppose that a certain given person is a medium; although these signs are not certain, they seem to me probable. In reality, there is only one sure way of testing the faculties of a medium: that is to experiment with him.