1. Marie LenÉru, Les Affranchis, Act III., Sc. iv.

2. This essay forms part of the volume published under the title of Life and Flowers.—Translator’s Note.

3. To learn the precise truth about the neotheosophical movement and its first manifestations, the reader should study the striking report drawn up, after an impartial, but strict enquiry, by Dr. Hodgson, who was sent to India for this special purpose by the Society for Psychical Research. In it he unveils, in a masterly fashion, the obvious and often clumsy impositions of the famous Mme. Blavatsky and the whole neotheosophical organization (Proceedings, Vol. III, pp. 201-400: Hodgson’s Report on Phenomena connected with Theosophy).

4. How strict these investigations are is shown by the perpetual attacks on the S.P.R. in the spiritualistic press, which constantly refers to it as the Society “for the suppression of facts,” “for the wholesale imputation of imposture,” “for the discouragement of the sensitive and for the repudiation of every revelation of the kind which was said to be pressing itself upon humanity from the regions of light and knowledge.”

5. It would, however, be unjust to assert that all these apparitions are open to question. For instance, it is impossible to deny the reality of the celebrated Katie King, the double of Florence Cook, whose actions and movements were rigorously investigated and controlled by a man like Sir William Crookes for a period of three years. But, looked upon as a proof of survival—notwithstanding that Katie King professed to be a dead person who had returned to earth to expiate certain sins—her manifestations are not so valuable as the communications obtained since her time. In any case, they bring us no revelation concerning existence beyond the grave; and Katie, who was so young, so much alive, whose pulsations could be counted, whose heart was heard beating, who was photographed, who distributed locks of her hair to those present, who replied to every question put to her, Katie herself never uttered a word on the subject of the secrets of the next world.

6. Those who take up the study of these supernormal manifestations usually ask themselves:

“Why mediums? Why make use of these often questionable and always inadequate intermediaries?”

The reason is that, hitherto, no way has been discovered of doing without them. If we admit the spiritualistic theory, the discarnate spirits which surround us on every side and which are separated from us by the impenetrable and mysterious wall of death seek, in order to communicate with us, the line of least resistance between the two worlds and find it in the medium, without our knowing why, even as we do not know why an electric current passes along copper wire and is stopped by glass or porcelain. If, on the other hand, we admit the telepathic hypothesis, which is the more probable, we observe that the thoughts, intentions or suggestions transmitted are, in the majority of cases, not conveyed from one subconscious intelligence to another. There is need of an organism that is, at the same time, a receiver and a transmitter; and this organism is found in the medium. Why? Once more, we know absolutely nothing about it, even as we do not know why one body or combination of bodies is sensitive to concentric waves in wireless telegraphy, while another is not affected by it. We here grope, as, for that matter, we grope almost everywhere, in the obscure domain of undisputed, but inexplicable facts. Those who care to possess more precise notions on the theory of mediumism will do well to read the admirable address delivered by Sir William Crookes, as president of the S.P.R., on the 29th of January 1897.

7. These questions of fraud and imposture are naturally the first that suggest themselves when we begin to study these phenomena. But the slightest acquaintance with the life, habits and proceedings of the three or four great mediums of whom we are going to speak is enough to remove even the faintest shadow of suspicion. Of all the explanations conceivable, that one which attributes everything to imposture and trickery is unquestionably the most extraordinary and the least probable. Moreover, by reading Richard Hodgson’s report entitled, Observations of certain Phenomena of Trance (Proceedings, Vols. VIII. and XIII.; and also J. H. Hyslop’s report, Vol. XVI.), we can observe the precautions taken, even to the extent of employing special detectives, to make certain that Mrs. Piper, for instance, was unable, normally and humanly speaking, to have any knowledge of the facts which she revealed. I repeat, from the moment that one enters upon this study, all suspicions are dispelled without leaving a trace behind them; and we are soon convinced that the key to the riddle must not be sought in imposture. All the manifestations of the dumb, mysterious and oppressed personality that lies concealed in every one of us have to undergo the same ordeal in their turn; and those which relate to the divining-rod, to name no others, are at this moment passing through the same crisis of incredulity. Less than fifty years ago, the majority of the hypnotic phenomena which are now scientifically classified were likewise looked upon as fraudulent. It seems that man is loth to admit that there lie within him many more things than he imagined.

8. In this and other “communications,” I have quoted the actual English words employed, whenever I have been able to discover them.—Translator.

9. Proceedings, Vol. XXIII, p. 33.

10. Ibid. p. 120.

11. For a discussion of these cases, which would take us too far from our subject, see Mr. J. G. Piddington’s paper, Phenomena in Mrs. Thompson’s Trance (Proceedings, Vol. XVIII, pp. 180 et seq.); also Professor A. C. Pigou’s article in Vol. XXIII (pp. 286 et seq.), which treats of “Cross Correspondence” without the agency of spirits.

12. Proceedings, Vol. XIII, pp. 349-350 and 375.

13. The Survival of Man, Chap. xxv, p. 325.

14. In this connexion, however, we find two or three rather perturbing facts, a remarkable one being, at a spiritualistic meeting held by the late W. T. Stead, the prediction of the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga, described with the most circumstantial details. A verbatim report of this prediction was drawn up and signed by some thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to beg the Servian minister in London to warn the king of the danger that threatened him. The event took place, as announced, a few months later. But “precognition” does not necessarily require the intervention of the dead; moreover, every case of this kind, before being definitely accepted, would call for prolonged investigation in every particular.

15. To exhaust this question of survival and of communications with the dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s recent investigations, made with the assistance of the mediums Smead and Chenoweth (communications with William James). I ought also to mention Julia’s famous “bureau” and, above all, the extraordinary sittings of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet medium, who not only obtains communications in which the dead speak languages of which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises apparitions said to be extremely disturbing. I ought, lastly, to examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano and M. Rozanne and many other things besides, for spiritualistic investigation and literature are already piling volume upon volume. But it was not my intention nor my pretension to make a complete study of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential point and to give a general, but accurate idea of this posthumous atmosphere which no really new and decisive fact has come to unsettle since the manifestations of which we have spoken.

16. In order to hide nothing and to bring all the documents into court, we may point out that Colonel de Rochas ascertained upon enquiry that the subjects’ revelations concerning their former existences were inaccurate in several particulars:

“Their narratives were also full of anachronisms which disclosed the presence of normal recollections among the suggestions that came from an unknown source. Nevertheless, one perfectly indubitable fact remains, which is that of the existence of certain visions recurring with the same characteristics in the case of a considerable number of persons unknown to one another.”

17. In this connexion may I be permitted to quote a personal experience? One evening, at the Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, where I am wont to spend my summers, some newly-arrived guests were amusing themselves by making a small table spin on its foot. I was quietly smoking in a corner of the drawing-room, at some distance from the little table, taking no interest in what was happening around it and thinking of something quite different. After due entreaty, the table replied that it held the spirit of a seventeenth-century monk, who was buried in the east gallery of the cloisters, under a flagstone dated 1693. After the departure of the monk, who suddenly, for no apparent reason, refused to continue the interview, we thought that we would go, with a lamp, and look for the grave. We ended by discovering, in the far cloister on the eastern side, a tombstone in very bad condition, broken, worn down, trodden into the ground and crumbling, on which, by examining it very closely, we were able, with great difficulty, to decipher the inscription, “A.D. 1693.” Now, at the moment of the monk’s reply, there was no one in the drawing-room except my guests and myself. None of them knew the abbey; they had arrived that very evening, a few minutes before dinner, after which, as it was quite dark, they had put off their visit to the cloisters and the ruins until the following day. Therefore, short of a belief in the “shells” or the “elementals” of the theosophists, the revelation could only have come from me. Nevertheless, I believed myself to be absolutely ignorant of the existence of that particular tombstone, one of the least legible among a score of others, all belonging to the seventeenth century, which pave this part of the cloisters.