THE FLUIDS.

I. NATURE AND PROPERTIES OF THE FLUIDS:

Fluidic elements.

— Formation and properties of the perispirit.

— Action of the Spirits upon the fluids. Fluidic creations. Photography of thought.

— Qualities of the fluids.

II. EXPLANATION OF SOME PHENOMENA CONSIDERED SUPERNATURAL: Spiritual or psychic sight. Double sight. Somnambulism.

Dreams.

— Catalepsies. Resurrections.

— Cures.

— Apparitions. Transfigurations.

— Physical manifestations. Mediumship.

— Obsessions and possessions.

FLUIDIC ELEMENTS.

— Science has resolved the question of the miracles that derive more particularly from the material element, either by explaining them or by demonstrating their impossibility in view of the laws that govern matter; 2 but the phenomena in which the spiritual element predominates, these, being unable to be explained solely by means of the laws of Nature, escape the investigations of Science; such is the reason why they, more than the others, present the apparent characteristics of the marvelous.

It is, therefore, in the laws that govern spiritual life that the explanation of the miracles of this category can be found.

— The universal cosmic fluid is, as has already been demonstrated, the primitive elementary matter, whose modifications and transformations constitute the innumerable variety of the bodies of Nature. (Chap. X.)

As the elementary principle of the Universe, it assumes two distinct states:

that of etherealization or imponderability, which may be considered the primitive normal state, and that of materialization or ponderability, which is, in a certain way, consecutive to the former.

The intermediate point is that of the transformation of the fluid into tangible matter.

But even there, there is no abrupt transition, for our imponderable fluids may be considered as a middle term between the two states.

(Chap. IV, n.º 10 and following.)

Each of these two states naturally gives rise to special phenomena: to the second belong those of the visible world and to the first those of the invisible world.

Some, those called material phenomena, fall within the province of Science properly so called; the others, qualified as spiritual or psychic phenomena, because they are linked in a special way to the existence of the Spirits, belong to the attributions of Spiritism; 6 since, however, spiritual life and corporeal life are incessantly in contact, the phenomena of the two categories are often produced simultaneously.

In the state of incarnation, man can only perceive the psychic phenomena that are connected to corporeal life; those of the exclusively spiritual domain escape the material senses and can only be perceived in the state of Spirit. n

— In the state of etherealization, the cosmic fluid is not uniform; without ceasing to be ethereal, it undergoes modifications as varied in kind and perhaps more numerous than in the state of tangible matter.

These modifications constitute distinct fluids which, although proceeding from the same principle, are endowed with special properties and give rise to the phenomena peculiar to the invisible world.

Within the relativity of all things, these fluids have, for the Spirits, who are also fluidic, an appearance as material as that of tangible objects for incarnates, and they are, for them, what the substances of the terrestrial world are for us; 4 they elaborate and combine them to produce determinate effects, as men do with their materials, though by different processes.

There, however, as in this world, it is given only to the more enlightened Spirits to understand the role played by the constitutive elements of the world in which they find themselves.

The ignorant of the invisible world are as incapable of explaining to themselves the phenomena which they witness and to which they often contribute mechanically, as the ignorant of the Earth are of explaining the effects of light or of electricity, of saying in what manner it is that they see and hear.

— The fluidic elements of the spiritual world escape our instruments of analysis and the perception of our senses, made to perceive tangible matter and not ethereal matter.

There are some, belonging to a medium so different from ours, that we can only form an idea of them through comparisons as imperfect as those by which one born blind seeks to form an idea of the theory of colors.

But among such fluids, there are those so intimately linked to corporeal life that, in a certain way, they belong to the terrestrial medium.

In default of direct observation, their effects can be observed, as those of the fluid of the magnet are observed, a fluid which has never been seen, it being possible to acquire about their nature knowledge of some precision.

This study is essential, because in it lies the key to an immensity of phenomena that cannot be explained solely by the laws of matter.

— Absolute purity, of which nothing can give us an idea, is the point of departure of the universal fluid; the opposite point is that in which it is transformed into tangible matter.

Between these two extremes occur innumerable transformations, more or less approximate to the one and to the other.

The fluids closest to materiality, the least pure consequently, compose what may be called the terrestrial spiritual atmosphere.

It is from this medium, where the degrees of purity are likewise various, that the Spirits, incarnate and disincarnate, of this planet, draw the elements necessary to the economy [organization] of their existences.

However subtle and impalpable these fluids may be to us, they are not on that account any less of a coarse nature, in comparison with the ethereal fluids of the superior regions.

The same occurs on the surface of all worlds, except for the differences of constitution and the conditions of vitality proper to each one.

The less material life is in them, the less affinity do the spiritual fluids have with matter properly so called.

The qualification of spiritual fluids is not rigorously exact, for, in the final analysis, they are always matter more or less quintessentialized.

Of what is truly spiritual, there is only the soul or intelligent principle.

This denomination is given to them only by comparison and, above all, by the affinity they keep with the Spirits.

It may be said that they are the matter of the spiritual world, which is the reason why they are called spiritual fluids.

— Who, moreover, knows the intimate constitution of tangible matter?

It is perhaps compact only in relation to our senses; this would be proved by the ease with which the spiritual fluids and the Spirits pass through it, to which it offers no greater obstacle than that which transparent bodies offer to light.

Having for its primitive element the ethereal cosmic fluid, tangible matter must be able, by disaggregating itself, to return to the state of etherealization, in the same way that the diamond, the hardest of bodies, can volatilize into impalpable gas.

In reality, the solidification of matter is no more than a transitory state of the universal fluid, which can revert to its primitive state when the conditions of cohesion cease to exist.

Who even knows whether, in the state of tangibility, matter is not susceptible of acquiring a kind of etherealization that would give it particular properties? Certain phenomena, which seem authentic, would tend to make us suppose so.

We still know only the frontiers of the invisible world; the future, no doubt, holds in reserve for us the knowledge of new laws, which will permit us to understand what is kept from us in mystery.

FORMATION AND PROPERTIES OF THE PERISPIRIT.

— The perispirit, or fluidic body of the Spirits, is one of the most important products of the cosmic fluid; it is a condensation of this fluid around a focus of intelligence or soul.

We have already seen that the carnal body too has its principle of origin in this same fluid condensed and transformed into tangible matter; 3 in the perispirit, the molecular transformation operates differently, for the fluid preserves its imponderability and its ethereal qualities.

The perispiritic body and the carnal body thus have their origin in the same primitive element; both are matter, though in two different states.

— It is from the medium in which it finds itself that the Spirit extracts its perispirit, that is to say, this envelope it forms from the surrounding fluids; 2 from this it results that the constitutive elements of the perispirit naturally vary according to the worlds.

Jupiter being given as an orb very advanced in comparison with the Earth, as an orb where corporeal life does not present the materiality of ours, the perispiritic envelopes must be there of a much more quintessentialized nature than here.

Now, just as we could not exist in that world with our carnal body, so too our Spirits could not penetrate it with the terrestrial perispirit that clothes them.

In emigrating from the Earth, the Spirit leaves there its fluidic covering and takes another appropriate to the world where it is going to dwell.

— The nature of the fluidic envelope is always in relation with the degree of moral advancement of the Spirit.

The inferior Spirits cannot change their envelope at their pleasure, wherefore they cannot pass, at will, from one world to another.

There are some, therefore, whose fluidic envelope, although ethereal and imponderable in relation to tangible matter, is still too heavy, if we may so express ourselves, in relation to the spiritual world, not to allow them to leave the medium that is proper to them.

In this category must be included those whose perispirit is so coarse that they confuse it with the carnal body, which is the reason why they continue to believe themselves alive.

These Spirits, whose number is large, remain on the surface of the Earth, like the incarnates, believing themselves engaged in their terrestrial occupations; 6 others a little more dematerialized are not, however, sufficiently so to rise above the terrestrial regions. n

The superior Spirits, on the contrary, can come to the inferior worlds, and even incarnate in them.

They take, from the constitutive elements of the world they enter, the materials for the formation of the fluidic or carnal envelope appropriate to the medium in which they find themselves.

They do as the nobleman who temporarily removes his garments, to don plebeian attire, without on that account ceasing to be noble.

It is thus that the Spirits of the most elevated category can manifest themselves to the inhabitants of the Earth or incarnate on a mission among them.

Such Spirits bring with them, not the covering, but the remembrance, by intuition, of the regions from which they came and which, in thought, they see. They are the sighted among the blind.

— The layer of spiritual fluids that surrounds the Earth may be compared to the lower layers of the atmosphere, heavier, more compact, less pure, than the upper layers.

These fluids are not homogeneous; they are a mixture of molecules of diverse qualities, among which are necessarily found the elementary molecules that form their base, but more or less altered.

The effects that these fluids produce will be in proportion to the sum of the pure parts that they contain.

Such, by comparison, is rectified alcohol, or alcohol mixed, in different proportions, with water or other substances: its specific weight increases, by effect of this mixture, at the same time that its strength and its inflammability diminish, although on the whole there continues to be pure alcohol.

The Spirits called to live in that medium draw from it their perispirits; but according as the Spirit is more or less purified, its perispirit will be formed from the purer or from the coarser parts of the fluid peculiar to the world in which it incarnates.

The Spirit produces there, always by comparison and not by assimilation, the effect of a chemical reagent that draws to itself the molecules that its nature can assimilate.

From this results this capital fact: the intimate constitution of the perispirit is not identical in all the Spirits, incarnate or disincarnate, that people the Earth or the space that surrounds it.

The same does not occur with the carnal body, which, as has been demonstrated, is formed from the same elements, whatever may be the superiority or the inferiority of the Spirit.

Therefore, in all, the effects that the body produces are the same, the needs similar, whereas they differ in all that concerns the perispirit.

It also results that: the perispiritic envelope of a Spirit is modified with the moral progress that it accomplishes in each incarnation, even though it incarnate in the same medium; 11 that the superior Spirits, incarnating exceptionally, on a mission, in an inferior world, have a perispirit less coarse than that of the natives of that world.

— The medium is always in relation with the nature of the beings that have to live in it: fishes are in the water; terrestrial beings are in the air; spiritual beings are in the spiritual or ethereal fluid, even when they are on the Earth.

The ethereal fluid is to the needs of the Spirit as the atmosphere is to those of the incarnates.

Now, just as fishes cannot live in the air; as terrestrial animals cannot live in an atmosphere too rarefied for their lungs, the inferior Spirits cannot endure the brilliance and the impression of the more ethereal fluids.

They would not die in the midst of these fluids, because the Spirit does not die, but an instinctive force keeps them away from there, as the terrestrial creature withdraws from a too ardent fire or from a too dazzling light.

This is why they cannot leave the medium that is appropriate to their nature; 6 in order to change their medium, they must first change their nature, divest themselves of the material instincts that retain them in the material mediums; 7 in a word, that they purify themselves and morally transform themselves; then, gradually, they identify themselves with a more purified medium, which becomes a necessity to them, as the eyes, for one who has lived a long time in darkness, imperceptibly accustom themselves to the light of day and to the radiance of the Sun.

— Thus, everything in the Universe is connected, everything is linked, everything is submitted to the great and harmonious law of unity, from the most compact materiality to the purest spirituality.

The Earth is like a vessel from which escapes a dense smoke that clears as it rises and whose rarefied particles are lost in infinite space.

The divine power shines forth in all parts of this grandiose whole and, nevertheless, it is wished that God, not content with what He has done, should come to disturb this harmony! that He should lower Himself to the role of a magician, producing puerile effects, worthy of a conjurer!

And one dares, moreover, to give Him as a rival in skill Satan himself! There would be no way of belittling the divine majesty more, and people are astonished that incredulity progresses.

You are right to say: "Faith is departing." But the faith that is departing is the faith in all that deviates from good sense and reason; it is the faith identical to that which formerly led people to say: "The gods are departing!"

But faith in serious things, faith in God and in immortality, that is always alive in the heart of man and, however stifled it may have been beneath the heap of puerile stories with which it has been oppressed, it will rise again stronger, once it feels itself liberated, just like the plant which, compressed, lifts itself up anew, as soon as the rays of the Sun bathe it!

In effect, everything is a miracle in Nature, because everything is admirable and bears testimony to the divine wisdom! These miracles are manifest to all people, to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear and not for the benefit of only a few!

No! there are no miracles in the sense that is commonly given to that word, because everything flows from the eternal laws of Creation, those laws being perfect.

ACTION OF THE SPIRITS UPON THE FLUIDS.

FLUIDIC CREATIONS. PHOTOGRAPHY OF THOUGHT.

— The spiritual fluids, which constitute one of the states of the universal cosmic fluid, are, properly speaking, the atmosphere of spiritual beings; 2 the element from which they draw the materials upon which they operate; 3 the medium where the special phenomena occur, perceptible to the sight and hearing of the Spirit, but which escape the carnal senses, sensitive only to tangible matter; 4 the medium where the light peculiar to the spiritual world is formed, different, by cause and by effects, from ordinary light; 5 finally, the vehicle of thought, as the air is of sound.

— The Spirits act upon the spiritual fluids, not by manipulating them as men manipulate gases, but by employing thought and will.

For the Spirits, thought and will are what the hand is for man.

By thought, they impress upon those fluids this or that direction, they agglomerate, combine or disperse them, organize with them ensembles that present a determinate appearance, form, and coloration; they change their properties, as a chemist changes those of gases or of other bodies, combining them according to certain laws.

It is the great workshop or laboratory of spiritual life.

Sometimes, these transformations result from an intention; at other times, they are the product of an unconscious thought; 6 it suffices that the Spirit think a thing, for this to be produced, as it suffices that one shape an air, for this to reverberate in the atmosphere.

It is thus, for example, that a Spirit makes itself visible to an incarnate who possesses psychic sight, under the appearances it had when alive at the epoch in which the latter knew it, although it may have had, after that epoch, many incarnations.

It presents itself with the clothing, the exterior signs, — infirmities, scars, amputated limbs, etc., — that it had then; one beheaded will present himself without his head.

This does not mean that it has preserved these appearances, certainly not, for, as a Spirit, it is neither lame, nor one-armed, nor one-eyed, nor beheaded; what happens is that, its thought going back to the epoch in which it had such defects, its perispirit instantaneously takes on their appearances, which cease to exist as soon as that same thought ceases to act in that direction.

If, then, it was black one time and white another, it will present itself as white or black, according to the incarnation to which its evocation refers and to which its thought is transported.

By an analogous effect, the thought of the Spirit fluidically creates the objects it was accustomed to use; a miser will handle gold, a soldier will bear his weapons and his uniform, a smoker his pipe, a plowman his plow and his oxen, an old woman her distaff.

For the Spirit, which is, it too, fluidic, these fluidic objects are as real as they were, in the material state, for the living man; but, for the reason that they are creations of thought, their existence is as fleeting as that of the latter. n

— The fluids being the vehicle of thought, this acts upon the fluids as sound acts upon the air; they bring us thought, as the air brings us sound.

It may therefore be said, without fear of error, that there are, in these fluids, waves and rays of thoughts, which cross one another without confounding themselves, as there are in the air sonorous waves and vibrations.

There is more: in creating fluidic images, thought is reflected in the perispiritic envelope, as in a mirror; it takes body in it and there, in a certain way, photographs itself.

Let a man, for example, have the idea of killing another: although the material body remains impassive, his fluidic body is set in action by thought and reproduces all the nuances of the latter; it fluidically executes the gesture, the act that it intended to perform; thought creates the image of the victim and the entire scene is painted, as in a picture, just as it unfolds in his spirit.

In this manner it is that the most secret movements of the soul reverberate in the fluidic envelope; that one soul can read in another soul as in a book and see what is not perceptible to the eyes of the body.

Nevertheless, seeing the intention, it may foresee the execution of the act that will be its consequence, but it cannot determine the instant in which that same act will be executed, nor mark out its details, nor, again, affirm that it will occur, because ulterior circumstances may modify the plans laid down and change the dispositions.

It cannot see what is not yet in the thought of the other; what it sees is the habitual preoccupation of the individual, his desires, his projects, his designs good or bad. QUALITIES OF THE FLUIDS.

— The action of the Spirits upon the spiritual fluids has consequences of capital and direct importance for the incarnates.

These fluids being the vehicle of thought, and this being able to modify their properties, it is evident that they must be found impregnated with the good or bad qualities of the thoughts that make them vibrate, modifying themselves by the purity or impurity of the sentiments.

Bad thoughts corrupt the spiritual fluids, as deleterious miasmas corrupt the breathable air.

The fluids that envelop the bad Spirits, or that these project, are, therefore, vitiated, whereas those that receive the influence of the good Spirits are as pure as the degree of their moral perfection allows.

— It would be impossible to make an enumeration or classification of the good and the bad fluids, or to specify their respective qualities, since their diversity is as great as that of the thoughts.

The fluids do not possess sui generis qualities, but those they acquire in the medium where they are elaborated; they are modified by the effluvia of that medium, as the air by exhalations, the water by the salts of the strata it traverses.

According to circumstances, their qualities are, like those of water and air, temporary or permanent, which renders them very especially appropriate to the production of this or that effect.

They likewise lack particular denominations; like odors, they are designated by their properties, their effects, and original types.

From the moral point of view, they bear the stamp of the sentiments of hatred, of envy, of jealousy, of pride, of egoism, of violence, of hypocrisy, of kindness, of benevolence, of love, of charity, of gentleness, etc.; 6 from the physical aspect, they are excitant, calming, penetrating, astringent, irritant, sweetening, soporific, narcotic, toxic, restorative, expulsive; they become a force of transmission, of propulsion, etc.

The table of the fluids would thus be that of all the passions, the virtues and the vices of Humanity and of the properties of matter, corresponding to the effects that they produce.

— Being only incarnate Spirits, men have a portion of spiritual life, since they live that life as much as the corporeal life; firstly, during sleep and, often, in the waking state.

The Spirit, incarnate, preserves, with the qualities that are proper to it, its perispirit which, as is known, is not circumscribed by the body, but radiates around it and envelops it as with a fluidic atmosphere.

By its intimate union with the body, the perispirit plays a preponderant role in the organism; 4 by its expansion, it places the incarnate Spirit in more direct relation with the free Spirits and also with the incarnate Spirits.

The thought of the incarnate acts upon the spiritual fluids, like that of the disincarnate, and is transmitted from Spirit to Spirit by the same channels and, according as it is good or bad, sanitizes or vitiates the surrounding fluids.

Since these are modified by the projection of the thoughts of the Spirit, its perispiritic covering, which is a constituent part of its being and which receives in a direct and permanent manner the impression of its thoughts, must, even more, retain that of its good or bad qualities.

The fluids vitiated by the effluvia of the bad Spirits can be purified by the withdrawal of these, whose perispirits, however, will always be the same, as long as the Spirit does not modify itself by its own effort.

The perispirit of the incarnates being of a nature identical to that of the spiritual fluids, it assimilates them with facility, as a sponge soaks up a liquid.

These fluids exert upon the perispirit an action all the more direct in that, by its expansion and its radiation, the perispirit becomes confounded with them.

These fluids acting upon the perispirit, this, in its turn, reacts upon the material organism with which it is in molecular contact.

If the effluvia are of a good nature, the body feels a salutary impression; if they are bad, the impression is painful; 12 if they are permanent and energetic, the bad effluvia can occasion physical disorders; such is no other than the cause of certain infirmities.

The mediums where bad Spirits superabound are, therefore, impregnated with bad fluids that the incarnate absorbs through the perispiritic pores, as he absorbs through the pores of the body the pestilential miasmas.

— Thus are explained the effects that are produced in places of assembly.

An assembly is a focus of radiation of diverse thoughts; it is like an orchestra, a chorus of thoughts, where each one emits a note.

From this results a multiplicity of currents and of fluidic effluvia, the impression of which each one receives by the spiritual sense, as in a musical chorus each one receives the impression of the sounds by the sense of hearing.

But, in the same way that there are sonorous radiations, harmonious or dissonant, there are also harmonious or discordant thoughts.

If the whole is harmonious, the impression is agreeable; painful, if it is discordant.

Now, for this, it is not necessary that the thought be externalized by words; whether it be externalized or not, the radiation always exists.

Such is the cause of the satisfaction that one experiences in a sympathetic gathering, animated by good and benevolent thoughts; it is enveloped by, as it were, a salubrious moral atmosphere, where one breathes at ease; one leaves it comforted, because impregnated with salutary fluidic effluvia; 8 it suffices, however, that some bad thoughts be mingled with it, to produce the effect of a current of icy air in a tepid medium, or that of a discordant note in a concert.

In this manner is also explained the anxiety, the indefinable malaise that one experiences in an antipathetic gathering, where malevolent thoughts provoke currents of nauseous fluid.

— Thought, therefore, produces a kind of physical effect that reacts upon the moral, a fact that only Spiritism could render comprehensible.

Man feels it instinctively, since he seeks out homogeneous and sympathetic gatherings, where he knows that he can draw new moral forces, it being possible to say that, in such gatherings, he recovers the fluidic losses that he suffers every day through the radiation of thought, as he recovers, by means of food, the losses of the material body.

For, in effect, thought is an emission that occasions a real loss of spiritual fluids and, consequently, of material fluids, in such a manner that man needs to retemper himself with the effluvia that he receives from outside.

When it is said that a physician operates the cure of a patient by means of good words, an absolute truth is enunciated, for a kindly thought brings with it restorative fluids that act upon the physical, as much as upon the moral.

— It will be said that one can avoid men who are knowingly ill-intentioned; that is beyond doubt; but how shall we flee from the influence of the bad Spirits that swarm around us and everywhere insinuate themselves, without being seen?

The means is very simple, because it depends on the will of man, who carries with him the necessary preservative.

The fluids combine by the similarity of their natures; the dissimilar repel one another; 4 there is incompatibility between the good and the bad fluids, as between oil and water.

What is done when the air is vitiated? One proceeds to its sanitation, one takes care to purify it, destroying the focus of the miasmas, expelling the unhealthy effluvia, by means of stronger currents of salubrious air.

To the invasion, then, of the bad fluids, it behooves that the good fluids be opposed and, since each one has in his own perispirit a permanent fluidic source, all carry with them the applicable remedy; 7 it is only a matter of purifying that source and of giving it such qualities that it constitutes, for the bad influences, a repeller, instead of being an attractive force.

The perispirit, therefore, is a cuirass to which the best temper possible must be given; 9 now, as its qualities keep relation with those of the soul, it is important that one work to improve it, since it is the imperfections of the soul that attract the bad Spirits.

Flies are attracted by the foci of corruption; those foci destroyed, they will disappear.

The bad Spirits, likewise, go to where evil attracts them; evil eliminated, they will withdraw.

The truly good Spirits, incarnate or disincarnate, have nothing to fear from the influence of the bad ones.

[1] The denomination of psychic phenomenon expresses the thought with more exactness than that of spiritual phenomenon, given that these phenomena repose upon the properties and the attributes of the soul, or, better, of the perispiritic fluids, inseparable from the soul. This qualification links them more intimately to the order of natural facts governed by laws; one can, therefore, admit them as psychic effects, without admitting them in the capacity of miracles.

[2] Examples of Spirits who still believe themselves of this world: Spiritist Review, December 1859: A Spirit who does not believe himself dead; November 1864 and April 1865: Pierre Legay, the Great Pierrot.

[3] Spiritist Review, July 1859: The Zouave of Magenta. — The Mediums' Book, 2nd Part, chapter VIII.