INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHY AND TELEGRAPHY OF THOUGHT.

The physiological action of individual upon individual, with or without contact, is an incontestable fact. Such an action can evidently be exercised only by an intermediary agent, of which our body, our eyes, and our fingers are the reservoir, being the principal organs of emission and direction. This invisible agent is necessarily a fluid. What are its nature and its essence? What are its intimate properties? Is it a special fluid, or a modification of electricity, or of some other known fluid? Is it not rather what we today call cosmic fluid, when it is dispersed in the atmosphere, and perispiritic fluid, when individualized?

This question, moreover, is secondary.

The perispiritic fluid is imponderable, like light, electricity, and caloric. It is invisible to us in our normal state, and reveals itself only by its effects.

It becomes visible, however, to whoever is in the state of lucid somnambulism and, even, in the waking state, to persons endowed with double sight. In the state of emission, it presents itself in the form of luminous beams, very similar to electric light diffused in a vacuum. To this, in short, its analogy with that latter fluid is limited, for it does not produce, at least ostensibly, any of the physical phenomena that we know. In its ordinary state, it shows diverse hues, according to the individuals who emit it: now a faint red, now bluish, or grayish, like a light mist. Most often, it spreads over the surrounding bodies a yellowish coloration, more or less strong.

On this question, the accounts of somnambulists and of seers are identical. We shall have occasion to treat of this again, when we speak of the qualities imparted to the fluid by the motive that sets it in motion and by the advancement of the individual who emits it.

No body opposes any obstacle to it; it penetrates and passes through them all. Until now none is known that is capable of isolating it. Only the will can amplify or restrict its action. The will, in effect, is its most powerful principle. By the will, its effluvia are directed through space, certain objects are saturated with it, or it is made to withdraw from places where it superabounds. Let us say, in passing, that it is upon this principle that magnetic force is founded. It seems, finally, that it is the vehicle of psychic sight, as the luminous fluid is that of ordinary sight.

The cosmic fluid, although it emanates from a universal source, individualizes itself, so to speak, in each being and acquires characteristic properties, which allow it to be distinguished from all others. Not even death erases these characters of individualization, which persist for long years after the cessation of life, something of which we have already been able to convince ourselves. Each of us, then, has his own fluid, which envelops him and accompanies him in all his movements, as the atmosphere accompanies each planet. The extent of the radiation of these individual atmospheres is very variable. The Spirit being in a state of absolute repose, this radiation may remain confined within the limits of a few steps; but, the will acting, it can reach infinite distances. The will dilates the fluid, as it were, in the same way that heat dilates gases. The different individual atmospheres intersect and mingle, without ever being confounded, exactly like sound waves that remain distinct, despite the immensity of sounds that simultaneously stir the air. One may, consequently, say that each individual is the center of a fluidic wave, whose extent is in relation to the force of the will, in the same way that each vibrating point is the center of a sound wave, whose extent is in proportion to the propulsion of the fluid, as the shock is the cause of the vibration of the air and the propeller of the sound waves. From the qualities peculiar to each fluid there results a kind of harmony or disagreement between them, a tendency to unite or to avoid one another, an attraction or repulsion, in a word: the sympathies or antipathies that are experienced, often without manifest determining causes. If we place ourselves within the sphere of activity of an individual, his presence is not rarely revealed to us by the agreeable or disagreeable impression that his fluid produces in us. If we are among persons whose sentiments we do not share, whose fluids do not harmonize with ours, a painful reaction begins to oppress us and we feel ourselves there like a dissonant note in a concert! If, on the contrary, many individuals find themselves gathered in communion of views and intentions, the sentiments of each are exalted in the very proportion of the mass of the acting forces. Who does not know the carrying force that dominates gatherings where there is homogeneity of thoughts and of wills? No one can imagine to how many influences we are thus subjected, unbeknownst to us. Can these influences not be the determining cause of certain ideas, of those ideas that at a given moment become common to us and to other persons, of those presentiments that lead us to say: something hovers in the air, presaging such or such an event? Finally, certain indefinable sensations of well-being or of moral malaise, of joy or sadness, are they not the effects of the reaction of the fluidic medium in which we find ourselves, of the sympathetic or antipathetic effluvia that we receive and that envelop us like the emanations of an odoriferous body? We cannot pronounce ourselves affirmatively, in an absolute manner, on these questions, but it is necessary to agree, at least, that the theory of the cosmic fluid, individualized in each being under the name of perispiritic fluid, opens an entirely new field for the solution of an immensity of problems hitherto insoluble. In his movement of translation, each of us carries with him his fluidic atmosphere, as the snail carries its shell; this fluid, however, leaves traces of its passage; it leaves a kind of luminous furrow, inaccessible to our senses in the waking state, but which serves for somnambulists, seers, and disincarnate Spirits to reconstitute the facts that have occurred and to examine the motives that occasioned them.

Every action, physical or moral, patent or hidden, of a being upon himself, or upon another, presupposes, on the one hand, an acting force and, on the other, a passive sensibility. In all things, two equal forces neutralize each other and weakness yields to strength. Now, all men not being endowed with the same fluidic energy, or, in other words, the perispiritic fluid not having, in all, the same active potency, it is explained why, in some, this potency is almost irresistible, whereas, in others, it is null; why some persons are very accessible to its action, while others are refractory to it.

This relative superiority and inferiority evidently depend upon the organism; but it would be an error to believe that they are in direct proportion to physical strength or weakness. Experience proves that the most robust men sometimes undergo fluidic influences more easily than others of a much more delicate constitution, whereas one frequently discovers among these latter a strength that their fragile appearance would not permit one to suspect. This diversity in the manner of acting can be explained in many ways.

The fluidic power applied to the reciprocal action of men upon one another, that is, to Magnetism, may depend: 1st, upon the quantity of fluid that each possesses; 2nd, upon the intrinsic nature of the fluid of each, abstraction made of the quantity; 3rd, upon the degree of energy of the impulsive force; perchance, even, upon these three causes combined. In the first hypothesis, he who has more fluid would give it to the one who has less, receiving it from the latter in lesser quantity. There would in this case be a perfect analogy with the exchange of caloric between two bodies that place themselves in an equilibrium of temperature. Whatever may be the cause of that difference, we can perceive the effect it produces by imagining three persons whose power we shall represent by the numbers 10, 5, and 1. The 10 will act upon the 5 and upon the 1, but more energetically upon the 1 than upon the 5; the latter will act upon the 1 but will be powerless to act upon the 10; the 1, finally, will not act upon either of the other two. This is perhaps the reason why certain patients are sensitive to the action of one magnetizer and insensitive to that of another. One may also, to a certain extent, explain this phenomenon, supported by the preceding considerations. We said, in effect, that individual fluids are sympathetic or antipathetic, one with relation to another. Now, could it not be that the reciprocal action of two individuals were in proportion to the sympathy of the fluids, that is, to the tendency of these to merge by a kind of harmony, like the sound waves produced by vibrating bodies? Undoubtedly this harmony or sympathy of the fluids is a condition, although not absolutely indispensable, at least very preponderant, and when there is disagreement or antipathy, the action cannot fail to be weak, or, even, null. This system explains well the prior conditions of the action; but it does not say on which side the strength lies and, admitting it, we are forced to have recourse to our first supposition. In short, whether the phenomenon occurs by one or another of these causes, that leads to no consequence. The fact exists; that is the essential. Those of light are explained equally by the theory of emission and by that of undulations; those of electricity, by the positive and negative fluids, vitreous and resinous.

In a forthcoming study, supporting ourselves on the considerations we have set forth, we shall seek to define what we understand by the photography and telegraphy of thought.