PHOTOGRAPHY AND TELEGRAPHY OF THOUGHT.

The photography and the telegraphy of thought are matters that until now have been little expounded. Like all those that bear no connection with the laws which, by their essence, must be universally diffused, they have been relegated to a secondary plane, notwithstanding their being of capital importance and that the elements they contain may contribute to the elucidation of many problems that still remain without solution.

When a talented artist executes a painting, a masterly work to which he has consecrated all the genius he has progressively acquired, he first lays down the general outlines, in such a way that, from the sketch, one may comprehend all the advantage he hopes to draw from it. Only after having minutely elaborated his general plan does he enter into the details; and, although to this latter work he may perhaps have to devote greater care than to the other, this would not be possible for him had he not first sketched out his picture. The same happens in Spiritism. The fundamental laws, the general principles, whose roots exist in the spirit of every created being, were elaborated from the very beginning. All the other questions, whatever they may be, depend upon the former. That is why, for a certain time, it becomes necessary to set aside the study of those questions. Indeed, could one logically speak of the photography and the telegraphy of thought, before the existence of the soul that maneuvers the fluidic elements, and that of the fluids which allow relations to be established between two distinct souls, had been demonstrated? Even today, perhaps, we are scarcely beginning to be sufficiently enlightened for the elaboration of such vast problems! Nevertheless, a few considerations of a nature to prepare the bases for a more complete study will not be found out of place here.

Limited in his ideas and aspirations, having his horizons circumscribed, man needs to make all things concrete and to put labels upon them, in order to keep an appreciable remembrance of them and to base his future studies upon the data he has gathered. It was through the sense of sight that the first notions of knowledge came to him. It was the image of an object that taught him the existence of that object. When he had come to know many objects, he drew deductions from the different impressions they produced within his being, and he fixed in his intelligence the quintessence of them by means of the phenomenon of memory. Now, what is memory but a kind of album, more or less voluminous, that one leafs through to find again the faded ideas and to reconstitute the events that have gone by? This album has marks at the principal points. Of some facts the individual immediately recollects; to recollect others, he must leaf for a long while through the album. Memory is like a book! The one in which we read certain passages presents them easily to our eyes; the leaves that are blank or rarely perused must be turned over one by one, so that we may succeed in reconstituting a fact upon which we have dwelt our attention but little.

When the incarnate Spirit remembers, his memory presents to him, in a certain way, the photograph of the fact he is seeking. In general, the incarnate beings who surround him see nothing; the album lies in a place inaccessible to their gaze; but the Spirits see it and leaf through it with us. In given circumstances, they may even deliberately help our search, or disturb it.

What is produced from an incarnate being toward a disincarnate one is also verified from the disincarnate one toward the seer. When the remembrance of certain facts of a Spirit's existence is evoked, the photograph of those facts is presented to him; and the seer, whose spiritual situation is analogous to that of the free Spirit, sees as he does and even, in certain circumstances, sees what the Spirit does not see of himself, just as a disincarnate being may leaf through the memory of an incarnate one without the latter being conscious of it, and recall to him facts long forgotten. As for abstract thoughts, by the very fact that they exist, they take on body in order to impress the brain; they must naturally act upon it and, in a certain way, be engraved upon it. In this case too, as in the first, the resemblance between the facts of the earth and those of space appears perfect. The phenomenon of the photography of thought having already been the object of some reflections of ours in the Review, for greater clarity we shall reproduce certain passages from the article in which the subject was treated, and which we shall complete with other new observations.

The fluids being the vehicle of thought, the latter acts upon them as sound acts upon the air; they bring us thought as the air brings us sound. One may therefore say, with truth, that there are waves in the fluids and radiations of thought, which cross one another without becoming confused, just as there are, in the air, sonorous waves and radiations.

More still: in creating fluidic images, thought is reflected in the perispiritic envelope as in a mirror, or else like those images of terrestrial objects that are reflected in the vapors of the air, there taking on a body and, in a certain way, photographing themselves. If a man, for example, has the idea of killing someone, although his material body remains impassive, his fluidic body is set in motion by that idea and reproduces it with all its nuances. He executes fluidically the gesture, the act that the individual premeditated. His thought creates the image of the victim, and the whole scene is drawn out, as in a picture, just as it lies in his mind. Thus it is that the most secret movements of the soul are reflected in the fluidic wrapping. Thus it is that one soul may read in another soul as in a book, and see what is not perceptible to the bodily eyes. These see the inner impressions that are reflected in the features of the physiognomy: anger, joy, sadness; but the soul sees in the features of the soul the thoughts that are not externalized.

Nevertheless, if, in seeing the intention, the soul may foresee the execution of the act that will be its consequence, it cannot, however, determine the moment in which it will be executed, nor specify its particulars, nor even affirm that it will be carried out, because later circumstances may modify the plans conceived and change the dispositions. It cannot see what is not yet in the thought; what it sees is the occasional or habitual preoccupation of the individual, his desires, his projects, his intentions good or bad. Hence the errors in the predictions of certain seers.

When an event is subordinated to the free will of a man, they can only foresee its probability, in accordance with the thought they see; but they cannot affirm that it will occur in such a manner, or at such a moment. The greater or lesser exactness in the predictions depends, moreover, upon the extent and the clarity of the psychic sight. In some individuals, disincarnate or incarnate, it is limited to one point or is diffuse, whereas in others it is distinct and embraces the whole set of thoughts and wills that are to contribute to the realization of a fact. But, above all, there is always the superior will which may, in its wisdom, permit a revelation or prevent it. In this latter case, an impenetrable veil is cast over the most perspicacious psychic sight. (See, in Genesis, the chapter on Prescience.) The theory of fluidic creations and, consequently, of the photography of thought, is a conquest of modern Spiritism and may henceforth be considered as established in principle, save for the applications of detail, which are to result from observation. This phenomenon is incontestably the origin of fantastic visions and plays a great part in certain dreams.

Who on Earth knows in what manner the first means of communicating thought were established? How were they invented, or rather discovered, given that nothing is invented, since everything exists in a latent state, there falling to men only the means of setting in action the forces that Nature offers them? Who knows how much time was necessary in order that men should use speech in a perfectly intelligible manner?

He who uttered the first inarticulate cry had, no doubt, a certain consciousness of what he wished to express, but those to whom he addressed himself at first understood nothing. Only at the end of a long lapse of time did there come to be conventional words, then abbreviated phrases, and finally entire discourses. How many thousands of years were necessary in order that Humanity should reach the point at which it finds itself today! Each advance in the modes of communication, in the relations among men, was always marked by an improvement in the social state of beings. As the relations from individual to individual become closer, more regular, the need is felt for a new and more rapid form of language, more suited to placing men in instantaneous and universal communication with one another. Why should there not be a place in the moral world, from incarnate being to incarnate being, by means of human telegraphy, for what occurs in the physical world by means of electric telegraphy? Why should the hidden relations that link, in a more or less conscious manner, the thoughts of men and of Spirits, by means of spiritual telegraphy, not become generalized among men in a conscious manner? Human telegraphy! There is something assuredly fashioned to provoke the laughter of those who refuse to admit what does not fall under the material senses. But what do the mockeries of the presumptuous matter? Their denials, however much they may multiply them, will not prevent the natural laws from following their course, nor new applications of those laws from being found, as human intelligence comes into a state to experience their effects.

Man exercises a direct action upon things, as well as upon the persons who surround him. Frequently, a person of whom little account is made exercises a decisive one upon others of far superior reputation. This proceeds from the fact that on Earth one sees far more masks than countenances, and that there the gaze is obscured by vanity, by personal interest, and by all the evil passions. Experience demonstrates that one may act upon the spirit of men without their being aware of it. A superior thought, strongly thought, if we may be permitted the expression, may therefore, according to its force and its elevation, touch near or far men who have no idea of the manner in which it reaches them, just as often the one who emits it has no idea of the effect produced by its emission. This is a constant play of the human intelligences and of the reciprocal action of some upon others. Add to it that of the intelligences of the disincarnate beings, and imagine, if you can, the incalculable power of that force composed of so many forces united together. If one could suspect the immense mechanism that thought sets in action, and the effects it produces from one individual to another, from one group of beings to another group, and finally the universal action of the thoughts of creatures one upon another, man would be astounded! He would feel himself annihilated before that infinity of particulars, before those innumerable networks linked together by a potent will and acting harmoniously to attain a single objective: universal progress.

Through the telegraphy of thought, he will appreciate in all its worth the law of solidarity, considering that there is not a thought, be it criminal, be it virtuous, or of any other kind, that does not have a real action upon the whole of human thoughts and upon each one of them. If egoism led him to ignore the consequences, for others, of a perverse thought of his own, by that very egoism he will find himself induced to have good thoughts, in order to raise the moral level of the generality of creatures, attending to the consequences that another's evil thought would produce upon himself.

What are, if not a consequence of the telegraphy of thought, those mysterious shocks that warn us of the joy or the suffering of a dear being who is far from us? Is it not to a phenomenon of the same kind that we owe the feelings of sympathy or of repulsion that draw us toward certain Spirits and turn us away from others?