ON DOUBLE MEN AND THE APPARITIONS OF LIVING PERSONS.

It is a fact today proven and perfectly explained that the Spirit, isolating itself from a living body, can, with the help of its fluidic-perispiritic envelope, appear in a place different from that in which the material body is. Up to the present, however, theory, in agreement with experience, seems to demonstrate that this separation occurs only during sleep, or, at least, during the inactivity of the bodily senses. If they are accurate, the following facts prove that it likewise occurs in the waking state. We take them from the German work: The Mystical Phenomena of Human Life, by Maximilian Perty, professor at the University of Berne, published in 1861. (Leipzig and Heidelberg)

[The Mystical Phenomena of Human Life.]

by Maximilian Perty.

— A peasant landowner was seen, by his coachman, in the stable, with his gaze directed toward the animals, at the very moment when he was taking communion in the church. Recounting the fact later to his pastor, the latter asked him what he had been thinking of at the moment of communion. — To tell the truth, the peasant replied, I was thinking of my animals. — There is the explanation of your apparition, the clergyman replied.”

The pastor was right, for, thought being the essential attribute of the Spirit, the latter must be found wherever its thought is. The question is to know whether, in the waking state, the detachment of the perispirit can be great enough to produce an apparition, which would imply something like a doubling of the Spirit, one part of which would animate the fluidic body and the other the material body. There would be nothing impossible in this, if we consider that, when thought is concentrated on a distant point, the body acts only mechanically, by the effect of a sort of mechanical impulse, which is verified, above all, in absent-minded persons. Spiritual life accompanies the Spirit. It is therefore probable that the man in question had, at that moment, a strong distraction and that his animals preoccupied him more than the communion. This other fact is of the same category; it presents, however, a more remarkable particularity:

— The cantonal judge, J…, in Fr.… one day sent his clerk to a village in the surroundings. After some time, he saw him enter again, take a book from the cabinet, and leaf through it. He brusquely asked him why he had not yet gone where he had been sent. At these words, the clerk disappeared. The book falls to the floor and the judge places it on a table, open as it had fallen. In the evening, when the clerk returned, the judge questioned him as to whether anything had happened to him along the way, whether he had returned to the room where at that moment they were. — No, the clerk replied; I made the journey in the company of a friend; as we crossed the forest, we began to discuss a plant we had found and I told him that, if I were at home, it would be easy for me to show him a page of Linnaeus that would prove me right. That was precisely the book that had remained open at the page indicated.” However extraordinary the fact may seem, one could not accuse it of being materially impossible, since we are still far from knowing all the phenomena of spiritual life. Nevertheless, confirmation is needed. In a case such as this, it would be necessary to verify, in a positive manner, the state of the body at the moment of the apparition. Until proof to the contrary, we doubt that the fact is possible, given that the body is in intelligent activity.

Those that follow are far more extraordinary and we frankly confess that they inspire even greater doubts in us. It is easily understood that the apparition of the Spirit of a living person should be seen by a third person, but not that an individual can see his own apparition, especially under the conditions referred to below.

— The Secretary of the government, Triptis, in Weimar, going to the Chancery in search of a bundle of documents that he greatly needed, came upon himself there, already seated in his habitual chair and having the documents before him. Frightened, he returns home and sends his employee with orders to fetch the documents that were in the usual place. The employee goes and likewise sees the master seated in his chair.”

— Becker, professor of mathematics in Rostock, was at table with some friends, among whom a theological question arises. Becker goes to his library in search of a work that would decide the question and found himself seated in the customary place. Looking over the shoulders of his other self, he verifies that the latter points out to him the following passage of the Bible, in an open volume: “Set thy house in order, for thou must die.” He returns to his friends, who vainly endeavor to demonstrate to him that it was folly to attach the least importance to that vision. — He died the next day.”

— Hoppack, author of the work: Materials for the Study of Psychology, says that the priest Steinmetz, having visitors at his house, while in his room, saw himself in his garden, in the place he preferred. Pointing to himself and then to his counterpart, he said: “Here is Steinmetz, the mortal; there is the immortal.”

— F…, of the city of Z…, who became a judge later on, finding himself, when young, on a country holiday, a daughter of the house asked him to go to her room to fetch a parasol. He went and saw the girl seated at her work table, but paler than when he had left her. She was looking straight ahead. F…, despite the fear that seized him, picked up the parasol, which was beside her, and carried it off. Seeing him with a disturbed countenance, the girl said to him: Confess that you saw something, that you saw me in the room. Do not be distressed, I am not about to die. I am double (in German: Doppelgaenger, which means, literally: someone who walks double). In thought, I was beside my work and many times already I have come upon my image at my side. We do nothing to each other.”

— Count D… and the sentinels claimed to have seen one night the empress Elisabeth of Russia, seated on her throne, in the hall where it stood, in full gala dress, while she was lying down and sleeping in her chamber. The lady-in-waiting, who was on duty, convinced of the fact, went to wake her. The empress also made her way to the throne hall and saw her image there. She ordered a sentinel to fire; the image immediately disappeared. The empress died three months later.”

— A student, named Elger, became very melancholy after having seen himself in the red costume that he habitually wore. He never saw his face, but only the contours of a vaporous form that resembled him and always at nightfall or by moonlight. He saw the image in the place where he had spent a long time studying.”

— A French governess, Émilie Sagée, lost this post nineteen times, because she appeared everywhere in double. The girls of a boarding school in Neuwelke, in Livonia, saw her several times in the parlor or in the garden, at the same time when, in reality, she was somewhere else. At other times, they saw, before the blackboard, two Mademoiselles Sagée, one beside the other, exactly alike, making the same movements, with the only difference being that only the true Sagée had in her hand a piece of chalk, with which she wrote on the board.”

Mr. Perty's work contains a great number of facts of this kind. It is to be noted that, in all the cases cited, the intelligent principle shows itself equally active in the two individuals and, even, more active in the material being, when the contrary is what ought to occur. But what seems to us radically impossible is that there should be antagonism, divergence of ideas, of thoughts, and of feelings in the two beings. Yet, that divergence is manifest, above all, in fact No. 4, in which one warns the other of his death, and in No. 7, in which the empress orders firing against her other self.

Granting the division of the perispirit and a fluidic force sufficient to maintain normal activity in the body; supposing also the division of the intelligent principle, or a radiation of it capable of animating the two beings and of granting it a sort of ubiquity, this principle, which is one, must remain identical; there could not, therefore, be, on one side, a will that did not exist on the other, unless one admits that there are twin Spirits, as there are twin bodies, that is, that two Spirits identify themselves in order to incarnate in a single body, which is not conceivable.

If, in all these fantastic stories, there is something that ought to be kept, there is also much to be repudiated, there being still the part belonging to legend. Far from inducing us to accept them blindly, Spiritism helps us to separate the true from the false, the possible from the impossible, by means of laws that it reveals to us, concerning the constitution and the role of the spiritual element. Let us not hasten, however, to reject a priori all that we do not understand, because we are very far from knowing all the laws and because nature has not yet disclosed to us all its secrets. The invisible world is a field still new for observations and we would be presumptuous if we claimed to have sounded all its depths, when incessantly new marvels display themselves before our eyes. Nevertheless, there are facts whose material impossibility logic and known laws demonstrate. Such, for example, is that which is related in the Spiritist Review of February 1859, on page 41, under the heading: My friend Hermann. It concerns a young German of high society, delicate, considerate, of good character, who, every evening, at sunset, fell into a state of apparent death, during which his Spirit awoke at the antipodes, in Australia, in the body of a bandit who ended up being hanged. Simple good sense demonstrates that, granting this bodily duality as possible, the same Spirit cannot be, alternately, an honest man, during the day, in one body, and, at night, a bandit, in another body. Whoever says that Spiritism believes in such stories proves that he does not know it, for, on the contrary, it furnishes the means of evidencing their absurdity. But, at the same time that it demonstrates the error of a belief, it proves that often that belief rests on a true principle, disfigured or exaggerated by superstition. The fruit must be separated from the husk that envelops it.

What ridiculous tales were not engendered about lightning, before the law of electricity was known! The same occurs with regard to the relations of the visible world with the invisible world. By making known the law that presides over these relations, Spiritism places them on the terrain of reality. This reality, however, is still excessive for those who admit neither souls nor invisible world. In the view of these, everything that goes beyond the limits of the visible and tangible world is superstition. Such is the reason why they deride Spiritism.

NOTE. — The very interesting question of double men and that of the agéneres, which is intimately linked to it, spiritist science has until now relegated to the background, for lack of documents for the complete elucidation of one and the other. These manifestations, however singular they may be, however incredible they may seem at first sight, sanctioned by the narratives of the most serious historians of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, confirmed by recent facts, prior to the advent of Spiritism, or contemporary, can in no way be cast into doubt. The Mediums' Book, in the article entitled: Spiritual visits among living persons, and the Spiritist Review, in many passages [see Apparition of a son to his mother. See further below other examples], confirm the reality of such manifestations in an absolutely incontestable manner. From a comparison and a thorough examination of all these facts, there would perhaps emerge a solution at least partial to the question and the elimination of some of the difficulties that seem to envelop it. We would be most grateful to those of our correspondents who would deign to make of this question a special study, whether personally or through the Spirits, and to communicate to us the result of their researches, in the interest, of course, of the diffusion of truth.

Running rapidly through the previous years of the Review and considering the facts noted and the theories enunciated to explain them, we arrive at the conclusion that it might perhaps be fitting to separate the phenomena into two well-distinct categories, which would permit different explanations to be given for them and would demonstrate that the impossibilities raised against the pure and simple acceptance of these phenomena are more apparent than real. (See in this regard the articles of the Spiritist Review of January 1859, the Goblin of Bayonne; February 1859: The agéneres and My friend Hermann; May 1859: The bond between the Spirit and the body; November 1859: The wandering soul; January 1860: The Spirit on one side and the body on the other; March 1860: Study on the Spirit of living persons. Dr. V… and Mademoiselle S…; April 1860: The manufacturer of St. Petersburg; Tangible apparitions; November 1860: History of Maria d'Agreda; July 1861: A providential apparition, etc., etc.) The faculty of expansion of the perispiritic fluids is already amply demonstrated by the most painful surgical operations performed on patients put to sleep, whether by chloroform and ether, or by animal magnetism. Not rarely, indeed, these latter converse of agreeable things with the bystanders, or transport themselves far away, in Spirit, while the body writhes with all the appearances of experiencing the most horrible tortures. The human machine, immobilized in whole or in part, is carved by the brutal scalpel of the surgeon, the muscles stir, the nerves contract and transmit the sensation to the cerebro-spinal apparatus; but the soul, which is what, in the normal state, feels the pain and manifests it outwardly, removed, for some moments, from the body subject to the operation, dominated by other ideas, by other actions, is only very faintly warned of what is happening in its mortal envelope and remains perfectly insensible. How many times have soldiers gravely wounded, absorbed in the ardor of combat, losing blood and strength, not been seen to fight on for a long time still, without perceiving their wounds? A man, keenly preoccupied, receives a violent blow without feeling anything, and only when the abstraction of his intelligence ceases does he recognize that the painful sensation he experiences had struck him. To whom has it not yet happened, during a profound concentration of the Spirit, to pass through the midst of a tumultuous and howling crowd, without seeing or hearing anything, although the optic nerve and the auditory apparatus had perceived and transmitted the sensations to the soul? From the cases that precede and from an immensity of facts that it would be idle to reproduce here, but which it is possible for all to know and appreciate, it becomes beyond doubt that the body can perform its organic functions while the Spirit is far away, carried off by preoccupations of another order. Indefinitely expansible, preserving for the body the elasticity and the activity necessary to its existence, the perispirit constantly accompanies the Spirit during its prolonged journey through the ideal world.

If, moreover, we consider the very well-known property that it possesses of condensing itself, a property that permits it to become visible under corporeal appearances to seeing mediums and, though more rarely, to whoever happens to be present in the place to which the Spirit has transported itself, we cannot cast into doubt the possibility of the phenomenon of ubiquity.

We have, then, as demonstrated that a living person can appear simultaneously in two places distant from each other: in one, with his real body; in the other, with his perispirit momentarily condensed under the appearance of his material forms. Nevertheless, in agreement on this, as always, with Allan Kardec, we cannot admit ubiquity except when we recognize perfect identity in the manners in which the apparent being behaves. Such, for example, are the facts cited earlier, Nos. 1 and 2. As for the facts that follow these and that we consider inexplicable, if we apply to them the theory of ubiquity, they soon seem to us, if not indisputable, at least admissible, provided they are considered from another point of view. None of our readers is unaware that disincarnate Spirits have the faculty of showing themselves, under material appearance, in certain circumstances and, in particular, to seeing mediums. However, in a good number of cases, such as those of apparitions visible and tangible to a crowd, or to a number of persons, it becomes evident that the perception of the apparition is not due to the mediumistic faculty of the bystanders, but to the reality of the corporeal appearance of the Spirit and, in this circumstance, as in the cases of ubiquity, this corporeal appearance results from the condensation of the perispiritic apparatus. Now, if, most of the time, the Spirits, in order to make themselves recognizable, present themselves just as they were in life, with the garments they habitually wore, it must not be impossible that they should present themselves dressed in a different manner, or even under any aspects whatever, as, for example, the Goblin of Bayonne, who appeared now under his personal form, now with the figure of a brother of his, likewise already dead, now under the aspect of living and even present persons. The Spirit took care to make his identity recognized, notwithstanding the various forms under which he presented himself. He would, however, have done nothing, if it were not evident that the witnesses of the manifestation were persuaded that they were witnessing a phenomenon of ubiquity. If, considering as a precedent this fact, which is by no means unique, we seek to explain those of Nos. 3 and following, it may perhaps become possible for us to accept their reality, whereas, granting ubiquity, the incompatibility of the ideas, the antagonism of the feelings, and the activity of the organism of the two parts do not permit us to consider them possible.

In fact No. 4, if, instead of imagining professor Becker in the presence of his double, we admit that he had before him a Spirit that appeared to him with his aspect, there ceases to be any antagonism and the phenomenon enters into the domain of the possible. The same occurs with fact No.

It is not understandable that Elisabeth of Russia should have ordered firing upon her own image, but it is perfectly admissible that she did so against a Spirit that had taken her appearance in order to mystify her. Some Spirits sometimes take borrowed names and adopt the style and the manners of speech of another, in order to attain the confidence of mediums and succeed in penetrating into groups. What would there be impossible in a proud Spirit being pleased to take the form of the empress Elisabeth and to sit upon her throne, in order to give vain satisfaction to its ambitious dreams? The same may be said with regard to other facts. This explanation we give only for what it may be worth. It is, for us, no more than a fairly plausible supposition; it is not the real solution of the problem. But, such as we present it, it seems to us of a nature to clarify the question, to attract toward it the lights of discussion and refutation. It is under this title that we submit it to our readers. May the reflections that it provokes, the meditations to which it gives occasion, cooperate in the elucidation of a problem that we have only grazed, leaving it to others more worthy of doing so to dissipate the obscurity that still envelops it.

P.-G. Leymarie.