The harm of fear.

Physiological problem addressed to the Spirit Saint Louis in the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, in the session of September 14, 1858.

We read in the Moniteur of November 26, 1857:

“The following fact is communicated to us, which comes to confirm the observations already made about the influence of fear.

“Yesterday Dr. R.. was returning home, after having visited some clients. On one of these excursions he had been given, as a sample, a bottle of excellent rum, coming directly from Jamaica. The physician forgot the precious bottle in the carriage. Remembering it some hours later, he went out to recover it; he declared to the station chief that he had left in one of his carriages a bottle of very violent poison and exhorted him to warn the coachmen to be attentive and not to make use of that deadly liquid.

“Dr.… had hardly entered his apartment when they came to warn him in great haste that three coachmen of the neighboring station were suffering horrible pains in their entrails. He had great difficulty in calming them and persuading them that they had drunk excellent rum and that their indelicacy could not have consequences more serious than a severe suspension, inflicted immediately upon the culprits.”

— Could Saint Louis give us a physiological explanation of this transformation of the properties of a harmless substance? We know, through magnetic action, that this transformation can occur; in the fact related above, however, there was no emission of magnetic fluid: only the imagination acted, and not the will.

Answer. – Your reasoning is quite correct as regards the imagination. But the malevolent Spirits who induced those men to commit that improper act caused to pass into the blood, into the matter, a shudder of fear, which you might well call a magnetic shudder, which distends the nerves and produces a sensation of coldness in certain regions of the body. As you know, any cold in the abdominal region can provoke colic. It is, then, a means of punishment that amuses the Spirits who caused the theft to be committed and, at the same time, leads them to laugh at the expense of those whom they made sin. But, in all cases, death would not occur: there is only a lesson for the culprits and amusement for the frivolous Spirits. They repeat the same thing every time the occasion presents itself, even going so far as to seek it out for their satisfaction. We can avoid this – I speak to you – by raising ourselves to God through thoughts less material than those that occupied the spirit of those men. Malevolent Spirits love to laugh; be on your guard; he who thinks he is saying something pleasant to the people around him and amuses a company with his jokes or attitudes, sometimes deceives himself, which frequently happens, when he thinks that all this comes from himself. The frivolous Spirits who surround him identify themselves with him and little by little deceive him concerning his own thoughts, the same happening with those who hear him. In this case, you think you are dealing with a man of wit, when he is only an ignoramus. Descend into yourselves and judge my words. Spirits are not for that reason enemies of joy: sometimes they too like to laugh in order to be agreeable to you; but each thing has its time. Observation. – In saying that there was, in the fact related, no emission of magnetic fluid, perhaps we did not express ourselves with exactness. Here we venture a mere supposition. As we said, it is known what kind of transformation of the properties of matter can be operated by the action of the magnetic fluid directed by thought. Now, through the thought of the physician, who wanted to make them believe in the existence of a toxin, provoking in the thieves the anguish of poisoning, could we not admit that there had occurred, although at a distance, a kind of magnetization of the liquid, which would have acquired new properties, whose action would be corroborated by the moral state of the individuals, rendered more impressionable by fear? This theory would not destroy that of Saint Louis on the intervention of frivolous Spirits in such a circumstance; we know that Spirits act physically by physical means; they can, then, with a view to realizing certain designs, make use of those that they themselves provoke or that we ourselves furnish them, without our being aware of it.