Apparitions.

— The phenomenon of apparitions presents itself today under an aspect in a certain way new, casting vivid light upon the mysteries of life beyond the tomb. Before approaching the strange facts that we are going to relate, we deem it our duty to repeat the explanation that has been given and to complete it.

One must by no means lose sight of the fact that, during life, the Spirit is united to the body by a semimaterial substance, which constitutes a first envelope and which we designate under the name of perispirit. The Spirit has, then, two envelopes: one coarse, heavy, and destructible — the body; and another ethereal, vaporous, and indestructible — the perispirit. Death is nothing more than the destruction of the coarse envelope; it is the worn-out garment that we leave behind; the semimaterial envelope persists, constituting, so to speak, a new body for the Spirit. This etherealized matter — it is well that we note this — is absolutely not the soul; it is merely its first envelope. The intimate nature of this substance is not yet perfectly known, but observation has set us on the path of some of its properties. We know that it plays a capital role in all Spiritist phenomena; after death, it is the intermediary agent between the Spirit and matter, just as the body is during life. By this is explained a host of problems hitherto insoluble. We shall see in a subsequent article the role it plays in the sensations of Spirits. The discovery of the perispirit, therefore, if we may so express ourselves, has allowed the Spiritist science to take an enormous step and to enter upon an entirely new path. But, you will say, is not this perispirit a fantastic creation of the imagination? Would it not be one more of those suppositions made by science to explain certain effects? No; it is not a work of the imagination, because it was the Spirits themselves who revealed it; it is not a fantastic idea, since it can be verified by the senses, be seen and touched. The thing exists; only the term is ours. We need new words to express new things. The Spirits themselves adopted it in the communications we had with them.

— By its nature and in its normal state, the perispirit is invisible to us, although it may undergo modifications that render it perceptible to sight, whether by a kind of condensation, or by a change in its molecular disposition: it is then that it appears to us under a vaporous form. The condensation — a term we use for lack of a better one, but which must not be taken literally — the condensation, we were saying, may be of such intensity that the perispirit comes to acquire the properties of a solid and tangible body, even though it is capable of instantly resuming its ethereal and invisible state. We may have an idea of this effect from vapor, which is capable of passing from invisibility to the misty state, then to the liquid, next to the solid, and vice versa. These different states of the perispirit are the product of the will of the Spirit, and not of an exterior physical cause. When it appears to us, it is because it gives to its perispirit the property necessary to render it visible, and this property it can extend, restrict, and cause to cease at will. Another property of the substance of the perispirit is that of penetrability. No matter offers it an obstacle: it passes through all matter, as light passes through transparent bodies.

Separated from the body, the perispirit assumes a determined and limited form, and this normal form is that of the human body, although it is not constant; the Spirit may give it, at will, the most varied appearances, even that of an animal or of a flame. Moreover, this is conceived very easily. Do we not see men who impress upon their faces the most diverse expressions, imitating, to the point of deceiving us, the voice and expressions of other persons, appearing hunchbacked, lame, etc.? Who in the street would recognize certain actors who are seen only in costume on the stage? If, therefore, man can thus give to his material and rigid body appearances so contrary, with all the more reason will the Spirit be able to do so with an envelope eminently flexible and which can lend itself to all the caprices of the will.

— The Spirits, then, generally appear to us under the human form; in their normal state this form has nothing very characteristic, nothing that distinguishes them from one another in a very clear manner; in good Spirits, it is ordinarily beautiful and regular: long hair floating over the shoulders and tunics enveloping their bodies. But when they wish to make themselves recognized, they take on exactly all the features under which they were known and, when necessary, even the appearance of the clothing. Thus, by way of example, as a Spirit, Aesop is not deformed; but if he is evoked as Aesop, even though he had had several later existences, he would appear ugly and hunchbacked, with the traditional attire. This clothing, perhaps, is what most astonishes; however, if we consider that it forms an integral part of the semimaterial envelope, it is conceived that the Spirit may give to that envelope the appearance of such or such clothing, as well as that of such or such physiognomy. Spirits can appear in dream as well as in the waking state; these latter are neither rare nor new; they have always existed in all times and History records them in great number; but without going back so far, today these visions are quite frequent, and many people, at first, took them for hallucinations. They are frequent, above all in cases of the death of absent persons, who come to visit their relatives or friends. Often they have no determined purpose, but, in general, we may say that the Spirits who thus appear to us are drawn by sympathy. We knew a young lady who at night, in her home, with or without lighting, saw men who came in and went out, although the doors were closed. This left her greatly astonished, rendering her of a pusillanimity that bordered on the ridiculous. One day she distinctly saw her brother, then in California and who had absolutely not died, which comes to prove that the Spirit of the living can overcome distances and appear in a determined place, while their body rests elsewhere. Since she was initiated into Spiritism this lady has no longer been afraid, because she has become aware of the visions and knows that the Spirits who come to visit her can do her no harm. When her brother appeared, it is probable that he was sleeping; if she had been able to explain his presence she could have held a conversation with him, who, upon awakening, might perhaps have retained a vague recollection of that meeting. Moreover, it is probable that at that moment he was dreaming that he was beside his sister. We said that the perispirit can acquire tangibility; we have already spoken of this subject when we referred to the manifestations produced by Mr. Home. We know that on several occasions he made hands appear, which one could feel as if they were living but which, suddenly, vanished like a shadow; but whole bodies had not yet been seen under that tangible form, although this fact is not impossible. In a family of the intimate acquaintance of one of our subscribers, a Spirit attached itself to the daughter of the master of the house, a little girl of about ten or eleven years, under the form of a handsome boy of the same age. He made himself visible to her as though he were an ordinary person, and visible or invisible to others as it pleased him; he rendered her all manner of good services, brought her toys, sweets, did the household work, went to buy that which they needed, and the like. This is by no means a legend of mystical Germany, and is in no way an anecdote of the Middle Ages, but rather a present-day fact, which is taking place at the moment in which we write, in a city of France and in a most honorable family. We have even made quite interesting studies on this fact, which furnished us the strangest and most unexpected revelations. We shall entertain our readers more fully in a special article that we shall publish shortly.

[see The phantom of Bayonne.]