Mr. Adrien, seeing medium.

— Anyone who can see Spirits without the aid of a third party is, by that very fact, a seeing medium; but in general the apparitions are fortuitous, accidental. We had not yet known anyone with the aptitude to see Spirits in a permanent manner and at will. It is with this remarkable faculty that Mr. Adrien is endowed, one of the members of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies. He is, at the same time, a seeing, writing, hearing, and sensitive medium. As a psychographic medium, he writes down the Spirits' dictation, but rarely in a mechanical manner, like the purely passive mediums; that is, although writing things foreign to his thought, he is conscious of what he writes. As a hearing medium, he listens to the hidden voices that speak to him. We have, in the Society, two other mediums who enjoy this last faculty to the highest degree. They are, simultaneously, excellent writing mediums. Finally, as a sensitive medium, he feels the contact of the Spirits and the pressure they exert upon him; he even comes to feel very violent electric shocks, which are communicated to the persons present. When he magnetizes someone, he can, at will and provided it is necessary to health, produce in him the discharge of a voltaic pile.

— A new faculty has just revealed itself in him: second sight; without being a somnambulist and although entirely awake, he sees at will, at an unlimited distance, even beyond the seas, what is happening in a locality; he sees the persons and what they are doing; he describes places and facts with a precision whose exactness has been verified. Let us hasten to say that Mr. Adrien is in no way one of those weak and credulous men who let themselves be carried away by their imagination; on the contrary: he is a man of a rather cold character, very calm, and who sees all this with the most absolute coolness; we do not say with indifference — far from it — for he takes his faculties seriously and regards them as a gift of Providence, granted to him for good, and thus he makes use of them for useful things and never to satisfy vain curiosity. He is a young man, of distinguished family, very honorable, of a gentle and benevolent character, whose careful education reveals itself in his language and in all his manners. As a sailor and as a military man, he has already traveled across a part of Africa, India, and our colonies.

— Of all his faculties as a medium, the most remarkable and, in our opinion, the most precious, is clairvoyance. The Spirits appear to him in the form we described in our previous article on apparitions; he sees them with a precision of which we can form an idea from the portraits we shall give a little further on of the widow of Malabar and of the Belle Cordière of Lyon. But, it will be said, what proves that he really sees and that he is not the victim of an illusion? What proves it is that, when someone he does not know invokes through him a relative or a friend he has never seen, he makes of this person a portrait of extraordinary resemblance, which we ourselves have been able to verify. There is, then, for us not the slightest doubt regarding this faculty, which he enjoys in the waking state, and not as a somnambulist. What is perhaps still more remarkable is the fact that he sees not only the Spirits we evoke, but, at the same time, all those who are present, evoked or not; he sees them entering, leaving, coming and going, listening to what is said, laughing or being serious, according to their character; some are grave, others have a mocking and sardonic air. At times one of them advances toward one of those present, placing his hand on his shoulder or stationing himself at his side, while others keep their distance; in a word, in every gathering there is always a hidden assembly, composed of Spirits attracted by sympathy to the persons or to the things with which they are occupied; in the streets Mr. Adrien sees a multitude of them, for besides the familiar Spirits who accompany their protégés there is, as among us, the mass of the indifferent and of those who have nothing to do. He told us that, in his home, he never finds himself alone and is never bored: there is always an assembly, with which he entertains himself.

— His faculty extends not only to the Spirits of the dead but also to those of the living; when he sees a person, he can make abstraction of his body: the Spirit then appears to him as if separated from it, and he can converse with it. In a child, for example, he can see the Spirit incarnated in it, appreciate its nature, and know what it was before incarnating.

This faculty, carried to such a degree, better than all written communications instructs us in the nature of the world of the Spirits, showing it to us such as it is; and, even if we do not see it with the eyes of the body, the description that he gives us of it makes us see it through thought; the Spirits are no longer those abstract beings, but real beings, who are at our side, who jostle us without cease; and, as we now know that their contact can be material, we understand the cause of a number of impressions that we feel without being aware of them. For this reason we place Mr. Adrien in the number of the most remarkable mediums and in the front rank of those who have furnished us with the most precious elements for the knowledge of the Spirit world;

above all we place him in this position for his personal qualities, which are those of a man of good par excellence and which make him eminently sympathetic to the Spirits of the most elevated order, which does not always occur with the mediums of purely physical effects. Among these, without a doubt, there are those who make a sensation, who better captivate curiosity; nevertheless, for the good observer, for the one who wishes to probe the mysteries of this marvelous world, Mr. Adrien is the most powerful helper we have yet seen.

[see example: A Spirit at the funeral of his body.] Thus, we placed his faculty and obligingness at the service of our personal instruction, whether in private, whether in the sessions of the Society, whether, finally, in visits to various places of gathering. We were together at theaters, balls, promenades, hospitals, cemeteries, and churches; we attended burials, weddings, baptisms, and sermons; everywhere we observed the nature of the Spirits who came there to gather, establishing conversation with some of them, questioning them and learning many things, which we shall make profitable to our readers, for our aim is to make them penetrate, as we do, into this world so new to all. The microscope revealed to us the world of the infinitely small, of which we had no suspicion, although it was within reach of our hands; in the same way, the telescope showed us an infinity of celestial worlds that we did not know existed. Spiritism discovers for us the world of the Spirits, which is everywhere, at our side as in the spaces, a real world that reacts incessantly upon us.

[Review of January 1859.]

Mr. Adrien, seeing medium.

(Second article.)

II.

Since the publication of our article on Mr. Adrien, seeing medium, a great number of facts have been communicated to us, confirming our opinion that this faculty, like the other mediumistic faculties, is more common than is thought. We had already observed it in a number of particular cases and, above all, in the somnambulic state. The phenomenon of apparitions is today a proven fact and, we may say, a frequent one, not to speak of the numerous examples offered by profane history and the Sacred Scriptures. Many of those that were related to us occurred personally to those who informed us of them, but, almost always, these facts are fortuitous and accidental; we had not yet seen anyone in whom such a faculty was, in some way, the normal state. In Mr. Adrien it is permanent; wherever he may be, the hidden population that swarms around us is visible to him, without his calling it; for us, he plays the role of a seer in the midst of a population of the blind; he sees these beings, whom we might call a duplicate of the human race, coming and going, mingling in our actions and, if we may so express ourselves, occupied with their affairs.

— The incredulous will say that it is a hallucination, a sacramental word by which they claim to explain what they do not understand. We would indeed like them to define for us what a hallucination is and, especially, its cause. Yet, in Mr. Adrien it has a rather unusual character: that of permanence. Until now, what has been conventionally called hallucination is an abnormal fact and almost always the consequence of a pathological state, which is absolutely not the case here. For us, who study this faculty, who observe it every day in its smallest details, we have even come to verify its reality. For us it is the object of no doubt and, as we shall see, it has notably assisted us in our Spiritist studies. It has allowed us to use the scalpel of investigation upon extracorporeal life; it is a torch in the darkness. Mr. Home, endowed with an extraordinary faculty as a medium of physical effects, produced surprising effects. Mr. Adrien initiates us into the cause of these effects, because he sees them produced, going far beyond what impresses our senses. The reality of Mr. Adrien's vision is proven by the portrait he makes of persons he has never seen, whose description is recognized as exact. Certainly when he describes, with rigorous minuteness, the smallest details of a relative or of a friend, evoked through him, we are certain that he sees, for he cannot take the thing as a product of the imagination. Nevertheless, there are persons whose prejudice leads them to reject even the evidence. And, what is more bizarre, in order to refute what they do not wish to admit, they explain it by causes still more difficult than those that are furnished to them.

— Mr. Adrien's portraits, however, are not always infallible; in this, as in every science, when an anomaly presents itself, it is necessary to seek its cause, considering that the cause of an exception frequently confirms the general rule. To understand the fact, one must not lose sight of what we have already said in this regard about the apparent form of the Spirits. This form depends on the perispirit, whose nature, essentially flexible, lends itself to all the modifications that the Spirit may wish to give it. On leaving the material wrapping, the Spirit carries with it its ethereal envelope, which constitutes another kind of body. In its normal state, this body has the human form, but not modeled trait by trait upon the one it left, especially when it abandoned it some time ago. In the first moments that follow death, and while there still exists a bond between the two existences, the resemblance is greater; this similitude, however, fades as the detachment operates and as the Spirit becomes more estranged from its last envelope; it can, however, always resume that first appearance, whether by the physiognomy or by the dress, when it judges it useful in order to make itself recognized; in general, however, this happens only by reason of a great effort of the will. There is, then, nothing surprising that, in certain cases, the resemblance is wanting in some details: the principal traits suffice. Likewise in the medium this investigation is not done without a certain effort, which becomes painful when too often repeated. His ordinary visions cost him no fatigue, provided he attaches himself only to generalities. The same thing occurs when we see a crowd: we see everything; all the individuals stand out to our eyes with their distinctive traits, without any of them impressing us enough that we could describe them. To make them precise, it is necessary to concentrate our attention on the intimate details that we wish to analyze, with the sole difference that, in ordinary circumstances, the eyes turn upon a material form, invariable, while in clairvoyance they rest upon a form essentially mobile, which a simple effect of the will can modify. Let us know, then, how to take things as they are; let us consider them in themselves and by reason of their properties. Let us not forget that, in Spiritism, we absolutely do not operate upon inert matter, but upon intelligences endowed with free will, which is why we cannot submit them to our caprice, nor make them act according to our will, as if we were moving a pendulum. Every time we wish to take our exact sciences as a point of departure in Spiritist observations, we shall lose our way; that is why vulgar science is incompetent in this question: it is exactly as if a musician wished to judge architecture from the musical point of view. Spiritism reveals to us a new order of ideas, of new forces, of new elements; it reveals to us phenomena that are based on nothing of what we know. Let us know, then, in order to judge them, how to strip ourselves of prejudices and of every preconceived idea; let us above all be penetrated by this truth: outside of what we know there may exist something else, unless we wish to fall into that absurd error, fruit of pride, that God has no more secrets for us. In accordance with this, it is understood that delicate influences can act in the production of the Spiritist phenomena; but there are others that merit an attention no less serious. Stripped of the earthly body, the Spirit preserves all its will and a freedom of thought far greater than when alive; it has susceptibilities that we hardly understand; that which often seems to us simple and natural hurts and displeases it; an improper question shocks and wounds it; moreover, they show us their independence by ceasing to do what we want, whereas, of themselves, now and then they do that which we would not even have thought of asking them. It is for this reason that requests for proofs and out of curiosity are essentially antipathetic to the Spirits, who rarely answer them in a satisfactory manner. Above all the serious Spirits never lend themselves to this and in no way wish to serve as amusement. It is conceived, then, that the intention can influence considerably their good will to present themselves to the eyes of a seeing medium under one or another appearance; and, definitively, since they assume a determined appearance only when it suits them, they do so only when there exists for it a serious and useful motive. There is another reason which, in a certain way, connects with what we might call Spiritist physiology. The vision of the Spirit by the medium is made by a kind of fluidic radiation that departs from the former and directs itself to the latter; the medium, so to speak, absorbs the rays and assimilates them. If he is alone, or surrounded only by sympathetic persons, united by intention and by thought, those rays concentrate upon him; then the vision is clear, precise, and it is in such circumstances that the portraits are, almost always, of a remarkable exactness. If, on the contrary, around the medium there are antipathetic influences, divergent and hostile thoughts, if there is no recollection, the fluidic rays disperse and are absorbed by the surroundings; hence a kind of fog that is projected upon the Spirit, not permitting its nuances to be distinguished. Such would be a light, with or without a reflector. Another comparison less material can still give us the reason for this phenomenon. We all know that the verve of an orator is excited by the sympathy and the attention of the audience; that, on the contrary, if he is distracted by noise, by inattention, and by ill will, his thoughts are no longer free: they disperse, affecting his reasoning. The Spirit, who is influenced by an absorbent surrounding, finds itself in the same case: instead of directing itself to a single point, its radiation is disseminated and loses its force. To the preceding considerations we must add another, whose importance will be easily understood by all who know the course of the Spiritist phenomena. It is known that several causes can prevent a Spirit from hastening to our call at the instant we evoke it: it may be reincarnated or occupied elsewhere. Now, among the Spirits who present themselves almost always simultaneously, the medium must distinguish the one we have requested and, in case it is not there, he may take for it another Spirit, equally sympathetic to the person who evokes. He describes the Spirit he sees, but he cannot always guarantee whether it is this or that entity. If, however, the Spirit who presents himself is serious, he will not be mistaken as to his identity; if he is questioned about it, he will be able to explain the reason for the misunderstanding and say who he is. A little favorable surrounding will also be prejudicial, but for another reason. Each individual has, as acolytes, Spirits who sympathize with his defects and with his qualities. Such Spirits are good or bad, according to the individuals. The greater the number of persons gathered, the greater the variety of Spirits and the greater the possibilities of encountering antipathies. If, then, in a gathering there are hostile persons, whether through defamatory thoughts, whether through levity of character, whether still through a systematic incredulity, by that very fact they will attract little benevolent Spirits who, frequently, hinder manifestations of every nature, both written and visual. Hence the necessity of placing ourselves in the most favorable conditions, if we wish to obtain serious manifestations: whoever wills the end wills the means. The Spiritist manifestations are not things with which we can trifle with impunity. Be serious in the most rigorous acceptation of the word, if you wish serious things; otherwise, you will be the playthings of frivolous Spirits, who will amuse themselves at your expense.