Inert mediums.

Among the important questions connected with spiritist science, the role of mediums has been the subject of many controversies. Mr. Brasseur, director of the Industrial Center, expressed particular ideas on the matter in a series of very well written articles in the Moniteur de la toilette,[1] chiefly in the month of August last, from which we extract the passages we shall cite below. He honors us with a request for our opinion; we shall give it to him in all sincerity, without pretending that our judgment makes law. Let us allow our readers and observers to judge the question. Moreover, we shall have but to summarize what we have already said on the matter on several occasions, when we treated the subject with far more development than we can do here, since it is not possible for us to repeat what is found in our various writings. Here are the principal passages of one of Mr. Brasseur's articles, followed by our replies:

“What is a medium? Is the medium active or passive? Such are the questions that aim to elucidate a subject which keenly preoccupies persons desirous of instructing themselves about the things of beyond the grave and, consequently, about their relations with that world. “On May 18 last, I sent the President of the Société Spirite a note entitled: Of the Medium and of the Spirits. Around July 15, Mr. Allan Kardec published a new book under the title: What Is Spiritism? On opening it, I imagined I would find a categorical answer, but in vain. The author persists in his errors: Mediums – he says on page 75 – are PERSONS apt to receive, in a manifest manner, the impression of the Spirits and to serve as INTERMEDIARIES between the visible world and the invisible world.” [Reply of Allan Kardec.] The aforementioned work is not a course in Spiritism;

it is a summary exposition of the principles of the science for the use of persons who wish to acquire the first notions, and the examination of questions of detail and of the various opinions cannot enter into so restricted a framework of special purpose. As for the definition we give of mediums, it seems perfectly clear, and it is by it that we reply to Mr. Brasseur's question: What is a medium? It is possible that it does not correspond to his personal opinion; as for us, up to now we have no reason to modify it.

[Mr. Brasseur.] “Mr. Allan Kardec does not recognize the inert medium. He speaks much of baskets, cards, or planchettes, but sees in those things (page

only appendages of the hand, whose uselessness has been recognized…”

“Let us understand clearly.”

“In his opinion the medium is an intermediary between the visible world and the invisible world; but is it absolutely necessary that this intermediary be a person? Is it not enough that the invisible have at its disposal some instrument or other in order to manifest itself?” [Allan Kardec.] To this we shall reply without circumlocution: No; it is not enough that the invisible have at its disposal some instrument or other in order to manifest itself, for it lacks the fluidic concurrence of a person; for us that person is the true medium. If it were enough for the Spirit to have at its disposal some instrument or other, we would see baskets or planchettes write by themselves, which has never happened. Direct writing, which appears to be the most independent fact of any cooperation, is produced only under the influence of mediums endowed with a special aptitude. A powerful consideration comes to corroborate our opinion. According to Mr. Brasseur, the instrument is the principal thing, and the person is the accessory thing; for us it is precisely the contrary. If it were not so, why would the planchettes not move with just anyone? If, then, in order to make it move, it is necessary that we be endowed with a special aptitude, the role of the person is not purely passive.

It is for this reason that this person is, for us, the true medium. The instrument, as we have already said, is only an appendage of the hand, which we can do without.

And this is so true that any person who writes by means of the planchette can do it directly with the hand, without a planchette and even without a pencil, since he can trace the characters with his finger, whereas the planchette does not write without the person. Moreover, all the varieties of mediums, as well as their active or passive role, are amply developed in our Practical Instructions on the Manifestations.

[Mr. Brasseur.] “Separated from matter by the dissolution of the body, the soul has no longer any physical element of Humanity.”

[Reply of Allan Kardec.] And what do you do with the perispirit? The perispirit is the bond that unites the soul to the body, the semimaterial envelope which it possesses during life and which it preserves after death: it is under this envelope that it shows itself in apparitions. This envelope is also matter which, although etherealized, can acquire the properties of tangibility.

[Mr. Brasseur.] “Holding the pencil directly, it has been observed that the person mixes his feelings and his ideas with the ideas and feelings of the invisible, so that thus only communications with interference are given, whereas, employing the baskets, cards, and planchettes under the hands of two persons gathered together, these remain absolutely strangers to the manifestation, which is then solely of the invisible; it is for this that I declare this latter means superior and preferable to that of the Spiritist Society.”

[Reply of Allan Kardec.] This opinion could be true if it were not contradicted by the thousands of facts observed, whether in the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, or elsewhere, proving, in an incontrovertible manner, that animate mediums, even intuitive ones, and with all the more reason mechanical mediums, can be instruments absolutely passive and enjoy the most complete independence of thoughts.

In the mechanical medium the Spirit acts upon the hand, which receives a completely involuntary impulse and performs the role of what Mr. Brasseur calls the inert medium, whether it be alone, or furnished with a pencil, or resting upon a mobile object provided with a pencil.

In the intuitive medium the Spirit acts upon the brain, transmitting through the current of the nervous system the movement to the arm, and so on. The mechanical medium writes without having the least consciousness of what he produces: the act precedes the thought. In the intuitive medium the thought accompanies the act and at times precedes it: it is then the thought of the Spirit that passes through the brain of the medium; and if at times they seem to merge, their independence is no less manifest for that, when, for example, the medium writes, even by intuition, things that he cannot know, or entirely contrary to his ideas, to his manner of seeing, and to his own convictions. In a word, when he thinks white and writes black. Moreover, there are so many spontaneous and unforeseen facts that doubt is not possible in those who have observed them. The role of the medium is here that of an interpreter who receives a foreign thought, transmits it, and must understand it in order to transmit it, and who nevertheless does not assimilate it. It is thus that things take place in speaking mediums who receive the impulse upon the organs of speech, as others receive it upon the arm or the hand, and likewise the hearing mediums, who clearly hear a voice speaking to them and dictating to them what they must write. And what would you say of seeing mediums, to whom the Spirits show themselves under the form they possessed in life, mediums who see them circulating about us, coming and going like the crowd we have before our eyes? And the impressionable mediums, who feel the hidden touches, the impression of fingers and even of fingernails, marking the skin and leaving their sign upon it? Can this occur with a being that has nothing more of matter? And the mediums of second sight? Though perfectly awake and in broad daylight, they clearly see what is happening at a distance. Is it not a faculty of its own, a genre of mediumship? Mediumship is the faculty of mediums. Mediums are persons accessible to the influence of the Spirits and who can serve them as intermediaries. Such is the definition found in the small abridged Dictionnaire des Dictionnaires français of Napoléon Landais, and up to now it seems to us to give exactly this idea. We do not contest the usefulness of the instruments that Mr. Brasseur designates under the name of inert mediums, since he has perfect freedom to choose it, should he judge it suitable to make a distinction. Incontestably they have an advantage, as a result of experience, for persons who have as yet seen nothing. Since, however, the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies is composed only of persons who are no longer beginners, whose convictions are already formed; since it makes no experiment aiming to satisfy the curiosity of the public – which it never invites to its sessions, in order not to be disturbed in its researches and in its observations – these primitive means would teach it nothing new. This is why the Society uses more efficient means, since it possesses a great experience of the subject so as to know how to distinguish perfectly the nature of the communications it receives. We shall not follow Mr. Brasseur in all the reasonings on which he supports his theory. We would fear to weaken or mutilate them. Being unable to reproduce them in full, we prefer to refer the readers, who may wish to take cognizance of them, to the journal he edits with incontestable talent, and in which are found, on the same subject, articles by Mr. Jules de Neuville, very well written, but which in our eyes present only one flaw: not having been preceded by a sufficiently thorough study of the matter, which would have avoided many superfluous questions. In sum, in agreement with the Spiritist Society, we persist in regarding persons as the true mediums, who may be active or passive, according to their nature and their aptitude. Let us call the instruments — if they so wish — inert mediums; it is a distinction that may perhaps be useful, but we would fall into error if we attributed to them the role and the properties of animate beings in intelligent communications. We say intelligent because it is still necessary to distinguish certain spontaneous manifestations that are purely physical. It is a subject that we have already treated amply in the Review. [1] Journal des salons. – Modes. – Littérature. – Théâtres. Rue de l'Echiquier, 45.