The globule Spirits.

— The will to see Spirits is a very natural thing, and we know few persons who would not desire to enjoy this faculty. Unfortunately it is one of the rarest, above all when permanent. Spontaneous apparitions are fairly frequent, but accidental, and almost always motivated by a wholly individual circumstance, based on the relations that may have existed between the seer and the Spirit who appears to him. It is one thing to see a Spirit fortuitously; it is another to see him habitually and under ordinary normal conditions. Now, it is therein that lies what constitutes, properly speaking, the faculty of seeing mediums. It results from a special aptitude, the cause of which is still unknown and which may be developed, but which would be provoked in vain if the natural predisposition did not exist. It is necessary, then, that we guard ourselves against the illusions that may arise from the desire to possess it, and which have given rise to strange systems. As much as we combat the rash theories by which the manifestations are attacked, above all when these theories denote ignorance of the facts, so much must we seek, in the interest of truth, to destroy ideas that prove more enthusiasm than reflection and which, for that very reason, do more harm than good, leading to ridicule. The theory of visions and apparitions is today perfectly known. We have developed it in several articles, especially in the numbers of December 1858, February and August 1859, and in our The Mediums' Book, or Experimental Spiritism. n We shall therefore not repeat it here; we shall recall only a few essential points, before coming to the examination of the system of the globules.

— Spirits may be seen under different aspects; the most frequent is the human form. Their apparition generally occurs under a vaporous and diaphanous form, sometimes vague and imprecise. At first it is almost always a whitish brightness, whose contours little by little become delineated. At other times the lines are more accentuated and the slightest features of the physiognomy are drawn with such precision that it permits a most exact description of them to be given. At these moments, certainly a painter could make his portrait with as much facility as he would make that of a living person. The manners and the aspect are the same that the Spirit had when alive. Being able to give all appearances to his perispirit, which constitutes his ethereal body, he presents himself under the one that best makes him recognizable. Thus, although as a Spirit he no longer has any of the corporeal infirmities he might have experienced as a man, he will show himself crippled, lame, or hunchbacked, if he judges it suitable to attest his identity. As for the garments, they are generally composed of a mass of cloth, terminating in a long floating tunic; this is, at least, the appearance of the superior Spirits, who have retained nothing of earthly things. The common Spirits, however, those we have known here, almost always appear in the attire they wore in the last period of their life.

Frequently, the Spirits show attributes characteristic of the position they occupied. The superior ones always have a beautiful, noble, and serene figure; the inferior ones, on the contrary, have a vulgar physiognomy, a mirror in which are reflected the more or less ignoble passions that agitated them. Sometimes they still reveal the vestiges of the crimes they committed, or of the tortures they suffered.

An interesting thing is that, save in special circumstances, the least accentuated parts are the lower limbs, whereas the head, the trunk, and the arms are always clearly drawn.

We have said that the apparitions have something vaporous about them, despite their distinctness. In certain cases, we could compare them to the image reflected in a mirror without tin backing, which does not prevent the objects behind it from being seen. It is generally thus that seeing mediums perceive them. They see them come and go, enter, leave, walk among the living with the air – at least if it concerns ordinary Spirits – of actively participating in all that goes on around them, of taking interest according to the subject, of listening to what humans say. Frequently they are seen approaching persons, inspiring ideas in them, influencing them, consoling them, showing themselves sad or content according to the result they obtain. In a word: they constitute as it were the replica or the reflection of the corporeal world, with its passions, vices, or virtues, more virtues than our material nature scarcely allows us to comprehend. Such is that hidden world that peoples the spaces, that surrounds us, within which we live without perceiving it, as we live amid the myriads of beings of the microscopic world. But it may happen that the Spirit assumes a still more precise form and takes on all the appearances of a solid body, to the point of causing complete illusion and giving those who observe the apparition to believe that they have before them a corporeal being. In short, tangibility may become real, that is, it becomes possible for the observer to touch, to feel the body, to sense the same resistance, the same warmth as in a living body, despite its being able to vanish with the rapidity of lightning. Although the apparition of these beings, designated by the name of agéneres, is very rare, it is always accidental and of short duration and, under this form, they could not become the habitual table-companions of a house.

It is known that, among the exceptional faculties of which Mr. Home gave irrecusable proofs, one must place that of making tangible hands appear, which can be felt and which, for their part, can grasp, squeeze, and leave marks on the skin. The tangible apparitions, we say, are fairly rare, but those that have occurred in these latter times confirm and explain those that History records, concerning persons who showed themselves after death with all the appearances of corporeal nature. Moreover, however extraordinary they may be, such phenomena entirely lose all character of the marvelous, when the manner in which they are produced is known and when one comprehends that, far from constituting a derogation of the laws of Nature, they are merely the effect of an application of those laws.

— When the Spirits assume the human form, we cannot be mistaken. The same no longer happens when they take on other appearances. We shall not speak of certain earthly images reflected by the atmosphere, which fed the superstition of ignorant persons, but of some other effects about which even enlightened men have been able to deceive themselves. It is therein, above all, that we must put ourselves on guard against illusion, so as not to expose ourselves to taking purely physical phenomena for Spirits.

The air is not always of a perfect limpidity; there are circumstances in which the agitation and the currents of aeriform molecules, produced by heat, are perfectly visible. The agglomeration of these particles forms small transparent masses that seem to swim in space and that have given rise to the singular system of Spirits under the form of globules. The cause of this appearance lies in the air itself, but it may also lie in the eye. The aqueous humor presents imperceptible points, which have lost something of their natural transparency. These points are like semi-opaque bodies in suspension in the liquid, whose movements and undulations they accompany. They produce in the ambient air and at a distance, by the effect of magnification and refraction, the appearance of small discs, at times iridescent, varying from 1 to 10 millimeters in diameter. We have seen certain persons take these discs for familiar Spirits, who followed and accompanied them everywhere and, in their enthusiasm, see figures in the hues of the iridescence. A simple observation, furnished by these very persons, will lead them back to the ground of reality. The aforesaid discs, or medallions, they say, not only accompany them, but follow all their movements, go to the right, to the left, upward, downward, or stop, according to the movement they make with the head. This coincidence, of itself, proves that the seat of the appearance is in us, and not outside of us, and what further demonstrates it is that, in their undulatory movements, these discs never depart from a certain angle; since, however, they do not abruptly follow the movement of the visual line, they appear to have a certain independence. The cause of this effect is quite simple. The opaque or semi-opaque points of the aqueous humor, the first cause of the phenomenon, are, we have said, maintained in suspension, but always tending to descend. When they rise, it is because they were solicited by the movement of the eyes, from below upward; arrived at a certain height, if the eye becomes fixed, one notes that the discs descend slowly, then stop. Their mobility is extreme, for an imperceptible movement of the eye suffices to make them traverse in the visual ray the whole amplitude of the angle in its opening in space, where the image is projected. The same we shall say of the sparks that are sometimes produced in more or less compact bundles, by the contraction of the muscle of the eye, and are due, probably, to the phosphorescence or the natural electricity of the iris, because they are generally confined to the circumference of the disc of this organ.

Such illusions can arise only from an incomplete observation. Whoever has studied the nature of Spirits, by all the means that practical science affords, will comprehend all that is puerile about them. If these aerial globules were Spirits, we would have to agree that they would be reduced to a purely mechanical role for intelligent and free beings, a role tolerably tedious for the inferior Spirits and, with all the more reason, incompatible with the idea we form of the superior Spirits.

The only signs that, in reality, can attest the presence of Spirits are the intelligent signs. Until it is proved that the images of which we have just spoken, even though assuming the human form, have their own, spontaneous movement, with an evident intentional character and accusing a free will, in this we shall see only physiological or optical phenomena. The same observation applies to all kinds of manifestations, above all to the noises, the knocks, the unusual movements of inert bodies, which thousands of physical causes may produce. We repeat: until an effect is intelligent in itself, and independent of the intelligence of men, it is necessary to look at it twice before attributing it to the Spirits.

[1] Translator's Note: See The Mediums' Book – Second Part – Chapter VI – item 108.

[2] Translator's Note: See The Mediums' Book, Second Part, chapter VI: On visual manifestations.