History of the marvelous and the supernatural

I.

— With the word marvelous it is the same as with the word soul; there is an elastic sense that lends itself to diverse interpretations. This is why we judged it useful to establish some general principles in the preceding article, before undertaking the examination of the history given by Mr. Figuier. When that work appeared, the adversaries of Spiritism applauded, saying that, without a doubt, we were going to fare badly; in their charitable thinking they already saw us dead beyond appeal. Sad effect of impassioned and unreflecting blindness, for if they would take the trouble to observe what they wish to demolish, they would see that Spiritism will one day, sooner than they think, be the safeguard of society, and perhaps they themselves will owe their salvation to it, not, we say, in the other world, with which they concern themselves little, but in this very one! It is not lightly that we say such words; the moment has not yet come to develop them, although many already understand us.

Returning to Mr. Figuier, we ourselves had thought to see in him a truly serious adversary, bringing peremptory arguments worth being refuted seriously. His work comprises four volumes; the first two with an exposition of principles, a preface and an introduction, then an account of perfectly known facts, which must be read with interest, in view of the erudite research they merited on the part of the author; we believe it to be the most complete account ever published on the subject. Thus, the first volume is almost entirely consecrated to the history of Urbain Grandier and the nuns of Loudun; next come the convulsionaries of Saint-Médard, the history of the Protestant prophets, the divining rod, animal magnetism. The fourth volume, which has just been published, deals especially with turning tables and rapping Spirits. Later we shall return to this last volume, limiting ourselves now to a summary appreciation of the whole.

The critical part of the histories that constitute the first two volumes consists in proving, by authentic testimonies, that intrigue, human passions and charlatanism played a great role; that certain facts bear the evident mark of cunning, which no one contests. No one ever guaranteed the integrity of all those facts, the Spiritists less than any others, who must be grateful to Mr. Figuier for having gathered proofs that will spare numerous compilations. They have an interest in fraud being unmasked, and all who discover it in facts erroneously qualified as spiritist phenomena will render them a service. Now, to render such a service, nothing is better than enemies. It is seen, therefore, that such enemies are good for something; only the desire for criticism sometimes carries them too far and, in the ardor of discovering evil, they often see it where it is not, for not having examined with enough attention and impartiality, which is even rarer. The true critic must struggle against preconceived ideas and divest himself of any prejudice, for otherwise he will judge from his own point of view, which perhaps is not always just. Let us take an example: let us suppose the political history of contemporary events written with the greatest impartiality, that is, with entire truth, and let us imagine this history commented upon by two critics of contrary opinions. Because all the facts are exact, they will necessarily contradict the opinion of one of them; hence the contradictory judgments: one that will praise the work to the skies, and the other, demanding that it be cast into the fire. Yet the work will contain only the truth. If this happens with patent facts, like those of History, all the more reason when it is a matter of appreciating philosophical doctrines. Now, Spiritism is a philosophical doctrine, and those who see it only in the fact of turning tables, or who judge it by absurd tales and by the abuses that can be made of them, who confuse it with means of divination, prove that they do not know it. Would Mr. Figuier be in the required conditions to judge it with impartiality? That is what we are going to examine.

— Thus Mr. Figuier begins his preface:

“In 1854, when the turning and speaking tables imported from America made their appearance in France, they produced an impression that no one has forgotten. Many wise and prudent spirits were alarmed by that unforeseen overflowing of the passion for the marvelous. They could not understand such a hallucination in the full nineteenth century, with an advanced philosophy and amid that magnificent scientific movement that today directs everything toward the positive and the useful.”

His judgment is decreed: belief in turning tables is a hallucination. As Mr. Figuier is a positive man, one must think that before publishing his book, he saw everything, studied everything, went deeply into everything; in a word, that he speaks with knowledge of the cause. If it were not so, he would fall into the error of Messrs. Schiff and Jobert (of Lamballe) with their theory of the cracking muscle. (see the Review of the month of June 1859). Meanwhile, we know that only a month ago he attended a session, where he proved that he was ignorant of the most elementary principles of Spiritism. Will he consider himself sufficiently enlightened because he attended a session? Certainly we do not doubt his perspicacity, but, however great it may be, we cannot admit that he could know and, above all, understand Spiritism in a session, just as he did not learn Physics in a single lesson. If Mr. Figuier could do it, we would take the fact as one of the most marvelous. When he has studied Spiritism with the same care that is devoted to the study of a science, when he has consecrated to it the necessary moral time, when he has attended thousands of experiments, when he has taken account of all the facts, without exception, when he has compared all the theories, only then will he be able to express a judicious criticism. Until then his judgment is a personal opinion, whose weight, for or against, will have no value. Let us take the matter from another point of view. We said that Spiritism rests entirely on the existence, in us, of an immaterial principle or, in other words, on the existence of the soul. Whoever does not admit a Spirit in himself cannot admit it outside himself. Consequently, not admitting the cause, he cannot admit the effect. We would like, then, to know whether Mr. Figuier would place at the frontispiece of his book the following profession of faith: 1st I believe in a God, author of all things, all-powerful, sovereignly just and good and infinite in his perfections; 2nd I believe in the providence of God; 3rd I believe in the existence of the soul surviving the body, and in its individuality after death, not as a probability, but as a thing necessary and consequent to the attributes of the Divinity; 4th Admitting the soul and its survival, I believe that it would be neither in conformity with the justice nor with the goodness of God that good and evil should be treated on an equal footing after death, considering that, during life, they very rarely receive the reward or the punishment they deserve; 5th If the soul of the wicked and that of the good are not treated in the same way, some are happy, others unhappy, that is, they are rewarded or punished according to their works.

— If Mr. Figuier made such a profession of faith, we would say to him: This profession is that of all Spiritists, for without this Spiritism would have no reason to exist; only what you believe theoretically, Spiritism demonstrates by facts, because all spiritist facts are a consequence of these principles. The Spirits who people space being no more than the souls of those who lived on Earth or in other worlds, since one admits the soul, its survival and its individuality, for this very reason one must admit the Spirits. The base being recognized, the whole question is reduced to knowing whether these Spirits or these souls can communicate with the living; whether they have action upon matter; whether they influence the physical world and the moral world; or, then, whether they are doomed to a perpetual uselessness, or to occupying themselves only with themselves, which is hardly probable, since one admits the providence of God and considers the admirable harmony that reigns in the Universe, where the least beings play their role.

If Mr. Figuier's reply were negative, or, out of politeness, were ambiguous, we would say to him — to use the expression of certain persons and in order not to shock too abruptly respectable prejudices — the following: you are no more a competent judge in matters of Spiritism than a Muslim in matters of the Catholic religion; your judgment would not be impartial, and in vain would you deny harboring preconceived ideas, for such ideas, in your own opinion, concern the fundamental principle, which you reject a priori, before knowing the subject.

If some day a team of scientists were to name a rapporteur to examine the question of Spiritism, and that rapporteur were not frankly Spiritualist, it would be the same as a council choosing Voltaire to treat a dogmatic question. We are astonished that the scientists have not given their opinion; but we forget that their mission — it is well to emphasize — is the study of the laws of matter and not of the attributes of the soul, and, still less, that of deciding whether the soul exists. On such subjects they can have individual opinions, as they can have on religion; but, as a scientific entity, they will never have to pronounce.

— We do not know what Mr. Figuier would reply to the questions formulated in the profession of faith above, but his book allows it to be sensed. Indeed, the second paragraph of his preface is thus conceived:

“An exact knowledge of the History of the past would have prevented or, at least, much diminished such astonishment. In fact, it would be a great error to imagine that the ideas which, in our days, gave rise to belief in the speaking tables and the rapping Spirits are of modern origin. This love of the marvelous is not particular to our epoch; it is in all times and countries, by being linked to the very nature of the human spirit. By an instinctive and unjustified distrust of his own forces, man is led to place above himself invisible forces, which are exercised in an inaccessible sphere. This innate disposition existed in all periods of the History of Humanity, taking on different aspects according to the time, the places and the customs, originating manifestations variable in form, yet having, at bottom, an identical principle.”

— To say that it is by an instinctive and unjustified distrust of his own forces that man is led to place above himself invisible forces, which are exercised in an inaccessible sphere, is to recognize that man is everything, that he can do everything, and that above him there is nothing. Unless we are mistaken, this is not only materialism, but atheism. Moreover, these ideas stand out from a number of other passages of his preface and his introduction, to which we call all the attention of our readers, and we are convinced that they will judge them as we do. Will it be said that such words do not apply to the Divinity, but to the Spirits? Then we shall reply that he does not know the first word of Spiritism, for to deny the Spirits is to deny the soul, since Spirits and souls are one and the same thing; that the Spirits do not exercise their force in an inaccessible sphere, since they are at our side, touching us and acting upon inert matter, in the likeness of all the imponderable and invisible fluids which, nonetheless, are the most powerful motors and the most active agents of Nature. Only God exercises his power in a sphere inaccessible to men; to deny this power is, then, to deny God. Will it be said, finally, that those effects, which we attribute to the Spirits, are perhaps due to some of those fluids? It is possible. But, then, we will ask him: how can unintelligent fluids produce intelligent effects? Mr. Figuier states a capital fact in saying that this love of the marvelous is not particular to our epoch; it is in all times and countries, by being linked to the very nature of the human Spirit. What he calls love of the marvelous is, quite simply, the instinctive, innate belief, as he says, in the existence of the soul and its survival of the body, a belief that has taken on diverse forms, according to the times and the places, but having at bottom an identical principle. This innate sentiment, universal in man, would God have inspired in him to amuse himself at his expense? to give him aspirations impossible to realize? To believe that it can be so is to deny the goodness of God; more still: it is to deny God himself.

— Do you want other proofs of what we anticipated? Let us see still some passages of his preface:

“In the Middle Ages, when a new religion transforms Europe, the marvelous installs itself in that very religion. People believe in diabolical possessions, in sorcerers and in magicians. For several centuries that belief is sanctioned by a war without quarter and without mercy, waged against the unfortunate ones, accused of secret commerce with the demons, or with the magicians, their agents.

“Toward the end of the seventeenth century, at the dawn of a tolerant and enlightened philosophy, the devil grew old and the accusation of magic begins to be a worn-out argument, but not for this does the marvelous lose its rights. Miracles flourish at will in the churches of the diverse Christian communions; people believe, at the same time, in the divining rod, or they decipher the movements of a forked twig to search for the objects of the physical world and obtain clarifications on the things of the moral world. In the diverse sciences the intervention of supernatural influences continues to be admitted, previously introduced by Paracelsus.

“In the eighteenth century, century of Voltaire and the Encyclopedia, while on philosophical matters all eyes were opening to the lights of good sense and reason — notwithstanding the vogue of Cartesian philosophy — only the marvelous resisted the fall of so many beliefs until then venerated. Miracles still multiplied.”

— If the philosophy of Voltaire, which opened eyes to the light of good sense and reason and undermined so many superstitions, could not extirpate the innate idea of an occult power, would it not be because such an idea is unassailable? The philosophy of the eighteenth century flagellated the abuses, but stopped before the base. If that idea triumphed over the blows struck by the apostle of incredulity, does Mr. Figuier hope to be more fortunate? We permit ourselves to doubt it.

Mr. Figuier makes a singular confusion of religious beliefs, of miracles and of the divining rod. For him, all this comes from the same source: superstition, belief in the marvelous. We shall not attempt here to defend that little forked twig, which would have the singular property of serving to search the physical world, by virtue of our not having gone deeply into the question; on a matter of principle, we praise or criticize only what we know. But, if we wished to argue by analogy, we would ask whether the little steel needle, with which the navigator finds his route, does not have a virtue much more admirable than the little forked twig? No, you will say, for we know the cause that makes it act, and this cause is entirely physical. Agreed. But who says that the cause that acts upon the forked twig is not entirely physical? Before the theory of the compass was known, what would you have thought, had you lived in that epoch, when the sailors had no guide but the stars, which often failed them? What would you have thought, we say, of a man who had come to say: I have here in a little box, no larger than a box of candies, a tiny needle, with which the largest ships can navigate with safety; which indicates the route in any weather, with the precision of a clock? Once again, we do not combat the divining rod, and still less the charlatanism that took hold of it; we only ask what there would be more supernatural if a little piece of wood, in given circumstances, were agitated by an invisible terrestrial effluvium, as the magnetized needle is by the magnetic current that also is not seen? Could it be that this needle does not also serve to search the things of the physical world? Will it not be influenced by the presence of a subterranean iron mine? The marvelous is the fixed idea of Mr. Figuier; it is his nightmare; he sees it everywhere there is something he does not understand. But will he alone, the savant, be able to say how the least grain germinates and reproduces? What is the force that makes the flower turn toward the light? Who, in the earth, draws the roots toward favorable ground, even through the rudest obstacles? Strange aberration of the human spirit, which thinks it knows everything and knows nothing; which despises countless marvels and denies a superhuman power! Being based on the existence of God, that superhuman power that is exercised in an inaccessible sphere; on the soul, which survives the body, conserving its individuality and, consequently, its action, religion has for its principle that which Mr. Figuier calls the marvelous. If he had limited himself to saying that among the facts qualified as marvelous some are ridiculous and absurd, to which reason does justice, we would applaud him with all our forces; but we could not agree with his opinion when he confounds in the same reprobation the principle and the abuse of the principle; when he denies the existence of any power above Humanity. Moreover, this conclusion is formulated in an unequivocal manner in the following passage:

— “From these discussions, we believe there will result for the reader the perfect conviction of the non-existence of supernatural agents and the certainty that all the prodigies which, in diverse epochs, have excited the surprise or the admiration of men, are explained solely by the knowledge of our physiological organization. The negation of the marvelous, this is the conclusion to be drawn from this book, which could be called the marvelous explained. And if we attain the objective we proposed to reach, we will have the conviction of having rendered a true service to the good of all.”

To make abuses known, to unmask fraud and hypocrisy wherever they are found, is, without a doubt, to render a great service. But we judge that it is to do great harm to society, as well as to individuals, to attack the principle by virtue of its having been abused; it is to want to cut down the good tree because it gave a spoiled fruit. Well understood, Spiritism, by making known the cause of certain phenomena, shows what is possible and what is not. For this very reason, it tends to destroy the ideas that are really superstitious; but, at the same time, by demonstrating the principle, it gives an objective to good; it strengthens the fundamental beliefs that incredulity attacks with violence on the pretext of abuse; it combats the plague of materialism, which is the negation of duty, of morality and of all hope, and it is for this that we say that one day it will be the safeguard of society.

Moreover, we are far from lamenting the work of Mr. Figuier. Upon the adherents of the doctrine it will be unable to have any influence, for they will immediately recognize its vulnerable points. Upon the others, it will have the effect of all criticisms: that of provoking curiosity. Since the appearance, or rather the reappearance, of Spiritism, much has been written against it. They have spared it neither sarcasms nor injuries. Of only one thing has it not had the honor, thanks to the customs of the time: the stake. Did this prevent it from progressing? Absolutely not, for today it counts its adherents by the millions in all parts of the world, and these increase every day. To this, and without wishing it, criticism much contributed, because, as we said, its effect is that of provoking examination. People want to see the pro and the con, and they are astonished to find a rational, logical, consoling doctrine, which calms the anguish of doubt, resolving what no philosophy could resolve, when they thought only to find a ridiculous belief. The more known the name of the contradictor, the more repercussion his criticism has and the more good it can do, calling the attention of the indifferent. In this respect, the work of Mr. Figuier is in the best conditions: besides being written in a very serious manner, it does not drag itself in the mire of gross injuries and personalities, the only arguments of low-level critics. Since it claims to treat the subject from the scientific point of view, and his position permits him to do so, one will see in it the last word of Science against this doctrine, and then the public will know how matters stand. If the learned work of Mr. Figuier does not have the power to deal it the coup de grâce, we doubt that others will be more fortunate. To combat it efficaciously, he has only one means, which we indicate to him with pleasure. A tree is not destroyed by cutting its branches, but its root. It is necessary, then, to attack Spiritism at the root, and not at the branches, which are reborn as they are cut. Now, the roots of Spiritism, of this hallucination of the nineteenth century, to use his expression, are the soul and its attributes. Let him, then, prove that the soul does not exist and cannot exist, for without souls there are no more Spirits. When he has proved this, Spiritism will no longer have a reason to exist, and we will confess ourselves vanquished.

— If his skepticism does not reach that point, let him prove, not by a simple negation, but by a demonstration mathematical, physical, chemical, mechanical, physiological or any other: 1st That the being who thinks in life is incapable of thinking after death; 2nd That, if it thinks, it must no longer wish to communicate with those whom it loved; 3rd That, if it can be everywhere, it cannot be at our side; 4th That, if it is at our side, it cannot communicate with us; 5th That, through its fluidic envelope, it cannot act upon inert matter; 6th That, if it can act upon inert matter, it cannot act upon an animate being; 7th That, if it can act upon an animate being, it cannot direct its hand to make it write; 8th That, being able to make it write, it cannot reply to its questions and transmit thought to it.

When the adversaries of Spiritism have demonstrated to us that this is impossible, through reasons as patent as those by which Galileo demonstrated that it is not the Sun that turns around the Earth, then we will be able to say that their doubts are well-founded. Unfortunately, until this day, all their argumentation is reduced to these words: I do not believe; therefore it is impossible. Without a doubt they will say that it is up to us to prove the reality of the manifestations; we prove them by facts and by reasoning; if they admit neither the ones nor the other, if they deny what they see, it is up to them to prove that our reasoning is false and that the facts are impossible.

In another article we will examine the theory of Mr. Figuier. We make vows that it be of better quality than the theory of the cracking muscle of Jobert (of Lamballe).

[Review of December 1860.]

HISTORY OF THE MARVELOUS.

BY MR. LOUIS FIGUIER.

(Second article; see the Review of September 1860.)

II.

— Speaking of Mr. Louis Figuier in our first article, we sought to discover, above all, what was his point of departure, and we demonstrated, citing textually his words, that he relies on the negation of any force that is outside corporeal humanity; his premises must allow his conclusion to be sensed. His fourth volume, in which he was to treat especially the question of turning tables and mediums, had not yet appeared, and we awaited it to see whether he would give of these phenomena an explanation more satisfactory than that of Mr. Jobert (of Lamballe). We read it with care, and what stood out for us most clearly was the fact that the author had treated a subject that he absolutely does not know. We need no other proof of this besides the first two lines, thus conceived: Before approaching the history of turning tables and of mediums, whose manifestations are entirely modern, etc. How is Mr. Figuier ignorant that Tertullian speaks in explicit terms of the turning and speaking tables? That the Chinese knew this phenomenon since time immemorial? That it is practiced by the Tartars and Siberians? That there are mediums among the Tibetans? That there were such among the Assyrians, the Greeks and the Egyptians? That all the fundamental principles of Spiritism are found in Sanskrit philosophy? This being so, it is false to advance that such manifestations are entirely modern. The moderns invented nothing in this respect, and the Spiritists rely on the antiquity and the universality of their doctrine, which Mr. Figuier should have known, before claiming to make on it a treatise ex-professo. None the less did his work fail to receive the honors of the press, which hastened to pay homage to that champion of materialist ideas.

— Here presents itself a reflection whose scope will escape no one. It is said that nothing is so brutal as a fact. Now, here is one that has well its value: it is the extraordinary progress of spiritist ideas, to which no press, neither small nor great, lent its concourse. When it deigned to speak of those poor imbeciles who think they have a soul, and that this soul, after death, still occupies itself with the living, it was only to cry help! against them, and to send them to the asylums, a prospect hardly encouraging for the public ignorant of the subject. Spiritism did not sound the trumpet of publicity; it did not fill the newspapers with pompous announcements. How is it, then, that, without noise, without fuss, without the support of those who set themselves up as arbiters of opinion, it infiltrates the masses and, according to the gracious expression of a critic whose name we do not recall, after having infested the enlightened classes, now penetrates the laboring classes? Let them tell us in what manner, without the use of the ordinary means of propaganda, the second edition of The Spirits' Book could sell out in four months? It is said that the people get enthusiastic about the most ridiculous things. So be it; but one gets enthusiastic about what amuses, a story, a novel. Now, The Spirits' Book has absolutely no pretension of being amusing. Could it not be because general opinion finds, in these beliefs, something that defies criticism?

— Mr. Figuier found the solution of the problem: it is, he says, the love of the marvelous; and he is right. Let us take the word marvelous in the acceptation he lends it, and we shall be in agreement. In his opinion, Nature being contained entirely in matter, every extramaterial phenomenon is due to the marvelous: outside matter there is no salvation. Consequently the soul and all that is attributed to it, its state after death, all this belongs to the marvelous. Like him, let us call it the marvelous. The question is to know whether this marvelous exists or not. Mr. Figuier, who does not like the marvelous and admits it only in nursery tales, says no. But if Mr. Figuier does not care to survive his body; if he despises his soul and the future life, not everyone shares his tastes, and it is not necessary, for this, that he should disgust others. There are many persons for whom the prospect of nothingness charms very little, and who hope to find up there, or over there, father, mother, children or friends. Mr. Figuier gives no importance to this. Tastes are not disputed.

— By instinct man has a horror of death. Let us agree that the desire not to die completely is very natural. One may even say that this weakness is general. Now, how to survive the body, if we do not possess that marvelous thing called the soul? If we have a soul, it must have some properties, for without properties it would not be anything. Unfortunately, for certain persons, they are not chemical properties; the soul cannot be introduced into a glass to be conserved in anatomy museums, as a skull is conserved; in this, the Great Worker certainly erred, by not having made it more palpable; probably He did not think of Mr. Figuier…

Be that as it may, of two things one: this soul, if it exists, lives or does not live after the death of the body; it is something or it is nothing: there is no middle term. Does it live always or for some time? If it must disappear at a given moment, it would matter little were it immediately; a little sooner or a little later, none the more would man be advanced. If it lives, it does something or it does nothing. But how to admit an intelligent being that does nothing, and this for all eternity? Without occupation, the future existence would be very monotonous. Not admitting that a thing inaccessible to the senses can produce any effects, Mr. Figuier is led, by reason of his point of departure, to the conclusion that every effect must have a material cause. This is why he places in the domain of the marvelous, that is, of the imagination, all the effects attributed to the soul and, in consequence, the soul itself, its properties, its deeds and gestures from beyond the grave. The simple folk, who believe in the folly of wanting to live after death, naturally like everything that satisfies their desires and comes to confirm their hopes. Hence why they love the marvelous. Until now they were content to be told: “Not everything dies with the body; rest tranquil; we give you our word of honor.” Without a doubt it was very reassuring, but a little proof would not spoil the affair. Now, here comes Spiritism, with its phenomena, to give them this proof, and they accept it with joy. Here is the whole secret of its rapid propagation; it renders real a hope: that of living and, better than this, of living happier. Whereas you, Mr. Figuier, strive to prove to them that all this is nothing but a chimera, an illusion. It lifts up courage, you cast it down. Do you believe that between the two the choice is doubtful? The desire to live again after death is, then, in man the source of his love for the marvelous, that is, for all that is linked to the life from beyond the grave. If some men, seduced by sophisms, were able to doubt the future, do not believe that it was voluntarily. No; for that idea inspires them with dread, and it is with terror that they sound the depths of nothingness. Spiritism calms their disquietudes, dissipates their doubts; what is vague, indecisive, uncertain, takes on a form, becomes a consoling reality. This is why, in a few years, it went around the world, for since everyone wants to live, man will always give preference to the doctrines that reassure him over those that terrify him.

— Let us return to the work of Mr. Figuier and say, to begin, that his fourth volume, consecrated to turning tables and to mediums, in three quarters is filled with stories that bear no relation to them, so that the principal there becomes the accessory. Cagliostro, the affair of the necklace, which figure there, one does not know why, the electric girl, the sympathetic snails, occupy thirteen chapters out of eighteen. It is true that these stories are treated with a true luxury of details and erudition, which will cause them to be read with interest, setting aside any spiritist opinion. His objective being to prove man's love of the marvelous, he seeks out all the tales which good sense, in all times, had already given their just value, and he strives to prove that they are absurd, which no one contests. And he exclaims: “Behold Spiritism struck down!” To listen to him, one might believe that the exploits of Cagliostro and the tales of Hoffmann are articles of faith for all Spiritists, and that the sympathetic snails have all their sympathy.

Mr. Figuier does not reject all the facts; far from it. In a sense opposite to other critics who, purely and simply, deny everything, which is more convenient, since it dispenses with any explanation, he admits perfectly the turning tables and the mediums, but attributing them on a large scale to trickery. The Misses Fox, for example, are notable conjurers, because they were ridiculed by the not very elegant American newspapers. He even goes so far as to admit magnetism — as a material agent, of course — the fascinating power of the will and the gaze, somnambulism, catalepsy, hypnotism, all the phenomena of biology. Let care be taken! He is going to pass for an illuminé in the eyes of his confreres. But, consistent with himself, he wants to reduce everything to the laws of physics and physiology. It is true that he cites some authentic and most honored witnesses in support of the spiritist phenomena, but he dwells with indulgence on all the contrary opinions, above all those of the savants who, like Mr. Chevreul and others, sought proofs in matter. He holds in great esteem the theory of the cracking muscle of Messrs. Jobert and accomplices. His theory, like the magic lantern of the fable, sins on a capital point: it loses itself in a labyrinth of explanations that would require other explanations to be understood. Another defect is that at every step it is contradicted by facts that it cannot explain and that the author passes over in silence for a very simple reason: it is that he does not know them. He saw nothing or saw little by himself; in a word, he went deeply into nothing de visu, with the sagacity, the patience and the independence of ideas of the conscientious observer; he contented himself with more or less fantastic accounts, found in certain works that do not excel in impartiality. He takes no account of the progress that science has made for some years; he takes it at its beginning, when it marched gropingly and each one brought an uncertain and premature opinion, being far from knowing all the facts; absolutely as if you wanted to judge the chemistry of today by what it was at the time of Nicolas Flamel. In our opinion, and however learned Mr. Figuier may be, he lacks the first quality required of a critic: that of knowing thoroughly what he speaks of, a condition still more necessary when one wishes to explain it. We shall not accompany him in all his reasonings. We prefer to point out his work, which every Spiritist can read without the least danger to his convictions; we shall cite only the passage in which he explains his theory of turning tables, which sums up more or less that of all the other phenomena.

— “Next comes the theory that explains the movements of the tables by the Spirits. If the table turns after a quarter of an hour of recollection and of attention on the part of the experimenters, it is, they say, because the Spirits, good or bad, angels or demons, entered the table and made it oscillate. Does the reader expect us to discuss such a hypothesis? We do not think of doing so. If we undertook to prove, with great reinforcements of logical arguments, that the devil does not enter into furniture to make it dance, we would also need to demonstrate that it is not the Spirits which, introduced into our body, make us act, speak, feel, etc. All these facts are of the same order, and he who admits the intervention of the demon to turn a table must have recourse to the same supernatural influence to explain the acts that occur only by virtue of our will and with the aid of our organs. No one ever wished seriously to attribute the effects of the will upon our organs, however mysterious the essence of that phenomenon may be, to the action of an angel or a demon. It is, nonetheless, to that consequence that those are led who wish to link the rotation of the tables to a superhuman cause.

“Let us say, to end this brief discussion, that reason forbids recourse to a supernatural cause in all the situations in which a natural cause can suffice. Could we invoke a natural, normal, physiological cause to explain the movement of the tables? That is the question.

“Here, then, has come the moment to expound what seems to us to account for the phenomenon studied in this last part of our book.

“The explanation of the fact of turning tables, considered in its greatest simplicity, seems to us to be furnished by those phenomena whose name until now has varied much, but whose nature, at bottom, is identical, seeing that, successively, it was called hypnotism with Dr. Braid, biologism with Mr. Philips, suggestion with Mr. Carpenter. We recall that, in consequence of the strong cerebral tension resulting from the contemplation of an immobile object, maintained for a long time, the brain falls into a particular state that received, successively, the names of magnetic state, nervous sleep and biological state, different names that designate certain particular variants of a generally identical state.

“Once this state is reached, whether by the passes of a magnetizer, as has been done since Mesmer, whether by the contemplation of a brilliant body, as Braid operated, imitated later by Mr. Philips, and as the Arab and Egyptian sorcerers still operate, whether simply, finally, by a strong moral constraint, of which we have already cited more than one example, the individual falls into that automatic passivity that constitutes nervous sleep. He has lost the force to direct and control his own will and is under the empire of a strange will. Present to him a glass of water, affirming, with authority, that it is a delicious beverage, and he drinks it, thinking he takes wine, liqueur or milk, according to the will of the one who has strongly taken hold of his being. Deprived thus of the aid of his own judgment, the individual becomes almost a stranger to the actions he executes and, once returning to his natural state, has lost the memory of the acts he performed during that strange and momentary abdication of his self. He is under the influence of suggestions, that is, he accepts without being able to repel it, a fixed idea that is imposed on him by an exterior will, acts and is forced to act without idea and without will of his own, consequently, without consciousness. This system raises a grave question of psychology, for, thus influenced, man has lost free will and no longer has responsibility for the actions he executes. He acts determined by intrusive images that obsess his brain, analogous to those visions that Cuvier supposes fixed in the sensorium of the bee, and which represent to it the form and the proportions of the cell that instinct leads it to construct. The principle of suggestions explains perfectly the phenomena, so varied and at times so terrible, of hallucinations, showing, at the same time, the small interval that separates the hallucinated from the monomaniac. It is not to be wondered at that, in a great number of table-turners, the hallucination outlives the experiment and is transformed into definitive madness. “This principle of suggestions, under the influence of nervous sleep, seems to us to furnish the explanation of the phenomenon of the rotation of the tables, taken in its greatest simplicity. Let us consider what takes place in a chain of persons who give themselves over to an experiment of this kind. Such persons are attentive, preoccupied, strongly moved with the expectation of the phenomenon that is to be produced. A great attention, a complete recollection of spirit is recommended to them. As the expectation is prolonged and the moral constraint is maintained for a long time by the experimenters, their brain fatigues more and more and the ideas suffer a slight perturbation. When we attended, during the winter of the year 1860, the experiments carried out in Paris by Mr. Philips; when we saw the ten or twelve persons to whom he entrusted a metallic disk, with the injunction to look fixedly and solely at that disk, placed in the palm of the hand for about half an hour, we could not help but see in those conditions recognized as indispensable for the manifestation of the hypnotic state, the faithful image of the state in which are found the persons who, in silence, form the chain, with a view to obtaining the rotation of the table. In the one and the other case, there is a strong constraint of spirit, an idea pursued exclusively for a considerable time. The human brain cannot resist for long that excessive tension, that abnormal accumulation of the nervous influx. Of the ten or twelve persons who gave themselves over to that operation, the majority abandon the experiment, forced to renounce by the nervous fatigue they experience. Only some, one or two, who persevere, are seized by the hypnotic or biological state, giving rise, then, to the diverse phenomena that we examined in the course of this work, in speaking of hypnotism and the biological state. “In that gathering of persons fixedly bound, during twenty minutes or half an hour, to forming the chain, with their hands spread flat on the table, without freedom to distract, even for an instant, their attention from the operation in which they take part, the majority experience no particular effect. But it is very difficult that one of them, even a single one, should not come to fall, even if for a moment, into the hypnotic or biological state. Perhaps that state need not last more than a second for the awaited phenomenon to be realized. Falling into that kind of nervous sleep, no longer having consciousness of his acts and with no other thought but the fixed idea of the rotation of the table, the member of the chain unconsciously imprints the movement upon the piece of furniture. He can, at that moment, exhibit a relatively considerable muscular force and the table moves. This impulse given, this unconscious act accomplished, nothing more is needed. Thus passingly biologized, the individual can afterward return to his ordinary state; for, as soon as this movement of mechanical displacement is manifested in the table, soon all the persons who compose the chain rise and follow its movements; in other words, they make the table walk, thinking that they only accompany it. As for the individual, the involuntary, unconscious cause of the phenomenon, since he retains no memory of the acts executed in that state of nervous sleep, he is ignorant of what he did and, in good faith, becomes indignant if he is accused of having pushed the table. He even suspects that other members of the chain played a tasteless joke, of which he is accused. Hence those frequent discussions and even those grave disputes, which so many times gave rise to the amusement of turning tables. “Such is the explanation that we judge we can give, with regard to the fact of the rotation of the tables, taken in its greatest simplicity. As for the movement of the tables responding to questions: the legs that rise at the orders and which, by the number of raps, answer the questions asked, the same system explains it if we admit that, among the members of the chain, there is one in whom the state of nervous sleep conserves a certain duration. Such an individual, hypnotized in spite of himself, answers the questions and the orders given to him, tilting the table or making it give raps, according to the request. Returning afterward to the normal state, he forgot all the acts thus carried out, as any magnetized or hypnotized individual loses the memory of the acts executed in that state. The individual who plays the role against his will is, then, a kind of awakened sleeper; he is absolutely not sui compos; he is in a mental state that partakes of somnambulism and of fascination. He does not sleep; he is enchanted or fascinated by virtue of the strong moral concentration he imposed on himself: he is a medium. As this last exercise is of an order superior to the first, it cannot be obtained in all groups. For the table to answer the questions asked, raising one of its legs and giving raps, it is necessary that the individuals who operate have practiced repeatedly the phenomenon of the turning table, and that among them there be found a sensitive particularly apt to fall into that state, which happens more quickly through habit and through perseverance for a longer time: in a word, an experienced medium is needed. “But, they will say, twenty minutes or half an hour are not always necessary to obtain the phenomenon of the rotation of a little cock-foot table or of a conventional table. Often, at the end of four or five minutes, the table sets itself in motion. To such an observation we shall answer that a magnetizer, when he deals with a habitual sensitive or with a professional somnambulist, makes the latter fall into somnambulism in one or two minutes, without passes, without apparatus, and merely by the fixed imposition of the gaze. Here, it is habit that renders the phenomenon easy and rapid. In the same way, exercised mediums can in a short time arrive at that state of half nervous sleep, which must render inevitable the phenomenon of the rotation of the table or the movement imprinted by it upon the piece of furniture, according to the request made.”

We do not know how Mr. Figuier would explain by his theory the movements that occur, the noises that are heard, the displacement of objects, without the contact of the medium, without the participation of his will, even against his will. But there are many other things that he does not explain. Moreover, even accepting his theory, it would reveal a physiological phenomenon of the most extraordinary, and well worthy of the attention of the savants. Why, then, did they disdain it?

Mr. Figuier ends his Treatise of the Marvelous with a brief notice on The Spirits' Book. Naturally he judges it from his point of view: “The philosophy — he says — is antiquated and the morality tedious.” Certainly he would have preferred a jocular and exciting morality. But what is to be done? It is a morality for the use of the soul; moreover, it would always have one advantage: that of making one sleep. It is, for him, a prescription in case of insomnia…

[Review of April 1861.]

APPRECIATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE MARVELOUS.

OF MR. LOUIS FIGUIER, BY MR. ESCANDE, EDITOR OF THE MODE NOUVELLE.

— In the articles we published on this work we sought to keep ourselves principally to the author's point of departure, which was not difficult for us, for in citing his own words we proved that he bases himself on materialist ideas. The base being false, at least from the point of view of the immense majority of men, the consequences he drew from it against the facts he qualifies as marvelous are, for this very reason, tainted with error. This did not prevent some of his colleagues of the press from exalting the merit, the depth and the sagacity of the work. However, not all are of that opinion. In this respect, we found in the Mode Nouvelle, a newspaper more serious than its title, an article as notable for its style as for the justness of its appreciations. Its length does not permit us to cite it in its entirety; moreover, the author promises others, because in this one he does not occupy himself much except with the first volume. Our readers will be grateful to us for giving them some fragments.

I.

— “This book has great pretensions, although it justifies none. It would like to pass for erudite: it affects science and ostentates an apparent luxury of research, but its erudition is superficial, its science incomplete and its research premature and ill-digested. Mr. Louis Figuier devoted himself to the specialty of collecting, one by one, the thousand little facts that sprout, day by day, around the academies, like those long rows of mushrooms that are born overnight upon the cryptogamic beds, organizing books that compete with the Bourgeois Cookery and with the treatises of Poor Richard. Habituated to that work of easy compositions — inferior to the work of compilation of that good Abbé Trublet, of whom Voltaire wittily mocked — and which necessarily leaves him leisure, he said to himself that it would be no more difficult to exploit the passion for the supernatural which, more than ever, excites the imaginations, than to make use of the almost always idle verbiage of the second class of the Institute. Habituated to editing scientific reviews, going over what belongs to others, with the summaries of reports that he in turn summarizes, with the theses and memoirs that he analyzes; skillful in transforming later into volumes those summaries of summaries, he sets himself to the work. And, faithful to his past, he hastily compiled all the treatises on the matter that fell into his hand, crumbled them, then kneaded those crumbs again in his own manner, composing with them a book, after which — we do not doubt — he exclaimed with Horace: Exegi monumentum; “I too have erected a monument, that will be more durable than bronze!” “And he would have reason to feel proud of his work, if quality were measured by quantity. Indeed, this history of the marvelous forms no fewer than four thick volumes and contains only the history of the marvelous in modern times, from 1630 until our days; only two centuries, which would suppose at least a little more than double the most voluminous encyclopedias, in case it enclosed the history of the marvelous in all times and among all peoples! Thus, when one thinks that this fragment of monograph, of such vast extension, cost him only a few months of work, we are led to believe that a production at once so great and so hurried is more extraordinary than the marvels it contains. But this fecundity ceases to be a prodigy when one studies closely the process of composition used by him, which, in truth, is so familiar to him that we could not expect another to be employed. Instead of condensing the facts, of expounding them summarily, of neglecting useless details, of highlighting principally the characteristic circumstances, and then discussing them, he applied himself only to writing a feuilleton longer than those he writes weekly in the Presse. Armed with scissors, he snipped from the works prior to his what could favor the preconceived ideas he wished to make triumph, casting aside what could contradict the opinion he had a priori formed on that important question, above all what would obviate the natural explanation he proposed to give of the manifestations qualified as supernatural, by what the freethinkers are unanimous in calling public credulity. For it is still one of the pretensions of his book — and this pretension is no better justified than the others — to give a physical or medical solution that is new, found by him, a triumphant, unassailable solution, henceforth sheltered from the objections of men simple enough to believe that God is more powerful than our savants. He repeats it in a hundred different passages of his work, so that no one may be ignorant of it and with the hope that they will end by believing it, notwithstanding that he limits himself to repeating what was said about it, before him, by the physicists and the physicians, the philosophers and the chemists, who have more horror of the supernatural than Pascal had of the vacuum. “From this it results that this history of the marvelous lacks, at the same time, authority and proportion. From the dogmatic point of view, it does not surpass the negations of the prior negators; it adds no argument to the reasonings already developed, and in this question, as in all the others, we do not understand the utility of echoes. There is more: tormented by the desire to appear to do better than Calmeil, Esquiros, Montègre, Hecquet and so many others who preceded him and will always be his masters, Mr. Louis Figuier often loses himself in the confused labyrinth of the demonstrations he borrows from them, wishing to appropriate them, ending by rivaling in logic with Mr. Babinet. As for the facts, he accumulated them in great quantity, though a little at random, truncating some, despising others, limiting himself to reproducing by preference those that could offer a certain attraction to reading, proof that he aimed, principally, at an easy success, having to struggle with the novelists of the day. We even come to ask ourselves how he did not induce the editor to include his work in the amusing Library of the Railways, in order that it might reach more directly that multitude that reads to distract itself and never to instruct itself.

“We do not contest that his book is amusing, if it suffices for a book, to have this merit, that it resemble a collection of anecdotes, composed of little stories heaped together, with a view to the picturesque, without much concern for the truth. This does not prevent him from boasting at every instant and without any purpose of his impartiality, of his veracity: one pretension more, to add to all those we highlighted and in which he struts with all the more affectation as he does not dissimulate whether it is lacking to him. Such as it is, we could not compare it better than to those improvised restaurants, prodigal of comestibles, which have nothing seductive but the appearance, and which serve the consumers without much concern for etiquette. More superficial than profound, there the important is sacrificed to the futile, the principal to the accessory, the dogmatic side to the episodic side; moreover, the lacunae are as abundant as the useless things and, so that nothing may be lacking, it is full of contradictions, affirming here what it denies further on, so that we would be tempted to believe that, unlike the celebrated Pico della Mirandola — capable of discoursing de omni re scibili [on all things knowable] — Mr. Louis Figuier ventured to teach others what he himself did not know.

II.

— “We could limit here the examination of this history of the marvelous, if we did not have to justify these severe but just appreciations. To begin, will we need to add that the one who wrote it does not believe in the possibility of the supernatural? We do not believe it. In his quality of supernumerary academician — a supernumerary who probably will only finish with his life; — by virtue of the powers conferred on him by his title of scientific feuilletonist, he could not sustain another thesis without exposing himself to being placed on the index by the army of the incredulous, of whom he judges himself susceptible of forming part. He too does not believe, and, in this respect, his incredulity is above suspicion. He is of the number of “those wise spirits who, witnesses of the unforeseen expansion of the contemporary marvelous, cannot understand such a hallucination in the full nineteenth century, with an advanced philosophy and amid that magnificent scientific movement that directs everything today toward the positive and the useful.” — We recognize that it must be painful for “those wise spirits” to see that the public spirit thus refuses to divest itself of its old prejudices and persists in having other beliefs, diverse from philosophical positivism, which, however, are those of all animals. Besides, this displeasure does not date only from our days. Mr. Louis Figuier confesses it, not without spite, when he asks, in terms that denote stupefaction, how is it possible that the marvelous resisted the eighteenth century, “the century of Voltaire and of the Encyclopedia, while eyes open to the lights of good sense and reason.” What is to be done, then? So lively is this belief in the marvelous, consecrated by all the religions, which was that of all times, of all peoples, under all latitudes and in all the continents, that the freethinkers, satisfied at having agitated it by themselves and for themselves, would act with wisdom in abstaining, henceforth, from a proselytism whose lack of success they know to be inevitable. “But Mr. Figuier is not of those pusillanimous hearts who take fright in anticipation in the face of the uselessness of their efforts. Full of confidence and of bravado in his strength, he glories in realizing what Voltaire, Diderot, La Mettrie, Dupuis, Volney, Dulaure, Pigault-Lebrun; what Dulaurens with his Compère Mathieu, what the chemists with their alembics, the physicists with their electric piles, the astronomers with their compasses, the pantheists with their sophisms, the malevolent scoffer with his contemptible skepticism, were impotent to realize. He proposed to demonstrate anew and triumphantly this time, that “the supernatural does not exist and never existed” and, in consequence, that “the ancient and contemporary prodigies can all be attributed to a natural cause.” The task is arduous: until now the most intrepid have succumbed. But “such a conclusion, which would necessarily set aside every supernatural agent, would be a victory of Science over the spirit of superstition, in favor of reason and human dignity”, and that victory flattered his ambition; — an easy victory, after all, easier than we think, if Mr. Figuier was not mistaken when he says, in his introduction, that “our century disquiets itself very little with theological matters and religious disputes.” Then, why arm oneself for war against a belief that does not exist? Why attack opinions of theology, with which no one disquiets himself? Why attach oneself to religious superstitions that no longer preoccupy us? “Victory without peril is triumph without glory”, says the poet, and it does not befit one to sound too loudly the warlike trumpet, if one has only windmills to combat. What would you? Mr. Louis Figuier had forgotten, in writing this, what he had written above, when he confessed, with shame on his face, that our century, deaf to the lessons of the Encyclopedia and to the teachings of the lay press, had suddenly inflamed itself for the marvelous and, more than its ancestors, believed in the supernatural, an incomprehensible aberration, of which he ambitioned to cure it. But this contradiction is so insignificant that perhaps it was not worth the trouble of being pointed out; we shall see many others and shall still be obliged to neglect many! Thus, Mr. Figuier denies that there are produced in our days, or that there have been produced at any time, supernatural manifestations. In the case of miracles, only Science can make them: the power of God reached only that far. Even when we say that God does not have such power, we have a kind of scruple at translating incompletely his thought. Does he recognize another god, besides the god nature, so admirable in its blind intelligence, and which realizes marvels without suspecting it, a god dear to the savants, because it is complacent enough to let them believe that they daily usurp a slice of its sovereignty? It is a question that we do not permit ourselves to go deeply into.

“Mediocrely marvelous, this history of the marvelous begins with an introduction that Mr. Louis Figuier calls a rapid glance cast at the supernatural in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, of which we shall say nothing, because we would not have much to say. The most important manifestations there are disfigured on the pretext of summary, and it is understood that it would take much time and space to restore the true physiognomy to the thousands of facts that figure in it only in an excessively abbreviated manner.

“The edifice is worthy of the peristyle. This history of the marvelous during the last two centuries opens with the account of the affair of Urbain Grandier and the nuns of Loudun; next comes the divining rod, the Tremblers of the Cévennes, the Jansenist Convulsionaries, Cagliostro, magnetism and turning tables. As for the possession of Louviers not a word, and also not a note on the illuminés, the Martinists, Swedenborgism, the stigmatized of the Tyrol and the notable manifestation of the children in Sweden, less than fifty years ago; he said only a word about the exorcisms of the priest Gassner [see The priest Gassner], and less than an insignificant page is consecrated to the seeress of Prevorst. Mr. Louis Figuier would have done better had he titled his book: Episodes of the history of the marvelous in modern times, even though the episodes he chose may give rise to serious objections. No one ever attributed to the conjuring tricks of Cagliostro a supernatural significance. He was a skillful intriguer, who held some curious secrets, of which he knew how to make skillful use to seduce those whom he wished to exploit and, above all, an intriguer who possessed numerous accomplices. Cagliostro deserved rather a place in the gallery of revolutionary precursors than in the pandemonium of the sorcerers. Equally we do not see what magnetism has to do in this history of the marvelous, principally from the point of view in which Mr. Louis Figuier placed himself. Magnetism stands out from the Academy of Medicine and the Academy of Sciences, which much disdained it; but it can interest supernaturalism only on the occasion of some of its manifestations, moreover neglected by Mr. Louis Figuier, in order to reserve the space he consecrated to the account of the life of Mesmer, of the experiments of the Marquis de Puységur and of the incident relative to the famous report of Mr. Husson. Two years ago we treated this important question and we shall not return to it, for we would only repeat ourselves. We shall also leave aside that of turning tables, which we examined at the same epoch. However, there would be much to say about the natural and physical explanation that Mr. Louis Figuier claims to give of that dance of the tables and of the manifestations that follow it; but one must know how to limit oneself. Let us leave him, then, to struggle with the Spiritualist Review and with the Spiritist Review, two reviews published in Paris by the adherents of the belief in the manifestation of the Spirits, who accuse him of having written his indictment without having previously heard the witnesses and consulted the documents of the case. The one and the other affirm that he never attended a single spiritualist session and that, upon his arrival, he took care to declare that his opinion was formed and nothing would make him change it. “Is it true? We do not know. All we can affirm is that, after having repelled, with just reason, the solution of Mr. Babinet, by nascent and unconscious movements, he ended by adopting it on his own account, so much is he unconscious of what he thinks and writes. Here is the proof: “In those gatherings of persons fixedly bound for twenty minutes or half an hour, to forming the chain, hands open on the table, without having the freedom to distract, even for an instant, the attention from the operation in which they take part, the majority experience no particular effect. But it is very difficult that one of them, even a single one one might wish, should not for a moment fall into the hypnotic or biological state. (Hypnotism gives him an answer to everything, as we shall see later.) It is not necessary that this state last more than a second for the awaited phenomenon to be realized. The member of the chain, fallen into that half nervous sleep, no longer having consciousness of his acts, nor other thought but the fixed idea of the rotation of the table, imprints, without knowing it, the movement upon the piece of furniture.” Why, then, would he not begin to mock himself, since he liked to mock Mr. Babinet? It would have been logical, above all after having announced that he came to clarify the mystery, since he placed in his lantern only a little light as ridiculous as the one that had previously illuminated the learned academician. But logic and Mr. Louis Figuier divorced in this history of the marvelous. Ah! however much the echoes claim that they are going to speak, their efforts only succeed in repeating what they hear. “As for the long chapters consecrated to the divining rod and, in particular, to Jacques Aymar, we first permit ourselves to observe to him that he deludes himself if he thinks that the problem was studied sufficiently by Mr. Chevreul. It is a fantasy that he may leave, if it well pleases him, to that savant; but, outside the Academy of Sciences, he will find no one who admits that the theory of the exploring pendulum answers all the objections. The phrase attributed to Galileo “And, nonetheless, it turns!” could very well be applied to the divining rod. It turned and turns, in spite of the skeptics who deny the movement, because they refuse to see; the thousands of examples that we could cite — and that Mr. Louis Figuier himself cites — attest the reality of the phenomenon. Does it turn by a diabolical or spiritist impulse, as one would say today, or under the impression it receives from some unknown effluvia? We very gladly repel any supernatural influence, although it may be admitted in certain cases. What does not seem to us proved is the inexistence of unknown fluids. Among others, the magnetic fluid counts numerous partisans, whose affirmations merit as much authority as the negations of their adversaries. Be that as it may, the divining rod realized marvels that may have nothing supernatural, but which Science is incapable of explaining, Science which, moreover, explains very little of all those that we see produced daily around us, in the life of the least blade of grass. Modesty is a virtue that is lacking to him, and which he would do well to acquire. “Among other marvels, those that Jacques Aymar realized, of whom we spoke a little while ago, deserved to be related minutely. One time, among others, he was called to Lyon, the day after a great crime committed in that city. Armed with his rod, he explored the cellar that had been the theater of the crime, declaring that the assassins were three; then, he began to follow their tracks, which led him to a gardener, whose house was situated on the bank of the Rhône, who affirmed that they had entered there and drunk a bottle of wine. The gardener protested, denying it; but, interrogated, his little children confessed that three individuals had come, in the absence of the father, and that they had sold them wine. Then Aymar, retaking the road and always led by the rod, discovered the place where they had embarked on the Rhône, entered a canoe, descended at all the places where they descended, went to the field of Sablon, between Vienne and Saint-Vallier, found that they tarried there some days, continued his pursuit and, from stage to stage, arrived as far as Beaucaire, in the middle of the fair, going through its streets thronged with people and stopping before the door of the prison, where he entered and pointed out a little hunchback as one of the assassins. Subsequently his investigations pointed out to him that the other two had directed themselves toward the region of Nîmes, but the police authorities did not wish to carry their researches further. Conducted to Lyon, the hunchback confessed the crime and was quartered alive. “Here is the feat of Jacques Aymar, and feats as surprising as this one are numerous in his life. Mr. Louis Figuier admits it in all the circumstances. Moreover, he could not do otherwise, since it is attested by hundreds of witnesses, whose veracity cannot be suspected “by three accounts and several concordant letters, written by the witnesses and by the magistrates, men equally honored and disinterested and whom no one, in the contemporary public, suspected of an agreement truly impossible among them.” But as here a physical explanation could not be ventured, he found himself obliged to renounce his ordinary process and threw himself into a labyrinth of suppositions more ingenious than verisimilar. He transforms Jacques Aymar into a police agent of a perspicacity that surpasses that of Mr. de Sartines, however celebrated he may be. Beside him, our most intelligent chiefs of the security police would be no more than schoolboys. He supposes, thus, that this rod-waver, during the three or four hours spent in Lyon, before beginning his experiments had time to gather information and discover what the judicial authorities themselves were ignorant of. He went to the gardener's house because it was to be presumed that the assassins had embarked on the Rhône, in order to get away faster; he guessed that they had drunk wine because they were thirsty; he approached the bank of the river everywhere it was known that they had really moored, because those habitual places of mooring were known to him; he stopped at the field of Sablon because it was evident that they wanted to see the spectacle of the gathering of troops; he directed himself to Beaucaire because it was certain that the desire to pull off a good stroke would have led them there; he stopped, finally, at the door of the prison because it was probable that one of them had had the misfortune to be arrested. “That is why your daughter is mute!” says Sganarelle; and Mr. Louis Figuier says no better, nor differently. Above all he believes he triumphs, because Jacques Aymar, having been later called to Paris, by the rumors of his fame, there saw his perspicacity suffer real failures, alongside some real triumphs as well. But for those eclipses, which earned him a certain disfavor, less than any other should Mr. Louis Figuier reproach him; less than any other could he feel authorized to declare him an impostor, he who knows better than anyone, he who recognizes, with respect to magnetism, that those kinds of experiments are capricious, successful one day and failing the next. To this inconsistency he adds, finally, a second, less excusable. Not content with accusing Jacques Aymar of charlatanism, he pronounces the same condemnation against almost all the rod-wavers, whose gestures and deeds he relates, and in the discussion he says: “Among the numerous practical adepts, only a small number were of bad faith; even then they were not always so; the greater number operated with entire sincerity. Really the rod turned in their hands, independent of any artifice, and the phenomenon, as a fact, was indeed real.” Well, very well, it could not be better: there is the truth. But how and why did it turn? Impossible to escape that indiscreet interrogation. Now, Mr. Louis Figuier answers thus: “That movement of the rod was operated by virtue of an act of their thought and without their having the least consciousness of that secret action of their will.” Always that unconsciousness, more marvelous than the marvelous they repel! Let believe who will.” [see The Catholic bibliography against Spiritism.] Escande.

[1]

[Histoire du merveilleux dans les temps modernes — Google Books, by Louis Figuier.]

[2] It is not the Spirits that make us act and think, but a Spirit that is our soul. To deny that Spirit is to deny the soul; to deny the soul is to proclaim pure materialism. Mr. Figuier seems to think that, like him, no one believes he possesses an immortal soul, or that he believes he is the whole world.

[3] Office, Rue Sainte-Anne, 63; no. of February 22, 1861. Price per no., 1 fr.

[4] [see A. J. de Montègre.]

[5] [see Hecquet.]