Essay on the theory of hallucination.

— Those who do not admit the incorporeal and invisible world think they can explain everything by the word hallucination. Its definition is well known: it is an error, an illusion of the person who believes he has perceptions that he does not really possess (Academy. From the Latin hallucinari, to err; derived from ad lucem), but the learned, as far as we know, have not yet given the physiological reason for it. It seems that optics and physiology hold no more secrets for them. How is it, then, that they have not yet explained the source of the images that present themselves to the spirit in certain circumstances? Real or not, the hallucinated person sees something; would one say that he believes he is seeing, but that he sees nothing at all? This is not likely. Say, if you wish, that it is a fantastic image; so be it; but what is the origin of this image, how is it formed, and how is it reflected in his brain? This is what you do not say. Certainly, when he believes he is seeing the devil with his horns and claws, the flames of hell, fabulous animals that do not exist, the Moon and the Sun colliding, it is evident that there is no reality whatsoever in this. But if it is a product of his imagination, how is it that he describes such things as if they were present? There is, then, before him a picture, some phantasmagoria; so what is the mirror upon which this image is reflected? What is the cause that gives this image its form, its color, and its movement? This is what we have sought in vain to find the solution to in Science. Since the learned wish to explain everything by the laws of matter, let them, then, give, by those laws, a theory of hallucination; good or bad, it will always be an explanation. The facts prove that there are true apparitions, perfectly explainable by the Spiritist theory, and which can only be denied by those who admit nothing outside the visible world. But, alongside the real visions, will there be hallucinations in the sense attached to this word? This is not doubtful; the essential thing is to determine the characteristics that can distinguish them from real apparitions. What is their source? It is the Spirits who are going to set us upon this path, for the explanation seems to us complete in the answer given to the following question:

— Can the figures and other images that often present themselves at the onset of sleep, or simply when the eyes are closed, be regarded as apparitions?

“As soon as the senses grow numb, the Spirit detaches itself and can see, far or near, what it could not see with the eyes. Sometimes these images are visions, but they can also be an effect of the impressions left by the sight of certain objects upon the brain, which retains traces of them, as it retains sounds. Then, detached, the Spirit sees in the brain itself these impressions, which have become fixed upon it as if made upon a daguerreotype plate. n Their variety and their mixture form bizarre and fleeting combinations, which fade away almost immediately, despite the efforts made to retain them. It is to a similar cause that certain fantastic apparitions must be attributed, which have nothing real about them, and which often occur in the state of illness.”

It is acknowledged that memory is the result of the impressions preserved by the brain. By what singular phenomenon do these impressions, so varied, so multiplied, not become confused with one another? Here is an impenetrable mystery, but no less strange than that of the sound waves that cross one another in the air and yet remain no less distinct. In a healthy and well-organized brain, these impressions are clear and precise; in less favorable conditions, they fade or become confused, as do the marks of a seal upon a substance that is too solid, or too fluid. Hence the loss of memory or the confusion of ideas. This will seem less extraordinary if one admits, as in phrenology, a special destination for each part, and even for each fiber of the brain.

Thus, the images that reach the brain through the eyes leave in it an impression that makes us remember a picture, as if we had it before us. The same happens with the impressions of sounds, odors, flavors, words, numbers, etc. According as the fibers and organs destined for the reception and transmission of these impressions are fit to retain them, one has the memory of forms, of colors, of music, of numbers, of languages, etc. When one represents to oneself a scene one has seen, it is merely a matter of memory, because in reality one does not see; but, in a certain state of emancipation, the soul sees in the brain and finds in it these images, especially those that most impressed it, according to the nature of the spirit's preoccupations or dispositions; there it finds the impression of religious, diabolical, dramatic, and other scenes, which it saw at another time in painting, in action, in reading, or in accounts, for accounts also leave impressions. Thus, the soul really sees something: in a manner of speaking, it is the image daguerreotyped in the brain. In the normal state these images are fleeting and ephemeral, because all the cerebral parts function freely; but in the state of illness, the brain is always more or less weakened; there is no longer equilibrium among all the organs; only some retain their activity, while others are in a certain way paralyzed. Hence the persistence of certain images, which are no longer effaced, as in the normal state, by the preoccupations of exterior life; here is the true hallucination, the first source of fixed ideas. The fixed idea is the exclusive remembrance of an impression; hallucination is the retrospective vision, by the soul, of an image impressed upon the brain. As one sees, we have described this apparent anomaly by an entirely physiological law, well known, that of cerebral impressions; but it was always necessary for us to admit the intervention of the soul, with its faculties distinct from matter. Now, if the materialists still cannot give a rational solution to this phenomenon, it is because they will not admit the soul, and because, with pure materialism, it is inexplicable. Thus they will say that our explanation is inadequate, because we bring in a contested agent. But contested by whom? By them, but admitted by the immense majority, ever since there have been men on Earth; and the denial of a few cannot make law.

Is our explanation good? We give it for what it may be worth, for lack of others and, if you will, by way of hypothesis, awaiting a better one; at least it has the advantage of giving to hallucination a basis, a body, a reason for being, whereas, when the physiologists have pronounced their sacramental words of overexcitation, of exaltation, of effects of the imagination, they have said nothing, or they have not said everything, because they have not observed all the phases of the phenomenon.

The imagination also plays a part that must be distinguished from hallucination properly so called, although these two causes are often combined. It lends to certain objects forms that they do not have, as it makes one see a face in the Moon or animals in the clouds. It is known that, in darkness, objects assume bizarre forms, because not all their parts are distinguished and because the contours are not clearly defined. How many times, at night, in a room, has a hanging garment, a vague luminous reflection, not seemed to take on a human form to the eyes of the most cool-headed people? If fear or an exaggerated credulity be added, the imagination will do the rest. One thus understands that the imagination can alter the reality of the images perceived during hallucination and lend them fantastic forms.

True apparitions have a character that, for the experienced observer, does not allow them to be confused with the effects we have just cited. As they can occur in broad daylight, one should be wary of those one thinks one sees at night, for fear of being the victim of an optical illusion. Besides, in apparitions, as in all the other Spiritist phenomena, there is the intelligent character, which is the best proof of their reality. Any apparition that gives no intelligent sign whatever can, with all certainty, be placed in the category of illusions. The materialist gentlemen must see that we grant them the larger share.

Such as it is, does our explanation give the reason for all cases of vision? Certainly not, and we challenge all the physiologists to give a single one, from their exclusive point of view, that resolves them all. If, then, all the theories of hallucination are insufficient to explain all the facts, it is because there is something other than hallucination properly so called, and that something finds its solution only in the Spiritist theory, which embraces them all. Indeed, if one examines carefully certain very frequent cases of visions, one will see that it is impossible to attribute to them the same origin as hallucination. In seeking to give to the latter a plausible explanation, we wished to show in what it differs from apparition. In both cases, it is always the soul that sees, and not the eyes. In the first, it sees an interior image, and in the second an external thing, if we may so express ourselves. When an absent person, of whom we are absolutely not thinking, and whom we believe to be in good health, presents himself spontaneously when we are perfectly awake and comes to reveal particulars of his death, which occurred at that very instant and of which, consequently, one could have had no knowledge, such a fact cannot be attributed to a remembrance, nor to the preoccupation of the spirit. Supposing one had had apprehensions about the life of this person, there would still remain to be explained the coincidence of the moment of death with the apparition and, above all, the circumstances of the death, something that can neither be known nor foreseen. One can, then, classify among the hallucinations the fantastic visions, which have nothing real about them, but the same does not hold for those that reveal positive present realities, confirmed by events. To explain them by the same causes would be absurd, and more absurd still to attribute them to chance, that supreme reason of those who have nothing to say. Only Spiritism can give the reason for them, by the dual theory of the perispirit and the emancipation of the soul. But how can one believe in the action of the soul when one does not admit its existence? Taking no account whatever of the spiritual element, Science finds itself powerless to resolve a multitude of phenomena and falls into absurdity by wishing to refer everything to the material element. It is principally in Medicine that the spiritual element plays an important part; when physicians take it into consideration, they will be mistaken less often than now. There they will draw a light that will guide them more surely in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. This can already be observed from the present in the practice of Spiritist physicians, whose number increases day by day. Hallucination having a physiological cause, we are certain that they will find the means to combat it. We know one who, thanks to Spiritism, is on the path to discoveries of the highest scope, because it made known to him the true cause of certain afflictions rebellious to materialist Medicine.

— The phenomenon of apparition can occur in two ways: either it is the Spirit that comes to find the person who sees, or it is the spirit of the latter that transports itself and goes to find the other. The two following examples seem to us to characterize both cases perfectly.

One of our colleagues was recently telling us that an officer, a friend of his, being in Africa, suddenly saw before him the picture of a funeral procession: it was that of one of his uncles, who resided in France, and whom he had not seen for a long time. He saw the entire ceremony distinctly, from the departure from the house of mourning to the church and the conveyance to the cemetery. He even noticed several particulars of which he could have had no idea. At that moment he was awake and yet in a certain state of absorption, from which he emerged only when everything disappeared. Struck by the circumstance, he wrote to France in order to obtain news of his uncle and learned that the latter, having died suddenly, had been buried on the day and at the hour at which the apparition had occurred, and with the particulars he had seen. It is evident that, in this case, it was not the procession that came to find him; it was he who went to find the procession, of which he had perception by the effect of second sight.

A physician of our acquaintance, Mr. Félix Mallo, had been treating a young lady; but, judging that the air of Paris was harmful to her, he advised her to go and spend some time with her family, in the province, which she did. For six months he had had no further news of her, nor did he think any more about the case, when, one night, around ten o'clock, being in his room, he heard a knock at the door of the consulting room. Thinking they had come to summon him to a patient, he said to come in; but he was quite surprised to see, before him, the young lady in question, pale, dressed as he had known her, who said to him with great composure: “Mr. Mallo, I come to tell you that I have died.” And immediately she disappeared. Assuring himself that he was quite awake and that no one had entered, the physician made inquiries and learned that the woman had died on the very night on which she had appeared to him. Here, it was indeed the Spirit of the lady that came to find him. The incredulous will not fail to say that the physician might have been preoccupied with the health of his former patient, and that there is nothing surprising in his foreseeing her death; so be it. But let them explain the coincidence of her apparition with the moment of death, since for many months the physician had no longer heard her spoken of. Even supposing that he had believed in the impossibility of her cure, could he have foreseen that she would die on such a day and at such an hour? We must add that he is not a man who lets himself be shaken by the imagination. Here is another fact no less characteristic, and which could not be attributed to any foresight. One of our associates, a naval officer, was at sea when he saw his father and his brother thrown beneath a carriage: the father dead and the brother having suffered no harm. Fifteen days later, having disembarked in France, his friends tried to prepare him to receive the sad news. — “Do not take so many precautions,” he said, “I know what you are going to say: My father has died; I have known it for a fortnight.” In reality, his father and his brother, being in Paris, were driving down the Champs-Élysées in a carriage; the horse took fright, the carriage broke, the father died and the brother suffered only a few bruises. These facts are positive, present-day, and one will not say that they are legends of the Middle Ages. If everyone gathered together his recollections, one would see that such facts are more frequent than one imagines. We ask whether any of them have the characteristics of hallucination. We ask the materialists to give an explanation of the fact related in the following article.