One More Word on Artificial Specters and to Mr. Oscar Comettant.

One more word on artificial specters and to Mr. Oscar Comettant.

(Summary)

Article by Edmond Texier, in the Siècle, on the apparitions of specters on the stages of salons and theaters.

Comments by Allan Kardec on these theatrical simulations.

Mr. Oscar Comettant and his feuilleton on Mr. Home's book.

There is not a single medium who can boast of communicating indistinctly with all the Spirits.

On fluidic attraction or repulsion between communicating Spirit and medium: There can, therefore, be between the Spirit and the medium an attraction or repulsion, according to the degree of sympathetic affinity. Sympathy is founded upon moral similarities and affection.

Paid evocations: Now, what sympathy can a Spirit have for a medium who calls upon it only for money? (…) Perhaps they will say that the Spirit comes for the person who calls it and not for the medium, who is merely an instrument.

As to the value of real mediumship and of simulated or abusive mediumship.

— The weekly review of the Siècle of July 12, 1863, carried the following paragraph:

“Apart from these important questions, there are others, of a different order, which likewise cannot be neglected, among them the so expressive question of specters. Have you seen the specters? For about a week now the specter has been the only subject capable of diverting conversations a little. Thus, every theater has its own — specters of honest scoundrels who robbed, plundered, murdered, and who return, impalpable shades, to walk about at midnight, in the fifth act of a strongly contrived drama. This secret of the specter, or, to speak the language of the wings, this trick, said to be so dear to an Englishman, is of so elementary a simplicity that all the theaters have had their specters on the same day, this one more costly than that. After the theater the specter passed into the salon, where it enlivens the merry evenings of gentlemen and ladies, greatly excited by this amiable spectromania. Here is a diversion that arrives at just the right moment to explain many marvels, and I wish to speak, above all, of the marvels of Spiritism. Much has been said of those Spiritists who evoke the dead, who, in private, are shown to terrified believers. With the help of a simple trick, the same task can be accomplished without passing for a great sorcerer. This general evocation of specters strikes a fatal blow at the marvelous, now that it is proven that it is no more difficult to make phantoms appear than people of flesh and bone. Mr. Home himself in person must by now have lost seventy-five percent of the esteem of his numerous admirers. “The ideal turns to dust at the touch of the real. The real is the trick.”

Edmond Texier.

— We were right to say, regarding this new phantasmagoric process, that the newspapers would not fail to speak of Spiritism. Already the Indépendance belge had expressed its lively satisfaction, exclaiming: “How will the Spiritists get out of this?” We will simply tell these gentlemen to inquire how Spiritism is faring. What stands out most clearly from these articles is, as always, the proof of the most complete ignorance of the subject they attack. Indeed, one must know almost nothing to believe that Spiritists gather to make phantoms appear. Now, the strangest thing is that we have never seen any, not even in the theaters, although, according to these gentlemen, we are greatly interested in the question.

Mr. Robin, the conjurer cited in our preceding article of the month of July, goes further: it is not only Spiritism that he claims to demolish, but the Bible itself. In his daily address to his spectators, he asserts that the apparition of Samuel to Saul occurred by the same process as his own. We did not imagine that the science of optics was so advanced in that era, among the Hebrews, who were not reputed to be very cultivated. Such being the case, it was no doubt also by means of some trick that Jesus appeared to his disciples.

Since the false specters do not produce the expected result, we shall no doubt soon see some new stratagem arise. They will have their day, like everything whose only result is to satisfy curiosity; that day may perhaps be shorter than one thinks, for people quickly tire of what leaves nothing in the mind. Thus, the theaters will do well to take advantage of them while they have the privilege of attracting the crowd by the seduction of novelty. Their apparition will always have had the advantage of making people speak of Spiritism and of spreading its idea. Like any other, it was a means of prompting many people to inquire after the truth.

— What shall we say of Mr. Oscar Comettant's feuilleton on Mr. Home's book, published in the Siècle of July 15, 1863? Nothing, except that it is the best advertisement for selling the work, of which Spiritism will take advantage [See: Revelations on My Supernatural Life, by D. D. Home]. It is useful that, from time to time, there be these lashes of the whip, to awaken the attention of the indifferent. If the article is neither Spiritist nor spiritualist, is it at least witty? We leave it to others to pronounce on that.

There is, however, something good in this article: it is that the author, like several of his colleagues, falls without pity or mercy upon those who make a profession of the mediumistic faculty; he censures with just severity the abuses resulting therefrom, and thus contributes to discrediting them, of which serious Spiritism could not complain, since it itself repudiates all exploitation of this kind as unworthy of the exclusively moral character of Spiritism and as a blow to the respect owed to the dead. Mr. Comettant errs in generalizing what would be, at most, a rare exception and, above all, in identifying mediums with conjurers, card-dealers, fortune-tellers, and mountebanks, because he has seen mountebanks take the name of mediums, as one sees charlatans passing themselves off as physicians. He seems to be unaware that there are mediums among the members of families of the highest classes; that there are even some among certain writers of renown, held in great esteem by himself and his friends; that it is well known that Mme. Émile de Girardin was an excellent medium. We would be curious to know whether he would dare to say to their faces that they are tricksters. If those who speak thus would take the trouble to study before speaking, they would know that the exercise of mediumship requires a profound recollection, incompatible with frivolity of character and the uproar of the curious, and that nothing serious is to be expected in public gatherings. Spiritism disapproves of every experiment of mere curiosity, conducted for the purpose of amusement, for one ought not to amuse oneself with these things. The Spirits, that is, the souls of those who have left the Earth, of our relatives and friends, which has nothing amusing about it, come to instruct and moralize us, and not to entertain the idle; they do not come to predict the future, nor to discover secrets or hidden treasures; they come to teach us that there is another life, and how we ought to conduct ourselves in order to be happy in it, which, for certain people, is hardly recreational. Even if one does not believe in the soul and in the survival of those who were dear to us, it is always improper to expose this belief to ridicule, if only out of respect for their memory. Spiritism also teaches us that the Spirits are not at anyone's orders; that they come when they wish and to whom they wish; that whoever claims to have them at his disposal and to govern them at will may, with full reason, pass for an ignorant person or a charlatan; that it is as illogical as it is irreverent to admit that serious Spirits would submit to the caprice of the first comer who claims to evoke them, at any hour and at so much per session, to make them play the part of a supernumerary; that there is even an instinctive feeling of repugnance attached to the idea that the soul of the being one mourns should come in exchange for money.

— On the other hand, it is a principle consecrated by experience that the Spirits do not communicate easily, nor willingly, through certain mediums; that among the latter there are some absolutely repulsive to certain Spirits, which is easily understood when one knows the manner in which communication operates, by the assimilation of fluids. There can, therefore, be between the Spirit and the medium an attraction or repulsion, according to the degree of sympathetic affinity. Sympathy is founded upon moral similarities and affection. Now, what sympathy can a Spirit have for a medium who calls upon it only for money?

Perhaps they will say that the Spirit comes for the person who calls it and not for the medium, who is merely an instrument. Agreed; but the fluidic conditions are no less necessary for that, conditions essentially modified by moral sentiments and by the personal relations between the Spirit and the medium. This is the reason why there is not a single medium who can boast of communicating indistinctly with all the Spirits, a capital difficulty for anyone who would wish to exploit them. This is what we teach Mr. Comettant, since he is unaware of it, and which destroys the assimilations he claims to establish. Real mediumship is a precious faculty, which acquires all the more value the more it is employed for good and is exercised religiously and with total disinterestedness, moral and material. As for simulated or abusive mediumship, in whatever form, we deliver it over to all the severities of criticism. It would be to ignore the most elementary principles of Spiritism to imagine that it constitutes itself the defender of such mediumship and that the legal repression of an abuse, should it occur, would be a shock. No repression could reach the mediums who do not make a profession of their faculty and do not depart from the moral path traced out for them by the doctrine. The weapons that abuses furnish to detractors, ever eager to seize upon occasions for censure, even to invent them when they do not exist, make stand out all the more, in the eyes of sincere Spiritists, the necessity of showing that there is no solidarity whatever between the true doctrine and those who parody it.