Revelations on my supernatural life.

— This work is a pure and simple account, without commentary or explanations, of the mediumistic phenomena produced by Mr. Home. These phenomena are very interesting for whoever knows Spiritism and can explain them, but, by themselves, they are little convincing for unbelievers who, not even believing in what they see, believe still less in what is told to them. It is a collection of facts more suited to those who know than to those who do not know, instructive for the former, merely curious for the latter. Our intention is not to examine or discuss here these facts, which would answer a need already satisfied by the articles we published on Mr. Home in the Spiritist Review (February, March, April, and May 1858). We will only say that the simplicity of the account has a stamp of truth that one could not ignore and that, for us, there is no motive whatever for suspecting its authenticity. What can be reproached in it is the excess of monotony and the absolute absence of conclusion and of philosophical or moral deduction. The incorrections of style are also very frequent; the translation, above all in certain parts, departs considerably from the genius of the French language. If doubt is the first impression in one who cannot account for the facts, whoever has read attentively and understood our works, principally The Mediums’ Book, will recognize at least their possibility, because he will have their explanation.

— As is known, Mr. Home is a medium of physical effects of immense power. A notable peculiarity is that he unites in himself the necessary aptitude for obtaining the majority of phenomena of this kind, and this to a degree in some sense exceptional. Although malevolence has delighted in attributing to him a number of apocryphal facts, ridiculous by their exaggeration, much remains to justify his reputation. His work will have, above all, the great advantage of separating the true from the false.

The phenomena he produces transport us to the first period of Spiritism, that of the turning tables, also called the period of curiosity, that is, of the preliminary effects, which had as their aim to draw attention to the new order of things and to open the way to the philosophical period. This march was rational, inasmuch as every philosophy must be the deduction of facts conscientiously studied and observed, and one that rested only upon purely speculative ideas would have no basis. The theory, therefore, had to result from the facts, and the philosophical consequences had to result from the theory. If Spiritism had limited itself to the material phenomena, once curiosity was satisfied, it would have been merely an ephemeral fashion. One has the proof of this in the turning tables, which had only the privilege of amusing the salons during a few winters. Their vitality lay only in their usefulness. Thus, the prodigious extension it acquired dates from the epoch when it entered the philosophical path. It was only from that epoch that it took its place among the doctrines.

The observation and concordance of the facts led to the search for the causes; the search for the causes led to recognizing that the relations between the visible and invisible worlds exist by virtue of a law. Once known, this law gave the explanation of an immensity of spontaneous phenomena until then incomprehensible and reputed supernatural, before their causes were known; the causes being established, these same phenomena entered into the order of natural facts and the marvelous disappeared. In this regard, one can criticize, and with reason, the qualifier of supernatural that Mr. Home gives to his life in his work. Formerly, he would certainly have passed for a thaumaturge; in the Middle Ages, if he had been a monk, they would have made him a saint with the gift of miracles; a simple man of the people, he would have passed for a sorcerer and been burned; among the pagans, they would have made him a god and erected altars to him. But, new times, new customs. Today he is a simple medium, predestined by the power of his faculty to restrict the circle of prodigies, proving by experience that certain effects, called marvelous, do not escape the laws of Nature.

Some persons feared for the authenticity of certain miracles, seeing them fall into the public domain. As Mr. Home shared this gift with a multitude of other mediums, who also reproduced such phenomena in the sight of all the world, it really became impossible to consider them as derogations from the laws of Nature, the essential character of miraculous facts, unless one admits that the power to subvert these laws was given to the first comer. But what is to be done? One cannot prevent being that which one is; one cannot place under the bushel that which is the privilege of no one. It is necessary, therefore, to resign oneself to accepting the accomplished facts, just as the movement of the Earth and the law of its formation were accepted. If Mr. Home had been the only one of his kind, once he died, they could deny what he did; but how to deny phenomena rendered common by the multiplicity and the perpetuity of mediums, who arise daily in thousands of families, in all points of the globe? Once again, whether they wish it or not, it is necessary to accept what is and what one cannot prevent.

But if certain phenomena lose in prestige from the miraculous point of view, they gain in authenticity. Incredulity regarding miracles — it must be admitted — is the order of the day, and, for this reason, faith was really shaken. Now, in the presence of mediumistic effects and thanks to the Spiritist theory, which proves that such effects are in Nature, the possibility of these effects is demonstrated and incredulity will have to fall silent. The negation of a fact leads to the negation of its consequences. Will it be preferable to deny a fact considered miraculous rather than to admit it as a simple law of Nature? Are the laws of Nature not the work of God? Is the revelation of a new law not proof of His power? Will God be lesser for acting by virtue of His laws than by derogating from them? Besides, are miracles the exclusive attribute of divine power? Does the Church herself not teach us that “false prophets, raised up by the demon, can perform miracles and prodigies that would seduce even the elect”? If the demon can perform miracles, he can derogate from the laws of God, that is, undo what God has made. But nowhere does the Church say that the demon can make laws to govern the Universe. Now, considering that miracles can be performed by God and by the demon, and taking into account that the laws are the exclusive work of God, Spiritism, by proving that certain facts regarded as exceptions are applications of the laws of Nature, attests, by that very fact, much more the power of God than the miracles do, for it attributes only to God what, on the other hypothesis, could be the work of the demon.

— From the phenomena produced by Mr. Home another lesson stands out, and his book comes to prove what we have said many times about the insufficiency of physical manifestations to bring, by themselves alone, conviction to certain persons. It is a well-known fact that many persons, although they witnessed the most extraordinary manifestations, did not allow themselves to be convinced, because they did not understand them and because they lacked a basis on which to establish a reasoning, seeing in them only charlatanism. Certainly, if anyone were capable of vanquishing incredulity by material effects, it would be Mr. Home. No medium produced an assemblage of more surprising phenomena, nor under more honest conditions, and yet, today, a good number of those who saw him operating still treat him as a skillful prestidigitator. For many, he does very curious things, more curious than those performed by Robert Houdin; and that is all. One would be of the opinion, however, that in the presence of facts so extraordinary, rendered notorious by the number and the quality of the witnesses, all negation would be impossible and that France was going to be converted en masse. It is understandable that these phenomena were rejected when they occurred only in America, given the impossibility of their being seen. But Mr. Home came to show them to the cream of society, and, even there, he found more curious people than believers, although he defied all suspicion based on charlatanism. What was lacking in such communications to convince? They lacked the key to being understood. Today there is not a single Spiritist who, having studied the science somewhat seriously, does not admit all the facts related in Mr. Home’s book, without having seen them, whereas, among those who saw them, there is more than one unbeliever, as if to prove that what speaks to the spirit and rests upon reasoning has a power of conviction that what merely strikes the eyes does not possess. Does it follow that Mr. Home’s coming was useless? Certainly not. We have said and we repeat: he hastened the emergence of Spiritism in France, by the brilliance he cast upon the phenomena, even among the unbelievers, proving that they are not surrounded by mysteries, nor by ridiculous formulas of magic, and that one can be a medium without having the air of a sorcerer; in short, by the repercussion that his name and the world he frequented gave to the matter. His coming, then, was very useful, even were it only to give Mr. Oscar Comettant the opportunity to speak and to make the witty article that is known, for which the author only lacked knowing what he wished to criticize, absolutely as if a man, who understood nothing of music, wished to criticize Mozart or Beethoven. (See the account of Mr. Home’s work by Mr. Comettant, in the Siècle of July 15, 1863, and a few words of ours in the Spiritist Review of the following month of August).

[1] One vol. In-12; translated from English. Price: 3 fr. 50, and not 2 fr., as was erroneously announced in the preceding issue of the Review. By post, 3 fr. 90.