Fantastic creations of the imagination.

— L'Evénement of June 19, 1866 contains the following article:

“Strange facts, still unexplained, occurred last year in Auxerre and agitated the population. The partisans of Spiritism saw in them manifestations of their doctrine, and the clergy considered them as new examples of possession; they spoke of exorcisms, as if the fine days of the Ursulines of Loudun had returned. The person around whom all this noise was being made was called Cantianille B… A vicar of the cathedral of Sens, the abbé Thorey, authorized by his bishop, ascertained these apparent derogations to the natural laws. Today this ecclesiastic publishes, under the title Marvelous relations of Madame Cantianille B… with the supernatural world, n the result of his observations. He brings us a sample of his work, and it is with pleasure that we extract from it a passage, curious under several aspects. In his preface the author, after having set forth the plan of the book, adds:

“May my reader, in perusing these pages, not precipitate his judgment; without doubt these facts will seem incredible to him, but I beg him to remember that we affirm under oath, Cantianille and I, the truth of these facts. In the account that follows, nothing exaggerated nor invented at will; everything in it is perfectly exact.

“Moreover these facts, these prodigious manifestations of the superior world repeat themselves every day and as often as I desire. We ask that you not believe us upon our simple affirmation; on the contrary, we earnestly beseech that you study them; that there be held gatherings of competent men, who desire only the truth and are disposed to seek it loyally. All these marvels will reproduce themselves before you and as many times as necessary to convince you. We undertake a commitment.

“May the spirits of broad ideas regard this book as good news!”

In the course of the work, Cantianille B… recounts how she became member and president of a society of Spirits, in 1840, during her stay in a convent of nuns:

“Ossian (Spirit of the second order), having come, as usual, to fetch me at the convent, I soon found myself transported into the midst of the gathering. He placed me upon a throne, where the most uproarious applause greeted my appearance.

“They made me utter the customary oath: I swear to offend God by every possible means and to recoil before nothing to make hell triumph over heaven. I love Satan! I hate God! I want the fall of heaven and the reign of hell!…

“After this, each one came to congratulate me and to encourage me to show myself strong in the trials that remained for me to endure. I promised.

“Those cries, that tumult, that solicitude of each one, the music and the beams of light that lit up the hall, all electrified me, intoxicated me! Then I cried out in a strong voice: ‘I am ready; I do not fear your trials; you shall see whether I am worthy of being one of yours.’ At once all noise ceased, all light disappeared. ‘March,’ a voice said to me. Without doubt I advanced through a narrow corridor, for I felt on each side as if two walls, and these seemed to draw nearer and nearer. I thought I was going to suffocate and terror took hold of me. I wished to turn back; but, at the same instant, I felt myself in the arms of Ossian. He exerted upon my whole body a pressure so keen that I let out a piercing cry. ‘Be silent,’ he said to me, ‘or you shall be dead.’ The danger restored my courage… “‘No, I will cry out no more; no, I will not recoil.’ And, making a superhuman effort, I cleared the long corridor in a single bound, which became darker and narrower and narrower. Despite my efforts, my dismay redoubled and I was perhaps about to flee, when, suddenly, the ground failing beneath my feet, I fell into an abyss whose depth I could not gauge. I remained an instant stunned by that fall, without, however, losing courage. An infernal thought had just crossed my mind. ‘Ah! they want to terrify me!… They shall see whether I fear the demons…’ And at once I rose to seek a way out. But… behold, on all sides flames appeared!… They approached me as if to burn me… “And, in the midst of that fire, the Spirits crying out, howling, what terror!

“‘What do you want with me?’ I asked Ossian.

“— I want you to be the president of our association… I want you to help us hate God; I want you to swear to be ours, for us and with us, everywhere and forever!’ “As soon as I made these promises the fire went out suddenly.

“‘Do not flee me,’ he said to me, ‘I bring you happiness and grandeur. Look.’ I found myself in the midst of the associates, in the middle of the hall, which they had embellished in my absence. — A sumptuous repast was served.

“There they gave me the place of honor; and, at the end, when all were heated by the wine and the liqueurs and overexcited by the music, I was named president.

“He who had delivered me up brought out in a few words the courage I had shown in those terrible trials and, amid a thousand cheers, I accepted the fatal title of president.

“I was thus at the head of several thousand persons attentive to the least sign. — I had but one thought: to merit their confidence and their submission. Unfortunately, I succeeded only too well.”

— The author is right in saying that the partisans of Spiritism may see in these facts manifestations of their doctrine. It is because, in fact, Spiritism, for those who have studied it elsewhere than in the school of Messieurs Davenport and Robin [See: The misunderstandings], is the revelation of a new principle, of a new law of Nature, which gives us the reason for that which, for lack of anything better, it has been agreed to attribute to the imagination. This principle is in the extracorporeal world, intimately bound to our existence. He who does not admit the individual soul, independent of matter, rejecting the cause a priori, cannot explain its effects. And yet, these effects are incessantly before our eyes, innumerable and patent; following them step by step in their filiation, one arrives at the source. This is what Spiritism does, proceeding always by way of observation, going back from the effect to the cause, and never by preconceived theory. Here is a capital point, upon which we could never insist too much. Spiritism did not take as its point of departure the existence of Spirits and of the invisible world, as a gratuitous supposition, save to prove that existence later, but in the observation of facts, and from facts ascertained it concluded to the theory. This observation led it to recognize not only the existence of the soul as the principal being, since in it reside intelligence and sensations, and it survives the body, but that phenomena of a particular order occur in the sphere of the activity of the soul, incarnate or disincarnate, beyond the perception of the senses. As the action of the soul is essentially bound to that of the organism during life, it is a vast and new field of exploration opened to psychology and to physiology, and in which Science will find what it has uselessly sought for so long. Thus Spiritism has found a profound principle, which does not mean that it can explain everything. The knowledge of the laws of electricity gave the explanation of the effects of lightning. No one treated this question with more learning and lucidity than Arago and, nevertheless, in that phenomenon so common, lightning, there are effects that he declares, despite his wisdom, he cannot explain, for example, that of forked lightning. Does he deny them for this? No, because he has too much good sense and, besides, one cannot deny a fact. What does he do? He says: let us observe and wait until we are more advanced. Spiritism acts no differently; it confesses its ignorance concerning that which it does not know and, hoping to know it, it seeks and observes. The visions of Mme. Cantianille belong to that category of questions concerning which, in a certain way, one cannot, until fuller information, do other than attempt an explanation. We believe we find it in the principle of the fluidic creations by thought.

— When the visions have for their object a positive, real thing, whose existence is ascertained, their explanation is very simple: the soul sees, by effect of its irradiation, what the eyes of the body cannot see. Had Spiritism explained nothing but this, it would already have lifted the veil over many mysteries. But the question becomes complicated when it concerns visions which, like those of Mme. Cantianille, are purely fantastic. How can the soul see what does not exist? Whence come these images which, for those who see them, have all the appearance of reality? They say they are effects of the imagination. So be it; but these effects have a cause. In what does this power of the imagination consist? How and upon what does it act? If a fearful person, on hearing a noise of mice during the night, is seized with terror and imagines hearing the steps of robbers; if she takes a shadow or a vague form for a living being that pursues her, there are true effects of the imagination; but, in visions of the kind of those in question here, there is something more, because it is no longer merely a false idea, it is an image with its forms and colors, so clear and so precise that they could be drawn; and yet, they are no more than illusion! Whence comes this? To render ourselves account of what occurs in this circumstance, we must come out of our exclusively material point of view, and penetrate, by thought, into the incorporeal world, identify ourselves with its nature and with the special phenomena that must occur in a medium entirely different from ours. We are here below in the position of a spectator who marvels at a scenic effect, because he does not understand its mechanism; but, if he goes behind the wings, everything will be explained to him.

In our world, everything is tangible matter. In the invisible world everything is, if we may so express ourselves, intangible matter, that is, intangible for us who perceive only by material organs, but tangible for the beings of that world, who perceive by spiritual senses. Everything is fluidic in that world, men and things, and fluidic things are there as real, relatively, as material things are for us. Here is a first principle.

— The second principle is in the modifications that thought makes the fluidic element undergo. One may say that it molds it at will, as we mold a portion of earth to make of it a statue; only, earth being a compact and resistant matter, to manipulate it requires a resistant instrument, whereas the ethereal matter undergoes without effort the action of thought. Under that action, it is susceptible of taking on all forms and all appearances. It is thus that one sees Spirits still little dematerialized present themselves as having in their hand the objects they had in life, clothe themselves with the same garments, wearing the same ornaments and taking on, at will, the same appearances. The queen of Oude, whose interview we published in the Review of March 1858, was always seen with her jewels and said that these had never left her. For this an act of thought suffices them, without, most often, their rendering account of the manner in which the thing operates, just as among the living many people walk, see, and hear without being able to say how and why. Such was still the Spirit of the zouave of Magenta (Review of July 1859), who said he had his very dress and who, when asked where he had obtained it, since his had remained on the battlefield, answered: That is my tailor's affair. We have cited several facts of this kind, among others that of the man with the snuffbox (August 1859) and that of Pierre Legay (November 1864), who paid his fare on the omnibus. These fluidic creations can sometimes take on, for the living, appearances momentarily visible and tangible, because they are due, in reality, to a transformation of the ethereal matter. The principle of the fluidic creations seems to be one of the most important laws of the incorporeal world. The incarnate soul, partially enjoying in its moments of emancipation the faculties of the free Spirit, can produce analogous effects. Therein may be the cause of the so-called fantastic visions. When the Spirit is strongly imbued with an idea, its thought can create for it a fluidic image which, for it, has all the appearances of reality, just as well as the money of Pierre Legay, although the thing does not exist of itself. Such is, without doubt, the case in which Mme. Cantianille found herself. Preoccupied with the account that was given her of hell, of the demons and their temptations, of the pacts by which they seize souls, of the tortures of the damned, her thought created for her a fluidic picture, which had reality only for her.

— One may classify in the same category the visions of Sister Elmerich, who affirmed having seen all the scenes of the Passion and having found the chalice from which Jesus had drunk, as well as other objects analogous to those in use in the present-day cult, which certainly did not exist in that epoch and of which, nevertheless, she gave a minute description. In saying that she had seen all this, she acted in good faith, because she had really seen with the eyes of the soul, but a fluidic image, created by her thought.

All visions have their principle in the perceptions of the soul, as corporeal sight has its own in the sensibility of the optic nerve, but they vary in their cause and in their object. The less developed the soul is, the more susceptible it is of creating illusion concerning what it sees; its imperfections render it subject to error. The most dematerialized are those whose perceptions are the most extensive and the most accurate; nevertheless, however imperfect they may be, their faculties are no less useful for study. If this explanation does not offer an absolute certainty, it has at least an evident character of probability. It proves, above all, one thing: that the Spiritists are not so credulous as their detractors pretend and do not bow their heads to all that seems marvelous. For them, therefore, not all visions are articles of faith; but, be they what they may, illusions or truths, they are effects that could not be denied. They study them and seek to render account of them, without the pretension of knowing everything and of explaining everything. They do not affirm a thing except when it is demonstrated by the evidence. In this way, to accept everything would be as inconsequent as to deny everything. [1]

[Rapports merveilleux de Mme Cantianille B… avec le monde surnaturel - Google Books.]