The spiritual sense.

— A second letter from Doctor Gregory [see Homeopathy in moral maladies] contains the following:

“In a communication, Erastus enunciated an idea that surprised me and made me reflect. Man, he says, has seven senses: the well-known senses of hearing, smell, sight, taste, and touch and, in addition to these, the somnambulic sense and the mediumistic sense.

“I add to these words that these last two exist only by exception, sufficiently developed in some privileged natures, in case they exist in every man in a rudimentary state. Now, there is in me a conviction acquired through more than one observation and through a rather long experience of the homeopathic powers: it is that our medicines, well chosen and taken for a long time, can develop these two admirable faculties.”

— In our opinion it would be an error to consider somnambulism and mediumship as the product of two different senses, considering that they are but two effects resulting from one and the same cause. This double faculty is one of the attributes of the soul and has for its organ the perispirit, whose radiation transports perception beyond the limits of the action of the material senses. Properly speaking it is the sixth sense, which is designated under the name of spiritual sense. Somnambulism and mediumship are two varieties of the activity of this sense which, as is known, present innumerable nuances and constitute special aptitudes. Apart from these two faculties, more notable because more apparent, it would be an error to believe that the spiritual sense exists only in a rudimentary state. Like the other senses, it is more or less developed, or more or less subtle according to the individuals, but everyone possesses it, and it is not the one that renders the least services, by the wholly special nature of the perceptions of which it is the source. Far from being the rule, its atrophy is the exception, and may be considered as an infirmity, just like the absence of sight or of hearing. It is by this sense that we receive the fluidic effluvia of the Spirits, that we are inspired, in spite of ourselves, by their thoughts, that the intimate warnings of conscience are given to us, that we have the presentiment and the intuition of things future or absent, that there are exercised fascination, unconscious and involuntary magnetic action, the penetration of thought, etc. These perceptions are given to man by Providence, just like sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, for his preservation; they are very common phenomena, which he scarcely notices through the habit he has of experiencing them, and of which he has not been aware up to today, owing to his ignorance of the laws of the spiritual principle, to the very negation, in some, of the existence of that principle. But whoever turns his attention to the effects we have just cited, and to many others of the same nature, will recognize how frequent they are and how completely independent they are of the sensations perceived by the organs of the body.

— Spiritual sight, commonly called double sight or second sight, is a phenomenon less rare than is thought; many persons have this faculty without suspecting it; only it is more or less accentuated, and it is easy to ascertain that it is foreign to the organs of vision, since it is exercised without the aid of those organs and even the blind possess it. It exists in certain persons in the most perfect normal state, without the least apparent trace of sleep or of an ecstatic state. We know in Paris a lady in whom it is permanent, and as natural as ordinary sight; she sees without effort and without concentration the character, the habits, the antecedents of whoever approaches her; she describes diseases and prescribes effective treatments with more ease than many ordinary somnambulists; it suffices to think of an absent person for her to see and designate him. One day we were at her home and saw passing in the street someone with whom we have relations, and whom she had never seen. Without being prompted by any question, she gave him the most exact moral portrait and gave us very sensible advice concerning him. And yet, this lady is not a somnambulist. She speaks of what she sees, as she would speak of anything else, without turning aside from her occupations. Is she a medium? She herself does not know, because until a short time ago she did not even know Spiritism by name. Thus, in her this faculty is as natural and as spontaneous as possible. How does she perceive, if not by the spiritual sense? We must add that this lady has faith in the signs of the hand, examining it when they question her and saying she sees there the indication of diseases.

As she sees correctly and it is evident that many of the things she says can have no physiological relation to the hand, we are persuaded that for her it is simply a means of putting herself in relation and of developing her sight, fixing it on a determined point; the hand plays the role of magic mirror or psychic mirror; she sees in it as others see in a vase, in a bottle or in another object. Her faculty has much relation with that of the Seer of the forest of Zimmerwald, but is superior to it in certain respects. Moreover, as she draws from this no profit, this consideration removes all suspicion of charlatanism and, considering that she makes use of it only to render service, she must be assisted by good Spirits. (See the Review of October 1864: The sixth sense and spiritual vision; October 1865: New studies on psychic mirrors. The seer of the forest of Zimmerwald.)