Doctor Claudius.

— A physician, whom we shall designate under the name of doctor Claudius, known to some of our colleagues, and whose life had been a profession of materialist faith, died some time ago of an organic affection, which he knew to be incurable. Attracted, no doubt, by the thought of those who had known him and who desired to know his position, he manifested himself spontaneously through Mr. Morin, one of the mediums of the Society, in a state of spontaneous somnambulism. This phenomenon has already several times been produced through this medium and through others fallen asleep in the spiritual sleep. The Spirit who thus manifests himself takes possession of the medium, makes use of his organs as if he were still alive. Then it is no longer a cold written communication; it is the expression, the pantomime, the inflection of voice of the individual one has before one’s eyes.

It was under these conditions that doctor Claudius manifested himself, without having been evoked. His communication, which we publish textually below, is instructive for several reasons, principally when it describes the sentiments that agitate him; doubt still constitutes his torment; the uncertainty of his situation plunges him into a terrible perplexity, and therein lies his punishment. It is one more example that comes to confirm what has been seen many times in similar cases.

— After a dissertation on another subject, the absorbed medium collects himself for a few moments; then, as if waking painfully, expresses himself thus, speaking to himself:

Ah! yet another system!… What is there that is true and false in human existence, in Creation, in the creature, in the Creator?… Does the thing exist?… Is matter really true?… Is Science a truth?… Is knowledge an acquisition?… The soul… does the soul exist?

The Creator, the Divinity, is it not a myth?… But, what do I say?… why these multiplied blasphemies?… Why, in the face of matter, can I not believe, O my God, can I not see, feel, understand?…

Matter!… matter!… but yes, all is matter… All is matter!!… and yet, the invocation to God came to my mouth!… Why, then, did I say: O my God?… Why this word, since all is matter?… Is it I?… Is it not an echo of my thought, which resounds and is heard?… Are they not the last peals of the bell I was tolling?

Matter!… Yes, matter exists, I feel it!… Matter exists; I have touched it!… but!… not all is matter and yet… yet everything was auscultated, palpated, touched, analyzed, dissected fiber by fiber, and nothing!… Nothing but flesh, matter ever since, from the instant the great movement halted, it too stopped!… The movement stops, the air no longer comes… But!… if all is matter, why does it no longer set itself in movement, since all that existed when it stirred, exists still?… And yet, it exists no more!…

But if I exist!… not all has ended with the body!… In truth… am I really dead?… yet, that corrosive which I nourished, which I tended with my own hands, did not pardon me!… It is true; I am dead!… But this illness which I saw be born… grow… had it a soul?

Ah! doubt! ever doubt!… in response to all my secret aspirations!… But, if it is I, O my God, if it is I… ah! grant that I recognize myself!… grant that I sense you!… because, if it is I, what a long succession of blasphemies!… what a long denial of your wisdom, of your goodness, of your justice!… What an immense responsibility of pride I took upon my head, O my God!… But, if I still have a self, I who would admit nothing beyond what was possible to the touch… I doubted your wisdom, O my God! it is just that I should doubt!… Yes, I doubted; doubt pursues me and chastises me. Oh! a thousand deaths are preferable to the doubt in which I live!… I see, I encounter old friends… and yet, all died before me! Méry, my poor madman!… but was it not I who was the madman?… does the epithet of madman suit his personality? – Let us see, then. What is madness?…

Madness!… Madness!… decidedly, madness is universal!… all men are mad in a greater or lesser degree… but his madness, his [reference to the poet Méry: A remembrance of past existences], was it not wisdom beside my own madness?… For him, the dreams, the images, the aspirations of the beyond… but, it is justice!… Did I know this unknown one, who presents himself to me unexpectedly? No, no, nothingness does not exist, because if it existed, this incarnation of negation, of crimes, of infamy, would not torture me so!… I see, but I see too late, all the evil I did!… Seeing it today, and repairing it little by little, perhaps one day I shall be worthy to see and to do good!… Systems!… prideful systems, products of human brains, this is where you lead us!… In one, it is the divinity; in another, the material and sensual divinity; in yet another, nothingness, nothingness!… Nothingness, material divinity, spiritual divinity—are they words? Oh! I beg to see, my God!… and if I exist, if you exist, grant me the favor I ask of you; accept my prayer, because I ask of you, O my God, that you make me see whether I exist, whether I am!… (These last words were said with a heartrending inflection).

Observation. – If Mr. Claudius persevered to the end in his incredulity, it was not the means of enlightening himself that he lacked. As a physician, he necessarily had a cultivated mind, a developed intelligence, a knowledge above the common, and nevertheless, this did not suffice him. In his minute investigations of dead nature and living nature, he did not glimpse God, he did not glimpse the soul! Seeing the effects, he did not know how to ascend to the cause! or, better said, he had conceived a cause in his own manner, and his pride as a savant prevented him from confessing to himself, above all from confessing in the face of the world that he could have been mistaken. A circumstance worthy of note: he died of an organic ill which he knew, by his own science, to be incurable. This ill, which he treated, was a permanent warning; the pain it caused him was a voice that cried out to him ceaselessly to think of the future. Yet, nothing could triumph over his obstinacy; he closed his eyes until the last moment. Could this man ever have become a Spiritist? Certainly not. Neither facts nor reasonings could have overcome a preconceived opinion, from which he was determined not to deviate. He was one of those men who will not surrender to evidence, because in them incredulity is innate, as belief is in others. The sense by which they may one day assimilate spiritual principles has not yet dawned; they are to spirituality as those blind from birth are to light: they do not understand it. Thus, intelligence does not suffice to lead one along the path of truth; it is like the horse that carries us, and that follows the route on which it was launched. If this route leads to a mire, it hurls the rider there; but, at the same time, it gives him the means to rise again.

Mr. Claudius having died voluntarily as a spiritual blind man, it is not to be wondered at that he did not see the light immediately; that he does not recognize himself in a world he would not study; that, dead with the idea of nothingness, he doubts his own existence, a poignant uncertainty that constitutes his torment. He fell into the precipice toward which his steed drove him. But he can rise from this fall, and he already seems to glimpse a glimmer which, if he follows it, will lead him to port. It is in his praiseworthy efforts that he must be sustained by prayer. Once he has enjoyed the benefits of the spiritual light, he will have horror of the darkness of materialism; and if one day he returns to Earth, it will be with intuitions and aspirations very different from those he had in his last existence.