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I repeat, mediumistic experience can show other instances of this kind. If it stood alone, it would be valueless, for it might well be explained by mere coincidence. But it forms part of a very normal series; and I could easily enumerate many others within my own knowledge. This, however, would merely mean repeating, with uninteresting variations, the essential features of the present case, a proceeding for which there would be no excuse save in a technical work.

Is success then practically certain? Yes, rash and surprising though the statement may seem, mistakes upon the whole are very rare, provided that the medium be carefully chosen and that the object serving as an intermediary have not passed through too many hands, for it will contain and reveal as many distinct personalities as it has undergone contacts. It will be necessary, therefore, first to eliminate all these accessory personalities, so as to fix the medium’s attention solely on the subject of the consultation. On the other hand, we must beware of calling for details which the nature of the medium’s vision does not allow her to give us. If asked, for instance, about a soldier who is a prisoner in Germany, she will see the soldier in question very plainly, will perceive his state of health and mind, the manner in which he is treated, his companions, the fortress or group of huts in which he is interned, the appearance of the camp, of the town, of the surrounding district; but she will very seldom indeed be able to mention the name of the camp, town or district. In fact, she can describe only what she sees; and, unless the town or camp have a board bearing its name, there will be nothing to enable her to identify it with sufficient accuracy. Let us add, lastly, that, with mediums in a state of trance, who are not conscious of what they are saying, we are exposed to terrible shocks. If they see death, they announce the fact bluntly, without suspecting that they are in the presence of a horror-stricken mother, wife or sister, so much so that, in the case of Mme. M. particularly, it has been found necessary to take certain precautions to obviate any such shock.

Now what is the nature of this strange and incredible faculty? In the book which I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I tried to examine the different theories that suggested themselves. The argument, unfortunately, is infinitely too long to be republished here, even if I were to compress it ruthlessly. I will give merely a brief summary of the conclusions, or rather of the attempted conclusions, for the mystery, like most of the world’s mysteries, is probably unfathomable. After dismissing the spiritualistic theory, which implies the intervention of the dead or of discarnate entities and is not as ridiculous as the profane would think, but which nothing hitherto has adequately confirmed, we may reasonably ask ourselves first of all whether this faculty exists in us or in the medium. Does it simply decipher, as is probably the case where the future is concerned, the latent ideas, knowledge and certainties which we bear within us, or does it alone, of its own initiative and independently of us, perceive what it reveals to us? Experience seems to show that we must adopt the latter hypothesis, for the vision appears just as distinctly when the illuminating object is brought by a third person who knows nothing and has never heard of the individual to whom the object once belonged. It seems therefore almost certain that the strange virtue is contained solely in the object itself, which is somehow galvanized by a complementary virtue in the medium. This being so, we must presume that the object, having absorbed like a sponge a portion of the spirit of the person who touched it, remains in constant communication with him, or, more probably, that it serves to track out, among the prodigious throng of human beings, the one who impregnated it with his fluid, even as the dogs employed by the police–at least so we are told–when given an article of clothing to smell, are able to distinguish, among innumerable cross-trails, that of the man who used to wear the garment in question. It seems more and more certain that, as cells of one vast organism, we are connected with everything that exists by an infinitely intricate network of waves, vibrations, influences, currents and fluids, all nameless, numberless and unbroken. Nearly always, in nearly all men, everything transmitted by these invisible threads falls into the depths of the subconsciousness and passes unperceived, which is not the same as saying that it remains inactive. But sometimes an exceptional circumstance, such as, in the present case, the marvellous sensibility of a first-rate medium, suddenly reveals to us the existence of the infinite living network by the vibrations and the undeniable operation of one of its threads.

All this, I agree, sounds incredible, but really it is hardly any more so than the wonders of radioactivity, of the Hertzian waves, of photography, electricity or hypnotism, or of generation, which condenses into a single particle all the physical, moral and intellectual past and future of thousands of creatures. Our life would be reduced to something very small indeed if we deliberately dismissed from it all that our understanding is unable to embrace.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: Chap. ii.: “Psychometry.”]