CHAPTER XVI

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH IN MODERN EUROPE

UNDER the name of psychical research the phenomena of Spiritualism are being carefully and cautiously investigated in Great Britain, and also, to a very great extent, in France, so much so, indeed, that in Paris it is almost impossible to avoid meeting talented and influential people who are actively engaged in this important and alluring study. When the writer, in 1895, was the honored guest of Marie, Countess of Caithness, Duchesse of Pomar,—known all over the literary world as a learned and enthusiastic exponent of Spiritualism and Theosophy,—at the magnificent palace in Ave Wagram, named Holyrood in honor of Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, whom the duchess believed to be her spiritual guardian, all sorts of interesting people gathered in the splendid salon to discuss all conceivable aspects of psychic science. It was then that many of the movements which have now grown to large proportions were in a comparatively incipient stage, though even then Spiritism as set forth by “Allan Kardec” was a well established cult, possessing an extensive literature and represented by many gifted men and women of high social standing and far more than average intelligence. Three of Allan Kardec’s works—“The Mediums’ Book,” “The Spirits’ Book,” and “Heaven and Hell”—had long been translated into excellent English by the famous Anna Blackwell, and still another—“Genesis”—translated by the present writer, had appeared in America.

These four books constitute the leading text-books of European Spiritists, who nearly all accept the doctrine of reincarnation as well as spirit-communion. The work of the Leymaries has long been widely and favorably known, and at the headquarters of the organization of which P. G. Leymarie (now succeeded by his son) was long the head, every phase of mysterious phenomena is persistently and critically investigated.

The fine premises known as 42 Rue Saint Jacques, are the centre of spiritistic operations participated in by many of the most famous scientists in Europe, for in France and Italy scientific men of recognized high standing are foremost in the ranks of psychical investigation. The works of Flamarion, the world-renowned astronomer, have done very much to popularize enquiry into everything "occult"; his splendid collection of well authenticated facts, published as "L'Inconnu" (an English edition of which bears the title "The Unknown") has served to open the eyes of very many who might never have been led to investigate had it not been for the prestige given to the enquiry by so great a scientist.

Victorien Sardou, the famous playwright, for a great many years has been a prominent advocate of Spiritualism, and it is well known that Victor Hugo and many others among French "immortals" have vouched for the reality of spirit-communion.

The Martinists and various other mystic orders have influential membership in Paris which, despite its frivolity on the surface, has a deep undercurrent of genuine spirituality, which no skepticism or indifference has ever been able effectually to quell.

We hear of "Satanism," which is Black Art and altogether opposed to true Spiritualism, Occultism and Theosophy, but that is but a sad perversion of a mighty and glorious force which, when rightly understood and wisely handled is capable of contributing enormously to human welfare. Despite the constantly reiterated assertion that France is atheistic in its modern tendency, nothing can be further from the truth so far as its most enlightened citizens are concerned. The Republic has indeed exalted State above Church, but, in so doing, though it has completely secularized education, it has cleared the way for a new and perfectly unfettered investigation of the secrct forces of Nature which can now be fearlessly conducted, without fear of interruption, unless deeds are performed so much at variance with common rights and liberties that the arm of civil law must be invoked, in which case the wrong-doing of clairvoyants, palmists, astrologers and others must be justly dealt with precisely as similar misdemeanors committed by other classes of society. Clairvoyants in France are numerous and often very reliable, though too many seers and seeresses are unduly given to enlarging upon the dark side of whatever they psychically discern. France is a curiously impressionable country; its very atmosphere seems favorable to psychical development, and the ready impressionability of its inhabitants makes it far less difficult for spiritual views of life to gain a footing there than in lands where the temperament and habits of the people incline to the solid rather than to the volatile.

The influence exerted by the Duchesse de Pomar was exceedingly great, as she combined with ample means and high station a superb intellectual equipment for literary enterprises in which she magnificently excelled. For many years the fine monthly magazine she edited L'Aurore was the paper par excellence in which might always be found the latest and most brilliant utterances of the greatest thinkers in Europe who undertook to treat on psychic themes. When that truly noble lady passed to spirit-life in the autumn of 1895, no one was found to exactly fill the place the good duchess had left vacant; but, though such was literally the sad fact a perfect host of honorable and capable men and women have arisen on all sides to sustain and further develop interest in all that pertains to the psychic side of human nature. That very popular American periodical, Everybody’s Magazine, published a finely illustrated article (March, 1906) by Vance Thompson, entitled “The Invisible World,” in which the public has been treated to an insight into spiritualistic and occult doings which must have proved a great eye-opener to those belated people who do not know that this scientific twentieth century is most keenly alive to the evidences of life immortal and that European as well as American and Australian capitals are centres of investigation, leading rapidly to results which are completely demolishing materialism and putting to rout at the same instant perverted religious dogmatism. A photograph of Spiritualist Headquarters in London shows a fine building in Hanover Square, a most fashionable West End district, the seat of the famous St. George’s Church, famed as the historic fane in which countless aristocratic marriages have been celebrated. The next illustration shows us the interior of the great hall in Rue d’ Athènes, Paris, where a highly distinguished company of learned men and women are seen seated at a conference of the Society for psychical Research, of which Professor Charles Richet is president. This body has had in its presidential chair at different times Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and others among the most distinguished scientists of the present age. Such men are neither charlatans nor the dupes of tricksters, and it is they, and others like them, who are now conducting intricate and elaborate investigations which are bearing abundant fruit, though the measures employed seem often unnecessarily slow and laborious to convinced spiritualists, for whom these tedious proceedings appear not to be necessary; but such should never lose sight of the important fact that the scientific world is not made up of lucides or sensitives, and the outside non-sensitive public is demanding a record of scientifically conducted experiments prior to accepting as proven the stupendous, though intrinsically simple, facts for which these learned savants are prepared to vouch.

Another photograph shows Flamarion lecturing on some phase of Spiritualism in which he has been deeply and critically interested from his youth. Celebrities and their endorsement mean much to many minds, and rightly so in some senses, for men who are devoting their lives industriously to the pursuit of any branch of science, provided their researches are being honorably conducted, are justly entitled to our attention and esteem. It takes the trained observer and experimentalist to carefully weigh all minor points in evidence, and if these are neglected, testimony otherwise valuable often remains decidedly inconclusive.

Major Darget’s portrait is also presented as one interested in matters occult, and he as discoverer of the “N Ray” has long been one of the brilliant and highly-honored lights in French scientific circles.

A comparatively new word is now in constant use—metapsychical, which undoubtedly means much more than the old metaphysical and it has a congenial companion in supernormal, which has largely driven from the vocabulary of culture the ancient supernatural. Terms are valuable to the extent that they clearly express ideas, but no further, and if the new word metapsychical proves a successful candidate for scientific honors, scientific men who use it must be prepared to define exactly what they mean by psychical, and then go on to define meta, which properly means beyond. That extremely foolish phrase “unconscious mind,” which we regret to discover is holding high carnival in reputable literature, conveys no intelligible idea to the average thoughtful reader. Super and sub, meaning respectively higher and lower, may be allowed to stand as expressive prefixes, but un is a negative term, and therefore definable only as an expression of negation. There is no unconscious mind, though the mind may be expressed on various planes in diverse manners.

The savants of Europe who are busy wrestling with occult problems, are certainly on their way to many valuable discoveries, but many of their present positions are purely tentative, and as they honestly and fearlessly admit, they are not afraid to propose hypotheses temporarily and then abandon one hypothesis in favor of another when further knowledge compels the taking of some more advanced position. “Everything is possible; nothing is proved.” Such is the introductory statement likely to be made by the scientific researcher who, standing on the threshold of a vast unknown, refuses to pronounce anything unknowable. In like manner are we dropping from our vocabulary, when we seek to be rigidly scientific in our choice of terms, such familiar, but often misleading, words as invisible, inaudible, incurable, incorrigible, and many more of the same family. As substitutes for the terms we are discarding we are bringing rightly into prominent employ such reasonable and useful words as unseen, unheard, uncorrected, and many more of like import which do not close the door upon any sort of investigation, but only describe an immediate and temporary agnostic attitude, which may at any moment yield to a gnostic position as a result of successful new discovery.

Much stress is laid in many quarters upon the dangers to ill-balanced minds resulting from too close attention given to things mysterious; but, though caution is doubtless needed, and there have been some sad catastrophes resulting apparently from unwise dabbling in the “occult,” it must not be forgotten that scientific research in general, as well as the pursuit of further application of the principles of mechanics, has never been unattended with some degree of danger as well as difficulty. It is therefore only puerile to cry out against investigation because danger and difficulty, to some extent, surround the gate of the temple of higher knowledge. Where would have been the great railways, canals, electric cables, and a thousand other valuable appliances in the modern world if inventors and explorers had been scared from their work by the parrot-cry of those whom Longfellow well described in his poetic gem “Excelsior,” but to whose croakings and warnings the intrepid Alpine climber would pay no heed? Timid people whose nerves are weak and whose hearts are in a pathological condition must move very cautiously in all directions; but the stronger and healthier members of the human race will never content themselves with following directions adapted only to the needs of the weakest specimens. But though there are dangers as well as difficulties along the road of psychical investigation, the uncanny aspects of the question are greatly exaggerated, and in almost all cases where insanity and crime have been attributed to psychic investigation or to the development and exercise of "mediumship," it has been found after more close examination that quite other causes than those alleged by the enemies of Spiritualism had been manifestly working to produce disastrous ends.

Religious revivals and all forms of emotional excitement are very dangerous for some people, and much as we may wish to reform Spiritualistic methods, as we certainly desire also to reform religious propaganda, we cannot do either by holding up to unreasonable execration an entire system because it manifests certain grave faults which greatly need correction. Ella Wheeler Wilcox gave excellent advice to multitudes through the medium of the Hearst newspapers when she counseled astrologers, palmists, clairvoyants and all to whom the public go to "get their fortunes told," to exercise great wisdom in plying their vocation, for her good sense and wide experience in the world had fully assured her that people will enquire into the mysterious, precisely as they will visit doctors, lawyers, and many other classes of people when they are in doubt or trouble. We certainly cannot prevent the exercise of psychic gifts or the investigation of aught that is "occult" in private, even though the law should put down its public practice, we are only reasonable, therefore, in so far as we determine to accept an existing situation and seek to make the best of it in the truly practical way of setting to work to improve and refine what cannot be abolished.

The darker aspects of Parisian Occultism have no connection whatever with scientific research or with Spiritualism, and though they are getting a good deal of advertising they exercise only a very slight influence in any other than the most morally depraved circles of society. Spirit pictures, drawn automatically through the hand of the distinguished etcher Ferdinand Demoulins, have excited much attention among Parisians, and spirit photographs vouched for by the famous Col. de Rochas are also objects of considerable interest.

All these things are very wonderful, and the attention they excite is more than transitory, but even these marvels pale in genuine importance, in the esteem of many, in the presence of the wonderful works of healing which are constantly attested by competent witnesses, who know of the immense benefit derived by many sufferers through the agency of psychic treatment or psycho-therapy, often clumsily designated hypnotism, which is a misleading term unless applied exclusively to methods which induce sleep or are in some way connected with it, as hypnosis from the Greek hypnos must always properly mean a state of somnolence, and very many cases of psychic cure have nothing whatever to do in any sense of the word with any somnambulic condition.

Professor Durville, one of the leaders of the Magnetic School (L’École Magnétique,—25 Rue Saint Merri) has recently achieved much prominence, and there are many others in Paris to whom the suffering public is greatly indebted for relief from distressing maladies. If it be asserted that nervous cases and diseases of the imagination are almost the only types of malady which are successfully treated by psychic methods, then be it so, if such shall prove the case, but even did we make so exaggerated an admission we should still be compelled to gratefully acknowledge that a beneficent agency is at work which is grappling successfully with many of the obscurest and most distressing ailments which baffle at every turn the skill of the most eminent physicians.

Telepathy is pronounced ‘‘an acquired certainty’’ by those who have studiously proved it, and instead of Spiritualists displaying wisdom by fighting shy of it as though it were an offset to spirit-communion, it is found to be exactly the reverse as further researches in psychology are constantly demonstrating with ever-brightening conclusiveness that the telepathic faculty survives physical dissolution, and can be and often is employed by our discarnate as well as by our incarnate friends, when seeking to communicate. Vance Thompson tells us that while accepted Science does not go quite so far as Occultism, it certainly sets forth the following propositions:

1st. There exist in Nature certain unknown forces capable of acting on matter.

2d. We possess other means of knowledge than those of reason or the senses.

This second statement applies to the subjective phenomena of ‘‘metaphysics,’’ which includes telepathy, second sight, clairvoyance, and all else that is closely allied with such a broad general classification.

While speaking of French institutions, we must not forget to mention the temple of the Martinists (the cult founded by Claude de Saint–Martin) in the Latin Quarter (13 Rue Sequier), of which Dr. Encausse, generally known as ‘‘Papus’’ is the leader. This society has spread the world over, and has recently established itself quite successfully in America under the leadership of Mrs. Margaret Peake, whose home is at Sandusky, Ohio. As author of “Born of Flame,” “Zenia the Vestal,” and other thrilling occult stories, this gifted woman is quite a literary celebrity, and in Boston, a city she often visits and where she is highly esteemed, with the coöperation of Dr. F. J. Miller, a prominent teacher and practitioner of mental and spiritual therapeutics, a Martinist lodge has been established; the opening sessions of which were held in the office of Dr. Miller in the Oxford Hotel, Huntington Avenue, late in 1905. Sardou has done much to popularize Spiritualism by his famous plays, and we see no cause for reasonable doubt that ere long the stage will prove one of the most efficient aids to helping forward a knowledge of psychic forces as the morality and miracle plays in the time of Queen Elizabeth were influential in spreading the religious and ethical opinions of that period, and it cannot be successfully denied that at the present time strong plays which introduce a psychic element are very popular.

In Italy all phases of psychic phenomena are undergoing close examination. The eminent Lombroso and other world-renowned scientific celebrities take prominent part in psychical investigation, and very persistent as well as rigidly analytical investigators do they prove to be.

Fanatical churchmen may howl “devil,” and materialists may scoff at every attempt to unseat their favorite fallacies, but Spiritualism has come to stay, and though in many quarters it has been unhappily saddled with excrescences which need removing (and are even now being removed) it is beyond question that a comprehensive spiritual philosophy is the coming philosophy, uniting, as it does, science with religion, and restoring knowledge of a spiritual universe coupled with acceptance of all that experimental science can reveal. Europe is undergoing a spiritual renaissance, and France is heading the advancing hosts which are patiently and industriously marching forward to ever-increasing victory.