O Livro dos Médiuns — Part II, ch. VI — Visual manifestations

101TJi covet ical Essay on Apparitions
The most ordinary apparent manifestations take place during sleep, by dreams; these are visions. It does not enter into our plan to examine all the particularities that dreams may present; we sum up by saying they may be an actual vision of things present or absent; a retrospective vision of the past; and, in some exceptional cases, a presentiment of the future. Often, also, they are allegorical pictures which the spirits cause to pass"before our eyes, to give us useful warnings or salutary advice, if they are good spirits; or to lead us into error, or to flatter our passions, if they are imperfect spirits. The following theory applies to dreams as to all other cases of apparitions. (See Book on Spirits, Nos. 400 and following.)
We should consider it an insult to the good sense of our readers to refute all the absurdities of what is commonly called the interpretation of dreams.

102Apparitions proper take place in a waking state, during the full and entire liberty of the faculties.- They are usually presented under a vaporous and diaphanous form, sometimes vague and indistinct; it is often at first a white light whose outline is gradually developed. At other times the forms are perfectly defined, and the smallest features can be distinguished, so that an exact description of them could be given. The manner, the aspect, are the same as were those of the spirit when living.
Being able to take all appearances, the spirit presents himself under that by which he could be most readily recognized, if such is his desire. Thus, although, as a spirit, he has no corporeal infirmity, he will show himself disabled, lame, humpbacked, wounded, with scars, if that is necessary to establish his identity. ^sop, for example, as a spirit, is not deformed; but if he is evoked as ^Esop, even should he since have had many existences, he will appear ugly and humpbacked, with the traditional costume. One remarkable thing is that, except in some particular instances, the least defined parts are the inferior members, while the head, the trunk, the arms, the hands, are always perfectly shown; also they are rarely seen to walk, but glide like shadows. As to the costume, it is ordinarily composed of a drapery ending in long, floating folds/or with hair in flowing, graceful curls, the appearance of spirits who have preserved nothing of terrestrial things; but the common spirits, those whom one has known, usually wear the costume of the latter part of their life. They have often the attributes characteristic of their elevation, as an aureole, or wings for those who may be considered as angels, while others have those which recall their terrestrial occupations; thus a warrior might appear in his armor, a savant with his books, an assassin with a poniard, &c. The superior spirits have a beautiful countenance, noble and serene; the more inferior something ferocious and brutal, and sometimes still bear the traces of the crimes they have committed or the punishments they have endured. The question of costume and of all these accessory objects is, perhaps, what most astonishes. We shall return to it in a special chapter, because it is united to other very important facts.

103We have said that an apparition has a vaporous appearance; in some cases it might be compared to the image reflected in a glass without foil, and which, despite its clearness, does not prevent the objects behind the glass from being seen through the reflected image. It is usually thus that the seeing mediums distinguish them; they see them go and come, enter a room or leave it, circulate among the crowd of the living, having the air — at least the ordinary spirits — of taking an active part in all that is going on around them, of interesting themselves in it, of listening to what is said. They often see them approach a person and whisper ideas, influence, console if they are good, jeer if they are malicious, seeming sad or contented with the results they obtain; in a word, it is the double of the corporeal world. Such is this secret world that surrounds us, in the midst of which we live unknowingly, as unthinkingly as we live in the midst of the myriads of the microscopic world. The microscope has revealed to us the world of infinity of small things which we had not suspected; Spiritism, aided by seeing mediums, has revealed to us the world of spirits, which also is one of the active forces of nature. With the aid of seeing mediums we have been able to study the invisible world, become initiated into its customs, as blind people could study the visible world with the help of men who enjoy sight. (See, further, the chapter on Mediums, article concerning seeing mediums.)

104The spirit who wishes to appear, or can appear, assumes sometimes a still more perfect form, having all the appearance of a solid body to the extent of producing a complete illusion, making a person think that a corporeal being stands before him. In some cases, also, and under certain circumstances, the tangible may become real; that is to say, we can touch, handle, feel the same resistance, the same warmth, as in a living body, which does not prevent him from vanishing with the rapidity of lightning. It is, then, no longer by the eyes their presence is verified, but by the touch. If the simply visual apparition might be attributed to illusion, or a kind of fascination, the doubt is not permitted when you can grasp it, handle it, when it seizes you and holds you fast. The facts of tangible apparitions are the rarest; but those that have happened in these last days by the influence of some powerful mediums (Mr. Home among others), and which have all the authenticity of unexceptionable witnesses, prove and explain those related in history of persons seen after death with all the appearances of reality. Yet, as we have already said, however extraordinary these phenomena may be, all the marvelous disappears when we know the manner in which they are produced, and comprehend that, far from being a derogation of Nature's laws, they are only a new application of them.

105By its nature and in its normal state, the perisprit is invisible, and it has that property in common with many fluids which we know exist, and yet which we have never seen; but it can also, the same as some other fluids, undergo modifications that render it perceptible to the sight, whether by a sort of condensation or by a change in the molecular disposition: it then appears to us under a vaporous form. Condensation (this word must not be taken in its exact meaning; we use it only for want of another, and by comparison), — condensation, let us say, may be such that the perisprit acquires the properties of a solid and tangible body; but it can instantaneously resume its ethereal and invisible state. We can understand this state by that of vapor which can pass from invisibility to a state of fog, then liquid, then solid, and vice versa. These different states of the VIS I rA L MANIFF.S TA TIONS. 14 1 perisprit are the result of the will of the spirit, and not an exterior physical cause, as in our gases. When the spirit appears to us, he puts his perisprit into the state necessary to render him visible; but for that his will alone is not sufficient, for the modification of the perisprit is effected by his combination with the fluid of the medium; but this combination is not always possible, which explains why the visibility of spirits is not general. It is not enough #iat the spirit desires to be seen; it is not enough that a person desires to see him; it is necessary that the two fluids may combine, that there should be between them a kind of affinity; perhaps, also, that the emission of the person's fluid should be sufficiently abundant to effect the transformation of the perisprit; and probably still other conditions, to us unknown; it is also necessary that the spirit should have permission to make himself visible to the person, which is not always granted, or granted only under certain conditions, for reasons we cannot always appreciate.

106Another property of the perisprit, and which pertains to its ethereal nature, is penetrability. Matter is no obstacle; it passes through everything as the light passes through transparent bodies. This is why no closing can shut out spirits; they visit the prisoner in his cell as easily as the man in the open fields.

107Apparitions in a waking state are neither rare nor new; they have occurred in every age; history relates very many; but without going so far, they are frequent in our own day, and many persons have had what, at first sight, they have taken for what it is considered proper to call hallucinations. They are, especially, frequent in the case of the death of absent persons who visit their relations or friends; often they seem to have no particular motive; but it may be said that, in generaj, the spirits who appear are attracted by sympathy. If every one would search his memory, he would see that there are few persons without a knowledge of some facts of this kind, whose authenticity cannot be doubted.

108We will add to the preceding considerations the examination of some optical effects which have given rise to«the singular system of globular spirits.
The air is not always of an absolute limpidity, and there are conditions under which the currents of aeriform molecules and their agitation produced by the heat are perfectly visible. Some persons have taken that for masses of spirits moving around in space; the mere mention of this opinion is all that is necessary to refute it; but there is another species of illusion, no less absurd, against which it is equally well to be forewarned.
The aqueous humor of the eye offers points, scarcely perceptible, that have lost their transparency. These points are like opaque bodies in suspension in the liquid, and whose movements they follow.. They produce in the air, and at a distance, from the effects of enlargement and refraction, the appearance of small disks varying from one to ten millimetres in diameter, and which seem to swim in the atmosphere. We have seen persons take these disks for spirits, who follow and accompany them everywhere, and in their enthusiasm take for figures the shades of irisation, which is almost as rational as to see a figure in the moon. A simple observation, furnished by these people themselves, would bring them to the land of reality.
These disks, or medallions, they say, not only accompany them, but follow all their movements; they go to the right, to the left, up, down, or stop, according to the movement of the head: that is not astonishing, since the seat of the appearance is in the globe of the eye; it should follow all its movements. If they were spirits, it must be admitted that they would be confined to entirely too mechanical a part for free and intelligent beings — a very tedious part, even for inferior spirits, and certainly entirely incompatible with our ideas of superior spirits. Some, it is true, think the black points bad spirits. These disks, the same as the black spots, have an undulatory movement which never varies from a certain angle, and their not rigidly following the line of vision adds to the illusion. The reason is very simple. The opaque points of the aqueous humor, primary cause of the phenomenon, are, as we have said, held, as it were, in suspension, and have always a tendency to descend; when they ascend, it is in consequence of the movement of the eye from low to high; but, after reaching a certain distance, if the eye is fixed, the disks descend of themselves, then stop. Their mobility is extreme, for an imperceptible movement of the eye is sufficient to make them change their direction and traverse rapidly the whole extent of the arc in the space where the object is produced. So long as it is not proved that an image possesses a spontaneous and intelligent movement of its own, there can be seen in it but a simple optical or physiological phenomenon. It is the< same with the sparks, which are sometimes produced in sheafs and bundles, more or less compact, by the contraction of the muscles of the eye, and which are, probably, owing to the phosphorescent electricity of the iris, as they are usually limited to the circumference of the disk of that organ. Similar illusions can only be the result of incomplete observation. Whoever may have seriously studied the nature of spirits by all the means practical science gives, will understand their puerility. While we combat the theories by which the manifestations are attacked, when these theories are based on ignorance of facts, we should also seek to destroy the false ideas which exhibit more enthusiasm than reflection, and which, in that very way, do more harm than good with the skeptical, already so disposed to look for the ridiculous.

109The perisprit, as may be seen, is the principle of all the manifestations; its knowledge has given the key to a crowd of phenomena; it has been the means of making an immense step in the science of Spiritism, and has caused it to enter a new path by taking from it all marvelous character. We have found it by the spirits themselves, for, remember carefully, it is they who have given us the explanation of the action of spirit on matter, of the movement of inert bodies, noises and apparitions. We shall yet find in it that of several other phenomena which remain for us to examine before passing to the study of the communications proper. They will be as much better understood as the reason for the first causes shall be better. If this principle has been thoroughly comprehended, each one may for himself easily make the application of the various facts which may be presented to the observer. # no. We are far from regarding the theory we give as absolute, and as being the last word; it will, doubtless, be completed or rectified by new studies; but however incomplete or imperfect it may be to-day, it can at least assist in showing the possibility of the facts by causes which have nothing in them of the supernatural: if it be a hypothesis, the merit of rationality and probability cannot be altogether refused to it; and it is worth more than all the explanations given by those who try to prove that in the spirit phenomena all is but illusion, phantasmagoria, and subterfuge.
Theory of Hallucination. in. Those who do not admit the incorporeal and invisible world, think to explain everything by the word hallucination. The definition of this word is well known; it is an error, an illusion of a person who thinks he has perceptions which he has not really (from the Latin halluciuari, to err, made of ad lucent); but the scientists have not yet, that we know, given the physiological reason.
Optics and physiology appear to have no further secrets from them; how, then, is it that they have failed to explain the nature and the source of the images presented to the mind under certain circumstances?
They wish to explain everything by the laws of matter: be it so; let them give, then, by those laws a theory of hallucination; good or bad, it will, at any rate, be an explanation.

112The cause of dreams has never been explained by science; it attributes them to an effect of the imagination, but it does not tell us what is imagination, nor how it produces these so clear and perfect images that sometimes appear to us; it is explaining an unknown thing by another equally unknown; the question remains untouched. It is, they say, a remembrance of the preoccupations of our waking state; but admitting this solution, which is not one, it would still remain to show what this magic mirror is that so preserves the impression of things; how, above all, explain those visions of things real which have never been seen, or even thought of, in a waking state? Spiritism alone can give us the key to this strange phenomenon, which passes unperceived because of its very commonness, like all the wonders of nature we trample under foot.
Scientists have disdained to investigate hallucination; whether it be real or not, it is not the less a phenomenon which physiology should be able to explain under pain of confessing its insufficiency. If some day a savant should undertake to give of it, not a definition, be it understood, but a physiological explanation, we should see if his theory solves all the cases; if they do not omit, especially the facts, so common, of apparitions of persons at the moment of their death, let them say from whence comes the coincidence of the apparition with the death of the person. If it were an isolated fact, it might be attributed to chance; but it is very frequent; chance has none of these renewals. If he who sees the apparition has had his imagination struck with the idea that the person would die, so be it; but the one that appears is most often the one he has least thought of; then the imagination counts for naught. Still less can the circumstances of the death, of which there has been no idea, be explained by imagination. Will the hallucinationists say that the soul (if they so much as admit a soul) has moments of over-excitement, when its faculties are exalted? We agree with them; but when what is seen is real, it is not illusion. If, in its exaltation, the soul sees a thing that is not present, it is because it is transported; but if our soul can be transported toward an absent person, why should not the soul of the absent person be transported toward us? In their theory of hallucination, let them take especial account of these facts, and not forget that a theory to which contrary facts may be opposed is necessarily false or incomplete.
While waiting their explanation, we shall endeavor to put forth some ideas on this subject.

113Facts prove that there are veritable apparitions, of which the spirit theory can give a perfect reason, and which those alone can deny who admit nothing outside of the organism; but by the side of the real visions are there hallucinations in the sense attached to this word? That is not doubtful. What is their source? The spirits will put us in the way of knowing, for the explanation seems to us complete in the answers made to the following questions: —
"Are visions always real, and are they not sometimes the effect of hallucination? When we see, in dreams and otherwise, the devil, for instance, or other fantastic things that do not exist, is it not produced by imagination?"
"Yes, sometimes: when persons are struck by what they have read, or impressed by stories of deviltries, they remember them, and think they see what does not exist. But we have also said, that the spirit under his semi-material envelope can take all kinds of forms to manifest himself. A mocking spirit thus can appear with horns or claws if it so please him, to sport with credulity, as a good spirit can show himself with wings and a radiant countenance."
"May the figures and other images that often present themselves in a half sleep, or simply when the eyes are shut, be considered as apparitions?"
"As soon as the senses grow dull, the spirit is freed, and can see, far off*or near, what he could not see with the eyes. These images are very often visions; but they may, also, be an effect of the impressions which the sight of certain objects has left in the brain, which preserves its traces as it preserves those of sounds. The freed spirit sees, then, in his own brain, these imprints, which are fixed there as on the plate of a daguerreotype. Their variety and their blending form strange and fugitive wholes, which are almost immediately effaced, in spite of the efforts made to retain them. To a similar cause must be attributed certain fantastic apparitions, which have nothing real about them, often produced in a state of sickness."
It is certain that memory is the result of impressions preserved in the brain; but what strange phenomenon prevents the confounding together of these impressions, so varied, so multiple? That is an impenetrable mystery, but not more strange than that of the sonorous undulations that cross each other in the air, and remain none the less distinct. In a healthy and well-organized brain these impressions are clear and precise: in a less favorable state they are effaced and confused; from thence loss of memory or confusion of ideas. That appears still less extraordinary if it be admitted, as in phrenology, a special destination to each part, and even to each fibre of the brain. The images reaching the brain through the eyes leave there an impression which brings to remembrance a picture as if it were before one; but this is not merely an affair of memory, for it is not seen; but in. a certain state of emancipation, the soul sees into the brain, and there finds again these images, especially those most deeply seated, according to the nature of the preoccupations or the dispositions of the mind. Thus it finds the impressions of scenes- religious, diabolic, dramatic, worldly; figures of strange animals seen at some other epoch, in painting or in story; for recitals, also, leave impressions. Thus the soul really sees but sees only an image daguerreotyped in the brain. In the normal state, these images are fugitive and ephemeral, because all the cerebral parts act freely; but in a state of disease the brain is always more or less enfeebled, the equilibrium no longer exists between all the organs; some alone preserve their activity, while others are in some sort paralyzed; from thence the permanence of certain images, which are not, as in the normal state, effaced by the preoccupations of the exterior life. That is the real hallucination, and the primary cause of fixed ideas.
As may be seen, we have given a reason for this anomaly by a well known and thoroughly physiological law — that of cerebral impressions; but we have always been obliged to bring in the soul; and if materialists have not yet given a satisfactory solution of this phenomenon, it is because they will not admit soul: so they may say our solution is good for nothing, because we rest on a contested principle. Contested by whom? By them, but admitted by the immense majority since there have been men on the earth, and the denial of some cannot make law.
Is our explanation good? We give it for what it is worth, in default of others, and, if you please, by way of simple hypothesis, while awaiting a better. Such as it is, does it account for all the cases of vision? Certainly not; and we defy all the physiologists to give a single one, exclusively from their point of view, that does solve them all; for when they have pronounced their cabalistic words of over-excitement and exaltation, they have said nothing. Then, if all the theories of hallucination are insufficient to explain all i5o the facts, it must be that there is something else besides hallucination. Our theory would be false if we should apply it to all cases of visions, because there is still something that would contradict it. It may be correct if confined to certain facts.
Apparitions of the Spirit of the Living. — Double Men. — St. A/phonse de Lignori and St. Antoinc de Padua. — Vespasian. — Transfiguration. — Invisibility.