Isis unveiled, Volume 1 (of 2), Science

The Count Agenor de Gasparin is a devoted Protestant. His battle with des Mousseaux, de Mirville and other fanatics who laid the whole of the spiritual phenomena at the door of Satan, was long and fierce. Two volumes of over fifteen hundred pages are the result, proving the effects, denying the cause, and employing superhuman efforts to invent every other possible explanation that could be suggested rather than the true one.

The severe rebuke received by the Journal des Débats from M. de Gasparin, was read by all civilized Europe.[182] After that gentleman had minutely described numerous manifestations that he had witnessed himself, this journal very impertinently proposed to the authorities in France to send all those who, after having read the fine analysis of the “spiritual hallucinations” published by Faraday, should insist on crediting this delusion, to the lunatic asylum for Incurables. “Take care,” wrote de Gasparin in answer, “the representatives of the exact sciences are on their way to become ... the Inquisitors of our days.... Facts are stronger than Academies. Rejected, denied, mocked, they nevertheless are facts, and do exist.”[183]

“The experimenters have often seen the legs of the table glued, so to say, to the floor, and, notwithstanding the excitement of those present, refuse to be moved from their place. On other occasions they have seen the tables levitated in quite an energetic way. They heard, with their own ears, loud as well as gentle raps, the former threatening to shatter the table to pieces on account of their violence, the latter so soft as to become hardly perceptible.... As to LEVITATIONS WITHOUT CONTACT, we found means to produce them easily, and with success.... And such levitations do not pertain to isolated results. We have reproduced them over THIRTY times.[184] ... One day the table will turn, and lift its legs successively, its weight being augmented by a man weighing eighty-seven kilogrammes seated on it; another time it will remain motionless and immovable, notwithstanding that the person placed on it weighs but sixty.[185] ... On one occasion we willed it to turn upside down, and it turned over, with its legs in the air, notwithstanding that our fingers never touched it once.”[186]

Since 1850, des Mousseaux and de Mirville, uncompromising Roman Catholics, have published many volumes whose titles are cleverly contrived to attract public attention. They betray on the part of the authors a very serious alarm, which, moreover, they take no pains to conceal. Were it possible to consider the phenomena spurious, the church of Rome would never have gone so much out of her way to repress them.

Both sides having agreed upon the facts, leaving skeptics out of the question, people could divide themselves into but two parties: the believers in the direct agency of the devil, and the believers in disembodied and other spirits. The fact alone, that theology dreaded a great deal more the revelations which might come through this mysterious agency than all the threatening “conflicts” with Science and the categorical denials of the latter, ought to have opened the eyes of the most skeptical. The church of Rome has never been either credulous or cowardly, as is abundantly proved by the Machiavellism which marks her policy. Moreover, she has never troubled herself much about the clever prestidigitateurs whom she knew to be simply adepts in juggling. Robert Houdin, Comte, Hamilton and Bosco, slept secure in their beds, while she persecuted such men as Paracelsus, Cagliostro, and Mesmer, the Hermetic philosophers and mystics—and effectually stopped every genuine manifestation of an occult nature by killing the mediums.

Those who are unable to believe in a personal devil and the dogmas of the church must nevertheless accord to the clergy enough of shrewdness to prevent the compromising of her reputation for infallibility by making so much of manifestations which, if fraudulent, must inevitably be some day exposed.

But the best testimony to the reality of this force was given by Robert Houdin himself, the king of jugglers, who, upon being called as an expert by the Academy to witness the wonderful clairvoyant powers and occasional mistakes of a table, said: “We jugglers never make mistakes, and my second-sight never failed me yet.”

The learned astronomer Babinet was not more fortunate in his selection of Comte, the celebrated ventriloquist, as an expert to testify against the phenomena of direct voices and the rappings. Comte, if we may believe the witnesses, laughed in the face of Babinet at the bare suggestion that the raps were produced by “unconscious ventriloquism!” The latter theory, worthy twin-sister of “unconscious cerebration,” caused many of the most skeptical academicians to blush. Its absurdity was too apparent.

“The problem of the supernatural,” says de Gasparin, “such as it was presented by the middle ages, and as it stands now, is not among the number of those which we are permitted to despise; its breadth and grandeur escape the notice of no one.... Everything is profoundly serious in it, both the evil and the remedy, the superstitious recrudescency, and the physical fact which is destined to conquer the latter.”[188]

Further, he pronounces the following decisive opinion, to which he came, conquered by the various manifestations, as he says himself—“The number of facts which claim their place in the broad daylight of truth, has so much increased of late, that of two consequences one is henceforth inevitable: either the domain of natural sciences must consent to expand itself, or the domain of the supernatural will become so enlarged as to have no bounds.”[189]

Among the multitude of books against spiritualism emanating from Catholic and Protestant sources, none have produced a more appalling effect than the works of de Mirville and des Mousseaux: La Magie au XIXme Siecle—Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons—Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie—Les Mediateurs de la Magie—Des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations, etc. They comprise the most cyclopædic biography of the devil and his imps that has appeared for the private delectation of good Catholics since the middle ages.

According to the authors, he who was “a liar and murderer from the beginning,” was also the principal motor of spiritual phenomena. He had been for thousands of years at the head of pagan theurgy; and it was he, again, who, encouraged by the increase of heresies, infidelity, and atheism, had reappeared in our century. The French Academy lifted up its voice in a general outcry of indignation, and M. de Gasparin even took it for a personal insult. “This is a declaration of war, a ‘levée of shields’”—wrote he in his voluminous book of refutations. “The work of M. de Mirville is a real manifesto.... I would be glad to see in it the expression of a strictly individual opinion, but, in truth, it is impossible. The success of the work, these solemn adhesions, the faithful reproduction of its theses by the journals and writers of the party, the solidarity established throughout between them and the whole body of catholicity ... everything goes to show a work which is essentially an act, and has the value of a collective labor. As it is, I felt that I had a duty to perform.... I felt obliged to pick up the glove, ... and lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner.”[190]

The medical faculties, as might have been expected, assuming the part of the Greek chorus, echoed the various expostulations against the demonological authors. The Medico-Psychological Annals, edited by Drs. Brierre de Boismont and Cerise, published the following: “Outside these controversies of antagonistical parties, never in our country did a writer dare to face, with a more aggressive serenity, ... the sarcasms, the scorn of what we term common sense; and, as if to defy and challenge at the same time thundering peals of laughter and shrugging of shoulders, the author strikes an attitude, and placing himself with effrontery before the members of the Academy ... addresses to them what he modestly terms his Mémoire on the Devil!”[191]

That was a cutting insult to the Academicians, to be sure; but ever since 1850 they seem to have been doomed to suffer in their pride more than most of them can bear. The idea of asking the attention of the forty “Immortals” to the pranks of the Devil! They vowed revenge, and, leaguing themselves together, propounded a theory which exceeded in absurdity even de Mirville’s demonolatry! Dr. Royer and Jobart de Lamballe—both celebrities in their way—formed an alliance and presented to the Institute a German whose cleverness afforded, according to his statement, the key to all the knockings and rappings of both hemispheres. “We blush” remarks the Marquis de Mirville—“to say that the whole of the trick consisted simply in the reiterated displacement of one of the muscular tendons of the legs. Great demonstration of the system in full sitting of the Institute—and on the spot ... expressions of Academical gratitude for this interesting communication, and, a few days later, a full assurance given to the public by a professor of the medical faculty, that, scientists having pronounced their opinion, the mystery was at last unravelled!“[192]

“The Devil is the chief pillar of Faith. He is one of the grand personages whose life is closely allied to that of the church; and without his speech which issued out so triumphantly from the mouth of the Serpent, his medium, the fall of man could not have taken place. Thus, if it was not for him, the Saviour, the Crucified, the Redeemer, would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries, and the Cross an insult to good sense!”[193]

But the Marquis de Mirville carries this idea of God’s partnership with the Devil still further. According to him it is a regular commercial affair, in which the senior “silent partner” suffers the active business of the firm to be transacted as it may please his junior associate, by whose audacity and industry he profits. Who could be of any other opinion, upon reading the following?

“At the moment of this spiritual invasion of 1853, so slightingly regarded, we had dared to pronounce the word of a ‘threatening catastrophe.’ The world was nevertheless at peace, but history showing us the same symptoms at all disastrous epochs, we had a presentiment of the sad effects of a law which Goërres has formulated thus: [vol. v., p. 356.] ‘These mysterious apparitions have invariably indicated the chastening hand of God on earth.’”[194]

These guerilla-skirmishes between the champions of the clergy and the materialistic Academy of Science, prove abundantly how little the latter has done toward uprooting blind fanaticism from the minds of even very educated persons. Evidently science has neither completely conquered nor muzzled theology. She will master her only on that day when she will condescend to see in the spiritual phenomenon something besides mere hallucination and charlatanry. But how can she do it without investigating it thoroughly? Let us suppose that before the time when electro-magnetism was publicly acknowledged, the Copenhagen Professor Oersted, its discoverer, had been suffering from an attack of what we call psychophobia, or pneumatophobia. He notices that the wire along which a voltaic current is passing shows a tendency to turn the magnetic needle from its natural position to one perpendicular to the direction of the current. Suppose, moreover, that the professor had heard much of certain superstitious people who used that kind of magnetized needles to converse with unseen intelligences. That they received signals and even held correct conversations with them by means of the tippings of such a needle, and that in consequence he suddenly felt a scientific horror and disgust for such an ignorant belief, and refused, point-blank, to have anything to do with such a needle. What would have been the result? Electro-magnetism might not have been discovered till now, and our experimentalists would have been the principal losers thereby.

Babinet, Royer, and Jobert de Lamballe, all three members of the Institute, particularly distinguished themselves in this struggle between skepticism and supernaturalism, and most assuredly have reaped no laurels. The famous astronomer had imprudently risked himself on the battlefield of the phenomenon. He had explained scientifically the manifestations. But, emboldened by the fond belief among scientists that the new epidemic could not stand close investigation nor outlive the year, he had the still greater imprudence to publish two articles on them. As M. de Mirville very wittily remarks, if both of the articles had but a poor success in the scientific press, they had, on the other hand, none at all in the daily one.

M. Babinet began by accepting a priori, the rotation and movements of the furniture, which fact he declared to be ”hors de doute.” “This rotation,” he said, “being able to manifest itself with a considerable energy, either by a very great speed, or by a strong resistance when it is desired that it should stop.”[195]

Now comes the explanation of the eminent scientist. “Gently pushed by little concordant impulsions of the hands laid upon it, the table begins to oscillate from right to left.... At the moment when, after more or less delay, a nervous trepidation is established in the hands and the little individual impulsions of all the experimenters have become harmonized, the table is set in motion.”[196]

He finds it very simple, for “all muscular movements are determined over bodies by levers of the third order, in which the fulcrum is very near to the point where the force acts. This, consequently, communicates a great speed to the mobile parts for the very little distance which the motor force has to run.... Some persons are astonished to see a table subjected to the action of several well-disposed individuals in a fair way to conquer powerful obstacles, even break its legs, when suddenly stopped; but that is very simple if we consider the power of the little concordant actions.... Once more, the physical explanation offers no difficulty.”[197]

In this dissertation, two results are clearly shown: the reality of the phenomena proved, and the scientific explanation made ridiculous. But M. Babinet can well afford to be laughed at a little; he knows, as an astronomer, that dark spots are to be found even in the sun.

There is one thing, though, that Babinet has always stoutly denied, viz.: the levitation of furniture without contact. De Mirville catches him proclaiming that such levitation is impossible: “simply impossible,” he says, “as impossible as perpetual motion.”[198]

De Mirville refers us to the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which is published a very interesting dialogue, invented by M. Babinet speaking of himself to himself, like the Chaldean En-Soph of the Kabalists: “What can we finally say of all these facts brought under our observation? Are there such raps produced? Yes. Do such raps answer questions? Yes. Who produces these sounds? The mediums. By what means? By the ordinary acoustic method of the ventriloquists. But we were given to suppose that these sounds might result from the cracking of the toes and fingers? No; for then they would always proceed from the same point, and such is not the fact.”[199]