113. Facts prove that there are veritable apparitions, which spiritism is perfectly
competent t6 account for, and which can only be denied by those who admit of nothing
beyond the bodily organism but, besides real visions, do what are called hallucinations
also occur? We reply, that such do undoubtedly occur. What, then, is the source of the
latter ? It is the spirits themselves who assist us to explain this point, for our
explanation appears to us to be fully implied in the answers given by spirits to the
following questions: -
-Are visions always real, or are they not sometimes the effect of hallucination ?
When one sees in a dream or otherwise, the devil, for example, or any other fantastic
appearance which has no real existence, is not such an appearance a product of the
imagination?
"Yes, sometimes, in the case of persons whose minds are excited by stories
which leave a strong impression, and which they carry in their memory until they fancy
they see what has no real existence. But we have already said that a spirit, with the aid
of its semi-material envelope, can assume any and every form for manifestation. Thus,
a mocking spirit can appear with horns and claws, if it pleases him so to play with your
credulity ; just as a good spirit can show himself with wings and a radiant
countenance."
-Can we regard as apparitions the faces and other images which often present
themselves when we are halt asleep, or when we merely close our eyes?
"As soon as the senses grow torpid, the spirit disengages itself, and is able to
see, whether far or near, what it could not see with the bodily eyes. The images then
seen are
frequently visions, but they may also be an effect of the impressions that the view of
Certain objects has left on the brain, which retains traces of them as it does of sounds.
The spirit, when disengaged, sees, in its own brain, these imprints which are fixed
therein as in a daguerreotype. From their variety and their intermingling are formed
fantastic but fugitive wholes, which disperse again almost immediately, in spite of the
efforts made to retain them. It is to an analogous cause that you must attribute many
fantastic apparitions which have nothing of reality in them, and which frequently occur
during illness."
It is certain that memory is the result of impressions preserved by the brain ; by
what singular arrangement is it that these impressions, so numerous and so varied, are
not inextricably confused? That is an impenetrable mystery; but it is not more strange
than the crossing of the sonorous undulations which pass athwart each other in the air,
and vet are none the less distinct. In a healthy and well-organised brain, these
impressions are clear and precise ; In a state less favourable, they become faint and
confused, which produces loss of memory and confusion of ideas a result that appears
less extraordinary, if we admit, with phrenologists, a special destination of each part,
and even of each fibre, of the brain.
Images which come to the brain through the eyes leave in them an impression,
so that we may remember a picture, as though we had it before us; but this is always an
act of memory, for we do not see the object thus present to our mental eye. In the state
of emancipation, the soul looks into the brain, and finds those images therein ; those,
especially, which have struck it the most, according to its personal idiosyncrasy,
prepossessions or disposition. Thus, it finds again, in its brain, the impress of religious
events, of diabolical, dramatic, or worldly scenes, the figures of fantastic animals,
which it has seen at some previous period in paintings. or has heard or read of for
recitals also leave their impress. Thus the soul really sees; but what it sees is only an
image daguerreotyped on the brain.
In the normal state, these images are fugitive and ephemeral, because the cerebral
organs perform their functions freely; but in illness, the brain being always more or less
enfeebled, the equilibrium of the organs is lost. some of them retaining their activity,
while others are partially paralysed : hence the permanence of certain images, which are
not effaced, as when in a normal state, by the pre-occupations of external life. This is
veritable hallucination, and the determining cause of fixed ideas.
It will be seen that we have explained this anomaly by a well-known
physiological law, that of cerebral impression but we have also had to assume the
intervention of the soul. If the materialists have not yet been able to give a satisfactory
solution of this phenomenon, it is because they do not admit of a soul ; and they will
say that our explanation is worth nothing, because we assume the very point which is
contested. Contested by whom? - By them; but admitted by the immense majority of
mankind, ever since men have lived upon the earth ; and the negation of the few cannot
be accepted as authoritative.
Is our explanation a sufficient one? - We give it for what it is worth, for want of
another, and as one which may he regarded as a convenient hypothesis, while waiting
for a better one. Does it explain all cases of vision? Certainly not ; but we defy
physiologists to give, from their point of view, any explanation that can do this; for,
when they have pronounced their sacramental words, excitement and imagination, they
have not advanced the solution of the problem a single step. Therefore, as all theories of
hallucination are insufficient to explain all the facts referred to, it follows that those
facts imply something else besides hallucination properly so called. Our theory would
fail if we applied it to all cases of visions, because there are cases which contradict it ;
but it may, nevertheless, be true in regard to some kinds of visions.
