[1]Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and copyright U. S. A., 1913, by Eugène Fasquelle.[2]“The Survival of Man,” Chap. XXV, p. 325.[3]In this connection, however, we find two or three rather perturbing facts, a remarkable one being that at a spiritualistic meeting held by the late W. T. Stead the prediction of the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga was described with the most circumstantial details. A verbatim report was drawn up of this prediction and signed by thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to beg the Servian minister in London to warn the king of the danger that threatened him. The event took place, as announced, a few months later. But “precognition” does not necessarily require the intervention of the dead; moreover, every case of this kind, before being definitely accepted, would call for prolonged study in every particular.[4]In order to exhaust this question of survival and of communications with the dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s recent investigations, made with the assistance of the mediums Smead and Chenoweth (communications with William James). I ought also to mention Julia’s famous “bureau” and, above all, the extraordinary séances of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet medium, who not only obtains communications in which the dead speak languages of which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises apparitions said to be extremely disturbing. I ought lastly, to examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano, and M. Rozanne, and many other things besides, for spiritualistic investigation and literature are already piling volume upon volume. But it was not my intention or my pretension to make a complete study of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential point and to give a general but accurate idea of this posthumous atmosphere which no really new and decisive fact has come to unsettle since the manifestations of which we have spoken.[5]In order to hide nothing and to bring all the documents into court, we may point out that Colonel de Rochas ascertained upon inquiry that the subjects’ revelations concerning their former existences were inaccurate in several particulars.“Their narratives were also full of anachronisms, which disclosed the presence of normal recollections among the suggestions that came from an unknown source. Nevertheless, one perfectly indubitable fact remains, which is that of the existence of certain visions recurring with the same characteristics in the case of a considerable number of persons unknown to one another.”[6]In this connection, may I be permitted to quote a personal experience? One evening at the Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, where I am wont to spend my summers, some newly arrived guests were amusing themselves by making a small table spin on its foot. I was quietly smoking in a corner of the drawing-room, at some distance from the little table, taking no interest in what was happening around it and thinking of something quite different. After due entreaty, the table replied that it held the spirit of a seventeenth-century monk who was buried in the east gallery of the cloisters under a flagstone dated 1693. After the departure of the monk, who suddenly, for no apparent reason, refused to continue the interview, we thought that we would go with a lamp and look for the grave. We ended by discovering in the far cloister, on the eastern side, a tombstone in very bad condition, broken, worn down, trodden into the ground, and crumbling, on which, by examining it very closely, we were able with great difficulty to decipher the inscription, “A.D. 1693.” Now, at the moment of the monk’s reply there was no one in the drawing-room except my guests and myself. None of them knew the abbey; they had arrived that very evening a few minutes before dinner, after which, as it was quite dark, they had put off their visit to the cloisters and the ruins until the following day. Therefore, short of a belief in the “shells” or the “elementals” of the theosophists, the revelation could have come only from me. Nevertheless, I believed myself to be absolutely ignorant of the existence of that particular tombstone, one of the least legible among a score of others, all belonging to the seventeenth century, which pave this part of the cloisters.
[1]Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and copyright U. S. A., 1913, by Eugène Fasquelle.
[1]Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and copyright U. S. A., 1913, by Eugène Fasquelle.
[2]“The Survival of Man,” Chap. XXV, p. 325.
[2]“The Survival of Man,” Chap. XXV, p. 325.
[3]In this connection, however, we find two or three rather perturbing facts, a remarkable one being that at a spiritualistic meeting held by the late W. T. Stead the prediction of the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga was described with the most circumstantial details. A verbatim report was drawn up of this prediction and signed by thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to beg the Servian minister in London to warn the king of the danger that threatened him. The event took place, as announced, a few months later. But “precognition” does not necessarily require the intervention of the dead; moreover, every case of this kind, before being definitely accepted, would call for prolonged study in every particular.
[3]In this connection, however, we find two or three rather perturbing facts, a remarkable one being that at a spiritualistic meeting held by the late W. T. Stead the prediction of the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga was described with the most circumstantial details. A verbatim report was drawn up of this prediction and signed by thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to beg the Servian minister in London to warn the king of the danger that threatened him. The event took place, as announced, a few months later. But “precognition” does not necessarily require the intervention of the dead; moreover, every case of this kind, before being definitely accepted, would call for prolonged study in every particular.
[4]In order to exhaust this question of survival and of communications with the dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s recent investigations, made with the assistance of the mediums Smead and Chenoweth (communications with William James). I ought also to mention Julia’s famous “bureau” and, above all, the extraordinary séances of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet medium, who not only obtains communications in which the dead speak languages of which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises apparitions said to be extremely disturbing. I ought lastly, to examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano, and M. Rozanne, and many other things besides, for spiritualistic investigation and literature are already piling volume upon volume. But it was not my intention or my pretension to make a complete study of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential point and to give a general but accurate idea of this posthumous atmosphere which no really new and decisive fact has come to unsettle since the manifestations of which we have spoken.
[4]In order to exhaust this question of survival and of communications with the dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s recent investigations, made with the assistance of the mediums Smead and Chenoweth (communications with William James). I ought also to mention Julia’s famous “bureau” and, above all, the extraordinary séances of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet medium, who not only obtains communications in which the dead speak languages of which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises apparitions said to be extremely disturbing. I ought lastly, to examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano, and M. Rozanne, and many other things besides, for spiritualistic investigation and literature are already piling volume upon volume. But it was not my intention or my pretension to make a complete study of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential point and to give a general but accurate idea of this posthumous atmosphere which no really new and decisive fact has come to unsettle since the manifestations of which we have spoken.
[5]In order to hide nothing and to bring all the documents into court, we may point out that Colonel de Rochas ascertained upon inquiry that the subjects’ revelations concerning their former existences were inaccurate in several particulars.“Their narratives were also full of anachronisms, which disclosed the presence of normal recollections among the suggestions that came from an unknown source. Nevertheless, one perfectly indubitable fact remains, which is that of the existence of certain visions recurring with the same characteristics in the case of a considerable number of persons unknown to one another.”
[5]In order to hide nothing and to bring all the documents into court, we may point out that Colonel de Rochas ascertained upon inquiry that the subjects’ revelations concerning their former existences were inaccurate in several particulars.
“Their narratives were also full of anachronisms, which disclosed the presence of normal recollections among the suggestions that came from an unknown source. Nevertheless, one perfectly indubitable fact remains, which is that of the existence of certain visions recurring with the same characteristics in the case of a considerable number of persons unknown to one another.”
[6]In this connection, may I be permitted to quote a personal experience? One evening at the Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, where I am wont to spend my summers, some newly arrived guests were amusing themselves by making a small table spin on its foot. I was quietly smoking in a corner of the drawing-room, at some distance from the little table, taking no interest in what was happening around it and thinking of something quite different. After due entreaty, the table replied that it held the spirit of a seventeenth-century monk who was buried in the east gallery of the cloisters under a flagstone dated 1693. After the departure of the monk, who suddenly, for no apparent reason, refused to continue the interview, we thought that we would go with a lamp and look for the grave. We ended by discovering in the far cloister, on the eastern side, a tombstone in very bad condition, broken, worn down, trodden into the ground, and crumbling, on which, by examining it very closely, we were able with great difficulty to decipher the inscription, “A.D. 1693.” Now, at the moment of the monk’s reply there was no one in the drawing-room except my guests and myself. None of them knew the abbey; they had arrived that very evening a few minutes before dinner, after which, as it was quite dark, they had put off their visit to the cloisters and the ruins until the following day. Therefore, short of a belief in the “shells” or the “elementals” of the theosophists, the revelation could have come only from me. Nevertheless, I believed myself to be absolutely ignorant of the existence of that particular tombstone, one of the least legible among a score of others, all belonging to the seventeenth century, which pave this part of the cloisters.
[6]In this connection, may I be permitted to quote a personal experience? One evening at the Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, where I am wont to spend my summers, some newly arrived guests were amusing themselves by making a small table spin on its foot. I was quietly smoking in a corner of the drawing-room, at some distance from the little table, taking no interest in what was happening around it and thinking of something quite different. After due entreaty, the table replied that it held the spirit of a seventeenth-century monk who was buried in the east gallery of the cloisters under a flagstone dated 1693. After the departure of the monk, who suddenly, for no apparent reason, refused to continue the interview, we thought that we would go with a lamp and look for the grave. We ended by discovering in the far cloister, on the eastern side, a tombstone in very bad condition, broken, worn down, trodden into the ground, and crumbling, on which, by examining it very closely, we were able with great difficulty to decipher the inscription, “A.D. 1693.” Now, at the moment of the monk’s reply there was no one in the drawing-room except my guests and myself. None of them knew the abbey; they had arrived that very evening a few minutes before dinner, after which, as it was quite dark, they had put off their visit to the cloisters and the ruins until the following day. Therefore, short of a belief in the “shells” or the “elementals” of the theosophists, the revelation could have come only from me. Nevertheless, I believed myself to be absolutely ignorant of the existence of that particular tombstone, one of the least legible among a score of others, all belonging to the seventeenth century, which pave this part of the cloisters.