Part 28 (1/2)

That is the broad question; but it is complicated here by a subsidiary question: whether, namely, any previous incarnations of Mlle.

Smith's--other phases of her own spiritual history, now involving complex relations.h.i.+p with the past--have any part in the crowd of personalities which seem struggling to express themselves through her quite healthy organism.

Mlle. Smith, I should at once say, is not,[183] and never has been, a paid medium. At the date of M. Flournoy's book, she occupied a leading post on the staff of a large _maison de commerce_ at Geneva, and gave seances to her friends simply because she enjoyed the exercise of her mediumistic faculties, and was herself interested in their explanation.

Her organism, I repeat, is regarded, both by herself and by others, as a quite healthy one. Mlle. Smith, says Professor Flournoy, declares distinctly that she is perfectly sound in body and mind--in no way lacking in equilibrium--and indignantly repudiates the idea that there is any hurtful anomaly or the slightest danger in mediums.h.i.+p as she practises it.

”It is far from being demonstrated,” he continues, ”that mediums.h.i.+p is a pathological phenomenon. It is abnormal, no doubt, in the sense of being _rare_, _exceptional_; but rarity is not morbidity. The few years during which these phenomena have been seriously and scientifically studied have not been enough to allow us to p.r.o.nounce on their true nature. It is interesting to note that in the countries where these studies have been pushed the furthest, in England and America, the dominant view among the _savants_ who have gone deepest into the matter is not at all unfavourable to mediums.h.i.+p; and that, far from regarding it as a special case of hysteria, they see in it a faculty superior, advantageous, healthy, of which hysteria is a form of degenerescence, a pathological parody, a morbid caricature.”

The phenomena which this sensitive presents (Helene Smith is Professor Flournoy's pseudonym for her) cover a range which looks at first very wide, although a clearer a.n.a.lysis shows that these varieties are more apparent than real, and that self-suggestion will perhaps account for all of them.

There is, to begin with, every kind of automatic irruption of subliminal into supraliminal life. As Professor Flournoy says (p. 45): ”Phenomena of hypermnesia, divinations, mysterious findings of lost objects, happy inspirations, exact presentiments, just intuitions, teleological (purposive or helpful) automatisms, in short, of every kind; she possesses in a high degree this small change of genius--which const.i.tutes a more than sufficient compensation for the inconvenience resulting from those distractions and moments of absence of mind which accompany her visions; and which, moreover, generally pa.s.s un.o.bserved.”

At seances--where the deeper change has no inconveniences--Helene undergoes a sort of self-hypnotisation which produces various lethargic and somnambulistic states. And when she is alone and safe from interruption she has spontaneous visions, during which there may be some approach to ecstasy. At the seances she experiences positive hallucinations, and also negative hallucinations, or systematised anaesthesiae, so that, for instance, she will cease to see some person present, especially one who is to be the recipient of messages in the course of the seance. ”It seems as though a dream-like incoherence presided over this preliminary work of disaggregation, in which the normal perceptions are arbitrarily split up or absorbed by the subconscious personality--eager for materials with which to compose the hallucinations which it is preparing.” Then, when the seance begins, the main actor is Helene's guide _Leopold_ (a pseudonym for Cagliostro) who speaks and writes through her, and is, in fact, either her leading spirit-control or (much more probably) her most developed form of secondary personality.

”Leopold,” says Professor Flournoy (p. 134), ”certainly manifests a very honourable and amiable side of Mlle. Smith's character, and in taking him as her 'guide' she has followed inspirations which are doubtless among the highest in her nature.”

The high moral quality of these automatic communications, on which Professor Flournoy thus insists, is a phenomenon worth consideration.

I do not mean that it is specially strange in the case of Mlle. Smith.

But the almost universally high moral tone of genuinely automatic utterances has not, I think, been sufficiently noticed or adequately explained.

In evidential messages--where there is real reason to believe that an identified spirit is communicating--there is a marked and independent consensus on such matters as these spirits profess themselves able to discuss.

And again in non-evidential messages--in communications which probably proceed from the automatist's subliminal self--I hold that there is a remarkable and undesigned concordance in high moral tone, and also in avoidance of certain prevalent tenets, which many of the automatists do supraliminally hold as true. But I also insist that these subliminal messages, even when not incoherent, are generally dream-like, and often involve tenets which (though never in my experience base or immoral) are unsupported by evidence, and are probably to be referred to mere self-suggestion.

Prominent among such tenets is one which forms a large part of Mlle.

Smith's communications; namely, the doctrine of _reincarnation_, or of successive lives spent by each soul upon this planet.

The simple fact that such was probably the opinion both of Plato and of Virgil shows that there is nothing here which is alien to the best reason or to the highest instincts of men. Nor, indeed, is it easy to realise any theory of the _direct creation_ of spirits at such different stages of advancement as those which enter upon the earth in the guise of mortal man. There _must_, one feels, be some kind of continuity--some form of spiritual Past. Yet for reincarnation there is at present no valid evidence; and it must be my duty to show how its a.s.sertion in any given instance--Mlle. Smith's included--const.i.tutes in itself a strong argument in favour of self-suggestion rather than extraneous inspiration as the source of the messages in which it appears.

Whenever civilised men have received what they have regarded as a revelation (which has generally been somewhat fragmentary in its first delivery) they have naturally endeavoured to complete and systematise it as well as they could. In so doing they have mostly aimed at three objects: (1) to _understand_ as much as possible of the secrets of the universe; (2) to _justify_ as far as possible Heaven's dealings with men; and (3) to _appropriate_ as far as possible the favour or benefit which the revelation may show as possibly accruing to believers. For all these purposes the doctrine of reincarnation has proved useful in many countries and times. But in no case could it seem more appropriate than in this last revelation (so to term it) through automatic messages and the like. And as a matter of history, a certain vigorous preacher of the new faith, known under the name of Allan Kardec, took up reincarnationist tenets, enforced them (as there is reason to believe) by strong suggestion upon the minds of various automatic writers, and set them forth in dogmatic works which have had much influence, especially among Latin nations, from their clarity, symmetry, and intrinsic reasonableness. Yet the data thus collected were absolutely insufficient, and the _Livre des Esprits_ must simply rank as the premature formulation of a new religion--the premature systematisation of a nascent science.

I follow Professor Flournoy in believing that the teaching of that work must have directly or indirectly influenced the mind of Mlle. Smith, and is therefore responsible for her claim to these incarnations previous to that which she now undergoes or enjoys.

On the general scheme here followed, each incarnation, if the last has been used aright, ought to represent some advance in the scale of being.

If one earth-life has been misused, the next earth-life ought to afford opportunity for expiation--or for further practice in the special virtue which has been imperfectly acquired. Thus Mlle. Smith's present life in a humble position may be thought to atone for her overmuch pride in her last incarnation--as Marie Antoinette.

But the mention of Marie Antoinette suggests the risk which this theory fosters--of a.s.suming that one is the issue of a distinguished line of spiritual progenitors; insomuch that, with whatever temporary sets-back, one is sure in the end to find oneself in a leading position.

Pythagoras, indeed, was content with the secondary hero Euphorbus as his bygone self. But in our days Dr. Anna Kingsford and Mr. Edward Maitland must needs have been the Virgin Mary and St. John the Divine. And Victor Hugo, who was naturally well to the front in these self-multiplications, took possession of most of the leading personages of antiquity whom he could manage to string together in chronological sequence. It is obvious that any number of re-born souls can play at this game; but where no one adduces any evidence it seems hardly worth while to go on. Even Pythagoras does not appear to have adduced any evidence beyond his _ipse dixit_ for his a.s.sertion that the alleged s.h.i.+eld of Euphorbus had in reality been borne by that mythical hero. Meantime the question as to reincarnation has actually been put to a very few spirits who have given some real evidence of their ident.i.ty. So far as I know, no one of these has claimed to know anything personally of such an incident; although all have united in saying that their knowledge was too limited to allow them to generalise on the matter.

Helene's controls and previous incarnations--to return to our subject--do perhaps suffer from the general fault of aiming too high.

She has to her credit a control from the planet Mars; one pre-incarnation as an Indian Princess; and a second (as I have said) as Marie Antoinette.

In each case there are certain impressive features in the impersonation; but in each case also careful a.n.a.lysis negatives the idea that we can be dealing with a personality really revived from a former epoch, or from a distant planet;--and leaves us inclined to explain everything by ”cryptomnesia” (as Professor Flournoy calls submerged memory), and that subliminal inventiveness of which we already know so much.

The _Martian_ control was naturally the most striking at first sight.

Its reality was supported by a Martian language, written in a Martian alphabet, spoken with fluency, and sufficiently interpreted into French to show that such part of it, at any rate, as could be committed to writing was actually a grammatical and coherent form of speech.