DEFINITION OF SPIRITISM
Since we proposed at the outset to distinguish spiritism from various other things which though quite different are too often confused with it, it is indispensable to begin by offering a precise definition. At first glance it seems that one can say this: spiritism basically consists in admitting the possibility of communicating with the dead. This is what constitutes it, properly speaking, and this is what all the spiritist schools accept, whatever their theoretical divergences on more or less important points, which they always regard as secondary in relation to the former. But this is insufficient: the fundamental postulate of spiritism is that communication with the dead is not only a possibility but it is a fact. If one admits this only as a possibility, one is not on that account a spiritist. It is true that in this latter case one is stayed from a complete refutation of spiritist doctrine, and this is already grave enough; for as we shall show in what follows, communication with the dead, such as the spiritists understand it, is purely and simply an impossibility, and it is only thus that one can completely and definitively cut short all their claims. Apart from this attitude there can only be more or less awkward compromises; and when one begins to make concessions and accommodations it is difficult to know where to stop. We have proof of this in what has happened to some, Theosophists and occultists especially, who would protest energetically-and rightly so-if they were taken to be spiritists, but who for various reasons have admitted that communication with the dead might really take place in more or less exceptional cases. To admit such a thing is fundamentally to acknowledge the truth of the spiritist hypothesis. But
for their part the spiritists are not content with this much, holding that this communication occurs regularly in all their séances, and not only once in a hundred or a thousand. For the spiritists it suffices to place oneself in certain conditions in order to set up this communication, which they regard not as an extraordinary fact but as something normal and commonplace. And this is a detail which it is appropriate to make part of the very definition of spiritism.
But there is something else: up to this point we have spoken of communication with the dead in a rather vague manner, but it must now be made clear that for the spiritists this communication is brought about by material means. This is another essential element in distinguishing spiritism from certain other conceptions in which one admits only mental or intuitive communications, a kind of inspiration; doubtless spiritists admit these too, but it is not these to which they accord the greatest importance. We will discuss this point below, but can say at once that real inspiration, which we are far from denying, has in reality quite another source. But such conceptions are certainly less gross than those proper to the spiritists, and the objections to which they give rise are of a somewhat different character. What we take as specifically spiritist is the idea that the 'spirits' act on matter, that they produce physical phenomena such as the displacement of objects, knockings and other noises, etc. We call attention here only to the simplest and most common examples, which are also the most characteristic. Moreover, it is well to add that this action on matter is supposed to be exercised indirectly through the intermediary of a living human being possessing certain special faculties who by reason of this intermediary role is called a 'medium'. It is difficult to define precisely the mediumistic faculty, and opinions vary; it seems that it is most commonly regarded as physiological in nature, or perhaps psycho-physiological. We note for future reference that the introduction of this intermediary does not do away with the difficulties. At first glance it does not seem any easier for a 'spirit' to act immediately upon the organism of a living being than on any inanimate body whatsoever. But at this point certain more complex considerations intervene.
The 'spirits', notwithstanding the name that is given them, are not regarded as being purely immaterial. On the contrary, it is said that
they are clad in a kind of envelope which, though normally too subtle to be perceived by the senses, is nonetheless a material organism, a true body, designated by the rather barbarous name 'perispirit'. If this is the case, one may ask why this organism does not allow the 'spirits' to act directly on matter of any kind and why it is necessary to have recourse to a medium. This seems illogical, for if the 'perispirit' is incapable in itself of acting on sensible matter, it must be the same for the corresponding element existing in the medium or in any other living being, in which case this element would serve for nothing in the production of the phenomena in question. We only note these difficulties in passing, for it is the spiritists' task to explain them if they can. It would be of no interest to pursue a discussion of these special points since there is much more to say against spiritism than this; and for us it is not in this way that the question must be posed. We believe it useful, however, to linger a little on the manner in which spiritists generally view the constitution of the human being and to state at once, in order to avoid any ambiguity, what we find unacceptable in their conceptions.
Modern Westerners usually consider the human composite in the most simplified and reduced form possible, conceiving it as consisting of only two elements. One is the body and the other is called indifferently soul or mind. We say modern Westerners, for in truth this dualist theory took firm root only after Descartes. We cannot give even a brief history of this question here, but will say that prior to the time of Descartes current ideas of body and soul did not involve this complete opposition of nature which renders their union truly inexplicable. Also, even in the West there were less 'simplistic' conceptions, closer to those of Easterners, for whom the human being is a much more complex totality. At that time one could scarcely have dreamed of the final degree of simplification represented by the most recent materialist theories, according to which man is no longer even a composite since he is reduced to a single element, the body. Among the ancient conceptions to which we have alluded one could find, even without going back to antiquity, many which envisage three elements in man by making a further distinction between soul and spirit. There is a certain fluidity in the use of the latter two terms, but the soul is usually the middle
term, corresponding in part to what the moderns have called the 'vital principle', while the spirit is the veritable, permanent, and imperishable being. Most occultists have wanted to renew this ternary conception, introducing into it a special terminology; but they have not understood its true sense and have emptied it of all significance by the fantastic manner in which they represent the elements of the human being. Thus they make of the median element a body, the 'astral body', which closely resembles the 'perispirit' of the spiritists. All theories of this genre have the fault of being fundamentally only a kind of transposition of materialist conceptions. 'Neo-spiritualism' appears as a broadened materialism, and yet this very broadness is somewhat illusory. These theories approach most closely to vitalistic conceptions, and their origin should probably be sought there; they reduce the median element of the human composite to the vital principle alone, which they seem to admit only in order to account for how the spirit can move the body, an insoluble problem on the Cartesian hypothesis. Vitalism poses the question badly and is, in sum, only a physiological theory. It implies a very special point of view and is subject to one of the simplest of objections: either one admits, with Descartes, that the natures of the soul and body do not have the least point of contact, in which case it is impossible that there could be an intermediary or middle term between them, or on the contrary one admits, as did the ancients, that they have a certain natural affinity, in which case the intermediary becomes useless, for this affinity would suffice to explain how the one could act upon the other. This objection is valid against vitalism and also against 'neo-spiritualist' conceptions insofar as they proceed from vitalism and adopt its point of view. But of course this objection has no force against conceptions which envisage things under entirely different relationships very much anterior to Cartesian dualism and therefore entirely foreign to the preoccupations created by this latter, and which regard man not in order to furnish a hypothetical solution to an artificial problem as a complex being, but in order to correspond as exactly as possible to reality. According to various points of view, a number of divisions and subdivisions can be established in the human being without such conceptions being irreconcilable. The essential thing is that one not
separate the human being into two apparently unrelated halves, and not seek to reunite these two halves after the fact by a third term the nature of which, under these conditions, is not even conceivable.
We can now return to the spiritist conception, which, since it distinguishes spirit, 'perispirit', and body, is ternary. In a sense, this conception may seem superior to that of modern philosophers in that it admits an additional element, but this superiority is only apparent because the manner in which this additional element is conceived does not correspond to reality. We will return to this point below, but there is another feature to which we wish to call attention, although we cannot treat it fully at the moment: if the spiritist theory is already very inaccurate concerning the constitution of the human being in this life, it is entirely false when it is a question of the same human being after death. Here we touch on the very nub of the problem we intend to treat later, but here we can say in a few words that the error consists especially in this: according to spiritism nothing changes at death except that the body disappears, or rather separates from the other two elements, which remain united to one another as before; in other words, a dead man would not differ from a living man except in that he would have one fewer element, the body. It will be readily understood that such a conception is indispensable if one is to admit communication between the dead and the living, and also that the persistence of the 'perispirit', a material element, would be no less necessary in order that this communication might take place by equally material means. There is a certain logical sequence in these various points of the theory; but it is not nearly so easy to understand why, in the view of the spiritists, a medium is an indispensable condition for the production of phenomena. We repeat that we do not see whyadmitting the spiritist hypothesis-a 'spirit' would act otherwise by means of an unknown 'perispirit' than by means of itself; or else, if death modifies the 'perispirit' in such a way as to remove certain possibilities of action, communication would then certainly seem to be compromised. Whatever the case, the spiritists insist so much on the role of the medium and attach to it such importance that it can be said without exaggeration that it is one of the fundamental points of their doctrine.
We in no way contest the reality of so-called mediumistic faculties, and our criticism bears only on the interpretation given it by the spiritists. Moreover, experimenters who are not themselves spiritists see no difficulty in using the word 'mediumism' simply to make themselves understood and to conform to received practice, even though the word no longer has its original raison d'être, and so we will continue to do the same. On the other hand, when we say that we do not understand the role attributed to the medium, this is said from the point of view of the spiritists, at least apart from certain specific cases. No doubt if a 'spirit' wants to accomplish this or that action, if it wants to speak for example, it cannot do so except by taking possession of the organs of a living man. But it is not the same thing when the medium only lends to the 'spirit' a certain illdefined power to which various names have been given: neuric, odic, or ectenic force, and many others. To bypass the objections we raised previously, it must be admitted that this force is not an integral part of the 'perispirit' and that, existing only in the living being, it is rather of a physiological nature. We do not deny this, but the 'perispirit'-if there is a 'perispirit'-must make use of this force in order to act upon sensible matter. And then again one can ask what is the use of a 'perispirit', not to mention that the introduction of this new intermediary certainly does not simplify the question. Finally, it seems that one must either make an essential distinction between the 'perispirit' and the neuric force or simply deny the first in order to keep only the second-or renounce any intelligible explanation. In addition, if the neuric force suffices to account for everything, which accords better than any other supposition with the mediumistic theory, the existence of the 'perispirit' appears as a wholly gratuitous hypothesis. But no spiritist would accept this conclusion, not least because for want of any other consideration it renders very doubtful the intervention of the dead in phenomena that could be more easily explained by certain more or less exceptional properties of the living being. For the rest, as the spiritists would say, these properties are not abnormal;