The Unknown Guest [8]
the ideal case, free from previous or ambient suggestion. If we refuse to believe in the existence of ghosts, if we are absolutely positive that the dead do not survive their death, then we must admit that the hallucination took birth spontaneously in the imagination of Miss Morton, an unconscious medium, and was subsequently trained by telepathy to all those around her. In my opinion, this explanation, however arbitrary and severe it may be, is the one which it behooves us to accept, pending further proofs. But it must be confessed that, in thus extending our incredulity, we render it very difficult for the dead to make its existence known.
We possess a certain number of cases of kind, rigorously investigated, cases probably representing but an infinitesimal part of those which might be collected. Is it possible that they one and all elude the telepathic explanation? It would be necessary to make a study of them, conducted with the most scrupulous and unremitting attention; for the question is not devoid of interest. If the existence of ghosts were well-established, it would mean the entrance into this world, which we believe to be our world, of a new force that would explain more than one thing which we are still far from understanding. If the dead interfere at one point, there is a reason why they should not interfere at every other point. We should no longer be alone, among ourselves, in our hermetically-closed sphere, as we are perhaps only too ready to imagine it. We should have to alter more than one of our physical and moral laws, more than one of our ideas; and it would no doubt be the most important and the most extraordinary revelation that would be expected in the present state of our knowledge and since the disappearance of the old positive religions. But we are not there yet: the proof of all this is still in the nursery-stage; and I do not know if it will ever get beyond that. Nevertheless the fact remains that, in these impenetrable regions of mystery which we are now exploring, the one weak spot lies here, the one wall in which there seems to be a chink--a strange one enough--giving a glimpse into the other world. It is narrow and vague and behind it there is still darkness; but it is not without significance and we shall do well not to lose sight of it.
6
Let us observe that this survival of the dead, as the neospiritualists conceive it, seems much less improbable since we have been studying more closely the manifestations of the extraordinary and incontestable spiritual force that lies hidden within ourselves. It is not dependent in our thought, nor on our consciousness, nor on our will; and very possibly it is not dependent either on our life. While we are still breathing on this earth it is already surmounting most of the great obstacles that limit and paralyse our existence. It acts at a distance and so to speak without organs. It passes through matter, disaggregates it and reconstitutes it. It seems to possess, the gift of ubiquity. It is not subject to the laws of gravity and lifts weights out of all proportion with the real and measurable strength of the body whence it is believed to emanate. It releases and removes itself from that body; it comes and goes freely and takes to itself substances and shapes which it borrows all around it; and therefore it is no longer so strange to see it surviving for a time that body to which it does not appear to be as indissolubly bound as is our conscious existence. Is it necessary to add that this survival of a part of ourselves which we hardly know and which besides seems incomplete, incoherent and ephemeral is wholly without prejudice to nor fate in the eternity of the worlds? But this is a question which we are not called upon to study here.
I shall perhaps be asked:
"If it is becoming increasingly difficult for all these facts--and there are more of them accumulating every day--to be embraced in the telepathic or psychometric theory, why not frankly accept the spiritualistic explanation, which is the simplest, which has an answer for everything
We possess a certain number of cases of kind, rigorously investigated, cases probably representing but an infinitesimal part of those which might be collected. Is it possible that they one and all elude the telepathic explanation? It would be necessary to make a study of them, conducted with the most scrupulous and unremitting attention; for the question is not devoid of interest. If the existence of ghosts were well-established, it would mean the entrance into this world, which we believe to be our world, of a new force that would explain more than one thing which we are still far from understanding. If the dead interfere at one point, there is a reason why they should not interfere at every other point. We should no longer be alone, among ourselves, in our hermetically-closed sphere, as we are perhaps only too ready to imagine it. We should have to alter more than one of our physical and moral laws, more than one of our ideas; and it would no doubt be the most important and the most extraordinary revelation that would be expected in the present state of our knowledge and since the disappearance of the old positive religions. But we are not there yet: the proof of all this is still in the nursery-stage; and I do not know if it will ever get beyond that. Nevertheless the fact remains that, in these impenetrable regions of mystery which we are now exploring, the one weak spot lies here, the one wall in which there seems to be a chink--a strange one enough--giving a glimpse into the other world. It is narrow and vague and behind it there is still darkness; but it is not without significance and we shall do well not to lose sight of it.
6
Let us observe that this survival of the dead, as the neospiritualists conceive it, seems much less improbable since we have been studying more closely the manifestations of the extraordinary and incontestable spiritual force that lies hidden within ourselves. It is not dependent in our thought, nor on our consciousness, nor on our will; and very possibly it is not dependent either on our life. While we are still breathing on this earth it is already surmounting most of the great obstacles that limit and paralyse our existence. It acts at a distance and so to speak without organs. It passes through matter, disaggregates it and reconstitutes it. It seems to possess, the gift of ubiquity. It is not subject to the laws of gravity and lifts weights out of all proportion with the real and measurable strength of the body whence it is believed to emanate. It releases and removes itself from that body; it comes and goes freely and takes to itself substances and shapes which it borrows all around it; and therefore it is no longer so strange to see it surviving for a time that body to which it does not appear to be as indissolubly bound as is our conscious existence. Is it necessary to add that this survival of a part of ourselves which we hardly know and which besides seems incomplete, incoherent and ephemeral is wholly without prejudice to nor fate in the eternity of the worlds? But this is a question which we are not called upon to study here.
I shall perhaps be asked:
"If it is becoming increasingly difficult for all these facts--and there are more of them accumulating every day--to be embraced in the telepathic or psychometric theory, why not frankly accept the spiritualistic explanation, which is the simplest, which has an answer for everything