4
I will not enter into the details of the numerous sittings which preceded or followed this one; nor will I even undertake to summarize them. To share the emotion aroused, we must read the reports which faithfully reproduce these strange dialogues between the living and the dead. We receive the impression that the departed son comes daily closer and closer to life and converses more and more easily, more and more familiarly with all those who loved him before he was overtaken by the shadows of the grave. He recalls to each of them a thousand little forgotten incidents. He remains among his own kindred as though he had never left them. He is always present and prepared to answer. He mingles so completely in their whole life that no one any longer thinks of mourning his loss. They question him about his present state, ask him where he is, what he is, what he is doing. He needs no pressing; he at once declares himself astonished at the incredible reality of that new world. He is very happy there, reforming himself, condensing himself, so to speak, and gradually finding himself again. The existence of the intelligence and of the will, disencumbered of the body, is freer, lighter, of greater range and diffusion, but continues very like what it was in the flesh. The environment is no longer physical but spiritual; and there is a translation to another plane rather than the break, the complete overthrow, the extraordinary transitions which we are pleased to imagine. After all, is it not fairly plausible? And are we not wrong in believing that death changes everything, from one day to the next, and that there is a sudden and inconceivable abyss between the hour which precedes decease and that which follows it? Is it in conformity with the habits of nature? Is the life-force which we carry within ourselves and which doubtless cannot be extinguished, is that force to so great a degree crippled and cramped by our body that, when it leaves this body, it becomes, then and there, entirely different and unrecognizable?
But I must set a limit to speculation and, lest I exceed the limits of this essay, I must pass by two or three revelations less striking than that of the photograph, but pretty strange notwithstanding. Obviously, it is not the first time that such manifestations have occurred; but these are really of a higher quality than those which crowd several volumes of the Proceedings. Do they furnish the proof for which we ask? I do not think so; but will any one ever be able to supply us with that compelling proof? What can the discarnate spirit do when trying to establish that it continues to exist? If it speak to us of the most secret, the most private incidents of a common past, we reply that it is we who are reviving those memories within ourselves. If it aim at convincing us by its description of the world beyond the grave, not all the most glorious and unexpected pictures of that world which it might trace are worth anything as evidence, for they cannot be controlled. If we seek a proof by asking it to foretell the future, it confesses that it does not know the future much better than we do, which is likely enough, seeing that any knowledge of this kind implies a sort of omniscience and consequently omnipotence which can hardly be acquired in a moment. All that remains to it, therefore, is such little snatches of evidence and uncertain attempts at proof as we find here. It is not enough, I admit; for psychometry, that is to say, a similar manifestation of clairvoyance between one living subconsciousness and another, gives almost equally astonishing results. But here as there these results show at least that we have around us wandering intelligences, already enfranchised from the narrow and burdensome laws of space and matter, that sometimes know things which we do not know or no longer know. Do they emanate from ourselves, are they only manifestations of faculties as yet unknown, or are they external, objective and independent of ourselves? Are they merely alive in the sense in which we speak of our bodies, or do they belong to bodies which have ceased to exist? That is what we cannot yet decide; but it must be acknowledged that, once we admit their existence, which at this date is hardly contestable, it becomes much less difficult to agree that they belong to the dead.
This at least may be said: if experiments such as these do not demonstrate positively that the dead are able directly, manifestly and almost materially to mingle with our existence and to remain in touch with us, they prove that they continue to live in us much more ardently, profoundly, personally and passionately than had hitherto been believed; and that in itself is more than we dared hope.
BAD NEWS
III
BAD NEWS
1
FOR more than four years, evil tidings passed night and day over almost half the world of men. Never since our earth came into being were they known to spread in crowds so dense and busy and commanding. In the happy days of peace, we would come upon the gloomy visitants here and there, travelling over hill and dale, nearly always alone, sometimes in couples, rarely in companies of three, timid and shy, seeking to pass unnoticed and humbly undertaking the smallest messages of sorrow that destiny confided to their charge. Now they go with heads erect; they are almost arrogant; and swollen with their importance, they neglect any misfortunes that are not deathly. They encumber the roads, cross the seas and rivers, invade the streets, do not forget the by-ways and climb the most rugged and stony tracks. There is not a hovel cowering in the dingiest and most obscure suburb of a great city, not a cottage hidden in the recesses of the poorest hamlet of the most inaccessible mountain, which escapes their search and towards which one of them, detached from the sinister band, does not hasten with its little footstep, eager, pitiless and sure. Each has its goal whence nothing can divert it. Through time and space, over rocks and walls they press onward, swift and determined, blind and deaf to all that would retard them, thinking only of fulfilling their duty, which is to announce as soon as may be to the most sensitive and defenceless heart the greatest sorrow that can fall upon it.
2
We watch them pass as emissaries of destiny. To us they seem as fatal as the very misfortune of which they are but the heralds; and no one dreams of barring the way before them. So soon as one of them arrives, all unexpected, in our midst, we leave everything, we rush forward, we gather round it. Almost a religious fear compasses it about; we whisper reverently; and we should bow no lower in the presence of a messenger of God. Not only would no one dare to contradict it, or advise it, or beg it to be patient, to grant a few hours of respite, to hide in the darkness or to arrive by a longer road; on the contrary, all compete in offering it zealous if humble service. The most compassionate, the most pitiful are the most assiduous and obsequious, as though there were no duty more unmistakable, no act of charity more meritorious than to lead the dark envoy by the shortest and the quickest way to the heart which it is to strike.