Thus they acknowledge the letter and not the spirit. It is therefore inconsequent to them to explain anything by animism.

But animism is a fact that they cannot deny: therefore it is stubbornness on their part to stand fast in their conception of physiology, while, on the other side, they combat the spiritualistic conception in the name of the animic theory, which for them cannot exist.

The spiritualists teach that without animism there could be no possible relation between mind and matter. Without animism, there could be no phenomenon of inspiration, no presentiment, none of those phenomena which make possible communication between us and the departed.

The possibility of spirit manifestation is subordinate to this very question of animism.

Fifty years ago, animism was not scientifically accredited. That is why science discarded the question a priori. To a Buchner and his disciples who mistook laws for causes, the question could not even be presented. Relying upon the known laws of physiology, Buchner declared blindly that they implied the rejection, pure and simple, of all action from a distance. The reasons for his conclusion were pitiable.

The antiquity of man, he wrote, destroyed the tradition of the almanac of Mathieu de la Drome for him - when it asserts that God had not created man 2000 years before the deluge, spiritualism breaks down. All the arguments of Buchner are of this stamp.

To him, thought-transmission would be a miracle: but this action is normally manifested in our organisms, and to-day it is no longer possible to deny that it is shown outside of organisms. However, people surrender reluctantly, giving up as little as may be, ceding as slowly as possible the ground that spiritualistic science is winning, and justifying this attitude by donning the hypocritical mask of scientific prudence.

There are those who, though convinced of the reality of abnormal manifestations, still declare a tardy intention of regarding these facts only under a conventional aspect. They declare that they must study the simplest phenomena before going on to the more complex. They forget, however, that before pronouncing a judgment, all phases of a phenomenon must be studied.

Those who have, so regretfully, conceded the reality of movement without contact, pretend to study only the physical side of the manifestation, without taking into account the intellectual, of which movement it is often but the expression. This is called, limiting the field of experiments: in other words, forbidding the search for causes.

Those who wish thus to dictate to us the course to follow, assure us that the independent pioneers impede and confuse them in their experiments. Let us therefore explain this.

It would be absurd pretension to hold to an explanation which explains only the simplest facts, while other facts of the same order contradict this explanation.

A fact is a fact, and no one has the right to eliminate one, however exceptional it may seem. That fact, even, which escapes our present comprehension, is all the more valuable, because it increases the limits of the possible and will serve as a basis for future discoveries.

I dare even to say that the more exceptional a fact is, the less chance there is of seeing it repeated often, and it becomes more necessary since definite proof exists to give it publicity.

The world must know that such a proof exists, lest it be forgotten and the limitation affect a new fact.

We do not find astronomers neglecting even an isolated observation and taking no further account of a comet's appearance because it has ceased to appear. We do not hear them declare that it is unnecessary to observe the nebulae, when there is so much more to be observed in a nearer field. That, however, is the method which they wish to recommend, when they say we must not overflow into the subject of communication with the beyond, until we shall have completely exhausted that of hypnotism.

Yet who knows which of these two subjects will shed its light upon the other? The same physiological process can produce similar automatic results, while the motive agents are different. If M. Pierre Janet is able to use hypnotism to produce, in an unconscious subject, an automatism of a spiritist appearance, he has simply proved that any mind could deposit in the lower strata of the organism a suggestion of similar nature. Whether the suggestion be true or false matters little: M. Pierre Janet has created an illusion, let us say. But he could, also, have used the same means to convey a real message. It is only in looking towards spiritism that certain cases become explicable.

According to the simplest method, we should have to conclude that, because one automatism may be explicable by spontaneous cellular activities, no other automatic action can be attributed to a higher source. But observation contradicts, absolutely, this conclusion.

We will not say much concerning table moving. That popular phenomenon is sufficiently well known.

As four or five persons are rarely found who are disposed to gather around a table for serious experiments and it is very difficult to arouse a common sympathy among them, only futile results, for the most part, are recorded, and indefinite observers pronounce definitely a verdict of condemnation.

Experimentation is difficult, yet we need but to study those who have observed seriously, to gain an idea of the communications obtained by the lifting of objects without contact.

Here we find again the proof of the fluidic element in communication with the brain of the audience, made manifest to our senses.

Therefore, there is round a table something like a field of force, created by the fluidic exteriorization of all the persons present. There already is soul, thinking and acting. This is an animic manifestation.

In the exteriorizable element is a sensitive faculty that brings it into relation with the will. There is soul everywhere: there is, everywhere, a motive faculty, capable of feeling an influence and of performing mechanically what the will dictates.