Man's soul seems so bound to his body that physiologists ascribe to the body itself movements which are determined by the soul.

It is as if we were to attribute to the telegraph wire the production of the electric current whose results are visible to us. Indeed, certain accidents have definitely established that the soul is not identical with the functions of the body, as the materialists believe.

Magnetism and hypnosis alone, already tend to prove the action of a psychic force independent of the organism. After Mesmer, Puysegur and De-leuze, Baron du Potet penetrated far into the mystery, but the time was not ripe for understanding.

Charcot saw very clearly the depth of the abyss, and dared not face it. "Hypnotism," he declared, "is a world wherein one encounters palpable, material, gross facts, side by side with other facts, absolutely extraordinary, and inexplicable at present, following no physiological law and wholly strange and surprising. I will address myself to the first and leave the latter untouched."

To-day, however, the hour to study these latter facts has come. Facts accumulate, extraordinary cases are recorded by competent persons, and they prove in a most evident manner, that the bonds which unite the soul and the senses are not indissoluble. For example, long distance sight, reading without the use of the eyes, inversion of senses, etc.

As early as 1886, Durand de Gros, a learned doctor, and, as rarely happens, also a profound philosopher, had written in his Physiologie philosophique: "If the retina were developed upon the spiral blade of the cochlea sonorous vibrations would replace light and sounds would be seen. Reciprocally, if the acoustic nerve should spread its fibers into the eye, luminous rays would become sounds."

This statement, which was for the most part an intuition of genius in Dr. Durand, has been confirmed by experience, but it is in the invisible organism, the psychic body that such inversions may be produced, since of course the optic and acoustic nerves cannot be substituted one for the other experimentally. Yet these nerves are only conductors and it is due to their purely conductive faculty that the strange transposition imagined by Durand de Gros can be accomplished.

However unlikely that may seem, it is true nevertheless, and we are able to quote a competent authority. Here is the testimony of Lombroso:

"In 1891 I had to contend in my medical practice with one of the most curious phenomena ever presented to me. I was called upon to care for the daughter of a high official of my native city. This young person was often seized with paroxysms of hysteria, with accompanying symptoms, which neither pathology nor physiology could explain. At times, her eyes lost their sight, and by inversion, the sick girl saw with her ears. With bandaged eyes, she was able to read several printed lines held before her ear. We placed a magnifying glass between her ear and the sunlight, and she felt a burning sensation, crying out that she was being blinded. She prophesied in detail, with mathematical exactitude, everything that would happen to her.

"Although these facts were not new, they were nevertheless extremely singular. I confess that to me, at least, they seemed inexplicable by physiological or pathological theories as developed up to that time. ... It was then that it occurred to me that perhaps spiritism might aid me in reaching the truth."1

In short, the conception of a soul independent of the body, an active and no longer a function soul, alone might solve this problem to which no materialistic conception could offer a solution.

When a fact of this kind is encountered, there is but one path to follow - abandon the obsolete conceptions and declare frankly that physiology, such as taught by dogmatic materialism, will always be unable to explain vital movement.

This is what Lombroso did in repudiating the old error.

Why then do so many others close their eyes that they may not see? We must confess, it is because our official scholars are very timid - they are afraid of having a soul.

Others are bravely mistaken. They receive the evidence of the fact, but are hampered by a preconceived notion at the very basis of their scientific education. The facts are absurd in the face of their materialistic faith: they are absurd, inasmuch as the soul's existence is judged absurd. But the hypothesis of the soul makes these facts natural and explicable, shows the bonds which unite them, and strange to say, the facts thus interpreted accord with all that we know of experimental science: agree with all scientific observations which they admirably explain and complete.

1 From the Italian magazine L'Arena, translated into French by Dr. Dusart, La Revue Scientifique Morale du Spiritisme, Aug., 1907.

It does not appertain to science to judge matters of the soul or of spiritualistic philosophy. These are questions beyond its province, but the soul gives rise to phenomena of animism, which at the present time allude every theory applicable to physical phenomena. Therefore it is the part of science to discover in what realm, ethereal or other, and by what theory, undulatory or inductive, might be explained the phenomena of action at a distance and of thought-transference.

Above all, science should make the amends honorable to the animistic fact which implies the existence of a force which science has always denied: for one cannot admit the exteriorization of sensorial, motive, or intellectual faculties, without being converted to some spiritualistic idea.

Materialists understood it in this way when they opposed every phenomenon of action at a distance with the argument of impossibility, for reasons which, they said, they alone were capable of appreciating.

Action at a distance - they would say to us, pitying our ignorance - simply shows us that and your name will go down in history, more renowned than Kepler or Newton.

Impossibility has become proof. The names of those who have demonstrated it have not become great in history, but the fact has become familiar, and has been christened Animism.

Animism, so called, is simply the manifestation of the psychic body, an intermediary agency between mind and matter.

We cannot state that it acts according to physical laws, since it is manifested under a form still unknown to science. But it is made manifest, and that is the essential.

The data we shall give concerning telepathy are the resume of forty years' experiments; those who have carried them on are scholars of the highest order. The facts which are the basis of our demonstrations have been verified or accepted by them after serious investigations.

Leaving out all that pertains to history, tradition and legend, we shall endeavor to show that the simple statement of observations of material phenomena rests upon the word of absolutely competent and credible authorities. Then we shall see how the organic machine conducts itself in face of these strange phenomena: how this delicate instrument is responsive to influences of inward or outward thought. It is this sensitiveness which opens the door to certain means of occult communication and makes possible a belief in the efficacy of prayer and in inspiration.

Without making personal hypotheses, we shall set forth those statements which have been formulated upon animistic polyzoism.

They seem to correspond strikingly to the problems of the constitution of the human soul and the evolution of beings, at the same time according with all that we know concerning phylogenesis, ontogenesis and embryology.

Finally we shall demonstrate how we may acquire the certainty of after life.

This conviction scientifically reached cannot but contribute to the raising of morale, need of which is everywhere felt. In scientific research lies our sole port of refuge. Science, accepting only demonstrations, does not hear, does not comprehend the language of faith. The facts that we set forth demonstrate after life.

Briefly, the rational basis of morale would be in absolute knowledge of the after life: science cannot reach this, but it can attain a relative knowledge, quite sufficient to prove the presence of soul in nature: and that there are not only forces but also psychic organisms.

This is enough to cure us of that mental malady which causes us to teach that in the human body there is naught else but the functions of nutrition, circulation and respiration. It is not the activity of the liver and the spleen which causes us to love the true, the good and the beautiful, which incites indignation and arouses enthusiasm - these are indeed psychic forces. They so truly exist that, throughout the history of humanity, they have always triumphed over the satanic forces of matter - it is these forces that won the battle of the Marne.

Let us then seek in the empiric experiments of animism, clairvoyance and telepathy, the scientific weapon with which we may combat the barbarous conception of materialism that was leading us to decadence. This study suffices to reinstate spiritistic teaching. Man is so constituted that he is insensible to arguments that do not touch him personally: he can only adopt a morality based upon knowledge of his destiny, since this alone will overcome his incurable egoism.

He must know that his happiness or unhappiness is but a natural consequence of the direction he himself has chosen. He must know that the simple telepathic law will subject him, in the Beyond, to the severe ordeal of confronting the lucidity of a throng of clairvoyant souls who will read him like an open book. A man's evil actions will then become the instrument of his own torture. When he can no longer endure this he will have to flee the society of these clairvoyant souls, seeking solitude and shadows. His final escape will be a return - a new incarnation, which will be a new ordeal.

Here is something to move our egoism. If we are able to demonstrate that, justly, the happiness of each is jointly and severally concerned in the general progress, if we are all responsible, then the strong should labor to raise the weak: it will serve no end to hate them. Thus we come, by simple knowledge of the laws of evolution, under the great law of Christ: there is no other issue save to love one another and to live each for the other. That is the true scientific revelation, which gives us the key to a solid, practical and rational moral teaching.