This book is a pure and simple report without comments or explanations of the mediumistic phenomena produced by Mr. Home. Those phenomena are very interesting to anyone that knows Spiritism and want to understand them but, on their own, they are not much convincing to unbelievers which do not believe in what they see, let alone what they are told. It is a collection of facts more appropriate to those who know than to those who don’t know, instructive to the former but simply a curiosity to the latter. Our intention is not to examine or discuss those facts that were already dealt with in the articles about Mr. Home published in the Spiritist Review in February, March, April and May 1858. We only say that the simplicity of the report carries a weight of truth that could not be ignored and that, from our point of view, we have no reason to be suspicious of its authenticity. What can be criticized is its monotony and the absence of any conclusion, of any moral or logical deduction. Inaccuracies of style are also very frequent. The translation, particularly in certain passages, is very distant from the spirit of the French language. If the doubt is the first impression in someone that cannot attest the facts any person that had carefully studies and understood our books, particularly The Mediums’ Book, will at least acknowledge their possibility because the explanation will be found.
As everybody knows, Mr. Home is a very gifted, enlightened medium. A remarkable point is that he gathers the necessary skills to obtain the majority of the phenomena of that kind in an exceptional level, in a certain way. Although he had been ridiculed by some because of his apocryphal facts and exaggerations, there is still a lot to justify his reputation. His work will have, above all, the great advantage of separating the true from the false. The phenomena produced by him takes us back to the first period of Spiritism. The period of the turning tables, also called as the “Curiosity Period”. This is the period of preliminary effects which was intended to draw the attention to the new order of things and pave the way to the “Philosophical Period”.
Such a march was rational because every philosophy must involve the deduction of facts consciously studied and observed and the one that would only rest on unfounded, speculative ideas. Theory then should result from the facts and the philosophical consequences should result from that theory.
If Spiritism was limited to the material phenomena then, once the curiosity was satisfied, it would have lived out its fashion and been short-lived. The proof of that is the turning tables which had the privilege of entertaining the theaters only during a few winters. Its vitality was in its utility only. Thus, the prodigious extension that it acquired comes from the time when it entered the philosophical path. It was only then that it took its place amongst the doctrines.
The observations and the agreement of the facts led to the search for the causes; the search for the causes led to the knowledge of the relationships between the visible and invisible worlds as a consequence of a law. Once that law was known it provided the explanation to a number of phenomena misunderstood and considered supernatural up until then, before the causes were known. Once the causes were established the phenomena entered the order of the natural phenomena and the wonderful disappeared.
In that respect and with reason one may criticize how Mr. Home characterizes his life as supernatural in his book. In the past, he would certainly be taken by a magician. Had he been a priest in the Middle Ages he would have become a saint, with the gift of making miracles; in his privacy he would be considered a witch and would have been burnt at the stake; among the pagans he would have been a god with altars erected in his name. But these were other times and other customs. Today he is a simple medium, predestined by the power of his gifts to a limited number of prodigies, proving by experience that certain phenomena considered supernatural are just part of the natural laws.
Some people feared the authenticity of certain miracles by seeing them reaching public opinion. But by sharing Mr. Home’s gifts with many other mediums so that all could observe, it becomes impossible to consider them as an exception to natural laws.
What to do then? One cannot preclude something to be what it is; one cannot hide something that is not the privilege of anybody. One must resign to the acceptance of these facts just like the Earth’s movement and creation were accepted. If Mr. Home were the only one of that kind, his works could be denied after his death but how can one deny phenomena that multiplied by the daily surge of thousands of families in all corners of the globe? Still once more, willing or not, one must accept what is positive and that cannot be blocked.
But if certain phenomena lose prestige from the point of view of the miraculous, they gain in authenticity. The disbelief, with respect to the miracles, is in the order of the day and must be acknowledged. Now in the presence of mediumistic effects and thanks to the Spiritist theory that proves that such effects are part of nature then the possibility of theses phenomena is demonstrated and disbelief will have to be silenced.
The denial of a fact brings the denial of its consequences. Is it better to deny a fact that is considered miraculous than to admit it as a simple law of nature? Aren’t the laws of nature the works of God? Isn’t the revelation of a new law the proof of his power? Will God be smaller by acting through his laws than by derogating them? As a matter of fact, are the miracles an exclusive attribute of the divine power? Doesn’t the Church teach us that “false prophets solicited by the devil may make miracles and prodigies to seduce even the elected ones”? If the devil can make miracles, he can also depart from the laws of God, that is undo what was done by God, but the Church does not say anywhere that the devil can make laws to rule the universe. Now if the miracles can be made by God and the devil and if the laws are only made by God, Spiritism, by explaining that certain facts that are seeing as exceptions, are in-fact theapplication of the laws of nature attesting for that very reason much more the power of God than the miracles themselves. This is because Spiritism attributes them only to God while, in the alternate hypothesis, they could also be the work of the devil.
Another teaching sticks out from the phenomena produced by Mr. Home and his book supports what we have many times said about the insufficiency of the physical manifestations only to bring conviction to certain persons. It is a very well-known fact that many people witnessed the most extraordinary manifestations and yet were not convinced because they did not understand them and because they were not founded on reasoning. As a result, their assessment was that these manifestations were based on charlatanism.
There is no doubt that if anyone was able to convince someone that these manifestations were factual then Mr. Homes would be able to do so. Not a single medium has produced a more credible set of phenomena. And even with these manifestations there were still those that believed he was a a skillful conjurer. To many,he produces curious things that are even more interesting than the great magician,Robert Houdin..It would seem, , however, that given the amazing effects and the observations from witnesses that that any denial would be impossible and that France would be massively converted. When those phenomena only took place in America they were rejected given the impossibility of witnessing them. Mr. Home came to show them to the top notch of society and he found more curious people than believers in that society although he challenged any suspicion of charlatanism.
What was missing in such manifestations to convince people? They lacked the key to understand them. Today there isn’t a single Spiritist that had seriously studied the science that would not admit the facts mentioned in Mr. Home’s book without having seen them, whereas there is more than one unbeliever among those that saw. This demonstrates that something that speaks to the mind and is supported by reason has the power of conviction that is not carried by something that only speak to the eyes.
Does it follow that the arrival of Mr. Home was useless? Absolutely not. We have said, and repeat, that he rushed the emergence of Spiritism in France by the light shed upon the phenomena even amidst the unbelievers, proving that they are not surrounded by mysteries or ridicule formulas of magic and that one can be a medium without the appearance of a witch.
Finally, by the repercussion that his name and the environment that he lived proved to be very useful as it gave Mr. Oscar Comettant the opportunity to speak about and write his well-known witty article. The only missing thing is the author to know about the subject that he criticized. This is similar to someone someone who know nothing about music and wants to criticize Mozart or Beethoven (see report of the work of Mr. Home by Mr. Comettant, Siècle July 15th 1863 and some words from us about that article in the Spiritist Review in the following August).
