Article August 3, 1899 Issue

Renounces Spiritualism

—The Inter Ocean

LONDON, June 20.—Spiritualism, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, has received a heavy blow in France. M. Camille Flammarion, its most prominent leader and best-known medium, has renounced it. He affirms his belief that the phenomena of spiritualism are due to autosuggestion and not to the influence of the spirits of the dead. Strangely enough his conversion is due to Allan Kardec's book "Genese," which was supposed to be written at the dictation of the late M. Galle, the discoverer of Neptune, through Flammarion himself as medium. Flammarion now declares that, although the book was produced in a series of trances in which he was the innocent and honest instrument, it is impossible that the illustrious astronomer could have dictated the blunders contained in "Genese".

That work states, for instance, that Jupiter has four satellites and Saturn eight, whereas it is now known that Jupiter has five and Saturn nine. When "Genese" was written, however, these discoveries had not yet been made, and M. Flammarion concludes that the information transcribed by Allan Kardec was merely the reflection of his own (M. Flammarion's) knowledge, and of what was said around him concerning the stars and planets.

Alter fifty years' association with the most celebrated spiritualists, M. Flammarion has come to the conclusion that these phenomena are in close concord with the ideas, convictions, and impressions of the assembly amid which they take place. Thus the organ melodies written in the group directed by Eugene Nus were really due to the unconsciously "exteriorized" spirit of Bureau, the musician. Auto-suggestion is extremely common in these experiments, says M. Flammarion, and the charming fable by M. Joubert, president of the Carcassonne court, the delicate poems obtained with the planchette by M. Mathieu, and many other works, all tend to show that the mediums wrote under their own influences. The human mind is probably a spiritual substance endowed with psychical power able to act outside the limits of the body.

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