THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
The devil is the giddiness of the intelligence stupefied by
the irresolution of the heart.
It is a monomania of nothingness, the lure of the abyss;
independently of what it may be according to the decisions of
the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith, which we have not
the temerity to touch.
As to the reproduction of signs and characters by that
universal fluid, which we call astral light, to deny its possi-
bility would be to take little account of the most ordinary
phenomena of Nature.
The mirage in the steppes of Russia, the palace of Morgan
le Fay, the figures printed naturally in the heart of stones
which Gaffarel calls gamahés, the monstrous deformities of
certain children caused by impressions of the nightmares of
their mothers, all these phenomena and many others prove that
the light is full of reflections and images which it projects and
reproduces according to the evocations of the imagination, of
memory, or of desire. Hallucination is not always an
objectless reverie: as soon as every one sees a thing it is
certainly visible; but if this thing is absurd one must
rigorously conclude that everybody is deceived or halluci-
nated by a real appearance.
To say (for example) that in the magnetic parties of
Mr. Home real and living hands come out of the tables, true
hands which some see, others touch, and by which still others
feel themselves touched without seeing them, to say that
these really corporeal hands are hands of spirits, is to speak
like children or madmen; it implies a contradiction in terms.
But to deem that such or such apparitions, such or such
sensations, are produced, is simply to be sincere, and to mock
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