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The Unknown Guest

by Maurice Maeterlinck

Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

January, 2000

Scanned by Dianne Bean of Phoenix, Arizona.

Scanned by Dianne Bean of Phoenix, Arizona.

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK

Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

INTRODUCTION

My Essay on Death led me to make a conscientious enquiry into the present position of the great mystery, an enquiry which I have endeavoured to render as complete as possible. I had hoped that a single volume would be able to contain the result of these investigations, which, I may say at once, will teach nothing to those who have been over the same ground and which have nothing to recommend them except their sincerity, their impartiality and a certain scrupulous accuracy. But, as I proceeded, I saw the field widening under my feet, so much so that I have been obliged to divide my work into two almost equal parts. The first is now published and is a brief study of veridical apparitions and hallucinations and haunted houses, or, if you will, the phantasms of the living and the dead; of those manifestations which have been oddly and not very appropriately described as "psychometric"; of the knowledge of the future: presentiments, omens, premonitions, precognitions and the rest; and lastly of the Elberfeld horses. In the second, which will be published later, I shall treat of the miracles of Lourdes and other places, the phenomena of so called materialization, of the divining-rod and of fluidic asepsis, not unmindful withal of a diamond dust of the miraculous that hangs over the greater marvels in that strange atmosphere into which we are about to pass.

Published in English, in an enlarged form, under the title of Our Eternity --Translator's Note.

When I speak of the present position of the mystery, I of course do not mean the mystery of life, its end and its beginnings, nor yet the great riddle of the universe which lies about us. In this sense, all is mystery, and, as I have said elsewhere, is likely always to remain so; nor is it probable that we shall ever touch any point of even the utmost borders of knowledge or certainty. It is here a question of that which, in the midst of this recognized and usual mystery, the familiar mystery of which we are almost oblivious, suddenly disturbs the regular course of our general ignorance. In themselves, these facts which strike us as supernatural are no more so than the others; possibly they are rarer, or, to be more accurate, less frequently or less easily observed. In any case, their deep-seated cause, while being probably neither more remote nor more difficult access, seem to lie hidden in an unknown region less often visited by our science, which after all is but a reassuring and conciliatory espression of our ignorance. Today, thanks to the labours of the Society for Psychical Research and a host of other seekers, we are able to approach these phenomena as a whole with a certain confidence. Leaving the realm of legend, of after-dinner stories, old wives' tales, illusions and exaggerations, we find ourselves at last on circumscribed but fairly safe ground. This does not mean that there are no other supernatural phenomena besides those collected in the publications of the society in question and in a few of the more weighty reviews which have adopted the same methods. Notwithstanding all their diligence, which for over thirty years has been ransacking the obscure corners of our planet, it is inevitable that a good many things escape their notice, besides which the rigour of their investigations makes them reject three fourths of those which are brought before them. But we may say that the twenty-six volumes of the society is Proceedings and the fifteen or sixteen volumes of its Journal, together with the twenty-three annuals of the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, to mention only this one periodical of signal excellence, embrace for the moment the whole field of the extraordinary and offer some instances of all the abnormal manifestations of the inexplicable. We are henceforth able to classify them, to divide and subdivide them into general, species and varieties. This is not much, you may say; but it is thus that every science begins and furthermore that many a one ends. We have therefore sufficient evidence, facts that can scarcely be disputed, to enable us to consult them profitably, to recognize whither they lead, to form some idea of their general character and perhaps to trace their sole source by gradually removing the weeds and rubbish which for so many hundreds and thousands of years have hidden it from our eyes.

Truth to tell, these supernatural manifestations seem less marvelous and less fantastic than they did some centuries ago; and we are at first a little disappointed. One would think that even the mysterious has its ups and downs and remains subject to the caprices of some strange extra mundane fashion; or perhaps, to be more exact, it is evident that the majority of those legendary miracles could not withstand the rigorous scrutiny of our day. Those which emerge triumphant from the test and defy our less credulous and more penetrating vision are all the more worthy of holding our attention. They are not the last survivals of the riddle, for this continues to exist in its entirety and grows greater in proportion as we throw light upon it; but we can perhaps see in them the supreme or else the first efforts of a force which does not appear to reside wholly in our sphere. They suggest blows struck from without by an Unknown even more unknown than that which we think we know, an Unknown which is not that of the universe, not that which we have gradually made into an inoffensive and amiable Unknown, even as we have made the universe a son of province of the earth, but a stranger arriving from another world, an unexpected visitor who comes in a rather sinister way to trouble the comfortable quiet in which we were slumbering, rocked by the firm and watchful hand of orthodox science.

Let us first be content to enumerate them. We shall find that we have table-turning, with its raps; the movements and transportations of inanimate objects without contact; luminous phenomena; lucidite, or clairvoyance; veridical apparitions or hallucinations; haunted houses; bilocations and so forth; communications with the dead; the divining-rod; the miraculous cures of Lourdes and elsewhere; fluidic asepsis; and lastly the famous thinking animals of Elberfeld and Mannheim. These, if I be not mistaken, after eliminating all that is in, sufficiently attested, constitute the residue or caput mortuum of this latter-day miracle.

Everybody has heard of table-turning, which may be called the A B C of occult science. It is so common and so easily produced that the Society for Psychical Research has not thought it necessary to devote special attention to the subject. I need hardly add that we must take count only of movements or "raps" obtained without the hands touching the table, so as to remove every possibility of fraud or unconscious complicity. To obtain these movements it is enough, but it is also indispensable that those who form the "chain" should include a person endowed with mediumistic faculties. I repeat, the experiment is within the reach of any one who cares to try it under the requisite conditions; and it is as incontestable as the polarization of light or as crystallization by means of electric currents.

In the same group may be placed the movement and transportation of objects without contact, the touches of spirit hands, the luminous phenomena and materialization. Like table-turning, they demand the presence of a medium. I need not observe that we here find ourselves in the happy hunting-ground of the impostor and that even the most powerful mediums, those possessing the most genuine and undeniable gifts, such as the celebrated Eusapia Paladino, are upon occasion--and the occasion occurs but too often--incorrigible cheats. But, when we have made every allowance for fraud, there nevertheless remains a considerable number of incidents so rigorously attested that we most needs accept them or else abandon all human certainty.

The case is not quite the same with levitation and the wonders performed, so travelers tell us, by certain Indian jugglers. Though the prolonged burial of a living being is very nearly proved and can doubtless be physiologically explained, there are many other tricks on which we have so far no authoritative pronouncement. I will not speak of the "mango-tree" and the "basket-trick," which are mere conjuring; but the "fire-walk" and the famous "rope-climbing trick" remain more of a mystery.

The fire-walk, or walk on red-hot bricks or glowing coals, is a sort of religious ceremony practiced in the Indies, in some of the Polynesian islands, in Mauritius and elsewhere. As the result of incantations uttered by the high priest, the bare feet of the faithful who follow him upon the bed of burning pebbles or brands seem to become almost insensible to the touch of fire. Travelers are anything but agreed whether the heat of the surface traversed is really intolerable, whether the extraordinary power of endurance is explained by the thickness of the horny substance which protects the soles of the natives' feet, whether the feet are burnt or whether the skin remains untouched; and, under present conditions, the question is too uncertain to make it worth while to linger over it.

"Rope-climbing" is more extraordinary. The juggler takes his stand in an open space, far from any tree or house. He is accompanied by a child; and his only impedimenta are a bundle of ropes and an old canvas sack. The juggler throws one end of the rope up in the air; and the rope, as though drawn by an invisible hook, uncoils and rises straight into the sky until the end disappears; and, soon after, there come tumbling from the blue two arms, two legs, a head and so on, all of which the wizard picks up and crams into the sack. He next utters a few magic words over it and opens it; and the child steps out, bowing and smiling to the spectators.

This is the usual form taken by this particular sorcery. It is pretty rare and seems to be practised only by one sect which originated in the North-West Provinces. It has not yet perhaps been sufficiently investigated to take its place among the evidence mentioned show. If it were really as I have described, it could hardly be explained save by some strange hallucinatory power emanating from the juggler or illusionist, who influences the audience by suggestion and makes it see what he wishes. In that case the suggestion or hallucination covers a very extensive area. In point of fact, onlookers, Europeans, on the balconies of houses at some distance from the crowd of natives, have been known to experience the same influence. This would be one of the most curious manifestations of that "unknown guest" of which we shall speak again later when, after enumerating its acts and deeds, we try to investigate and note down the eccentricities of its character.

Levitation in the proper sense of the word, that is to say, the raising, without contact, and floating of an inanimate object or even of a person, might possibly be due to the same hallucinatory power; but hitherto the instances have not been sufficiently numerous or authentic to allow us to draw any conclusions. Also we shall meet with it again when we come to the chapter treating of the materializations of which it forms part.

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

This brings us without any break to the consideration of veridical apparitions and hallucinations and finally to haunted houses. We all know that the phantasms of the living and the dead have now a whole literature of their own, a literature which owes its birth to the numerous and conscientious enquiries conducted in England, France, Belgium and the United States at the instance of the Society for Psychical Research. In the presence of the mass of evidence collected, it would be absurd to persist in denying the reality of the phenomena themselves. It is by this time incontestable that a violent or deep emotion can be transmitted instantaneously from one mind to another, however great the distance that separates the mind experiencing the emotion from the mind receiving the communication. It is most often manifested by a visual hallucination, more rarely by an auditory hallucination; and, as the most violent emotion which man can undergo is that which grips and overwhelms him at the approach or at the very moment of death, it is nearly always this supreme emotion which he sends forth and directs with incredible precision through space, if necessary across seas and continents, towards an invisible and moving goal. Again, though this occurs less frequently, a grave danger, a serious crisis can beget and transmit to a distance a similar hallucination. This is what the S. P. R. calls "phantasms of the living." When the hallucination takes place some time after the decease of the person whom it seems to evoke, be the interval long or short, it is classed among the "phantasms of the dead."

The latter, the so-called "phantasms of the dead," are the rarest. As F. W. H. Myers pointed out in his Human Personality, a consideration of the proportionate number of apparitions observed at various periods before and after death shows that they increase very rapidly for the few hours which precede death and decrease gradually during the hours and days which follow; while after about a year's time they become extremely rare and exceptional.

However exceptional they may be, these apparitions nevertheless exist and are proved, as far as anything can be proved, by abundant testimony of a very precise character. Instances will be found in the Proceedings, notably in vol. vi., pp. 13-65, etc.

Whether it be a case of the living, the dying, or the dead, we are familiar with the usual form which these hallucinations take. Indeed their main outlines hardly ever vary. Some one, in his bedroom, in the street, on a journey, no matter where, suddenly see plainly and clearly the phantom of a relation or a friend of whom he was not thinking at the time and whom he knows to be thousands of miles away, in America, Asia or Africa as the case may be, for distance does not count. As a rule, the phantom says nothing; its presence, which is always brief, is but a sort of silent warning. Sometimes it seems a prey to futile and trivial anxieties. More rarely, it speaks, though saying but little after all. More rarely still, it reveals something that has happened, a crime, a hidden treasure of which no one else could know. But we will return to these matters after completing this brief enumeration.

Proceedings, vol. i., pp. 101-115; vol. ii., pp. 137-151; vol. viii., pp. 311, 332, etc.

If it is a case of collective suggestion, we should have to admit that it is a subconscious suggestion emitted without the knowledge of the participants, which indeed is quite possible.

Though they belong to the same order, I will not here mention the exploits of what the Germans call the Poltergeist, which take the form of flinging stones, ringing bells, turning mattresses, upsetting furniture and so forth. These matters are always open to suspicion and really appear to be nothing but quaint frolics of hysterical subjects or of mediums indulging their sense of humour. The manifestations of the Poltergeist are fairly numerous and the reader will find several instances in the Proceedings and especially in the Journal of the S. P. R.

As for communications with the dead, I devoted a whole chapter to these in my own essay entitled Our Eternity and will not return to them now. It will be enough to recall and recapitulate my general impression, that probably the dead did not enter into any of these conversations. We are here concerned with purely mediumistic phenomena, more curious and mere subtle than those of table-rapping, but of the same character; and these manifestations, however astonishing they may be, do not pierce the terrestrial sphere wherein we are imprisoned.

Setting aside the religious hypotheses, which we are not examining here, for they belong to a different order of ideas, we find, as an explanation of the Majority of these phenomena, or at least as a means of avoiding an absolute and depressing silence in regard to them, two hypotheses which reach the unknown by more or less divergent paths, to wit, the spiritualistic hypothesis and the mediumistic hypothesis. The spiritualists, or rather the neospiritualists or scientific spiritualists, who must not be confused with the somewhat over-credulous disciples of Allan Kardec, maintain that the dead do not die entirely, that their spiritual or animistic entity neither departs nor disperses into space after the dissolution of the body, but continues an active though invisible existence around us. The neospiritualistic theory, however, professes only very vague notions as to the life led by these discarnate spirits. Are they more intelligent than they were when they inhabited their flesh? Do they possess a wider understanding and mightier faculties than ours? Up to the present, we have not the unimpeachable facts that would permit us to say so. It would seem, on the contrary, if the discarnate spirits really continue to exist, that their life is circumscribed, frail, precarious, incoherent and, above all, not very long. To this the objection is raised that it only appears so to our feeble eyes. The dead among whom we move without knowing it struggle to make themselves understood, to manifest themselves, but dash themselves against the inpenetrable wall of our senses, which, created solely to perceive matter, remain hopelessly ignorant of all the rest, though this is doubtless the essential part of the universe. That which will survive in us, imprisoned in our body, is absolutely inaccessible to that which survives in them. The utmost that they can do is occasionally to cause a few glimmers of their existence to penetrate the fissures of those singular organisms known as mediums. But these vagrant, fleeting, venturous, stifled, deformed glimmers can but give us a ludicrous idea of a life which has no longer anything in common with the life--purely animal for the most part- which we lead on this earth. It is possible; and there is something to be said for the theory. It is at any rate remarkable that certain communications, certain manifestations have shaken the scepticism of the coldest and most dispassionate men of science, men utterly hostile to supernatural influences. In order to some extent to understand their uneasiness and their astonishment, we need only read--to quote but one instance among a thousand--a disquieting but unassailable article, entitled, Dans les regions inexplorees de la biologic humaine. Observations et experiences sur Eusapia Paladino, by Professor Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological Institute of the University of Naples. Seldom have experiments in the domain of mediums or spirits been conducted with more distrustful suspicion or with more implacable scientific strictness. Nevertheless, scattered limbs, pale, diaphanous but capable hands, suddenly appeared in the little physiological laboratory of Naples University, with its doors heavily padlocked and sealed, as it were, mathematically excluding any possibility of fraud; these same hands worked apparatus specially intended to register their touches; lastly, the outline of something black, of a head, uprose between the curtains of the mediumistic cabinet, remained visible for several seconds and did not retire until itself apparently frightened by the exclamations of surprise drawn from a group of scientists who, after all, were prepared for anything; and Professor Bottazzi confesses that it was then that, to quote his own words--measured words, as beseems a votary of science, but expressive--he felt "a shiver all through his body."

On the same grounds, we will also leave on one side the theosophical hypothesis, which, like the others, begins by calling for an act of adherence, of blind faith. Its explanations, though often ingenious, are no more than forcible but gratuitous asservations and, as I said in Our Eternity, do not give us the shadow of the commencement of a proof.

Annales des Sciences Psychiques: April November 1907.

It was one of those moments in which a doubt which one had thought for ever abolished grips the most unbelieving. For the first time, perhaps, he looked around him with uncertainty and wondered in what world he was. As for the faithful adherents of the unknown, who had long understood that we must resign ourselves to understanding nothing and he prepared for every sort of surprise there was here, all the same, even for them, a mystery of another character, a bewildering mystery, the only really strange mystery, more torturing than all the others together, because it verges upon ancestral fears and touches the most sensitive point of our destiny.

The spiritualistic argument most worthy of attention is that supplied by the apparitions of the dead and by haunted houses. We will take no account of the phantasms that precede, accompany or follow hard upon death: they are explained by the transmission of a violent motion from one subconsciousness to another; and, even when they are not manifested until several days after death, it may still he contended that they are delayed telepathic communications. But what are we to say of the ghosts that spring up more than a year, nay, more than ten years after the disappearance of the corpse? They are very rare, I know, but after all there are some that are extremely difficult to deny, for the accounts of their actions are attested and corroborated by numerous and trustworthy witnesses. It is true that here again, where it is in most cases a question of apparitions to relations or friends, we may be told that we are in the presence of telepathic incidents or of hallucinations of the memory. We thus deprive the spiritualists of a new and considerable province of their realm. Nevertheless, they retain certain private desmesnes into which our telepathic explanations do not penetrate so easily. There have in fact been ghosts that showed themselves to people who had never known or seen them in the flesh. They are more or less closely connected with the ghosts in haunted houses, to which we must revert for a moment.

As I said above, it is almost impossible honestly to deny the existence of these houses. Here again the telepathic interpretation enforces itself in the majority of cases. We may even allow it a strange but justifiable extension, for its limits are scarcely known. It has happened fairly often, for instance, that ghosts come to disturb a dwelling whose occupiers find, in response to their indications, bones hidden in the walls or under the floors. It is even possible, as in the case of William Moir, which was as strictly conducted and supervised as a judicial enquiry, that the skeleton is buried at some distance from the house and dates more than forty years back. When the remains are removed and decently interred, the apparitions cease.

Proceedings, vol. vi., pp. 35-41.

But even in the case of William Moir there is no sufficient reason for abandoning the telepathic theory. The medium, the "sensitive," as the English say, feels the presence or the proximity of the bones; some relation established between them and him--a relation which certainly is profoundly mysterious--makes him experience the last emotion of the deceased and sometimes allows him to conjure up the picture and the circumstances of the suicide or murder, even as, in telepathy between living persons, the contact of an inanimate object is able to bring him into direct relation with the subconsciousness of its owner. The slender chain connecting life and death is not yet entirely broken; and we might even go so far as to say that everything is still happening within our world.

On the 22nd of September of the following year, a friend of Mr. G--'s arrived to make a short stay. The morning after his arrival, he came down, pale and tired, and announced his intention of leaving immediately. On being questioned, he confessed that he was afraid, that he had been kept awake all night by the sound of groans, blasphemous oaths and cries of despair, that his bedroom door had been opened, and so forth.

"That is the man whom I saw."

The landlord, in reply to their questions, said that the painting was a portrait of his grandfather, adding that he had been "no credit to the family."

It is none the less certain that there is some unfairness in suggesting this explanation for every incident of the kind. It means stretching to the uttermost and perhaps stretching too far the elastic powers of that amiable maid-of-all-work, telepathy. For that matter, there are cases in which the telepathic interpretation is even more uncertain, as in that described by Miss R. C. Morton in vol. viii. of the Proceedings.

The story is too long and complicated to be reproduced here. It is unnecessary to observe that, in view of the character of Miss Morton, a lady of scientific training, and of the quality of the corroborative testimony, the facts themselves seem incontestable.

The case is that of a house built in 1860, whose first occupier was an Anglo-Indian, the next tenant being an old man and the house then remaining unlet for four years. In 1882, when Captain Morton and big family moved in, there had never, so far as they knew, been any question of its being haunted. Three months afterwards, Miss Morton was in her room and on the point of getting into bed, when she heard some one at the door and went to it, thinking that it might be her mother. On opening the door, she found no one there, but, going a few steps along the passage, she saw a tall lady, dressed in black, standing at the head of the stair. She did not wish to make the others uneasy and mentioned the occurrence to no one except a friend, who did not live in the neighborhood.

But soon the same figure dressed in black was seen by the various members of the household, by a married sister on a visit to the house, by the father, by the other sister, by a little boy, by a neighbour, General A--, who saw a lady crying in the orchard and, thinking that one of the daughters of the house was ill, sent to enquire after her. Even the Mortons' two dogs on more than one occasion clearly showed that they saw the phantom.

It was, as a matter of fact very harmonious: it said nothing; it wanted nothing; it wandered from room to room, without any apparent object; and, when it was spoken to, it did not answer and only made its escape. The household became accustomed to the apparition; it troubled nobody and inspired no terror. It was immaterial, it could not be touched, but yet it intercepted the light. After making enquiries, they succeeded in identifying it as the second wife of the Anglo-Indian. The Morton family had never seen the lady, but, from the description which they gave of the phantom to those who had known her, it appeared that the likeness was unmistakable. For the rest, they did not know why she came back to haunt a house in which she had not died. After 1887, the appearances became less frequent, distinct, ceasing altogether in 1889.

Let us assume that the facts as reported in the Proceedings are certain and indisputable. We have very nearly the ideal case, free from previous or ambient suggestion. If we refuse to believe in the existence of ghosts, if we are absolutely positive that the dead do not survive their death, then we must admit that the hallucination took birth spontaneously in the imagination of Miss Morton, an unconscious medium, and was subsequently trained by telepathy to all those around her. In my opinion, this explanation, however arbitrary and severe it may be, is the one which it behooves us to accept, pending further proofs. But it must be confessed that, in thus extending our incredulity, we render it very difficult for the dead to make its existence known.

We possess a certain number of cases of kind, rigorously investigated, cases probably representing but an infinitesimal part of those which might be collected. Is it possible that they one and all elude the telepathic explanation? It would be necessary to make a study of them, conducted with the most scrupulous and unremitting attention; for the question is not devoid of interest. If the existence of ghosts were well-established, it would mean the entrance into this world, which we believe to be our world, of a new force that would explain more than one thing which we are still far from understanding. If the dead interfere at one point, there is a reason why they should not interfere at every other point. We should no longer be alone, among ourselves, in our hermetically-closed sphere, as we are perhaps only too ready to imagine it. We should have to alter more than one of our physical and moral laws, more than one of our ideas; and it would no doubt be the most important and the most extraordinary revelation that would be expected in the present state of our knowledge and since the disappearance of the old positive religions. But we are not there yet: the proof of all this is still in the nursery-stage; and I do not know if it will ever get beyond that. Nevertheless the fact remains that, in these impenetrable regions of mystery which we are now exploring, the one weak spot lies here, the one wall in which there seems to be a chink--a strange one enough--giving a glimpse into the other world. It is narrow and vague and behind it there is still darkness; but it is not without significance and we shall do well not to lose sight of it.

Let us observe that this survival of the dead, as the neospiritualists conceive it, seems much less improbable since we have been studying more closely the manifestations of the extraordinary and incontestable spiritual force that lies hidden within ourselves. It is not dependent in our thought, nor on our consciousness, nor on our will; and very possibly it is not dependent either on our life. While we are still breathing on this earth it is already surmounting most of the great obstacles that limit and paralyse our existence. It acts at a distance and so to speak without organs. It passes through matter, disaggregates it and reconstitutes it. It seems to possess, the gift of ubiquity. It is not subject to the laws of gravity and lifts weights out of all proportion with the real and measurable strength of the body whence it is believed to emanate. It releases and removes itself from that body; it comes and goes freely and takes to itself substances and shapes which it borrows all around it; and therefore it is no longer so strange to see it surviving for a time that body to which it does not appear to be as indissolubly bound as is our conscious existence. Is it necessary to add that this survival of a part of ourselves which we hardly know and which besides seems incomplete, incoherent and ephemeral is wholly without prejudice to nor fate in the eternity of the worlds? But this is a question which we are not called upon to study here.

I shall perhaps be asked:

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