Natural somnambulism is a notorious fact, the reality of which few now dispute, notwithstanding the marvelous character of the phenomena it presents. Why then, should self-induced somnambulism be regarded as more extraordinary or incredible, simply because it is produced by study and application like so many other things? It has been abused by charlatans, some persons will reply; but that fact only affords an additional reason for not leaving it in their hands. When science shall have taken possession of it, charlatanism will have much less credit with the masses; but, meanwhile, as somnambulism, both natural and artificial, is a fact, and as a fact cannot be argued down, it is making its way, despite the ill-will of its adversaries, and obtaining a footing even in the temple of western science, which it is entering by many side-doors, instead of entering by the principal one. Its right to be there, ere long, will be fully recognized. For somnambulism is more than a physical phenomenon; it is a light thrown on the subject of psychology; it is a state in which you can study the soul, because the soul shows itself, so to say, without covering. Now, one of the phenomena which characterizes the soul is clear-seeing independently of the ordinary physical organs.

Those who contest this fact do so on the ground that the somnambulist does not see at all times, at will of the skeptic, as with the eyes. Need we be astonished if the means employed being different, the methods are not the same? Is it reasonable to demand identical effects in cases in which the instrument employed are not the same? The soul has its properties just as has the eye; and the former must be judged of by themselves, and not by analogy with the latter.

The case of the clairvoyant and of the natural somnambulist is identically the same; it is an attribute of the soul, a faculty inherent in every part of the incorporeal being which is in us, and has no other limits than those assigned to the soul itself. The somnambulist sees wherever his soul can trans-port itself, no matter what distance. In sight at distance the somnambulist does not see from the point at which his body is, and as though through a telescope. The things he sees are present with him, as though he were at the place where they exist, because his soul is there in reality; and it is for this reason that his body is, as it were, annihilated, and seems to be deprived of sensation, until the moment when the soul comes back and retakes possession of it. This partial separation of the soul and the body is an abnormal state, which may last for a longer or shorter time, but not indefinitely; it is the cause of the fatigue felt by the body after a certain lapse of time, especially when the soul, during that partial separation, busies itself in some active spiritual pursuit. The fact that soul-sight or spirit-sight is not circumscribed, and has no definite seat, explains why somnambulists are unable to assign to it any special organ or focus.

They see, because they see, without knowing why or how; their sight, as spirit-sight having no special focus. If they refer their perception to their body, this focus seems to them to be in the organic centers in which the vital activity is greatest, especially in the brain, in the epigastric region, or in whatever organ appears to them to be the point at which the bond between the spirit and the body is most tenacious. The scope of somnambulic lucidity is not unlimited. A spirit, even when completely free, only possesses the faculties and the knowledge appertaining to the degree of advancement at which he has arrived, a limitation which becomes still further narrowed when he is united with matter, and thus subjected to its influence. This is the reason why somnambulic clairvoyance or soul sight is neither universal nor infallible; and its infallibility is all the less to be counted on when it is turned aside from the aim which has been assigned to it by nature, and made a mere matter of curiosity and experimentation.

In the state of comparative freedom in which the somnambulist finds himself, he enters more easily into communication with other spirits, incarnate or disincarnate; and this communication is established through the contact of the fluids which compose their perispirits, and serve, like the electric wire, for the transmission of thought. The somnambulist therefore has no need to articulate speech as a vehicle of thought, which he feels and divines; as a mode of perception that renders him eminently accessible to, and impressionable by, the influences of the moral atmosphere in which he finds himself. For the same reason, a numerous concourse of spectators, and especially of those who are attracted by a more or less malevolent curiosity, is essentially unfavorable to the manifestations of his peculiar faculties, which close up, so to say, at the contact of hostile influences, and only unfold freely in intimacy, and under the influence of sympathetic surroundings. The presence of those who are malevolent or antipathetic produces upon him the effect of the contact of the hand upon a sensitive plant.

The somnambulist sees, at the same time, his own spirit and his body; they are, so to say, two beings which represent to him his double existence, spiritual and corporeal, and which nevertheless, are blended into one by the ties which unite them together. The somnambulist does not always comprehend this duality, which often leads him to speak of himself as though he were speaking of another person; in such cases, the corporeal being sometimes speaking to the spiritual being, and the spiritual being sometimes speaking to the corporeal being. The spirit acquires an increase of knowledge and experience in each of his corporeal existences. It loses sight of these gains during its reincarnation in matter which is too gross to allow of its remembering them in their former state; but it remembers them as a spirit. It is thus that some somnambulists give evidence of possessing knowledge beyond their present degree of instruction, and even of their apparent intellectual capacity. The intellectual and scientific inferiority of a somnambulist in his waking state, therefore, proves nothing against his possession of the knowledge he may display in his lucid state.

According to the circumstances of the moment and the aim proposed, he may draw this knowledge from the stores of his own experience, from his clairvoyant perception of things actually occurring, or from the counsels which he receives from other spirits; but, in proportion as his own spirit is more or less advanced, he will make his statements more or less correctly.