From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



In other words, matter the unique substance is 

 resolved by final analysis into a superior dynamism 

 which conditions it, and this dynamism is itself dependent 

 on the idea. 



This is nothing less than the complete reversal of 

 materialist philosophy. As Flammarion says in his 

 admirable book, Les Forces Naturelles Inconnues^ these 

 manifestations * confirm what we know from other 

 sources: that the purely mechanical concept of nature 

 is insufficient; and there is more in the universe than 

 matter. It is not matter that governs the world, but 

 a dynamic and psychic element.' This is so, the ideo- 

 plastic materialisations demonstrate that the living being 

 can no longer be considered as a mere cellular complex. 

 It appears primarily as a dynamo-psychism, and the 

 cellular complex which is its body appears as the ideo- 

 plastic product of this dynamo-psychism. Thus the 

 formations materialised in mediumistic seances arise 

 from the same biological process as normal birth. They 

 are neither more nor less miraculous or supernormal; 

 they are equally so. The same ideoplastic miracle makes 

 the hands, the face, the viscera, the tissues, and the 

 entire organism of the foetus at the expense of the 

 maternal body, or the hands, the face, or the entire organs 

 of a materialisation. 



This singular analogy between normal and so-called 

 supernormal physiology extends even to details; the 

 ectoplasm is linked to the medium by a channel of 

 nourishment, a true umbilical cord, comparable to that 

 which joins the embryo to the maternal body. In 

 certain cases the materialised forms appear in an ovoid 

 of the substance. The following instance taken from 

 my notebook is characteristic. ' On the lap of the medium 

 there appears a white spot which very rapidly forms an 

 irregular rounded mass like a ball of snow or cotton 

 wool. Under our eyes the mass partly opens, divides 

 into two parts, united by a band of substance; in one 



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