The Mysterious Fluid

by Paul Vibert

  And on July 22 of the same year, the following dispatch was sent to us from Brussels:

  “The Madrid correspondent of the Étoile Belge has telegraphed to his newspaper that he had interviewed a member of the technical commission who has carried out experiments in wireless telegraphy using the system of the Spaniard Major Cervera.92 The major has telegraphed faultlessly between Tarifa and Ceuta. He will telegraph imminently from Barcelona to the Balearic Islands.

  “Major Cervera offers his personal assurance that he will be able to telegraph from Spain to America.

  “Near Alicante, Major Servera has detonated mines at a distance, still wirelessly. He thinks that he will be able to provoke the explosion of the powder-magazine of a warship at a distance.”

  That is conclusive enough for me to abstain from insisting unduly on the importance of these experiments, far surpassed today by the latest results obtained in this field of research.

  The Universal Soul

  The two fluids: the soul and electricity.

  The soul, the intellectual fluid.

  Electricity, the material fluid. The two motors of the world.

  For twenty years I have demonstrated peremptorily, in hundreds if not thousands of articles, that electricity, in its three forms of imponderable fluid, light and heat, is the unique agent of the universe—cold heat and black light in the void of space, only becoming manifest on contact with our atmosphere.

  Today, I want to demonstrate that the other fluid, the one we call the soul, the intellectual or intelligent fluid, as you wish, similarly resides in a general state, distributed throughout the universe.

  To make my idea more easily comprehensible, I will say that it is not a matter of admiring the intelligence of humans, dogs, elephants or ants, but simply affirming loudly that intelligence is distributed everywhere in the universe, in a fluid state, just like electricity, and that specific circumstance are sufficient to bring it into evidence and register its manifestations.

  Just as electricity, fluid in the two forms of light and heat, is only manifest on contact with our atmosphere, so the soul-fluid, distributed in the world, is only manifest when it enters into a living body, when resides there and is, so to speak, condensed there.

  This is so true that not only can I give numerous examples of it, but can even undertake to provoke external manifestations of this soul-fluid at will, in various beings that have been supposed until now to be entirely devoid of it.

  Two examples, from among a hundred, that I have taken from contemporary newspapers, will, I think, clarify my demonstration:

  “Numerous complaints of cheating have been made in London and Antwerp against a female snake-charmer named Zulema Kerdy, who arrived in Paris a few days ago, where she has been hired by an impresario.

  “An instruction was given to Monsieur Hamard, the deputy head of the Sûreté, who went to see the charmer at a house in the Rue de Trévise. Zulema was in bed. When M. Hamard made the purpose of his visit known, she whistled softly, and several snakes of menacing appearance emerged from beneath her bolster.

  “She said to M. Hamard: ‘If you come any closer you’ll be bitten, for I shall launch these snakes against you, which are only obedient to me. Their bite causes immediate death.

  “Fearlessly, the policeman replied to the charmer that her threats would not prevent him from carrying out his orders, and that in making threats she was risking forced labor. Zulema yielded to this reasoning, and rang a bell. A domestic appeared, whom she ordered to shut the snakes up in a basket. When that was done, she got dressed and meekly followed M. Hamard, who took her to headquarters in custody.”

  Here, therefore, is a woman who has been able to awaken the dormant universal soul in the bodies of her snakes, and to condense it there after a fashion. But is not the example of the savant seals recently exhibited on the stage of the Casino de Paris even more conclusive? Has not the voice of the worthy animals’ tamer and friend awakened their dormant intelligence and condensed the intellectual fluid marvelously?

  Thus, I am not exaggerating in saying that I can provoke manifestations of the soul-fluid at will, exactly like the electrical fluid. It is sufficient, for that, to give me any living creature whatsoever, and I will succeed so well in causing the universal soul to spring forth, if I might put it thus, that everyone will be obliged to recognize that I am telling the truth.

  It must be admitted, however, that petty-minded individuals with chagrined minds will probably say that it is pure pantheism that I am in the process of setting before them. To which I reply, firstly, that I can’t help that; and secondly, that all my life I have been an admirer and passionate lover of beautiful, good and great Nature, the source of all poetry, without knowing whether or not I was practicing pantheism.

  In my youth, magnetically drawn to philosophy, I devoured and meditated upon Spinoza, Schelling and Hegel, but I confess that I never understood their concepts of materialist or idealist pantheism. “Everything in God” or “God in everything” seemed to me to be equally vacuous formulae. Those men were never anything but dreamers; they never took account of tangible realities, which experimental science alone can reveal to us, gradually.

  Thus, whether I am practicing pantheism or not, I don’t know, but what I do know is that electricity is the unique motor of the universe in its three forms: fluid, heat and light. What I also know is that I can provoke at will manifestations of the soul-fluid, or intelligence, as you please, among the most obscure creatures. That is sufficient for me, for I believe that this double deposition will be extremely fecund from the viewpoint of the future development of all the sciences, whether they are purely experimental or moral, in the false meaning that has been given to that qualification. Everything must, in fact, be rational, experimental and demonstrated in the scientific realm.

  Now, people of good faith, who follow my work with too much benevolence, say to me: “You’ve arrived at the conclusion that one can condense and awaken the intelligence-fluid, the universal soul, at will in living creatures, in any fauna—that’s fine. However, you don’t believe yourself in the principle of life in the infinitely small; there, you see only chemical combinations re-entering the domain of electricity and heat. How do you sort that out?”

  “I don’t sort it out; I observe, that’s all, in advance of any explanation.”

  “Haven’t you tried to provoke external manifestations of the universal soul, the intelligence-fluid, in flora and in the geological or mineralogical realm?”

  “No, because I don’t believe in chimeras.”

  “Trees and plants, however, seek the light and seem to love the sun; how do we know that they don’t suffer and think as we do, but in a more obscure fashion?”

  “I don’t think so, and, to tell the truth, I don’t know anything about it. As for seeking light, that’s included in the ordinary phenomena if light- and heat-electricity.”

  For now, I think I’ve explained clearly enough the nature of the electricity-heat-light-fluid, the unique motor of the universe, and the soul-fluid, the motor of all the actions of animate beings. I’ll leave it at that.

  Whether infinitely small creatures participate in both, which I’m not far from believing, is possible, but we shall see in future, if the discoveries of science permit it. Until then, let us reserve our conclusions with regard to the role of the two fluids in the microbial realm.

  Why I Don’t Like Traveling

  Why the Earth is too small. Of air and space.

  The necessity of sometimes leaving one’s village.

  I recently ran into Gontran. You don’t know Gontran, one of my old friends, a young English multimillionaire? No? Well, listen to this conversation and you’ll make his acquaintance.

  So, I ran into him at the Exposition, in the process yawning as if he might dislocate his jaw.

  “How are you?”

  “Extremely bored?”

  “Why don’t you travel a little, to get a change of scene?”

&
nbsp; “Oh, no!”

  “I thought you like traveling?”

  “I’d adore it if it were possible, but alas, it’s not—and in spite of all modern discoveries, no one has yet found a means of traveling, other than in thought or in dream…as I do. That’s why I’ve devoted myself to spiritualism.”

  “I don’t understand. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve gone around the world several times—and you don’t like traveling?”

  Seeing my bewilderment, Gontran went on in a calm and sober tone: “Come on, my poor friend—let’s be serious. Let’s speak little and say much, as an old cousin of mine says. I could have believed that I liked what people call traveling, over land and sea, when I was fifteen, but now?

  “Yes, I’ve been around the world five or six times, but afterwards, it’s always the same. With steam and electricity, the Earth is as large as one’s hand nowadays. I’m stifling here; I need air, space—I want to get away from it.

  “Not only doesn’t it amuse me to stroll around this grain of sand—me, a poor human microbe—but, at my age, I blush as I set forth on what petty humans call great voyages. Poor fellows! To me, it seems that I’m always on a carousel of wooden horses, and I repeat, at my age, that makes me ashamed.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “Never.”

  “The Earth is too small for you, then?”

  “For traveling, yes. Come on, you’re a serious chap yourself, thoughtful and intelligent. Well, you’ll understand without difficulty why I get bored on Earth, why I have a yearning for movement, space, open sky…truly open, between worlds!

  “Why, when everyone knows that there are billions of worlds, billions of leagues apart in space, can’t I go there, my fortune notwithstanding? I have no idea what’s happening there, and you want me to amuse myself?

  “We’ve photographed and catalogued more than thirty million stars, and I can’t visit any of them. How is it that I can’t even visit the kindred worlds of our own solar system, and it’s even forbidden for me to drop in on the moon, which is on our very doorstep?—which I consider as the dressing-room of my bedroom, so to speak.”

  And as I displayed my astonishment with an interrogative stare, he went on vehemently, carried away, and truly handsome: “And you want me to amuse myself trailing miserably around the carousel of wooden horses that is the Earth! No, it’s you who are making fun of me, and you’re too intelligent not to share my opinion, deep down. What—travel over this heap of mud, to see why? Water, earth, mountains, trees, houses. And what then? Nothing—always the same thing, always the carousel going round and round, nothing new. It’s only at the Museum that I can imagine that there were once a few differences, with other animals—but the vague impression scarcely last a quarter of an hour.

  “What I thirst for is new worlds, lost in the infinity of space. There, there must be novelties, and beings perhaps less bestial than my co-citizens and yours. You see, my poor old chap, I feel that I’m dying of boredom, and that I shall go to my grave in consequence—for the so-called occult sciences, alas, have only given me the illusions of dreams and mirages.

  “A pleasure-balloon bound for Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, please—and I’ll give you my millions. Let’s go colonize the stars, somewhere far away—it doesn’t matter where; in other solar systems—but let’s get away from Earth, where I’m stifling and have no space.”

  I could see well enough that Gontran’s illness was profound, and as he perceived my dolor, he declared slowly, with false cheerfulness: “Come on, let’s go—we’ll watch bayaderes dancing in Benares, and then we’ll go have a cup of tea with a friend in Yokohama.”

  “No,” I said, sadly, in my turn. “You’ve convinced me; I no longer like traveling, at least on Earth.”

  And we stayed there, run aground like two old wrecks, on the terrace of a café, while the slow dull music of a belly-dance, performed by a suave Oriental from Ménilmontant, resounded behind us.

  Oh yes, the Earth really is too small now—and who will finally find the means of permitting us to take a little excursion to neighboring worlds? That inventor will be blessed, and will make a great deal of money, because there are many people like Gontran and your humble servant, who no longer like to travel because the Earth is so small.

  It really will be time, after the Exposition, to find something else and enable us to get off this eternal terrestrial carousel of wooden horses, no bigger than one’s hand and, at the end of the day, too banal—especially when one feels that there would be so much to see, to learn and admire amid the thirty million stars that surround us.

  Don’t I have good reason not to like traveling anymore?

  The Lightning Soul

  A new, simple and easy means of traveling the world,

  without fatigue, without expense and without wasting time.

  I’m well aware that above title is a trifle over-long, but I think it’s necessary to explain the purpose of what follows.

  My readers will doubtless remember the article in why I explained that, alongside the electricity-fluid, the unique agent of the universe, an intelligence-fluid exists, which is found in a more-or-less latent state in all the living and animate creatures on the world’s surface. They will also remember the more recent one in which I explained why and how, with steam and electricity in their multiple applications, the Earth has become so small that I no longer like traveling and that my sole ambition henceforth is to be able to roam freely from one world to another, amid the sixty million worlds that surround us—to begin with.

  I had reached that point when, after long research, I was finally led to make a decisive discovery which, I dare say, will turn the world upside down and render it smaller than the Place de la Concorde, if you absolutely have to have a comparison. In brief, this is what it comprises, and how I have finally been able to realize the scientific dream of my life.

  For I long time I was convinced that the intelligence-fluid would be revealed and treated like the electricity-fluid; once I had been convinced of that by the series of curious examples that I gave of the universal soul, I told myself that it ought not to be impossible, not to resuscitate the dead—for the intimate and still unknown link that constitutes life is then broken—but simply to be able to change the temporary domiciles of souls, the parcels of universal intelligence that constitute human personality.

  Then I remembered the reciprocal and instantaneous transmission of two dispatches over the same wire, in opposite directions—between Paris and Marseilles, for example—and I told myself that with a little drive and will-power, I ought to be able to obtain a similar result with the intelligence-fluid that animates all human beings.

  I’ve tried, and succeeded twenty times, a hundred times over, in the most various circumstances. Today, there is no longer any doubt; I’m sure of myself, and at the disposal of all my co-citizens to enable them to travel instantaneously through all the countries in the world—on condition, of course, that I have correspondents who will accept my tariffs.93

  For example: you want to go to Peking immediately, for a week. Out there, I have an honorable mandarin who is at my disposal, for a determined price. Naturally, I take a 20% commission for myself, and, for a fee of 4000 francs for a week, on a signal from my will, you find yourself in Peking in the skin of the mandarin, whose soul passes into your body in Paris.

  Naturally, you would not want to spend a week in the skin of a badly brought-up person, so I am in the process of ensuring that I have correspondents everywhere belonging to the best society. As it is necessary that your body should not be subject to any deterioration during our absence, I shall have them design a very strict contract concerning the use of beverages and other pleasures. Above all, this will be useful, not to say indispensable, for married clients; it is important that the temporary tenant should not lead a dissolute life with your carcass during his brief occupation.

  To this effect, I have even constituted a parallel insurance company, which should further augment m
y modest income.

  Where bachelors are concerned, it is evident that some of these difficulties disappear, and that the majority of these precautions are superfluous.

  I can also effect temporary exchanges of soul-fluid between individuals of different sexes, but the operation is more delicate and I’m always afraid that one of the tenants might damage the temporary envelope, which obliges me to make a very scrupulous inventory of intimate places. That’s the nub of the question; I don’t think it’s necessary to say any more.

  Now, the applications of my discovery are as numerous as they are fecund. When the two contracting parties both want to be displaced in opposite directions at the same time, between Paris and Yokohama, or San Francisco, for example, I simply take my 20% and the right of insurance, in case of reciprocal deterioration, according to the general tariff that I’ve set up, and the journey then becomes almost trivial, so far as my two clients are concerned.

  I can organize journeys of this sort to the ends of the earth, for a month or only an hour—and it’s utterly charming to be able to spend a mere hour, after lunch or a aperitif time, in Japan!

  Similarly, for the purpose of studying mores, I can send scientists, artists, explorers or simple curiosity-seekers into the body of a beggar, a bonze, a savage, a monk or a Hottentot princess, in order that my clients can carry out studies of the highest interest, thanks to my various combinations.

  I think that it would be quite puerile to insist on the full importance of such an application of twentieth-century science. The consequences would not be long delayed in manifesting their fecundity in all branches of human activity. From the moment I succeeded in mobilizing the intelligence-fluid in the same way as the electricity-fluid, there was no limit to my discoveries, and I hope that I will soon be able to exchange soul-fluids with the inhabitants of other worlds. Then, finally, I shall be able to travel freely, at my whim, through the infinity of worlds.