Zouave Jacob
Second article, see the October issue
Is Mr. Jacob a charlatan? His material selflessness is a constant fact, and perhaps one of those that has confused criticism the most. How can one accuse of charlatanism a man who asks for nothing and wants nothing, not even thanks?
So, what would be his driver? Self-love, they say. Since the absolute moral selflessness is sublime abnegation, it would be necessary to have the virtue of the angels not to feel a certain satisfaction when one sees the crowd suddenly elbowing around, whereas one was unknown the day before. Now, as Mr. Jacob does not have the pretensions of being an angel, supposing, what we do not know, that he has exalted his own importance a little bit, in his own eyes, we could not turn this into a great crime, and that would not destroy the facts, if there are any. We like to believe that those who attribute this fault to him are too above earthly things to make the slightest reproach in this regard.
But in any case, this feeling could only be consecutive and not preconceived. If Mr. Jacob had premeditated the plan to popularize him by claiming to be an emeritus healer, without being able to prove anything other than his impotence, instead of applause, he would have only received hoots from day one, that would not have been very flattering to him. To be proud of something, one needs a pre-existing cause; he, therefore, had to cure first, before being proud of himself.
He wanted to make people talk about him, they add; so be it; if that was his goal, we must admit that, thanks to the press, he was served as desired. But which newspaper can say that Mr. Jacob went to beg for the smallest advertisement, the smallest article, that he paid for one line only! Has he sought a single journalist? No, it was the journalists who went to him, and who could not always see him so easily. The press spontaneously spoke of him when they saw the crowd, and the crowd only came when there were facts. Has he been flattering great personalities? Has he shown himself to be more accessible, more eager, more considerate to them? Everyone knows that, in that regard, he has pushed his rigor to the excess. His self-esteem, however, would have found more elements of satisfaction in high society than with the obscure needy people.
We must, therefore, logically rule out any imputation of intrigue and charlatanism.
Does he cure all diseases? Not only does he not heal them all, but of two individuals suffering from the same disease, often he will heal one and do nothing on the other. He never knows in advance if he will cure a sick person, that is why he never promises anything; but we know that charlatans are not greedy with promises. Healing is due to fluidic affinities that manifest themselves instantly, like an electric shock, and that cannot be predetermined.
Is he gifted with a supernatural power? Are we back to the time of miracles? Ask him himself, and he will answer you that there is nothing supernatural or miraculous in these healings; that he is endowed with a fluidic power, independent of his will, that manifests itself with more or less energy, according to the circumstances and the environment in which he finds himself; that the fluid he emits cures certain illnesses in some people, without him knowing why or how.
As for those who claim that this faculty is a gift from the devil, we can answer them that, since it is only exercised for good, we must admit that the devil has good moments from which one must take advantage of. We can also ask them what is the difference between the healings of Prince of Hohenlohe and those of Zouave Jacob, so that some are considered holy and miraculous, and others diabolical? Let’s move on from this issue that cannot be taken seriously these days.
The question of charlatanism prejudged all others, and that is why we insisted on it; this question being ruled out, let us see what conclusions can be drawn from the observation.
Mr. Jacob instantly cured diseases deemed incurable, that is a positive fact. The question of the number of cured patients is secondary here; if there were only one in a hundred, the fact would still exist; this fact has a cause.
The healing faculty brought to this degree of power, found in a soldier that, however honest a man he may be, he has neither the character, nor the habits, nor the language, nor the demeanor of the saints; exercised without any mystical form or apparatus, in the most vulgar and prosaic conditions; found, moreover, in varying degrees in a crowd of other people, in heretics as well as in Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., excluding the idea of miracles in the liturgical sense of the word. It is, therefore, a faculty inherent to the individual; and since it is not an isolated fact, it is because it depends on a law like any natural effect.
The cure is obtained without the use of any medicine, therefore it is due to an occult influence; and given that this is an effective, material result, and that nothing cannot produce something, this influence must necessarily be something material; it can, therefore, only be a material fluid, though intangible and invisible. Mr. Jacob not touching the patient, not even applying any magnetic pass, the fluid can only have the will as its motor and propellant; now, since the will is not an attribute of matter, it can only emanate from the Spirit; it is thus the fluid that acts under the impulse of the Spirit. The greater part of the diseases cured by this means are those against which science is powerless, therefore, there are more powerful curative agents than those of ordinary medicine; these phenomena are, consequently, the revelation of laws unknown to science; in the presence of positive facts it is more prudent to doubt than to deny. These are the conclusions to which any impartial observer inevitably arrives. What is the nature of this fluid? Is it electricity or magnetism? There is probably both, and perhaps something else; In any case, this is a modification of them since the effects are different. The magnetic action is evident, although more powerful than that of ordinary magnetism, of which these facts are the confirmation, and at the same time the proof that it has not said the last word.
It is beyond the scope of this article to explain the mode of action of this curative agent, already described in the theory of healing mediumship; it suffices to have demonstrated that the examination of the facts leads to the recognition of the existence of a new principle, and that this principle, however strange its effects, does not go beyond the domain of natural laws.
In the facts concerning Mr. Jacob, Spiritism was hardly mentioned, while all the attention has been focused on magnetism; it had its reason of being and its usefulness. Although the co-operation of the discarnate Spirits, in these kinds of phenomena, is an established fact, their action is not obvious here, and that is why we disregard them. It does not matter whether the facts are explained with or without the intervention of foreign spirits; magnetism and Spiritism go hand in hand; they are two parts of the same whole, two branches of the same science that complement and explain each other. By accrediting magnetism, one is opening the way to Spiritism, and vice versa.
Criticism did not spare Mr. Jacob; for lack of good reasons, it lavished on him, as usual, mockery and gross insults, that he was not at all moved by; he despised both, and sensible people were grateful to him for his moderation.
Some have gone so far as to request his imprisonment as an impostor, abusing public credulity; but an impostor is one who promises and does not keep; however, since Mr. Jacob never promised anything, no one can complain of having been abused. What could one blame him for? How was he in legal violation? He did not practice medicine, not even ostensibly magnetism. What is the law that forbids healing people by watching them?
He was criticized for the fact that the crowd of sick people who came to him hampered movement; but was it he who called the crowd? Did he summon her with announcements? Who is the doctor who would complain if he had a crowd like that on his doorstep? And if one of them had this good fortune, even at the cost of heavily paid ads, what would he say if he were bothered about this fact? It was said that at a rate of fifteen hundred people a day for a month, that would make forty-five thousand sick people who had showed up, and that at that rate, if he had healed them, there should be no more lame nor crippled people in the streets of Paris. It would be superfluous to respond to this singular objection, but we will say that the more we increase the number of patients that, cured or not, crowded into the dead end of the rue de la Roquette, the more we prove how great is the number of those that medicine cannot cure, for it is evident that if these sick people had been cured by the doctors, they would not have come to Mr. Jacob.
Since, despite the denials, there were positive facts of extraordinary cures, they wanted to explain them by saying that Mr. Jacob was acting, by the very bluntness of his words, on the imagination of the sick; so be it, but then if you recognize such a power by the influence of the imagination over paralysis, epilepsies, stiff limbs, why don’t you employ this means, instead of allowing so many unfortunate patients to suffer, or give them drugs that you know are useless?
The proof, it has been said, that Mr. Jacob did not have the power he claimed, is that he refused to go to a hospital to perform cures before the eyes of competent people, to appreciate the reality of the cures.
Two reasons must have motivated this refusal. First, one could not hide that the offer made to him was not dictated by sympathy, but a challenge posed on him. If, in a ward of thirty patients, he had only raised or relieved three or four, they would certainly have said that he proved nothing and that he had failed.
In the second place, it is necessary to consider the circumstances that can favor or paralyze his fluidic action. When he is surrounded by sick people who come to him voluntarily, the confidence they bring predisposes them. Not admitting any stranger attracted by curiosity, he finds himself in a sympathetic environment which predisposes himself; he is his own man; his mind is freely concentrated, and his action has all its power. In a hospital ward, unknown to the patients who are used to the care of their doctors, where believing in anything beyond their medication would be to suspect their skills, under the inquisitive and mocking gazes of prewarned people, interested in the degrading him, instead of aiding him by the concurrence of benevolent intentions, they would fear more than they would wish to see him succeed, because the success of an ignorant Zouave would be a denial given to their knowledge, it is evident that, under such impressions and these antipathetic emanations, his faculty would be neutralized. The mistake of those gentlemen, in this as when dealing with somnambulism, was always to believe that these kinds of phenomena could be operated at will, like an electric battery.
Healings of this kind are spontaneous, unpredictable, and cannot be premeditated or called into competition. Let us add to this that the healing power is not permanent; he who possesses it today can see it cease when he least expects it; these intermittences prove that it depends on a cause independent of the will of the healer, and frustrate the calculations of charlatanism.
Observation: Mr. Jacob has not yet resumed the course of his healings; we do not know why, and it does not appear that there is anything settled as to when he will start them again, if it is to take place. In the meantime, we learn that healing mediumship is spreading in different places, with different abilities.
