it crashes into strange obstacles and breaks its wings against them. If
we admit that our ego does not remain eternally what it was at the moment
of our death, we can no longer imagine that, at a given second, it stops,
ceases to expand and rise, attains its perfection and its fulness, to
become no more than a sort of motionless wreck suspended in eternity and
a finished thing in the midst of that which will never finish. That would
indeed be the only real death and the more fearful inasmuch as it would
set a limit to an unparalleled life and intelligence, beside which those
which we possess here below would not even weigh what a drop of water
weighs when compared with the ocean, or a grain of sand when placed in
the scales with a mountain-chain. In a word, either we believe that our
evolution will one day stop, implying thereby an incomprehensible end
and a sort of inconceivable death; or we admit that it has no limit,
whereupon, being infinite, it assumes all the properties of infinity
and must needs be lost in infinity and united with it. This, withal,
is the latter end of theosophy, spiritualism and all the religions in
which man, in his ultimate happiness, is absorbed by God. And this again
is an incomprehensible end, but at least it is life. And then, taking
one incomprehensibility with another, after doing all that is humanly
possible to understand one or the other riddle, let us by preference
leap into the greatest and therefore the most probable, the one which
contains all the others and after which nothing more remains. If not, the
questions reappear at every stage and the answers are always conflicting.
And questions and answers lead us to the same inevitable abyss. As we
shall have to face it sooner or later, why not make for it straightway?
All that happens to us in the interval interests us beyond a doubt, but
does not detain us, because it is not eternal.
4
Behold us then before the mystery of the cosmic consciousness. Although
we are incapable of understanding the act of an infinity that would have
to fold itself up in order to feel itself and consequently to define
itself and separate itself from other things, this is not an adequate
reason for declaring it impossible; for, if we were to reject all the
realities and impossibilities that we do not understand, there would be
nothing left for us to live upon. If this consciousness exist under the
form which we have conceived, it is evident that we shall be there and
take part in it. If there be a consciousness somewhere, or some thing
that takes the place of consciousness, we shall be in that consciousness
or that thing, because we cannot be elsewhere. And as this consciousness
or this thing cannot be unhappy, because it is impossible that infinity
should exist for its own unhappiness, neither shall we be unhappy when
we are in it. Lastly, if the infinity into which we shall be projected
have no sort of consciousness nor anything that stands for it, the reason
will be that consciousness, or anything that might replace it, is not
indispensable to eternal happiness.
5
That, I think, is about as much as we may be permitted to declare,
for the moment, to the spirit anxiously facing the unfathomable space
wherein death will shortly hurl it. It can still hope to find there
the fulfilment of its dreams; it will perhaps find less to dread than
it had feared. If it prefer to remain expectant and to accept none of
the theories which I have expounded to the best of my power and without
prejudice, it nevertheless seems difficult not to welcome, at least, this
great assurance which we find at the bottom of every one of them, namely,
that infinity could not be malevolent, seeing that, if it eternally
tortured the least among us, it would be torturing something which it
cannot tear out of itself and that it would therefore be torturing its
very self.
I have added nothing to what was already known. I have simply tried to
separate what may be true from that which is assuredly not true; for, if
we do not know where truth is, we nevertheless learn to know where it is
not. And perhaps, in seeking for that undiscoverable truth, we shall have
accustomed our eyes to pierce the terror of the last hour by looking it
full in the face. Many things, beyond a doubt, remain to be said which
others will say with greater force and brilliancy. But we need have no
hope that any one will utter on this earth the word that shall put an end
to our uncertainties. It is very probable, on the contrary, that no one
in this world, nor perhaps in the next, will discover the great secret of
the universe. And, if we reflect upon this even for a moment, it is most
fortunate that it should be so. We have not only to resign ourselves to
living in the incomprehensible, but to rejoice that we cannot go out of
it. If there were no more insoluble questions nor impenetrable riddles,
infinity would not be infinite; and then we should have for ever to curse
the fate that placed us in a universe proportionate to our intelligence.
All that exists would be but a gateless prison, an irreparable evil and
mistake. The unknown and the unknowable are necessary and will perhaps
always be necessary to our happiness. In any case, I would not wish
my worst enemy, were his understanding a thousandfold loftier and a
thousandfold mightier than mine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a
world of which he had surprised an essential secret and of which, as a
man, he had begun to grasp the least tittle.
VIII
THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE
1
What is known as premonition or precognition leads us to mysterious
regions, where stands, half-emerging from an intolerable darkness, the
gravest problem that can thrill mankind, the knowledge of the future. The
latest, the best and the most complete study devoted to it is, I believe,
that published by M. Ernest Bozzano under the title _Des Phénomènes
prémonitoires_. Availing himself of excellent earlier work, notably
that of Mrs. Sidgwick and Myers,[9] and adding the result of his own
researches, the author collects some thousand cases of precognition, of
which he discusses one hundred and sixty, leaving the great majority of
the others on one side, not because they are negligible, but because he
does not wish to exceed too flagrantly the normal limits of a monograph.
He begins by carefully eliminating all the episodes which, though
apparently premonitory, may be explained by self-suggestion (as in
the case, for instance, where some one smitten with a disease still
latent seems to foresee this disease and the death which will be its
conclusion), by telepathy (when a sensitive is aware beforehand of the
arrival of a person or a letter), or lastly by clairvoyance (when a man
dreams of the spot where he will find something which he has mislaid, or
an uncommon plant, or an insect sought for in vain, or the unknown place
which he will visit at some later date).
In all these cases, we have not, properly speaking, to do with a pure
future, but rather with a present that is not yet known. Thus reduced
and stripped of all foreign influences and intrusions, the number of
instances wherein there is a really clear and incontestable perception
of a fragment of the future remains large enough, contrary to what
is generally believed, to make it impossible for us to speak of
extraordinary accidents or wonderful coincidences. There must be a limit
to everything, even to distrust, even to the most extensive incredulity,
otherwise all historical research and a good deal of scientific research
would become decidedly impracticable. And this remark applies as much
to the nature of the incidents related as to the actual authenticity
of the narratives. We can contest or suspect any story whatever, any
written proof, any evidence; but thenceforward we must abandon all
certainty or knowledge that is not acquired by means of mathematical
operations or laboratory experiments, that is to say, three-fourths of
the human phenomena that chiefly interest us. Observe that the records
collected by the investigators of the S. P. R., like those discussed by
M. Bozzano, are all told at first hand, and that those stories of which
the narrators were not the protagonists or the direct witnesses have
been ruthlessly rejected. Furthermore, some of these narratives are
necessarily of the nature of medical observations; as for the others,
if we attentively examine the character of those who have related them
and the circumstances which corroborate them, we shall agree that it is
more just and more reasonable to believe in them than to look upon every
man who has an extraordinary experience as being _a priori_ a liar, the
victim of an hallucination, or a wag.
2
There could be no question of giving here even a brief analysis of
the most striking cases. It would require a hundred pages and would
alter the whole nature of this essay, which, to keep within its proper
dimensions, must take it for granted that most of the materials which
it examines are familiar. I therefore refer the reader who may wish to
form an opinion for himself to the easily-accessible sources which I have
mentioned above. It will suffice to give an accurate idea of the gravity
of the problem to any one who has not time or opportunity to consult
the original documents if I sum up in a few words some of these pioneer
adventures, selected among those which seem least open to dispute; for
it goes without saying that all have not the same value, otherwise the
question would be settled. There are some which, while exceedingly
striking at first sight and offering every guarantee that could be
desired as to authenticity, nevertheless do not imply a real knowledge of
the future and can be interpreted in another manner. I give one, to serve
as an instance; it is reported by Dr. Alphonse Teste in his _Manuel
pratique du magnetisme animal_.
On the 8th of May, Dr. Teste magnetizes Mme. Hortense ⸺ in the presence
of her husband. She is no sooner asleep than she announces that she has
been pregnant for a fortnight, that she will not go her full time, that
“she will take fright at something,” that she will have a fall and that
the result will be a miscarriage. She adds that, on the 12th of May,
after having had a fright, she will have a fainting-fit which will last
for eight minutes; and she then describes, hour by hour, the course of
her malady, which will end in three days’ loss of reason, from which she
will recover.
On awaking, she retains no recollection of anything that has passed; it
is kept from her; and Dr. Teste communicates his notes to Dr. Amédée
Latour. On the 12th of May, he calls on M. and Mme. ⸺, finds them at
table and puts Mme. ⸺ to sleep again, whereupon she repeats word for word
what she told him four days before. They wake her up. The dangerous hour
is drawing near. They take every imaginable precaution and even close the
shutters. Mme. ⸺, made uneasy by these extraordinary measures which she
is quite unable to understand, asks what they are going to do to her.
Half-past three o’clock strikes. Mme. ⸺ rises from the sofa on which they
have made her sit and wants to leave the room. The doctor and her husband
try to prevent her.
“But what is the matter with you?” she asks. “I simply must go out.”
“No, madame, you shall not: I speak in the interest of your health.”
“Well, then, doctor,” she replies, with a smile, “if it is in the
interest of my health, that is all the more reason why you should let me
go out.”
The excuse is a plausible one and even irresistible; but the husband,
wishing to carry the struggle against destiny to the last, declares that
he will accompany his wife. The doctor remains alone, feeling somewhat
anxious, in spite of the rather farcical turn which the incident has
taken. Suddenly, a piercing shriek is heard and the noise of a body
falling. He runs out and finds Mme. ⸺ wild with fright and apparently
dying in her husband’s arms. At the moment when, leaving him for an
instant, she opened the door of the place where she was going, a rat, the
first seen there for twenty years, rushed at her and gave her so great a
start that she fell flat on her back. And all the rest of the prediction
was fulfilled to the letter, hour by hour and detail by detail.
3
To make it quite clear in what spirit I am undertaking this study
and to remove at the beginning any suspicion of blind or systematic
credulity, I am anxious, before going any further, to say that I fully
realize that cases of this kind by no means carry conviction. It is
quite possible that everything happened in the subconscious imagination
of the subject and that she herself created, by self-suggestion her
illness, her fright, her fall and her miscarriage and adapted herself
to most of the circumstances which she had foretold in her secondary
state. The appearance of the rat at the fatal moment is the only thing
that would suggest a precise and disquieting vision of an inevitable
future event. Unfortunately, we are not told that the rat was perceived
by other witnesses than the patient, so that there is nothing to prove
that it also was not imaginary. I have therefore quoted this inadequate
instance only because it represents fairly well the general aspect and
the indecisive value of many similar cases, and enables us to note once
and for all the objections which can be raised and the precautions which
we should take before entering these suspicious and obscure regions.
We now come to an infinitely more significant and less questionable
case related by Dr. Joseph Maxwell, the learned and very scrupulous
author of _Les Phénomènes psychiques_, a work which has been translated
into English under the title of _Metapsychical Phenomena_. It concerns
a vision which was described to him eight days before the event and
which he told to many people before it was accomplished. A sensitive
perceived in a crystal the following scene: a large steamer, flying a
flag of three horizontal bars, black, white and red, and bearing the name
_Leutschland_, was sailing in mid-ocean; the boat was suddenly enveloped
in smoke; a great number of sailors, passengers and men in uniform rushed
to the upper deck; and the boat went down.
Eight days afterwards, the newspapers announced the accident to the
_Deutschland_, whose boiler had burst, obliging the steamboat to stand
to.
The evidence of a man like Dr. Maxwell, especially when we have to do
with a so-to-speak personal incident, possesses an importance on which it
is needless to insist. We have here, therefore, several days beforehand,
the very clear prevision of an event which, moreover, in no way concerns
the percipient: a curious detail, but one which is not uncommon in these
cases. The mistake in reading _Leutschland_ for _Deutschland_, which
would have been quite natural in real life, adds a note of probability
and authenticity to the phenomenon. As for the final act, the foundering
of the vessel in the place of a simple heaving to, we must see in this,
as Dr. J. W. Pickering and W. A. Sadgrove suggest, “the subconscious
dramatization of a subliminal inference of the percipient.” Such
dramatizations, moreover, are instinctive and almost general in this
class of visions.
If this were an isolated case, it would certainly not be right to attach
decisive importance to it; “but,” Dr. Maxwell observes, “the same
sensitive has given me other curious instances; and these cases, compared
with others which I myself have observed or with those of which I have
received first-hand accounts, render the hypothesis of coincidence very
improbable, though they do not absolutely exclude it.”[10]
4
Another and perhaps more convincing case, more strictly investigated
and established, a case which clearly does not admit of explanation by
the theory of coincidence, worthy of all respect though this theory
be, is that related by M. Théodore Flournoy, professor of science
at the university of Geneva, in his remarkable work, _Esprits et
médiums_. Professor Flournoy is known to be one of the most learned
and critical exponents of the new science of metapsychics. He even
carries his fondness for natural explanations and his repugnance to
admit the intervention of superhuman powers to a point whither it is
often difficult to follow him. I will give the narrative as briefly as
possible. It will be found in full on pp. 348 to 362 of his masterly book.
In August 1883, a certain Mme. Buscarlet, whom he knew personally,
returned to Geneva after spending three years with the Moratief family
at Kazan as governess to two girls. She continued to correspond with the
family and also with a Mme. Nitchinof, who kept a school at Kazan to
which Mlles. Moratief, Mme. Buscarlet’s former pupils, went after her
departure.
On the night of the 9th of December (O.S.) of the same year, Mme.
Buscarlet had a dream which she described the following morning in a
letter to Mme. Moratief, dated 10 December. She wrote, to quote her own
words:
“You and I were on a country-road when a carriage passed in front of us
and a voice from inside called to us. When we came up to the carriage, we
saw Mlle. Olga Popoi lying across it, clothed in white, wearing a bonnet
trimmed with yellow ribbons. She said to you:
“‘I called you to tell you that Mme. Nitchinof will leave the school on
the 17th.’
“The carriage then drove on.”
A week later and three days before the letter reached Kazan, the event
foreseen in the dream was fulfilled in a tragic fashion. Mme. Nitchinof
died on the 16th of an infectious disease; and on the 17th her body was
carried out of the school for fear of infection.
It is well to add that both Mme. Buscarlet’s letter and the replies which
came from Russia were communicated to Professor Flournoy and bear the
post-mark dates.
Such premonitory dreams are frequent; but it does not often happen that
circumstances and especially the existence of a document dated previous
to their fulfilment give them such incontestable authenticity.
We may remark in passing the odd character of this premonition. The date
is fixed precisely; but only a veiled and mysterious allusion (the woman
lying across the carriage and cloaked in white) is made to the essential
part of the prediction, the illness and death. Was there a coincidence, a
vision of the future pure and simple, or a vision of the future suggested
by telepathic influence? The theory of coincidence can be defended, if
need be, here as every elsewhere, but would be very extraordinary in this
case. As for telepathic influence, we should have to suppose that, on
the 9th of December, a week before her death, Mme. Nitchinof had in her
subconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she transmitted this
presentiment across some thousands of miles, from Kazan to Geneva, to
a person with whom she had never been intimate. It is very complex but
possible, for telepathy often has these disconcerting ways. If this were
so, the case would be one of latent illness or even of self-suggestion;
and the preexistence of the future, without being entirely disproved,
would be less clearly established.
5
Let us pass to other examples. I quote from an excellent article on
the importance of precognitions, by Messrs. Pickering and Sadgrove,
which appeared in the _Annales des sciences psychiques_ for 1 February
1908, the summary of an experiment by Mrs. A. W. Verrall told in full
detail in Vol. XX. of the _Proceedings_. Mrs. Verrall is a celebrated
“automatist”; and her “cross-correspondences” occupy a whole volume of
the _Proceedings_. Her good faith, her sincerity, her fairness and her
scientific precision are above suspicion; and she is one of the most
active and respected members of the Society for Psychical Research.
On the 11th of May 1901, at 11.10 P.M., Mrs. Verrall wrote as follows:
“Do not hurry ____ date this ____ hoc est quod volui—tandem. δικαιοσύνη
καὶ χαρὰ συμφωνεῖ συνετοῖσιν. A. W. V. καὶ ἄλλῳ τινὶ ἴσως. calx pedibus
inhaerens difficultatem superavit. magnopere adiuvas persectando semper.
Nomen inscribere iam possum—sic, en tibi!”[11]
After the writing comes a humorous drawing representing a bird walking.
That same night, as there were said to be “uncanny happenings” in some
rooms near the London Law Courts, the watchers arranged to sit through
the night in the empty chambers. Precautions were taken to prevent
intrusion and powdered chalk was spread on the floor of the two smaller
rooms, “to trace anybody or anything that might come or go.” Mrs.
Verrall knew nothing of the matter. The phenomena began at 12.43 A.M.
and ended at 2.9 A.M. The watchers noticed marks on the powdered chalk.
On examination it was seen that the marks were “clearly defined bird’s
footprints in the middle of the floor, three in the left-hand room and
five in the right-hand room.” The marks were identical and exactly 2¾
inches in width; they might be compared to the footprints of a bird about
the size of a turkey. The footprints were observed at 2.30 A.M.; the
unexplained phenomena had begun at 12.43 that same morning. The words
about “chalk sticking to the feet” are a singularly appropriate comment
on the events; but the remarkable point is that Mrs. Verrall wrote what
we have said one hour and thirty-three minutes before the events took
place.
The persons who watched in the two rooms were questioned by Mr. J. G.
Piddington, a member of the council of the S. P. R., and declared that
they had not any expectation of what they discovered. I need hardly add
that Mrs. Verrall had never heard anything about the happenings in the
haunted house and that the watchers were completely ignorant of Mrs.
Verrall’s existence.
Here then is a very curious prediction of an event, insignificant in
itself, which is to happen, in a house unknown to the one who foretells
it, to people whom she does not know either. The spiritualists, who score
in this case, not without some reason, will have it that a spirit, in
order to prove its existence and its intelligence, organized this little
scene in which the future, the present and the past are all mixed up
together. Are they right? Or is Mrs. Verrall’s subconsciousness roaming
like this, at random, in the future? It is certain that the problem has
seldom appeared under a more baffling aspect.
6
We will now take another premonitory dream, strictly controlled by the
committee of the S. P. R.[12] Early in September 1893, Annette, wife
of Walter Jones, tobacconist, of Old Gravel Lane, East London, had her
little boy ill. One night she dreamt that she saw a cart drive up and
stop near where she was. It contained three coffins, “two white and one
blue. One white coffin was bigger than the other; and the blue was the
biggest of the three.” The driver took out the bigger white coffin and
left it at the mother’s feet, driving off with the others. Mrs. Jones
told her dream to her husband and to a neighbour, laying particular
stress on the curious circumstance that one of the coffins was blue.
On the 10th of September, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Jones was confined of
a boy, who died on the 29th of the same month. Their own little boy died
on the following Monday, the 2nd of October, being then sixteen months
old. It was decided to bury the two children on the same day. On the
morning of the day chosen, the parish priest informed Mr. and Mrs. Jones
that another child had died in the neighbourhood and that its body would
be brought into church along with the two others. Mrs. Jones remarked to
her husband:
“If the coffin is blue, then my dream will come true. For the two other
coffins were white.”
The third coffin was brought; it was blue. It remains to be observed
that the dimensions of the coffins corresponded exactly with the dream
premonitions, the smallest being that of the child who died first, the
next that of the little Jones boy, who was sixteen months old, and the
largest, the blue one, that of a boy six years of age.
Let us take, more or less at random, another case from the inexhaustible
_Proceedings_.[13] The report is written by Mr. Alfred Cooper and
attested by the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duke of Manchester and another
gentleman to whom the duchess related the incident before the fulfilment
of the prophetic vision:
“A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L⸺,” says Mr. Cooper,
“in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see
him professionally. After I had finished seeing him, we went into the
drawing-room, where the duchess was, and the duke said to me:
“‘Oh, Cooper, how is the earl?’
“The duchess said, ‘What earl?’ and, on my answering, ‘Lord L⸺,’ she
replied: