bed, but, after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but
thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were
Lord L⸺, in a chair, as if in a fit, with a man standing over him with a
red beard. He was by the side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was
distinctly shown.’
“I then said:
“‘I am attending Lord L⸺ at present; there is very little the matter with
him; he is not going to die; he will be all right very soon.’
“Well, he got better for a week and was nearly well, but, at the end of
six or seven days after this, I was called to see him suddenly. He had
inflammation of both lungs.
“I called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead man. There
were two male nurses attending on him; one had been taken ill. But, when
I saw the other, the dream of the duchess was exactly represented. He was
standing near a bath over the earl and, strange to say, his beard was
red. There was the bath with the red lamp over it; and this brought the
story to my mind.
“The vision seen by the duchess was told two weeks before the death of
Lord L⸺. It is a most remarkable thing.”
7
But it is impossible to find space for the many instances related. As
I have said, there are hundreds of them, making their tracks in every
direction across the plains of the future. Those which I have quoted
give a sufficient idea of the predominating tone and the general aspect
of this sort of story. It is nevertheless right to add that many of
them are not at all tragic and that premonition opens its mysterious
and capricious vistas of the future in connection with the most diverse
and insignificant events. It cares but little for the human value of
the occurrence and puts the vision of a number in a lottery on the same
plane as the most dramatic death. The roads by which it reaches us are
also unexpected and varied. Often, as in the examples quoted, it comes
to us in a dream. Sometimes, it is an auditory or visual hallucination
which seizes upon us while awake; sometimes, an indefinable but clear
and irresistible presentiment, a shapeless but powerful obsession, an
absurd but imperative certainty which rises from the depths of our inner
darkness, where perhaps lies hidden the final answer to every riddle.
One might illustrate each of these manifestations with numerous examples.
I will mention only a few, selected not among the most striking or the
most attractive, but among those which have been most strictly tested
and investigated.[14] A young peasant from the neighbourhood of Ghent,
two months before the drawing for the conscription, announces to all and
sundry that he will draw number 90 from the urn. On entering the presence
of the district-commissioner in charge, he asks if number 90 is still in.
The answer is yes.
“Well, then, I shall have it!”
And to the general amazement, he does draw number 90.
Questioned as to the manner in which he acquired this strange certainty,
he declares that, two months ago, just after he had gone to bed, he saw a
huge, indescribable form appear in a corner of his room with the number
90 standing out plainly in the middle, in figures the size of a man’s
hand. He sat up in bed and shut and opened his eyes to persuade himself
that he was not dreaming. The apparition remained in the same place,
distinctly and undeniably.
Professor Georges Hulin, of the university of Ghent, and M. Jules van
Dooren, the district-commissioner, who report the incident, mention
three other similar and equally striking cases witnessed by M. van
Dooren during his term of office. I am the less inclined to doubt their
declaration inasmuch as I am personally acquainted with them and know
that their statements, as regards the objective reality of the facts,
are so to speak equivalent to a legal deposition. M. Bozzano mentions
some previsions which are quite as remarkable in connection with the
gaming-tables at Monte Carlo.
I repeat, I am aware that, in the case of these occurrences and those
which resemble them, it is possible once again to invoke the theory of
coincidence. It will be contended that there are probably a thousand
predictions of this kind which are never talked about, because they were
not fulfilled, whereas, if one of them is accomplished, which is bound by
the law of probabilities to happen some day or other, the astonishment
is general and free rein is given to the imagination. This is true;
nevertheless, it is well to enquire whether these predictions are as
frequent as is loosely stated. In the matter of those which concern
the conscription-drawings, for instance, I have had the opportunity of
interrogating more than one constant witness of these little dramas of
fate; and all admitted that, on the whole, they are much rarer than one
would believe. Next, we must not forget that there can be no question
here of scientific proofs. We are in the midst of a slippery and nebulous
region, where we would not dare to risk a step if we were not allowing
ourselves to be guided by our feelings rather than by certainties which
we are not forbidden to hope for, but which are not yet in sight.
8
We will abridge our subject still further, referring readers who wish to
know the details to the originals, lest we should never have done; or
rather, instead of attempting an abridgment, which would still be too
long, so plentiful are the materials, we will content ourselves with
enumerating a few instances, all taken from Bozzano’s _Des Phénomènes
prémonitoires_. We read there of a funeral procession seen on a high-road
several days before it actually passed that way; or, again, of a young
mechanic who, in the beginning of November, dreamt that he came home at
half-past five in the afternoon and saw his sister’s little girl run
over by a tram-car while crossing the street in front of the house. He
told his dream, in great distress; and, on the 13th of the same month,
in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the child was run
over by the tram-car and killed at the hour named. We find the ghost,
the phantom animal or the mysterious noise which, in certain families,
is the traditional herald of a death or of an imminent catastrophe. We
find the celebrated vision which the painter Segantini had thirteen days
before his decease, every detail of which remained in his mind and was
represented in his last picture, _Death_. We find the Messina disaster
clearly foreseen, twice over, by a little girl who perished under the
ruins of the ill-fated city; and we read of a dream which, three months
before the French invasion of Russia, foretold to Countess Toutschkoff
that her husband would fall at Borodino, a village so little known at the
time that those interested in the dream looked in vain for its name on
the maps.
Until now we have spoken only of the spontaneous manifestations of the
future. It would seem as though coming events, gathered in front of our
lives, bear with crushing weight upon the uncertain and deceptive dike of
the present, which is no longer able to contain them. They ooze through,
they seek a crevice by which to reach us. But side by side with these
passive, independent and intractable premonitions, which are but so many
vagrant and furtive emanations of the unknown, are others which do yield
to entreaty, allow themselves to be directed into channels, are more or
less obedient to our orders and will sometimes reply to the questions
which we put to them. They come from the same inaccessible reservoir, are
no less mysterious, but yet appear a little more human than the others;
and, without drugging ourselves with puerile or dangerous illusions,
we may be permitted to hope that, if we follow them and study them
attentively, they will one day open to us the hidden paths joining that
which is no more to that which is not yet.
It is true that here, where we must needs mix with the somewhat lawless
world of professional mystery-mongers, we have to increase our caution
and walk with measured steps on very suspicious ground. But even in
this region of pitfalls we glean a certain number of facts that cannot
reasonably be contested. It will be enough to recall, for instance,
the symbolic premonitions of the famous “seeress of Prevorst,” Frau
Hauffe, whose prophetic spirit was awakened by soap-bubbles, crystals
and mirrors;[15] the clairvoyant who, eighteen years before the event,
foretold the death of a girl by the hand of her rival in 1907, in a
written prophecy which was presented to the court by the mother of
the murdered girl;[16] the gipsy who, also in writing, foretold all
the events in Miss Isabel Arundel’s life, including the name of her
husband, Burton the famous explorer;[17] the sealed letter addressed
to M. Morin, vice-president of the Société du mesmerisme, describing
the most unexpected circumstances of a death that occurred a month
later;[18] the famous “Marmontel prediction,” obtained by Mrs. Verrall’s
cross-correspondences, which gives a vision, two months and a half
before their accomplishment, of the most insignificant actions of a
traveller in an hotel bedroom;[19] and many others.
9
I will not review the various and very often grotesque methods
of interrogating the future that are most frequently practised
to-day: cards, palmistry, crystal-gazing, fortune-telling by means
of coffee-grounds, tea-leaves, magnetic needles and white of egg,
graphology, astrology and the rest. These methods, as I have said before,
are worth exactly what the medium who employs them is worth. They have no
other object than to arouse the medium’s subconsciousness and to bring
it into relation with that of the person questioning him. As a matter of
fact, all these purely empirical processes are but so many, often puerile
forms of self-manifestation adopted by the undeniable gift which is known
as intuition, clairvoyance or, in certain cases, psychometry. I have
written at length, in my volume entitled _The Unknown Guest_, of this
last faculty and need not linger over it now. All that we have still to
do is to consider it for a moment in its relations with the foretelling
of the future.
A large number of investigations, notably those conducted by M. Duchatel
and Dr. Osty, show that, in psychometry, the notion of time, as Dr.
Joseph Maxwell observes, is very loose, that is to say, the past,
present and future nearly always overlap. Most of the clairvoyant or
psychometric subjects, when they are honest, do not know, “do not feel,”
as M. Duchatel very ably remarks, “what the future is. They do not
distinguish it from the other tenses; and consequently they succeed in
being prophets, but unconscious prophets.” In a word—and this is a very
important indication from the point of view of the probable coexistence
of the three tenses—it appears that they see that which is not yet with
the same clearness and on the same plane as that which is no more, but
are incapable of separating the two visions and picking out the future
which alone interests us. For a still stronger reason, it is impossible
for them to state dates with precision. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that, when we take the trouble to sift their evidence and have the
patience to await the realization of certain events which are sometimes
not due for a long time to come, the future is fairly often perceived by
some of these strange soothsayers.
There are psychometers, however, and notably Mme. M⸺, Dr. Osty’s
favourite medium, who never confuse the future and the past. Mme. M⸺
places her visions in time according to the position which they occupy
in space. Thus she sees the future in front of her, the past behind her
and the present beside her. But, notwithstanding these distinctly-graded
visions, she also is incapable of naming her dates exactly; in fact, her
mistakes in this respect are so general that Dr. Osty looks upon it as
a pure chronological coincidence when a prediction is realized at the
moment foretold.
We should also observe that, in psychometry, only those events can be
perceived which relate directly to the individual communicating with the
percipient, for it is not so much the percipient that sees into us as
we that read in our own subconsciousness, which is momentarily lighted
by his presence. We must not therefore ask him for predictions of a
general character, whether, for instance, there will be a war in the
spring, an epidemic in the summer or an earthquake in the autumn. The
moment the question concerns events, however important, with which we are
not intimately connected, he is bound to answer, as do all the genuine
mediums, that he sees nothing.
The area of his vision being thus limited, does he really discover the
future in it? After three years of numerous, cautious and systematic
experiments with some twenty mediums, Dr. Osty categorically declares
that he does:
“All the incidents,” he says, “which filled these three years of my
life, whether wished for by me or not, or even absolutely contrary to
the ordinary routine of my life, had always been foretold to me, not all
by each of the clairvoyant subjects, but all by one or other of them. As
I have been practising these tests continually, it seems to me that the
experience of three years wholly devoted to this object should give some
weight to my opinion on the subject of predictions.”
This is incontestable; and the sincerity, scientific conscientiousness
and high intellectual value of Dr. Osty’s fine work inspire one with the
utmost confidence. Unfortunately, he contents himself with quoting too
summarily a few facts and does not, as he ought, give us _in extenso_
the details of his experiments, controls and tests. I am well aware
that this would be a thankless and wearisome task, necessitating a large
volume which a mass of puerile incidents and inevitable repetitions would
make almost unreadable. Moreover, it could scarcely help taking the form
of an intimate and indiscreet autobiography; and it is not easy to bring
one’s self to make this sort of public confession. But it has to be done.
In a science which is only in its early stages, it is not enough to show
the object attained and to state one’s conviction; it is necessary above
all to describe every path that has been taken and, by an incessant and
infinite accumulation of investigated and attested facts, to enable every
one to draw his own conclusions. This has been the cumbrous and laborious
method of the _Proceedings_ for over thirty years; and it is the only
right one. Discussion is possible and fruitful only at that price. In
all these extra-conscious matters, we have not yet reached the stage of
definite deductions, we are still bringing up materials to the scene of
operations.
Once more, I know that, in these cases, as I have seen for myself, the
really convincing facts are necessarily very rare; indeed, no elsewhere
do we meet with the same difficulty. If the medium tells you, for
instance, as Mme. M⸺ seems easily to do, how you will employ your day
from the morning onwards, if she sees you in a certain house in a certain
street meeting this or that person, it is impossible to say that, on the
one hand, she is not already reading your as yet unconscious plans or
intentions, or that, on the other hand, by doing what she has foreseen,
you are not obeying a suggestion against which you could not fight
except by violently doing the opposite to what it demands of you, which
again would be a case of inverted suggestion. None therefore would have
any value save predictions of unlikely happenings, clearly defined and
outside the sphere of the person interested. As Dr. Osty says:
“The ideal prognostication would obviously be that of an event so rare,
so sudden and unexpected, implying such a change in one’s mode of life
that the theory of coincidence could not decently be put forward. But, as
everybody is not, in the peaceful course of his existence, threatened by
such an absolutely convincing event, the clairvoyant cannot always reveal
to the person experimenting—and reveal for a more or less approximate
date—one of those incidents whose accomplishment would carry irresistible
conviction.”
In any case, the question of psychometric prognostications calls for
further enquiry, though it is easy even at the present day to foresee the
results.
10
Let us now return to our spontaneous premonitions, in which the future
comes to seek us of its own accord and, so to speak, to challenge us at
home. I know from personal experience that when we embark upon these
disconcerting matters the first impression is scarcely favourable. We are
very much inclined to laugh, to treat as wearisome tales, as hysterical
hallucinations, as ingenious or interested fictions most of the incidents
that give too violent a shock to the narrow and limited idea which we
have of our human life. To smile, to reject everything beforehand and to
pass by with averted head, as was done, remember, in the time of Galvani
and in the early days of hypnotism, is much more easy and seems more
respectable and prudent than to stop, admit and examine. Nevertheless we
must not forget that it is to some who did not smile so lightly that we
owe the best part of the marvels from whose heights we are preparing to
smile in our turn. For the rest, I grant that, thus presented, hastily
and summarily, without the details that throw light upon them and the
proofs that support them, the incidents in question do not show to
advantage and, inasmuch as they are isolated and sparingly chosen, lose
all the weight and authority derived from the compact and imposing mass
whence they are arbitrarily detached. As I said above, nearly a thousand
cases have been collected, representing probably not the tenth part of
those which a more active and general search might bring together. The
number is evidently of importance and denotes the enormous pressure of
the mystery; but, if there were only half a dozen genuine cases—and Dr.
Maxwell’s, Professor Flournoy’s, Mrs. Verrall’s, the Marmontel, Jones
and Hamilton cases and some others are undoubtedly genuine—they would be
enough to show that, under the erroneous idea which we form of the past
and the present, a new verity is living and moving, eager to come to
light.
The efforts of that verity, I need hardly say, display a very different
sort of force after we have actually and attentively read those hundreds
of extraordinary stories which, without appearing to do so, strike to
the very roots of history. We soon lose all inclination to doubt. We
penetrate into another world and come to a stop all out of countenance.
We no longer know where we stand; before and after overlap and mingle.
We no longer distinguish the insidious and factitious but indispensable
line which separates the years that have gone by from the years that
are to come. We clutch at the hours and days of the past and present to
reassure ourselves, to fasten on to some certainty, to convince ourselves
that we are still in our right place in this life where that which is
not yet seems as substantial, as real, as positive, as powerful as that
which is no more. We discover with uneasiness that time, on which we
based our whole existence, itself no longer exists. It is no longer the
swiftest of our gods, known to us only by its flight across all things;
it alters its position no more than space, of which it is doubtless but
the incomprehensible reflex. It reigns in the centre of every event; and
every event is fixed in its centre; and all that comes and all that goes
passes from end to end of our little life without moving by a hair’s
breadth around its motionless pivot. It is entitled to but one of the
thousand names which we have been wont to lavish upon its power, a power
that seemed to us manifold and innumerable: “yesterday,” “recently,”
“formerly,” “erewhile,” “after,” “before,” “to-morrow,” “soon,” “never,”
“later” fall like childish masks, whereas “to-day” and “always”
completely cover with their united shadows the idea which we form in the
end of a duration which has no subdivisions, no breaks and no stages, but
is pulseless, motionless and boundless.
11
Many are the theories which men have imagined in their attempts to
explain the working of the strange phenomenon; and many others might be
imagined.
As we have seen, self-suggestion and telepathy explain certain cases
which concern events already in existence but still latent and perceived
before the knowledge of them can reach us by the normal process of the
senses or the intelligence. But, even by extending these two theories
to their uttermost point and positively abusing their accommodating
elasticity, we do not succeed in illumining by their aid more than
a rather restricted portion of the vast undiscovered land. We must
therefore look for something else.
The first theory which suggests itself and which on the surface seems
rather attractive is that of spiritualism, which may be extended until
it is scarcely distinguishable from the theosophical theory and other
religious suppositions. It assumes the survival of spirits, the existence
of discarnate or other superior and more mysterious entities which
surround us, interest themselves in our fate, guide our thoughts and
our actions and, above all, know the future. It is, as we recognize
when we speak of ghosts and haunted houses, a very acceptable theory;
and any one to whom it appeals can adopt it without doing violence to
his intelligence. But we must confess that it seems less necessary and
perhaps even less clearly proved in this region than in that. It starts
by begging the question: without the intervention of discarnate beings,
the spiritualists tell us, it is impossible to explain the majority of
the premonitory phenomena; therefore we must admit the existence of
these discarnate beings. Let us grant it for the moment, for to beg
the question, which is merely an indefensible trick of the superficial
logic of our brain, does not necessarily condemn a theory and neither
takes away from nor adds to the reality of things. Besides, as we shall
insist later, the intervention or non-intervention of the spirits is
not the point at issue; and the crux of the mystery does not lie there.
What must interest us is far less the paths or intermediaries by which
prophetic warnings reach us than the actual existence of the future in
the present. It is true—to do complete justice to neospiritualism—that
its position offers certain advantages from the point of view of the
almost inconceivable problem of the preexistence of the future. It can
evade or divert some of the consequences of that problem. The spirits, it
declares, do not necessarily see the future as a whole, as a total past
or present, motionless and immovable, but they know infinitely better
than we do the numberless causes that determine any agent, so that,
finding themselves at the luminous source of those causes, they have no
difficulty in foreseeing their effects. They are, with respect to the
incidents still in process of formation, in the position of an astronomer
who foretells, within a second, all the phases of an eclipse in which a
savage sees nothing but an unprecedented catastrophe which he attributes
to the anger of his idols of straw or clay. It is indeed possible that
this acquaintance with a greater number of causes explains certain
predictions; but there are plenty of others which presume a knowledge of
so many causes, causes so remote and so profound, that this knowledge
is hardly to be distinguished from a knowledge of the future pure and
simple. In any case, beyond certain limits, the preexistence of causes
seems no clearer than that of effects. Nevertheless it must be admitted
that the spiritualists gain a slight advantage here.