Amid the Alps--with glacier, torrent, forest around--you still evoke
the fancied spirit of the scene, though it be but
"To gaze upon her beauty--nothing more."
And where, in sublimer grandeur, snowclad, upreared against the nearer
sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies
no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rhoetus or Enceladus of the
West, and
"over earth, air, wave,
Glares with his Titan eye."
This is but the calm, the dignified, the measured march of poetical
conception. No wonder, when superstition steps in to prick on
imagination, that all should vividly team with spirit life. Or that on
Walpurgis' night, bush and streamlet and hill bustle and hurry, with
unequal pace, towards the haunted Brocken: the heavy ones lag, indeed, a
little, and are out of breath--
"The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
How they snort and how they blow!"
No wonder that to the dreamer's eye, in tranquil scenes of sylvan
solitude the fawn of yore skipped in the forest dell, the dryad peeped
from behind the shadowy oak, the fay tripped lightly over the moonlit
sward.
But enough, and too much, of "your philosophy." Yet there are those
still who may be the wiser for it. Let me sketch you a believer in the
creed it would dispel.
He was a Spanish West-Indian--in his active years had been an extensive
planter and slave-owner in Porto Rico. His manners were grave and
dignified, as due to himself; courteous, as not denying equal or
superior worth in others. He had seen the world, and spoke of it
habitually with a fine irony. We had many a walk together. He was
nervous about his health. One day, as our path lay along the banks of
the Rhine, his conversation took this turn:--
"Do you believe in spirits?" he asked me; and upon my intimating the
polite but qualified assent which suited the tone in which the question
was put--"It may be superstition," he continued, "but I am often
inclined to think that the pucks and goblins, which, as they say, once
haunted these scenes, are not entirely visionary beings. You may
smile--but this has happened, nay, often, happens, to me in my walks. I
see a big clod before me in the path, and form the intention of avoiding
it; when close to it, I step to one side, when pr-r-rt, my toe strikes
against it."
I edged slightly away from my companion with the disagreeable impression
that he was gone mad.
He went on;--"When I lived in the West Indies, the children of the
slaves, about my house, were treated with great kindness and indulgence.
They would come about my table at dessert, and often had little presents
given them. So they grew into objects of affection. But, out of several,
some, of course, took ill and died. I cannot tell you what grief it
caused me. Then this has happened several times, after the death of one
or other of my little favourites:--a bird has flown into the hall, and
into my sitting-room, and has hovered near me, and, after a while, has
flown away. For a few days it has regularly returned, and then finally
disappeared. I thought it was tenanted by the spirit of my lost
favourite, which had come to bid me farewell."
I drew nearer again to my companion. I felt I was in all events safe
from violence from him. And I contrasted, with humiliation, his
beautiful superstition with the commonplace remembrance of a school-boy
conviction of my own, one dark night, upon Blackheath, that a
direction-post was a ghost.
My friend had not, indeed, always been a dreamer: and although this is
no place to narrate his course of daring and hazardous adventure, on
which I am therefore silent, yet I wish to be allowed to re-establish
his credit for intelligence, by reporting the answer which he made, on
another occasion, to a question, as to what he thought of the
emancipation of the Negroes in our colonies. "The principle," answered
my friend, "was good, but you were in too great a hurry. Before giving
them freedom, you should have made them fit for it. They were not
impatient. Slavery is an African institution. Some outlay of public
money, and extreme care and prudence in your measures, would have
enabled you to secure their humane treatment in the interval. As fast
as they became innoculated with the wants and habits of civilised life,
you might have made _freedmen_ of the most advanced, and given them
official occupation, or allotted them land under proper conditions. One
sheep would have followed another. The fag-end you might have
emancipated together. Thirty or forty years, and a million of money,
would have done the thing. The results would have been, from first to
last, beneficial to the colonists. It would have set an example which
other nations _could_ have followed. It would have been a noble return
for having, temporarily, used the race as unmitigated slaves. It would
have been an act of enlightened philanthropy. It would have become
statesmen. What you did reads and works like the puerile suggestion of a
school-boy's theme. What you are further doing, to suppress, by force,
the trade in slaves, would have been worthy my distinguished countryman
whose biography has immortalised Cervantes. Humanity would smile at it,
but that she shudders and sickens."
But, to leave the region of dreams, which are no longer realisable, let
us shift the scene.
The churchyard has its nightly terrors. One heard of corpse-lights seen
dancing over graves--but over some alone. A few only had witnessed this;
but _they_ had no doubt on the matter. Things looked "uncanny;" but time
did not pause, and the story was forgotten. Even when the tale was
fresh, what was it but superstition? Who of those who hugged its
sympathetic terrors by the Christmas fireside, thought they could be
true on the bright frosty morning of the morrow? It was mere fancy.
There was nothing in it. Yet there _was_ something. And now and then a
striking and mysterious event would occur to bring back the old idea.
There was a cottage, (this I heard of a certainty,) in a hamlet I could
name, to which a bad report attached. A room in it was haunted. More
than one who had slept there had seen, at midnight, the luminous
apparition of a little child standing upon the hearth-stone. At length
suspicion became active. The hearth-stone was raised, and there were
found, buried beneath it, the remains of an infant. A story was now
divulged, how the former tenant and a female of the neighbourhood had, a
very few years before, abruptly left the village. The apparition here
was real and significant enough.
"It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak:
Augurs and understood relations have,
By magot-pyes, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood."
But tales like these, though true, gradually lose the sharpness of their
evidence for want of an accredited contemporary narrator, and so become
valueless. But time brings round every thing.
And at length a marvellous narrative, to the same effect with the above,
made its appearance in a trustworthy German work, _P. Kieffer's
Archives_, the complete authentication of which caused it to make a deep
impression. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of Strasburg,
the son-in-law of the well-known German writer Pfeffel, from whom he
received it.
The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age,
of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves,--had
already experienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive
to the presence of human remains, which made him tremble and shudder in
all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm of
this young man, and they walked thus together in Pfeffel's garden, near
Colmar. At one spot in the garden Pfeffel remarked, that his companion's
arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric shock. Being
asked what was the matter, Billing replied, "nothing." But, on their
going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The young man
being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed that it
arose from a peculiar sensation which he always experienced when in the
vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a human body must
be interred there; but that if Pfeffel would return with him at night,
he should be able to speak with more confidence. Accordingly, they went
to the garden together when it was dark, and as they approached the
spot, Billing observed a faint light over it. At two paces from it, he
stopped and would go no further; for he saw hovering over it, or
self-supported in the air, its feet only a few inches from the ground, a
luminous female figure, nearly five feet high, with the right arm folded
on her breast, the left hanging by her side. When Pfeffel himself
stepped forward and placed himself about where the figure was, Billing
said it was now on his right hand, now on his left, now behind, now
before him. When Pfeffel cut the air with his stick, it seemed as if it
went through and divided a light flame, which then united again. The
visit, repeated the next night, in company with some of Pfeffel's
relatives, gave the same result. _They_ did not see any thing. Pfeffel,
then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had the ground dug up, when there was
found at some depth, beneath a layer of quicklime, a decomposing human
body. The remains were removed, and the earth carefully replaced. Three
days afterwards, Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept
concealed, was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now
without experiencing any unusual impression whatever.
This extraordinary phenomenon, it is now generally known, has been
completely elucidated through the discoveries of Von Reichenbach, to
which, in a former letter, I had occasion to make allusion.
You are probably aware, that the individuals whose nerves Von
Reichenbach found to be so sensitive to the proximity of crystals,
magnets, &c., would, in the dark, see flames issuing from the same
substances. Then, in the progress of his inquiries, Von Reichenbach
found that chemical decomposition was a rich source of the new power he
had discovered, by its action on the nerves. And being acquainted with
the story of the ghost in Pfeffel's garden at Colmar, it occurred to him
as not unlikely, that Billing had just been in the same condition with
his own sensitive patients, and that graves very likely would present to
all of them a luminous _aura_; and that thus the mystery might find a
very simple explanation.
Accordingly, Miss Reichel, one of his most sensitive subjects, was taken
at night to an extensive burying-ground, near Vienna, where many
interments take place daily, and there were some thousand graves. The
result did not disappoint Von Reichenbach's expectations. Whithersoever
Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance
manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was
not visible. She described the appearance as resembling less bright
flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several
instances, the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When
Miss Reichel placed her hand in it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud
of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed
no alarm, being accustomed to the appearance.
The mystery has thus been entirely solved. For it is evident that the
spectral character of the luminous apparition in the two instances I
have narrated had been supplied by the imagination of the seers. So the
superstition has vanished, leaving, as is usual, a very respectable
truth behind it.
It is indeed a little unlucky for this new truth, which reveals either a
new power in nature or an unexpected operation of familiar ones, that
the phenomena which attest it are verifiable by a few only who are
possessed of highly sensitive temperaments. And it is the use of the
world to look upon these few as very suspicious subjects. This is
unjust. Their evidence, the parties having otherwise a character for
honesty, should be accepted with the same faith and the same distrust
with which all evidence is to be viewed; with neither more nor less than
in other cases. Nothing should be received in scientific inquiry which
it is not compulsory on our understanding to believe. It is not a whit
more difficult in these than in other cases to obtain inductive
certainty. Nature is not here peculiarly coy or averse from being
interrogated.
Philosophers occasionally regret the limited number of their senses, and
think a world of knowledge would flow from their possessing but one
more. Now, persons of highly-wrought nervous systems have what is
equivalent to a new sense, in their augmentation of natural sensibility.
But philosophers will not accept this equivalent. They must have the
boon from nature their own way, or not at all.
To turn elsewhere.--We may now look into a broader seam of illusive
power--one which lies entirely within ourselves, and needs no objective
influence to bring its ghost-producing fertility into play. Let me
exemplify it in operation.
A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me, that he was
one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a
common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were
struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning
him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home, he
had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him, the
rider and horse being facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even
to the copy of a newfangled bit he sported that day for the first time.
The apparition vanished on his entering the town. He had, in fact, seen
his double or fetch, and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably.
His friends advised him to consult the college tutor, who failed not to
give him some good advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown
away. My informant, who thought the whole matter very serious, and was
disposed to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added,
that it _had_ made the ghost-seer, for the time at all events, a wiser
and better man.
In more ignorant times, the appearance of one's fetch was held to be of
very alarming import, and to menace either death or serious personal
harm. Now, it is known to be one of the commonest forms in which
_sensorial illusions_ shape themselves. And these are matters of
every-day occurrence.
It would seem, that when the blood is heated or the nervous system
over-strained, we are liable to attach reality to the mere productions
of the imagination. There must be few who have not had personal
experience of this affection. In the first night of a febrile attack,
and often in the progress of fever, the bed-hangings appear to the
patient swarming with human faces, generally of a disagreeable and
menacing expression. With some, opium will produce a host of similar
visitants. In much illness, I have often myself taken this drug, and
always hoped it would provide me a crop of apparitions that I might
analyse. But I was disappointed; opium I found to give me only a great
tranquillity and clearness of thought. Once or twice only have I had a
vision, and that but a transitory landscape. I used in vain to look upon
that _black mixture_ which lies before one in the dark, and try to make
its fragmentary lights arrange themselves into definite shapes. And I
have imaged to my mind familiar scenes or faces, (as in the daytime a
strong conception will half realise such,) but they were not more
distinct then than formerly,--ideas only and perfectly transient. But,
as I have said, once or twice I have had the satisfaction of seeing a
bright and coloured landscape spread before my view; yet unlike reality,
and more resembling a diorama, occupying a rectangle on the black
mixture before my eyes. It was not a known and familiar scene, but a
brilliant sketch, made out of materials I remembered, but could not by a
deliberate effort _have combined_ so effectively. It was a spontaneous
throe of the imagination, which had force to overpersuade the organs of
perception.
How well did Shakspeare understand this creative power of the
fancy!--the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, and his test--"come, let me
clutch thee!" are physiologically perfect. Nor less perfect or true to
nature, is the conception of the ghost of Banquo haunting the kingly
murderer. The ghost, it is obvious, however, should not in the play
appear bodily. The audience are in the position of the guests at the
royal supper-table, who saw it not. I wonder how in Shakspeare's time
the stage-directions ran upon this point. Probably as now. Though
Shakspeare wrote for all times, he was probably wise enough to act for
the present. Or perhaps, with no disrespect to his unequalled genius, he
understood not the principles of which he exactly portrayed the
workings, and was, like Shelley's poet,
"Hidden in the light of thought."
So, some say the sun may be dark as another planet; and that the spots
on it are its common earth seen through the gaps in its luminous
atmosphere.
To the world, the alpha and omega of this piece of philosophy were
furnished by the publication of the case of Nicolai, the bookseller of
Berlin. Its details were read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin,
in 1799. The _substance_ ran thus. Nicolai had had some family troubles
which much annoyed him. Then, on the 21st of February 1791, there stood
before him, at the distance of ten paces, the ghost of his eldest son.
He pointed at it, directing his wife to look. She saw it not, and tried
to convince him that it was an illusion. In a quarter of an hour it
vanished. In the afternoon, at four o'clock, it came again. Nicolai was
alone. He went to his wife's room--the ghost followed him. About six
other apparitions joined the first, and they walked about, among, and
through each other. After some days the apparition of his son stayed
away; but its place was filled with the figures of a number of persons,
some known, some unknown to Nicolai--some of dead, others of living
persons. The known ones were distant acquaintances only. The figures of
none of Nicolai's habitual friends were there. The appearances were
almost always human: exceptionally, a man on horseback, with dogs and
birds would present themselves. The apparitions came mostly after
dinner, at the commencement of digestion. They were just like real
persons; the colouring a thought fainter. The apparitions were equally
distinct whether Nicolai was alone or in society, by day as in the dark,
in his own house or those of others; but in the latter case they were
less frequent, and they very seldom presented themselves in the streets.
During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of
each other, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and there
communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or of his
remarks about them to his wife and physician. No effort of his would
dismiss them, or bring an absent one back. When he shut his eyes, they
sometimes disappeared, sometimes remained; when he opened his eyes, they
were there as before. After a week they became more numerous, and began
to converse. They conversed with each other, and then addressed him.
Their remarks were short and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His
acquaintances inquired after his health, and expressed sympathy for him,
and spoke in terms comforting him. The apparitions were most conversible
when he was alone; nevertheless they mingled in the conversation when
others were by, and their voices had the same sound as those of real
persons. This illusion went on thus from the 24th of February to the
20th of April; so that Nicolai, who was in good bodily health, had time
to become tranquillised about them, and to observe them at his ease. At
last they rather amused him. Then the doctors thought of an efficient
plan of treatment. They prescribed leeches: and then followed the
_denouement_ to this interesting representation. The apparitions became
pale and vanished. On the 20th of April, at the time of applying the
leeches, Nicolai's room was full of figures moving about among each
other. They first began to have a less lively motion; shortly afterwards
their colours became paler--in another half hour fainter still, though
the forms still remained. About seven o'clock in the evening, the
figures had became colourless, and they moved scarcely at all, but their
outline was still tolerably perfect. Gradually that became less and less
defined. At last they disappeared, breaking into air, fragments only
remaining, which at last all vanished. By eight o'clock all were gone,
and Nicolai subsequently saw no more of them.
Other cases are on record in which there was still greater facility of
ghost-production than Nicolai evinced. One patient could, for instance,
by thinking of a person, summon his apparition to join the others. He
could not, however, having done this, subsequently banish him. The sight
is the sense most easily and frequently tricked; next, the hearing. In
some extraordinary cases the touch, also, has participated in the
delusion.
Herr von Baczko, already subject to visual hallucinations, of a diseased
nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and
the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening, shortly after
the battle of Jena, as he tells us in his autobiography, in translating
a brochure into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked
round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy,
seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the whole
was an illusion, he thought it best to knock the apparition down, when
he felt that it offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then attacked
him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable
twist, when Baczko pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit
him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and
remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing
as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took his leave.
The illusion and its principle having been thus elucidated, it is hardly
worth while to look into its operation in tales of vulgar terror. But it
is highly interesting to trace its effects on minds of a high order,
when its suggestions have been received and interpreted as the visits
and communications of superior beings. You have heard, I dare say, my
dear Archy, of the mysticism of Schwedenborg. Now that they are
explained, the details of his hallucinations are highly gratifying to
one's curiosity.
Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg,
ennobled as Schwedenborg, was, up to the year 1743, which was the
fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished
only in literature, having written many volumes of philosophy and
science, and being Professor in the Mineralogical school, where he was
much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to
have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took
possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their
revelations, but was in the habit of detailing, with the greatest
equanimity, his daily chat with them. Thus he says, "I had a
conversation the other day on that very point with the Apostle Paul," or
with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what
he believed to be daily communion with spirits till his death, in 1772.
He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of
his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wirtemburg prelate,
Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words:--"If I
have spoken with the Apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St
Paul during a whole year, particularly on the text, Romans iii. 28. I
have three times conversed with St John, once with Moses, and a hundred
times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an
angel that he professed '_fidem solam_,' and that he stood alone upon
the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these
twenty-two years conversed, and converse daily.
"Of the angels," he says, "they have human forms, the appearance of men
that I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them as a man
with other men, often with several together; and have seen nothing in
the least to distinguish them from ordinary men." [They had evidently
just the appearance of Nicolai's visitors.] "Lest any one should call
this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I
am accustomed to see them, when perfectly myself wide awake, and in full
exercise of my observation. The speech of an angel or of a spirit sounds
like, and as loud as, that of a man, but it is not heard by the
bystanders; the reason is, that the speech of an angel or a spirit finds
entrance first into a man's thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing
from within outwards." This is indeed _cum ratione insanire_! how just
an analysis of the illusion, when he is most deceived by it!
"The angels who converse with men, speak not in their own language, but
in the language of men, and likewise in other languages which are
inwardly known to man, not in languages which he does not understand."
Schwedenborg here took up the angels, and to explain their own ideas to
them observed, that they most likely appeared to speak his mother
tongue, _because, in fact_, it was not they who spoke, but himself by
their suggestion. The angels held out, however, and went away
unconvinced.
"When approaching, the angels often appear like a ball of light; and
they travel in companies so grouped together--they are allowed so to
unite by the Lord--that they may act as one being, and share each
others' ideas and knowledge; and in this form they bound through the
universe, from planet to planet."
I will, in conclusion, add another different, but equally interesting
sketch.
"It is now seven years ago," so spoke, before her judges, the simple,
but high-minded Joan of Arc--"the beginning of the year 1431; it was a
summer day, towards the middle hour, I was about thirteen years old, and
was in my father's garden, that I heard for the first time, on my right
hand towards the church, a voice, and there stood a figure in a bright
radiance before my eyes. It had the appearance and look of a right good
and virtuous man, bore wings, was surrounded with light on all sides,
and by the angels of Heaven. It was the Archangel Michael. The voice
seemed to me to command respect; but I was yet a child, and was
frightened at the figure, and doubted very much whether it was the
archangel! I saw him and the angels as distinctly before my eyes as I
now see you, my judges." With words of encouragement the archangel
answered to her, that God had taken pity upon France, and that she must
hasten to the assistance of the king. At the same time he promised her
that St Catherine and St Margaret would shortly visit her; he told her
that she should do what they commanded her, because they were sent by
God to guide and conduct her. "Upon this," continued Joan, "St Catherine
and St Margaret appeared to me, as the angel had foretold. They ordered
me to get ready to go to Robert de Beaudricourt, the king's captain. He
would several times refuse me, but at last would consent, and give me
people, who would conduct me to the king. Then should I raise the siege
of Orleans. I replied to them that I was a poor child, who understood
nothing about riding on horseback and making war. They said I should
carry my banner with courage; God would help me, and win back for my
king his entire kingdom. As soon as I knew," continued Joan, "that I was
to proceed on this errand, I avoided, as much as I could, afterwards
taking part in the sports and amusements of my young companions."----"So
have the Saints conducted me during seven years, and have given me
support and assistance in all my need and labours; and now at present,"
said she to her judges, "no day goes by, but they come to me."----"I
seldom see the Saints that they are not surrounded with a halo of light;
they wear rich and precious crowns, as it is reasonable they should. I
see them always under the same forms, and have never found in their
discourse any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the
other, and distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by
their salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when
they do not come, I pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and
never have I needed them but they have visited me."
Such is part of the defence of the high-spirited Joan of Arc, who was
taken prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23d of May 1430--sold by
him for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a
heretic, idolatress, and magician--condemned, and finally burned alive,
the 30th of May 1431. Ill-fated heroine! I seem to be thinking of
writing her epitaph, but I am considering only that there is more to
come out of her evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were
simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How
came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry
would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the
navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and
it grows late--so good-night, dear Archy.
"Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum."
"Cras ingens iterabimus aequor."
Yours, &c.,
MAC DAVUS.