The imagination is a quality of the soul, not only a brilliant but an
happy one, for it is more frequently the cause of our happiness, than of
our misery; it presents us with more pleasures than vexations, with more
hopes than fears. Men of dull and heavy dispositions, who are not
affected by any thing, vegetate and pass their lives in a kind of
tranquility, but without pleasure or delight; like animals which see,
feel, and taste nothing, but that which is under their eyes, paws, or
teeth; but the imagination, which is proper to man, transports us beyond
ourselves, and makes us taste future and the most distant pleasures. Let
us not be told, that it makes us also foresee evils, pains, and
accidents, which will perhaps never arrive: it is seldom that
imagination carries us to these panic fears, unless it be deranged by
physical causes. The sick man sees dark phantoms, and has melancholy
ideas; the man in health has no dreams but such as are agreeable; and as
we are more frequently in a good, than a bad state of health, our
natural state is to desire, to hope, and to enjoy. It is true, that the
imagination, which gives us some agreeable moments, exposes us, when
once we are undeceived, to others which are painful. There is no person
who does not wish to preserve his life, his health, and his property;
but the imagination represents to us our life, as a thing which ought to
be very long; our health established and unchangeable; and our fortune
inexhaustible: when the two latter of these illusions cease before the
former, we are much to be pitied.
* * * * *
* * * *
THE VICTIM OF MAGICAL DELUSION.
_OR, INTERESTING MEMOIRS OF MIGUEL, DUKE DE CA*I*A._
Unfolding Many Curious Unknown Historical Facts.
_Translated from the German of Tschink._
(Continued from page 78.)
The stillness of eternal rest, and the horrors of corruption which were
hovering around me, whispered audibly in my ear that this was not a
residence fit for living beings. “Is my tutor here?” I enquired after a
dreadful pause. The Irishman remained silent, “Hiermanfor! is my tutor
here?”
“He is.”
“Alas! then he is dead!” I stammered, staggering against a tomb-stone to
support myself.
The face of the Irishman began to brighten up; he took me by the hand;
“Come, my Lord, and convince yourself, that even on this spot, where
common men behold nothing but death and corruption, the flower of life
is blooming!” With these words, he led me round the corner of a small
chapel, and I beheld what at first appeared to me the delusion of a
dream, my tutor standing five paces distant from me upon a tomb; he was
dressed in a white garment, and seemed to await me in tranquil
expectation: “Antonio! my friend!” I exclaimed, quivering with joy, and
flew with expanded arms to the tomb, but shuddered with horror when I
grasped through an airy phantom, instead of embracing my friend.
“Don’t be afraid, Miguel!” said the ethereal being without once opening
his lips, or making the least motion, “I am no apparition from the other
world. I am yet living; however, the more solid parts of my body are
above 600 miles distant. My spirit has assumed this form in order to
communicate her ideas to thee. Thou wilt at some future period
comprehend this mystery if thou dost follow the directions of
Hiermanfor. Young man, there exists a felicity upon earth more sublime
than the love of women. Leave Amelia and hasten to Ma***d. Endeavour to
break the abominable fetters whereby thy country is chained to the
throne of a despot. Down into the dust with Vascon**llos, who has forged
these chains, and encreases their weight every day. Thou shalt see me
again when thy country is restored to liberty, and I will lead Amelia to
thy arms. ’Till then, Miguel, farewell!”
The vision was not dissolved, nor did it sink into the ground, nor rise
aloft, and yet it was removed in the twinkling of an eye. “Antonio, my
friend!” I exclaimed, “if thy spirit is still hovering around me, tell
me whether I may confide blindly in Hiermanfor?”
The vision re-appeared on the tomb as quick as thought. “Follow the
advice of Hiermanfor,” he said, “he will supply my place. I have
mistaken him like thyself; however, thou shalt know him too as he is
known to me; and then we shall be united by stronger ties.”
The vision disappeared, and I heard the _Unknown_ calling to me from the
other side of the chapel.
I felt like one who is suddenly roused from a dream, and looked around
me with uncertain, examining eyes, searching for the Irishman. He
perceived it and came towards me.
The sudden change of the most opposite sensations, particularly the last
scene, had affected me very much, and I sat myself down upon a tomb. “Is
it not true, Hiermanfor?” said I after a long silence, “I have dreamed?”
“Dreamed?” he replied with astonishment, “and _what_ have you dreamed?”
“Methought my tutor was standing upon this tomb, and talking strange
things.”
“I have had the same _vision_.”
“Hiermanfor! don’t sport with my understanding.”
“It is as I have said.”
“It cannot be!” I exclaimed vehemently, “it was an illusion. Don’t think
that I am still as credulous as I have been. Confess only that the
vision was a new illusion, whereby you wanted to try me.”
“An illusion requires the assistance of machines: and I give you leave,
nay, I beseech you to search for them. You may ransack the whole burying
ground, but your labour will be lost.”
“That may be! It has perhaps been one of your finest artifices, but
nevertheless it was mere delusion.”
“It was delusion, because you will have it so.”
“Hiermanfor! what do you wish me to believe?”
“Whatever you _can_ believe.”
“Here the figure of my tutor was standing, and there I stood and
conversed with him.”
“You may have been dreaming, it was perhaps one of my finest artifices.”
“What can you say against it?”
“Nothing, my Lord, nothing!”
“I conjure you, what can you say against it?”
“On one part I could find it improbable that two people should have the
same dream while they are awake; on the other, that the most consummate
juggler would find it difficult to produce by day-light, and on an open
spot, an airy vision which resembles your friend exactly, talks in a
sensible manner, answers questions which are put to it, and appears a
second time at your desire.”
“True, very true! however the apparition is not less mysterious to me if
I deem it _no_ illusion.”
“You will comprehend it one time, said Antonio.”
“But when? I am dying with a desire to have the mystery unfolded.”
“May I speak without reserve, my Lord.”
“I wish you always had spoken without disguise, and acted openly.”
“What I am going to say may perhaps offend you; Yet I must beg you to
give me leave to speak freely. I am not going to address Miguel, but the
Duke.”
“Frankness and truth are equally acceptable to the latter as they are to
the former; speak without reserve.”
“It is not fondness of truth, but vain curiosity that has driven you
upon the _dangerous ocean_ of knowledge, where you are cruising about
without either rudder or compass, in search of unknown countries, and
enchanted islands. I met you some time since on your voyage, and
captured you. You could as well have fallen in with somebody else, who
would have forged heavier fetters for you. I have not misused my power
over you. You have indeed worked in the fetters which I have chained you
with, but not in my service, not for me, but for your country, which
you, I am sorry to say, would never have done voluntarily. You have
attempted nothing, at least very little, to break those chains, but you
struggled hard to avoid serving your country. I endeavoured to keep you
in its service by strengthening your chains; however, unforeseen
accidents liberated you from your bondage, and then I appeared first to
you a lawless corsair, who had made an unlawful prize of you, although
you had supposed me, before that time, to be a supernatural being, to
whose power you fancied you had surrendered voluntarily. My dear Duke,
I am neither a villain, nor am I a supernatural being; however, you are
not able to judge of me. It is true that I possess important arcana, by
the application of which I can effect wonderful things; but I am not
allowed to make use of them before I have tried in vain every common
means of attaining my aim. According to my knowledge of your Lordship,
the artifices of natural magic were sufficient for carrying my point;
but now, as the veil is taken from your eyes, and those delusions by
which your will has been guided, have lost their influence upon you, now
I could make use of my superior power, by which I have been enabled to
effect the apparition of your tutor. However, you judge of my deeds
equally wrong as of myself. At first you mistook real delusions, for
miracles, and now you mistake the effect of a great and important
arcanum, for delusion. Whence these sudden leaps from one extreme to the
other? What is it that constantly removes from your eyes the real point
of view from which you ought to see things? The source of this evil is
within yourself; I will point it out to you, lest you discover it too
late. You have an innate propensity, which has been nursed up by your
lively imagination, a propensity which is agitating powerfully within
you, and struggles for gratification, the propensity to the wonderful.
Your tutor strove too late to combat it by the dry speculations of
philosophy, instead of guiding and confining it in proper bounds. My
God! your friend is an excellent man, who had your real happiness at
heart; however, his philosophy was not altogether consistent.
A preconceived contempt of all occult sciences prevented him examining
them with impartiality, and declaring all events contrary to the common
course of nature, to be the effects of imposition. He committed a sin
against philosophy, premising as demonstrated, what was to be proved.
Your own feeling, my Lord, made you sensible of the defects and
exaggerations of his arguments; your reason was not sufficient to
rectify, or to refute them; and thus you have adopted the principles of
your tutor, not from conviction, but from a blind confidence in his
learning and honesty, and believing the assertions of your instructor,
you believed in his philosophy.”
“Hiermanfor! I think you are right.”
“Give me leave to proceed. It was consequently not philosophical
conviction that made you suspect your inclination to the wonderful; but
faith was opposed to faith. The former was founded on the authority of
your tutor, and the latter on the secret voice of your heart. Regard for
your friend, and the ambition of being looked upon as a philosopher,
impelled you to adopt the principles of your tutor, and an innate
instinct spurred you to yield to the voice of your heart, and thus you
embraced by turns, the opinion of your instructor and the faith which
originated from your heart, according to the strength of motive which
prevailed on either side. However, these motives were never pure
undoubted arguments of reason, but mere sentiments, which made you shift
from one side to the other, in the same measure in which your sentiments
of one or the other kind, received nourishment or additional strength
from without. As soon as I began to play off my magical machineries your
belief in miracles began to prevail; but as soon as your tutor
recapitulated his lectures, philosophy resumed her former sway. You were
a ball which flew alternately in his and my hands, because you wanted
firm conviction, to fix yourself upon. Nevertheless I should have
succeeded at last in getting an exclusive power over you merely by means
of my delusions, because your predilection for the wonderful, and your
imagination, which found an excuse and a gratification in my works,
would have prevailed over the philosophical sentences which you have
been taught. Paleski discovered to you what you ought to have discovered
yourself, that my arts were mere delusions, and now you conclude that I
can produce nothing but delusions. Perhaps you go still farther, and
deny even the possibility of apparitions, because I have raised in
Amelia’s house a ghost who was none. At bottom you keep firm to your
character; you came over to my party because your _feelings_ found their
account in doing so; you find you have been deceived, and you fly back
again to the opposite party because you _fancy_ to find truth there.
However you are really guided only by a blind instinct, by sentiment and
opinion. And with _these_ guides do you fancy you can penetrate to the
sanctuary of truth and happiness?----Unhappy young man! you are doomed
to deceive yourself and to be deceived.”
After a short pause the Irishman resumed:
“Pardon my frankness, my Lord! I have done.”
(_To be continued._)
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_For the +New-York Weekly Magazine+._
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