“It seems you deny also the possibility of miracles?” Alumbrado said
with a dreadful look, which he however soon sweetened again.
“I am convinced of the possibility of miracles,” I replied, “because it
is self-evident that God, who is the author of the laws of nature, can
alter and suspend them; but this only the Creator can do; man,
consequently, is not capable of working miracles.”
“But men can become instruments in the hand of God,” Alumbrado
continued, “whereby Providence performs miracles!”
“Undoubtedly, but no wretches like the Irishman. The eternal source of
truth and holiness can never employ, as an immediate instrument, an
impostor who deals in lies and artifice.”
“Where will you find a mortal without fault?” the Duke said, “indeed you
are too much prejudiced against the Irishman. He did not deceive me out
of malice or selfishness, but only for the sake of a just and noble
purpose.”
“Actions that are in themselves immoral, like imposition and lies, never
can be rendered moral by the justness of their end, and an organ of the
Godhead never can employ means of so culpable a nature. But, my friend,
if you really are persuaded the furtherance of the revolution to have
been a noble and just action, why has the Irishman been obliged to exert
all his arts to prevail on you to assist in the execution of that
undertaking?”
The Duke cast his eyes to the ground, and Alumbrado left us. Miguel
seemed to be penetrated with shame and confusion, and continued for some
time to keep his eyes rivetted to the ground without uttering a word.
I took him affectionately by the hand: “It was not my intention to tell
you my opinion of your adventures with the Irishman in Alumbrado’s
presence; you have forced me to do it, and I could not help telling my
mind freely.”
“I thank you for it.”
“Your obstinacy and my frankness may prove fatal to me.”
“How so?”
“It will perhaps cost me my life and liberty.”
“I do not comprehend you.”
“I have declared myself against the belief in apparitions, and Alumbrado
is perhaps at present on the road to the inquisition, in order to inform
against me.”
“Have you not yet conquered your prejudices against him? Don’t be
uneasy, and cease judging unjustly of a man against whom you have no
reason of complaint, except a countenance you do not like.”
“You did not observe the fiend-like look he darted at me. O my friend,
whatever may befall me, I will submit willingly to it, if I have
succeeded in recalling you from your errors!”
“I thank you for your love, but I apprehend very much I am one of those
unhappy men of whom you have been saying, that no arguments of reason
can remove their delusion. I am sensible that my sensations has an
immediate evidence, which overpowers every persuasion of the
understanding---this I am sensible of, as often as I recall to my mind
the apparition at the church-yard.”
“You view me with looks of pity,” the Duke continued, after a short
pause, “I divine your thoughts. However, if you had seen what I have
witnessed---”
“Then I should have been astonished at the artful delusion, and the
dexterity of the Irishman.”
“And at the same time would not have been able to conceive, as well as
myself, how it could have been performed in a natural manner.”
“I grant it; but I never conclude that any thing has been performed by
supernatural means, because I cannot comprehend how it could have been
effected in a natural manner. These was a time when you fancied the
apparition in Amelia’s apartment to have been effected by supernatural
means, and yet it was not so. Who would have the childish arrogance to
fancy his intellectual faculties to be the scale of the powers of
nature, and his knowledge the limit of human art? However, the
apparition of the church-yard has some defects, which its author could
not efface in spite of his dexterity, and which easily would have
dispelled the delusion before the eyes of a cool observer. The Irishman
could not give to the phantom the accent of Antonio’s voice, how
skilfully soever he imitated his features. That the apparition did not
move his eyes and lips, nor any limb, is also a suspicious circumstance,
that proves the limits of the artificer’s skill. But what renders the
reality of the apparition most suspicious is, undoubtedly, your friend’s
ignorance of what his pretended spirit (consequently his proper self)
told you at the church-yard; for if he had known any thing of it, he
would not have concealed it from the Prince of Braganza, in whose arms
he died, much less from you, in his farewell letter. Finally, if you
consider what your tutor has told the Prince about his statue, which has
been cut in wood during his imprisonment, you will find it very probable
that the Irishman has made use of it in some manner or other for
effecting that delusion.”
The Duke stared at me like a person suddenly roused from a profound
sleep.--“Marquis!” he said, at length, “you have opened my eyes; but my
unwont looks are unable to penetrate another fact I cannot expel from my
memory.”
“Again, an apparition--?”
“Which, however, did not happen to me, but to my father.”
“You mean the apparition of Count San*?”
“The very same.”
“Your father has related to me all the particulars of it; I have
reflected upon it, and imagine I am capable of explaining it in a
natural manner. Your father received, two days before the ghost appeared
to him, a letter, by which he was informed that the Count was
dangerously ill, and that his life was despaired of on account of his
advanced age. This intelligence affected him violently, and the idea of
the impending dissolution of his dearest friend, prevailed in his mind
from that moment. The melancholy of your father seemed to encrease
hourly, reduced him in the day to the state of a dreaming person, and
disturbed his rest at night. As often us he awoke in the second night,
he fancied he heard somebody groan, yet the groaning person was
undoubtedly nobody but himself, and the cause of his groans originated
from the pressure of the blood against the breast. This pressure
awakened him once more, early in the morning, with some violence; he
fell again asleep a few minutes after, and it was very natural that the
object of the dream that stole upon him should be no other but Count
San*. Your father mistook that dream for a real apparition, and nothing
is more pardonable than this self-deceit. The only circumstance that
renders this incident remarkable, is, that the Count really expired in
that very hour. However, I ask you whether it be so very strange, if our
imagination, which deceives us so many thousand times by its delusions,
should at length coincide once accidentally with the truth?”
“One rather ought to wonder,” the Duke replied, “that this is so rarely
the case.”
“Here you have two instances of apparitions,” I resumed, “which agree in
their being delusions, only with that difference, that one of them which
happened at the church-yard originated from external causes, and the
other from the imagination of your father. We are not always so
fortunate as to be able to explain apparitions in so natural a manner;
our incapacity and ignorance gives us, however, no right to think that
they are supernatural.”
“You think then that the belief in apparitions and the influence of
spirits originates merely from ignorance?”
“Certainly; when man was yet in his unpolished state, and ignorant of
the laws of nature and of thinking, the uncivilized mortals could not
but observe many external phenomena which they could not explain, their
stock of experimental knowledge not being equal to that task.
Necessitated by the law of reason to search for the cause of every
effect, they substituted unknown causes, when unable to find out any
that were known to them, and mistook these powers for spirits, because
they were invisible to them, though they perceived their effects.”
“I do not deny, my friend, that the original source of the belief in
apparitions, and the influence of spirits, has taken its rise from an
evidently false conclusion. It has however been frequently the fate of
truth, that its discovery was founded on erroneous premises;
consequently the manner in which an idea is generated cannot render its
internal truth suspected, provided it be supported by other valid
arguments.”
“Your remark is very just and true, yet it cannot be applied to the
present case, for I have already proved that we possess neither an
external nor an internal criterion by which we could discern the
influence and apparition of those invisible beings, and that we
consequently have no sufficient reason to believe in their existence.
This too I will not contest. You have, however, proved only the
impossibility of finding out a criterion by which we could discern the
real influence of spirits, but not the impossibility of that influence
itself. It may yet be supposed that these beings can produce apparitions
without, and effects within ourselves, and that we are connected with
them in an effectual and secret manner. While this internal
impossibility is not proved, it will not be absurd to imagine that men
who mortify their sensuality, who are entirely absorbed in meditation,
and fix their looks merely on super-terrestial things, may be favoured
more frequently with the influence of spiritual beings, and a more
intimate connection with them.”
(_To be continued._)
* * * * *