CONCLUSION.
OF the power of the mind over matter, we have a remarkable example in
the numerous well-authenticated instances of the _stigmata_. As in most
cases this phenomenon has been connected with a state of religious
exaltation, and has been appropriated by the Roman church as a miracle,
the fact has been in this country pretty generally discredited, but
without reason. Ennemoser, Passavent, Schubert, and other eminent German
physiologists, assure us that not only is the fact perfectly
established, as regards many of the so-called saints, but also that
there have been indubitable modern instances, as in the case of the
ecstaticas of the Tyrol, Catherine Emmerich (commonly called the Nun of
Dulmen), Maria Morl, and Domenica Lazzari, who have all exhibited the
stigmata.
Catherine Emmerich, the most remarkable of the three, began very early
to have visions, and to display unusual endowments. She was very pious;
could distinguish the qualities of plants, reveal secrets or distant
circumstances, and knew people’s thoughts; but was, however, extremely
sickly, and exhibited a variety of extraordinary and distressing
symptoms, which terminated in her death. The wounds of the crown of
thorns round her head, and those of the nails in her hands and feet,
were as perfect as if painted by an artist, and they bled regularly on
Fridays. There was also a double cross on her breast. When the blood was
wiped away, the marks looked like the puncture of flies. She seldom took
any nourishment but water; and, having been but a poor cow-keeper, she
discoursed, when in the ecstatic state, as if inspired.
I am well aware that on reading this, many persons who never saw her,
will say it was all imposture. It is very easy to say this; but it is as
absurd as presumptuous to pronounce on what they have had no opportunity
of observing. I never saw these women either; but I find myself much
more disposed to accept the evidence of those who did, than of those who
only “do not believe, because they do not believe.”
Neither Catherine Emmerich nor the others made their sufferings a source
of profit, nor had they any desire to be exhibited—but quite the
contrary. She could see in the dark as well as the light, and frequently
worked all night at making clothes for the poor, without lamp or candle.
There have been instances of magnetic patients being stigmatized in this
manner. Madame B. von N—— dreamed one night that a person offered her
a red and a white rose, and that she chose the latter. On awaking she
felt a burning pain in her arm, and by degrees there arose there the
figure of a rose perfect in form and color. It was rather raised above
the skin. The mark increased in intensity till the eighth day, after
which it faded away, and by the fourteenth was no longer perceptible.
A letter from Moscow, addressed to Dr. Kerner, in consequence of reading
the account of the “Nun of Dulmen,” relates a still more extraordinary
case. At the time of the French invasion, a Cossack having pursued a
Frenchman into a _cul de sac_—an alley without an outlet—there ensued
a terrible conflict between them, in which the latter was severely
wounded. A person who had taken refuge in this close and could not get
away, was so dreadfully frightened, that when he reached home, there
broke out on his body the very same wounds that the Cossack had
inflicted on his enemy!
The signatures of the fœtus are analogous facts; and if the mind of the
mother can thus act on another organism, why not the minds of the
saints, or of Catherine Emmerich, on their own? From the influence of
the mother on the child, we have but one step to that asserted to be
possible between two organisms not visibly connected for the difficulty
therein lies, that we do not see the link that connects them, though
doubtless it exists. Dr. Blacklock, who lost his eyesight at an early
period, said that, when awake, he distinguished persons by hearing and
feeling them; but when asleep, he had a distinct impression of another
sense. He then seemed to himself united to them by a kind of distant
contact, which was effected by threads passing from their bodies to his,
which seems to be but a metaphorical expression of the fact; for,
whether the connection be maintained by an all-pervading ether, or be
purely dynamic, that the intertraction exists between both organic and
inorganic bodies, is made evident wherever there is sufficient
excitability to render the effects sensible.
Till very lately, the powers of the divining-rod were considered a mere
fable; yet, that this power exists, though not in the rod, but in the
person that holds it, is now perfectly well established. Count Tristan,
who has written a book on the subject, says that about one in forty have
it, and that a complete course of experiments has proved the phenomenon
to be electric. The rod seems to serve, in some degree, the same purpose
as the magical mirror and conjurations, and it is also serviceable in
presenting a result visible to the eye of the spectator. But numerous
cases are met with, in which metals or water are perceived beneath the
surface of the earth, without the intervention of the rod. A man, called
Bleton, from Dauphiny, possessed this divining power in a remarkable
degree, as did a Swiss girl, called Katherine Beutler. She was strong
and healthy, and of a phlegmatic temperament, yet so susceptible of
these influences that, without the rod, she pointed out and traced the
course of water, veins of metal, coal-beds, salt-mines, &c. The
sensations produced were sometimes on the soles of her feet, sometimes
on her tongue, or in her stomach. She never lost the power wholly, but
it varied considerably in intensity at different times, as it did with
Bleton. She was also rendered sensible of the bodily pains of others, by
laying her hand on the affected part, or near it; and she performed
several magnetic cures.
A person now alive, named Dussange, in the Maçonnés, possesses this
power. He is a simple, honest man, who can give no account of his own
faculty. The Abbés Chatelard and Paramelle can also discover
subterraneous springs; but they say it is effected by means of their
geological science. Monsieur D——, of Cluny, however, found the faculty
of Dussange much more to be relied on. The Greeks and Romans made
hydroscopy an art; and there are works alluded to as having existed on
this subject, especially one by Marcellus. The caduceus of Mercury, the
wand of Circe, and the wands of the Egyptian sorcerers, show that the
wand or rod was always looked upon as a symbol of divination. One of the
most remarkable instances of the use of the divining-rod, is that of
Jacques Aymar.
On the 5th of July, 1692, a man and his wife were murdered in a cellar
at Lyons, and their house was robbed. Having no clew whatever to the
criminal, this peasant, who had the reputation of being able to discover
murderers, thieves, and stolen articles, by means of the divining-rod,
was sent for from Dauphiny. Aymar undertook to follow the footsteps of
the assassins, but he said he must first be taken into the cellar where
the murder was committed. The procurator royal conducted him thither;
and they gave him a rod out of the first wood that came to hand. He
walked about the cellar, but the rod did not move till he came to the
spot where the man had been killed. Then Aymar became agitated, and his
pulse beat as if he were in a high fever; and all these symptoms were
augmented when he approached the spot on which they had found the body
of the woman. From this, he, of his own accord, went into a sort of shop
where the robbery had been committed; thence he proceeded into the
street, tracing the assassin, step by step, first to the court of the
archbishop’s palace, then out of the city, and along the right side of
the river. He was escorted all the way by three persons appointed for
the purpose, who all testified that sometimes he detected the traces of
three accomplices, sometimes only of two. He led the way to the house of
a gardener, where he insisted that they had touched a table and one of
three bottles that were yet standing upon it. It was at first denied;
but two children, of nine or ten years old, said that three men had been
there, and had been served with wine in that bottle. Aymar then traced
them to the river where they had embarked in a boat; and, what is very
extraordinary, he tracked them as surely on the water as on the land. He
followed them wherever they had gone ashore, went straight to the places
they had lodged at, pointed out their beds, and the very utensils of
every description that they had used. On arriving at Sablon, where some
troops were encamped, the rod and his own sensations satisfied him that
the assassins were there; but fearing the soldiers would ill treat him,
he refused to pursue the enterprise further, and returned to Lyons. He
was, however, promised protection, and sent back by water, with letters
of recommendation. On reaching Sablon, he said they were no longer
there; but he tracked them into Languedoc, entering every house they had
stopped at, till he at length reached the gate of the prison, in the
town of Beaucaire, where he said one of them would be found. They
brought all the prisoners before him, amounting to fifteen; and the only
one his rod turned on was a little _Bossu_, or deformed man, who had
just been brought in for a petty theft. He then ascertained that the two
others had taken the road to Nimes, and offered to follow them; but as
the man denied all knowledge of the murder, and declared he had never
been at Lyons, it was thought best that they should return there; and as
they went the way they had come, and stopped at the same houses, where
he was recognised, he at length confessed that he had travelled with two
men who had engaged him to assist in the crime. What is very remarkable,
it was found necessary that Jacques Aymar should walk in front of the
criminal, for when he followed him he became violently sick. From Lyons
to Beaucaire is forty-five miles.
As the confession of the _Bossu_ confirmed all Aymar had asserted, the
affair now created an immense sensation; and a great variety of
experiments were instituted, every one of which proved perfectly
satisfactory. Moreover, two gentlemen, one of them the controller of the
customs, were discovered to possess this faculty, though in a minor
degree. They now took Aymar back to Beaucaire, that he might trace the
other two criminals; and he went straight again to the prison-gate,
where he said that now another would be found. On inquiry, however, it
was discovered that a man had been there to inquire for the _Bossu_, but
was gone again. He then followed them to Toulon, and finally to the
frontier of Spain, which set a limit to further researches. He was often
so faint and overcome with the effluvia, or whatever it was that guided
him, that the perspiration streamed from his brow, and they were obliged
to sprinkle him with water to prevent his fainting.
He detected many robberies in the same way. His rod moved whenever he
passed over metals or water, or stolen goods; but he found that he could
distinguish the track of a murderer from all the rest, by the horror and
pain he felt. He made this discovery accidentally, as he was searching
for water. They dug up the ground, and found the body of a woman that
had been strangled.
I have myself met with three or four persons in whose hands the rod
turned visibly; and there are numerous very remarkable cases recorded in
different works. In the Hartz, there is a race of people who support
themselves entirely by this sort of divination; and as they are paid
very highly, and do nothing else, they are generally extremely worthless
and dissipated.
The extraordinary susceptibility to atmospheric changes in certain
organisms, and the faculty by which a dog tracks the foot of his master,
are analogous facts to those of the divining-rod. Mr. Boyle mentions a
lady who always perceived if a person that visited her came from a place
where snow had lately fallen. I have seen one who, if a quantity of
gloves are given her, can tell to a certainty to whom each belongs; and
a particular friend of my own, on entering a room, can distinguish
perfectly who has been sitting in it, provided these be persons he is
familiarly acquainted with. Numerous extraordinary stories are extant
respecting this kind of faculty in dogs.
Doubtless not only our bodies, but all matter, sheds its atmosphere
around it; the sterility of the ground where metals are found is
notorious; and it is asserted that, to some persons, the vapors that
emanate from below are visible, and that, as the height of the mountains
round a lake furnishes a measure of its depth, so does the height to
which these vapors ascend show how far below the surface the mineral
treasures or the waters lie. The effect of metals on somnambulic persons
is well known to all who have paid any attention to these subjects; and
surely may be admitted, when it is remembered that Humboldt has
discovered the same sensibility in zoophytes, where no traces of nerves
could be detected; and, many years ago, Frascatorius asserted that
symptoms resembling apoplexy were sometimes induced by the proximity of
a large quantity of metal. A gentleman is mentioned who could not enter
the mint at Paris without fainting. In short, so many well-attested
cases of idiosyncratic sensibilities exist, that we have no right to
reject others because they appear incomprehensible.
Now, we may not only easily conceive, but we know it to be a fact, that
fear, grief, and other detrimental passions, vitiate the secretions,[9]
and augment transpiration; and it is quite natural to suppose that,
where a crime has been committed which necessarily aroused a number of
turbulent emotions, exhalations perceptible to a very acute sense may
for some time hover over the spot; while the anxiety, the terror, the
haste, in short, the general commotion of system, that must accompany a
murderer in his flight, is quite sufficient to account for his path
being recognisable by such an abnormal faculty, “for the wicked flee
when no man pursueth.” We also know that a person perspiring with open
pores is more susceptible than another to contagion; and we have only to
suppose the pores of Jacques Aymar so constituted as easily to imbibe
the emanations shed by the fugitive, and we see why he should be
affected by the disagreeable sensations he describes.
The disturbing effect of odors on some persons, which are quite
innoxious to others, must have been observed by everybody. Some people
do actually almost “die of a rose in aromatic pain.” Boyle says that, in
his time, many physicians avoided giving drugs to children, having found
that external applications, to be imbibed by the skin, or by
respiration, were sufficient; and the homeopaths occasionally use the
same means now. Sir Charles Bell told me that Mr. F——, a gentleman
well known in public life, had only to hold an old book to his nose to
produce all the effects of a cathartic. Elizabeth Okey was oppressed
with most painful sensations when near a person whose frame was sinking.
Whenever this effect was of a certain intensity, Dr. Elliotson observed
that the patient invariably died.
Herein lies the secret of amulets and talismans, which grew to be a vain
superstition, but in which, as in all popular beliefs, there was a germ
of truth. Somnambulic persons frequently prescribe them; and absurd as
it may seem to many, there are instances in which their efficacy has
been perfectly established, be the interpretation of the mystery what it
may. In a great plague which occurred in Moravia, a physician, who was
constantly among the sufferers, attributed the complete immunity of
himself and his family to their wearing amulets composed of the powder
of toads, “which,” says Boyle, “caused an emanation adverse to the
contagion.” A Dutch physician mentions, that in the plague at Nimeguen,
the pest seldom attacked any house till they had used soap in washing
their linen. Wherever this was done it appeared immediately.
In short, we are the subjects, and so is everything around us, of all
manner of subtle and inexplicable influences: and if our ancestors
attached too much importance to these ill-understood arcana of the
night-side of nature, we have attached too little. The sympathetic
effects of multitudes upon each other, of the young sleeping with the
old, of magnetism on plants and animals, are now acknowledged facts: may
not many other asserted phenomena that we yet laugh at be facts also,
though probably too capricious in their nature—by which I mean,
depending on laws beyond our apprehension—to be very available? For I
take it, that as there is no such thing as chance, but all would be
certainty if we knew the whole of the conditions, so no phenomena are
really capricious and uncertain: they only appear so to our ignorance
and shortsightedness.
The strong belief that formerly prevailed in the efficacy of sympathetic
cures, can scarcely have existed, I think, without some foundation: nor
are they a whit more extraordinary than the sympathetic falling of
pictures and stopping of clocks and watches, of which such numerous
well-attested cases are extant that several learned German physiologists
of the present day pronounce the thing indisputable. I have myself heard
of some very perplexing instances.
Gaffarillus alludes to a certain sort of magnet, not resembling iron,
but of a black-and-white color, with which if a needle or knife were
rubbed, the body might be punctured or cut without pain. How can we know
that this is not true? Jugglers who slashed and cauterized their bodies
for the amusement of the public were supposed to avail themselves of
such secrets.
How is it possible for us, either, to imagine that the numerous recorded
cases of the _Blood Ordeal_, which consisted in the suspected assassin
touching the body of his victim, can have been either pure fictions or
coincidences? Not very long ago, an experiment of a frightful nature is
said to have been tried in France on a somnambulic person, by placing on
the epigastric region a vial filled with the arterial blood of a
criminal just guillotined. The effect asserted to have been produced was
the establishment of a rapport between the somnambule and the deceased
which endangered the life of the former.
Franz von Baader suggests the hypothesis of a _vis sanguinis ultra
mortem_, and supposes that a rapport or _communio vitæ_ may be
established between the murderer and his victim; and he conceives the
idea of this mutual relation to be the true interpretation of the
sacrificial rites common to all countries, as also of the _Blutschuld_,
or the requiring blood for blood.
With regard to the blood ordeal, the following are the two latest
instances of it recorded to have taken place in this country; they are
extracted from “Hargrave’s State Trials:”—
“Evidence having been given with respect to the death of Jane Norkott,
an ancient and grave person, minister of the parish in Hertfordshire
where the murder took place, being sworn, deposed, that the body being
taken up out of the grave, and the four defendants being present, were
required each of them, to touch the dead body. Okeman’s wife fell upon
her knees, and prayed God to show token of her innocency. The appellant
did touch the body, whereupon the brow of the deceased, which was before
of a livid and carrion color, began to have a dew, or gentle sweat on
it, which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on the
face, the brow turned to a lively and fresh color, and the deceased
opened one of her eyes and shut it again, and this opening the eye was
done three several times; she likewise thrust out the ring, or marriage
finger, three times, and pulled it in again, and blood dropped from the
finger on the grass.
“Sir Nicholas Hyde, the chief justice, seeming to doubt this evidence,
he asked the witness who saw these things besides him, to which he, the
witness, answered, ‘My lord, I can not swear what others saw, but I do
believe the whole company saw it; and if it had been thought a doubt,
proof would have been made, and many would have attested with me. My
lord,’ added the witness, observing the surprise his evidence awakened,
‘I am minister of the parish, and have long known all the parties, but
never had displeasure against any of them, nor they with me, but as I
was minister. The thing was wonderful to me, but I have not interest in
the matter, except as called on to testify to the truth. My lord, my
brother, who is minister of the next parish, is here present, and, I am
sure, saw all that I have affirmed.’”
Hereupon, the brother, being sworn, he confirmed the above evidence in
every particular, and the first witness added, that having dipped his
finger into what appeared to be blood, he felt satisfied that it was
really so. It is to be observed, that this extraordinary circumstance
must have occurred, if it occurred at all, when the body had been upward
of a month dead; for it was taken up in consequence of various rumors
implicating the prisoners, after the coroner’s jury had given in a
verdict of _felo de se_. On their first trial, they were acquitted, but
an appeal being brought, they were found guilty and executed. It was on
this latter occasion that the above strange evidence was given, which,
being taken down at the time by Sir John Maynard, then sergeant-at-law,
stands recorded, as I have observed, in Hargrave’s edition of “State
Trials.”
The above circumstances occurred in the year 1628, and in 1688 the blood
ordeal was again had recourse to in the trial of Sir Philip Stansfield
for parricide, on which occasion the body had also been buried, but for
a short time. Certain suspicions arising, it was disinterred and
examined by the surgeons, and, from a variety of indications, no doubt
remained that the old man had been murdered, nor that his son was guilty
of his death. When the body had been washed and arrayed in clean linen,
the nearest relations and friends were desired to lift it and replace it
in the coffin; and when Sir Philip placed his hand under it, he suddenly
drew it back, stained with blood, exclaiming, “Oh, God!” and letting the
body fall, he cried, “Lord, have mercy upon me!” and went and bowed
himself over a seat in the church, in which the corpse had been
inspected. Repeated testimonies are given to this circumstance in the
course of the trial; and it is very remarkable that Sir John Dalrymple,
a man of strong intellect, and wholly free from superstition, admits it
as an established fact in his charge to the jury.
In short, we are all, though in different degrees, the subjects of a
variety of subtle influences, which, more or less, neutralize each
other, and many of which, therefore, we never observe; and frequently
when we do observe the effects, we have neither time nor capacity for
tracing the cause; and when in more susceptible organisms such effects
are manifested, we content ourselves with referring the phenomena to
disease or imposture. The exemption, or the power, whichever it may be,
by which certain persons or races are enabled to handle venomous animals
with impunity, is a subject that deserves much more attention than it
has met with; but nobody thinks of investigating secrets that seem
rather curious than profitable; besides which, to believe these things
implies a reflection on one’s sagacity. Yet, every now and then, I hear
of facts so extraordinary, which come to me from undoubted authority,
that I can see no reason in the world for rejecting others that are not
much more so. For example, only the other day, Mr. B. C——, a gentleman
well known in Scotland, who has lived a great deal abroad, informed me,
that having frequently heard of the singular phenomenon to be observed
by placing a scorpion and a mouse together under a glass, he at length
tried the experiment; and the result perfectly established what he had
been previously unable to believe. Both animals were evidently
frightened, but the scorpion made the first attack, and stung the mouse,
which defended itself bravely, and killed the scorpion. The victory,
however, was not without its penalties, for the mouse swelled to an
unnatural size, and seemed in danger of dying from the poison of its
defeated antagonist, when it relieved itself and was cured by eating the
scorpion, which was thus proved to be an antidote to its own venom;
furnishing a most interesting and remarkable instance of isopathy.
There is a religious sect in Africa, not far from Algiers, who eat the
most venomous serpents alive, and certainly, it is said, without
extracting their fangs. They declare they enjoy the privilege from their
founder. The creatures writhe and struggle between their teeth; but
possibly, if they do bite them, the bite is innocuous.
Then, not to mention the common expedients of extracting the poisonous
fangs, or forcing the animal by repeated bitings to exhaust their venom,
the fact seems too well established to be longer doubted, that there are
persons in whom the faculty of charming, or, in other words, disarming
serpents, is inherent, as the psylli and marsi of old, and the people
mentioned by Bruce, Hassequist, and Lempriere, who were themselves
eye-witnesses of the facts they relate. With respect to the marsi, it
must be remembered, that Heliogabalus made their priests fling venomous
serpents into the circus when it was full of people, and that many
perished by the bites of these animals, which the marsi had handled with
impunity. The modern charmers told Bruce that their immunity was born
with them; and it was established beyond a doubt, during the French
expedition into Egypt, that these people go from house to house to
destroy serpents, as men do rats in this country. They declare that some
mysterious instinct guides them to the animals, which they immediately
seize with fury and tear to pieces with their hands and teeth. The
negroes of the Antilles can smell a serpent which they do not see, and
of whose presence a European is quite insensible; and Madame Calderon de
la Barca mentions, in her letters from Mexico, some singular cases of
exemption from the pernicious effects of venomous bites; and further
relates, that in some parts of America, where rattlesnakes are extremely
abundant, they have a custom of innoculating children with the poison,
and that this is a preservative from future injury. This may or may not
be true; but it is so much the fashion in these days to set down to the
account of fable everything deviating from our daily experience, that
travellers may repeat these stories for ages before any competent person
will take the trouble of verifying the report. However, taking the
evidence altogether, it appears clear that there does exist in some
persons a faculty of producing in these animals a sort of numbness, or
_engourdissement_, which renders them for the time incapable of
mischief; though of the nature of the power we are utterly ignorant,
unless it be magnetic. The senses of animals, although generally
resembling ours, are yet extremely different in various instances; and
we know that many of them have one faculty or another exalted to an
intensity of which we have no precise conception. Galen asserted, on the
authority of the marsi and psylli themselves, that they obtained their
immunity by feeding on the flesh of venomous animals: but Pliny, Elian,
Silius Italicus, and others, account for the privilege by attributing it
to the use of some substance of a powerful nature, with which they
rubbed their bodies; and most modern travellers incline to the same
explanation. But if this were the elucidation of the mystery, I suspect
it would be easily detected.
It is observable that in all countries where a secret of this sort
exists, there is always found some custom which may be looked upon as
either the cause or the consequence of the discovery. In Hindostan, for
example, in order to test the truth of an accusation, the cobra capello
is flung into a deep pot of earth with a ring; and if the supposed
criminal succeeds in extracting the ring without being bitten by the
serpent, he is accounted innocent. So the sacred asps in Egypt inflicted
death upon the wicked, but spared the good. Dr. Allnut mentions that he
saw a negro in Africa touch the protruded tongue of a snake with the
black matter from the end of his pipe, which he said was tobacco-oil.
The effects were as rapid as a shock of electricity. The animal never
stirred again, but stiffened, and was as rigid and hard as if it had
been dried in the sun.
It is related of Machamut, a Moorish king, that he fed on poisons till
his bite became fatal and his saliva venomous. Cœlius Rhodiginus
mentions the same thing of a woman who was thus mortal to all her
lovers; and Avicenna mentions a man whose bite was fatal in the same
way.
The boy that was found in the forest of Arden, in 1563, and who had been
nourished by a she-wolf, made a great deal of money for a short time,
after he was introduced to civilized life, by exempting the flocks and
herds of the shepherds from the peril they nightly ran of being devoured
by wolves. This he did by stroking them with his hands, or wetting them
with his saliva, after which they for some time enjoyed an immunity. His
faculty was discovered from the circumstance of the beasts he kept never
being attacked. It left him, however, when he was about fourteen, and
the wolves ceased to distinguish him from other human beings.
However, my readers will, I think, ere now have supped full with
_wonders_, if not with _horrors_—and it is time I should bring this
book to a conclusion. If I have done no more, I trust I shall at least
have afforded some amusement; but I shall be better pleased to learn
that I have induced any one, if it be _but_ one, to look upon life and
death, and the mysteries that attach to both, with a more curious and
inquiring eye than they have hitherto done. I can not but think that it
would be a great step if mankind could familiarize themselves with the
idea that they are spirits incorporated for a time in the flesh; but
that the dissolution of the connection between soul and body, though it
changes the external conditions of the former, leaves its moral state
unaltered. What a man has made himself, he will be; his state is the
result of his past life, and his heaven or hell is in himself. At death
we enter upon a new course of life, and what that life shall be depends
upon ourselves. If we have provided oil for our lamps, and fitted
ourselves for a noble destiny and the fellowship of the great and good
spirits that have passed away, such will be our portion; and if we have
misused our talent, and sunk our souls in the sensual pleasures or base
passions of this world, we shall carry our desires and passions with us,
to make our torment in the other—or perhaps be tethered to the earth by
some inextinguishable remorse or disappointed scheme, like those unhappy
spirits I have been writing about—and that perhaps for hundreds of
years; for, although they be evidently freed from many of the laws of
space and matter, while unable to leave the earth, they are still the
children of time and have not entered into eternity. It is surely absurd
to expect that because our bodies have decayed and fallen away, or been
destroyed by an accident, that a miracle is to be wrought in our favor,
and that the miser’s love of gold, or the profligate’s love of vice, is
to be immediately extinguished, and be superseded by inclinations and
tastes better suited to his new condition! New circumstances do not so
rapidly engender a new mind here, that we should hope they will do so
there: more especially as, in the first place, we do not know what
facilities of improvement may remain in us; and in the second, since the
law that like seeks like must be undeviating, the blind will seek the
blind, and not those who could help them to light.
I think, too, that if people would learn to remember that they are
spirits, and acquire the habit of conceiving of themselves as
individuals, apart from the body, that they would not only be better
able to realize this view of a future life, but they would also find it
much less difficult to imagine, that, since they belong to the spiritual
world on the one hand, quite as much as they belong to the material
world on the other, that these extraordinary faculties, which they
occasionally see manifested by certain individuals, or in certain
states, may possibly be but faint rays of those properties which are
inherent in spirit, though temporarily obscured by its connection with
the flesh—and designed to be so, for the purposes of this earthly
existence. The most ancient nations of the world knew this, although we
have lost sight of it, as we learn by the sacred books of the Hebrews.
According to the _Cabbalah_, “Mankind are endowed by nature, not only
with the faculty of penetrating into the regions of the supersensuous
and invisible, but also of working magically above and below, or in the
worlds of light and darkness. As the Eternal fills the world, sees, and
is not seen, so does the soul (_N’schamach_) fill the body, and sees
without being seen. The soul perceives that which the bodily eye can
not. Sometimes a man is seized suddenly with a fear, for which he can
not account, which is because the soul descries an impending misfortune.
The soul possesses also the power of working with the elementary matter
of the earth, so as to annihilate one form and produce another. Even by
the force of imagination, human beings can injure other things; yea,
even to the slaying of a man!” (The new platonist, Paracelsus, says the
same thing.) The “Cabbalah” teaches that there have in all times existed
men endowed with powers, in a greater or less degree, to work good or
evil; for, to be a virtuoso in either, requires a peculiar spiritual
vigor: thence, such men as heroes and priests in the kingdom of Tumah
(the kingdom of the clean and unclean). “If a man therefore sets his
desires on what is godly, in proportion as his efforts are not selfish,
but purely a seeking of holiness, he will be endowed, by the free grace
of God, with supernatural faculties; and it is the highest aim of
existence, that man should regain his connection with his inward,
original source, and exalt the material and earthly into the spiritual.”
The highest degree of this condition of light and spirit is commonly
called “the holy ecstasy,” which is apparently the degree attained by
the ecstatics of the Tyrol.
I am very far from meaning to imply that it is our duty, or in any way
desirable, that we should seek to bring ourselves into this state of
holy ecstasy, which seems to involve some derangement of the normal
relations between the soul and body; but it is at least equally unwise
in us to laugh at, or deny it or its proximate conditions, where they
really exist. It appears perfectly clear that, as by giving ourselves up
wholly to our external and sensuous life, we dim and obscure the spirit
of God that is in us—so, by annihilating, as far as in us lies, the
necessities of the body, we may so far subdue the flesh as to loosen the
bonds of the spirit, and enable it to manifest some of its inherent
endowments. Ascetics and saints have frequently done this voluntarily;
and disease, or a peculiar constitution, sometimes does this for us
involuntarily: and it is far from desirable that we should seek to
produce such a state by either means, but it _is_ extremely desirable
that we should avail ourselves of the instruction to be gained by the
simple knowledge that such phenomena have existed and been observed in
all ages; and that thereby our connection with the spiritual world may
become a demonstrated fact to all who choose to open their eyes to it.
With regard to the cases of apparitions I have adduced, they are not, as
I said before, one hundredth part of those I could have brought forward,
had I resorted to a few of the numerous printed collections that exist
in all languages.
Whether the view I acknowledge myself to take of the facts be or not the
correct one—whether we are to look to the region of the psychical or
the hyperphysical for the explanation—the facts themselves are
certainly well worthy of observation; the more so, as it will be seen
that, although ghosts are often said to be out of fashion, such
occurrences are, in reality, as rife as ever: while, if these shadowy
forms be actually visiters from the dead, I think we can not too soon
lend an attentive ear to the tale their reappearance tells us.
That we do not all see them, or that those who promise to come do not
all keep tryst, amounts to nothing. We do not know why they can come,
nor why they can not; and as for not seeing them, I repeat, we must not
forget how many other things there are that we do not see: and since, in
science, we know that there are delicate manifestations which can only
be rendered perceptible to our organs by the application of the most
delicate electrometers, is it not reasonable to suppose that there may
exist certain susceptible or diseased organisms, which, judiciously
handled, may serve as electrometers to the healthy ones?
As my book is designed as an inquiry, with a note of interrogation I
characteristically bid adieu to my readers.
C. C.
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[9] In the “Medical Annals,” a case is recorded of a young lady whose
axillary excretions were rendered so offensive, by the fright and horror
she had experienced in seeing some of her relations assassinated in
India, that she was unable to go into society.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.