anecdotes, we reply by asking, 'Dear sir, what are _your_ modern
instances? What do you know of "Mrs. A.," whom you still persistently
cite as an example of morbid recurrent hallucinations? Name the German
servant girl who, in a fever, talked several learned languages, which she
had heard her former master, a scholar, declaim! Where did she live? Who
vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her? There is, you know, no
evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge: the phenomena are said
by him to have been observed "in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year
or two before my arrival at Göttingen.... Many eminent physiologists and
psychologists visited the town." Why do you not name a few out of the
distinguished crowd?'[8] This anecdote, a rumour of a rumour of a
Protestant explanation of a Catholic marvel, was told by Coleridge at
least twenty years after the possible date. The psychologists copy it,[9]
one after the other, as a flock of sheep jump where their leader has
jumped. An example by way of anecdote may be permitted.
According to the current anthropological theory, the idea of soul or
spirit was suggested to early men by their experiences in dreams. They
seemed, in sleep, to visit remote places; therefore, they argued,
something within them was capable of leaving the body and wandering about.
This something was the soul or spirit. Now it is obvious that this opinion
of early men would be confirmed if they ever chanced to acquire, in
dreams, knowledge of places which they had never visited, and of facts as
to which, in their waking state, they could have no information. This
experience, indeed, would suggest problems even To Mr. Herbert Spencer, if
it occurred to him.
Conversing on this topic with a friend of acknowledged philosophical
eminence, I illustrated my meaning by a story of a dream. It was reported
to me by the dreamer, with whom I am well acquainted, was of very recent
occurrence, and was corroborated by the evidence of another person, to
whom the dream was narrated, before its fulfilment was discovered. I am
not at liberty to publish the details, for good reasons, but the essence
of the matter was this: A. and B. (the dreamer) had common interests. A.
had taken certain steps about which B. had only a surmise, and a vague
one, that steps had probably been taken. A. then died, and B. in an
extremely vivid dream (a thing unfamiliar to him) seemed to read a mass of
unknown facts, culminating in two definite results, capable of being
stated in figures. These results, by the very nature of the case, could
not be known to A., so that, before he was placed out of B.'s reach by
death, he could not have stated them to him, and, afterwards, had
assuredly no means of doing so.
The dream, two days after its occurrence, and after it had been told to
C., proved to be literally correct. Now I am not asking the reader's
belief for this anecdote (for that could only be yielded in virtue of
knowledge of the veracity of B. and C.), but I invite his attention to the
psychological explanation. My friend suggested that A. had told B. all
about the affair, that B. had not listened (though his interests were
vitally concerned), and that the crowd of curious details, naturally
unfamiliar to B., had reposed in his subconscious memory, and had been
revived in the dream.
Now B.'s dream was a dream of reading a mass of minute details, including
names of places entirely unknown to him. It may be admitted, in accordance
with the psychological theory, that B. might have received all this
information from A., but, by dint of inattention--'the malady of not
marking'--might never have been _consciously_ aware of what he heard. Then
B.'s subconscious memory of what he did not _consciously_ know might break
upon him in his dream. Instances of similar mental phenomena are not
uncommon. But the general result of the combined details was one which
could not possibly be known to A. before his death; nor to B. could it be
known at all. Yet B.'s dream represented this general result with perfect
accuracy, which cannot be accounted for by the revival of subconscious
memory in sleep. Neither asleep nor awake can a man remember what it is
impossible for him to have known. The dream contained no _prediction_ for
the results were now fixed; but (granting the good faith of the narrator)
the dream did contain information not normally accessible.
However, by way of psychological explanation of the dream, my friend cited
Coleridge's legend, as to the German girl and her unconscious knowledge of
certain learned languages. 'And what is the evidence for the truth of
Coleridge's legend?' Of course, there is none, or none known to all the
psychologists who quote it from Coleridge. Neither, if true, was the
legend to the point. However, psychology will accept such unauthenticated
narratives, and yet will scoff at first baud, duly corroborated testimony
from living and honourable people, about recent events.
Only a great force of prejudice can explain this acceptance, by
psychologists, of one kind of marvellous tale on no evidence, and this
rejection of another class of marvellous tale, when supported by first
hand, signed and corroborated evidence, of living witnesses. I see only
one escape for psychologists from this dilemma. Their marvellous tales are
_possible_, though unvouched for, because they have always heard them and
repeated them in lectures, and read and repeated them in books. _Our_
marvellous tales are impossible, because the psychologists know that they
are impossible, which means that they have not been familiar with them,
from youth upwards, in lectures and manuals. But man has no right to have
'clear ideas of the possible and impossible,' like Faraday, _a priori_,
except in the exact sciences. There are other instances of weak evidence
which satisfies psychologists.
Hamilton has an anecdote, borrowed from Monboddo, who got it from Mr. Hans
Stanley, who, 'about twenty-six years ago,' heard it from the subject of
the story, Madame de Laval. 'I have the memorandum somewhere in my
papers,' says Mr. Stanley, vaguely. Then we have two American anecdotes by
Dr. Flint and Mr. Rush; and such is Sir William Hamilton's equipment of
odd facts for discussing the unconscious or subconscious. The least
credible and worst attested of these narratives still appears in popular
works on psychology. Moreover, all psychology, except experimental
psychology, is based on anecdotes which people tell about their own
subjective experiences. Mr. Galton, whose original researches are well
known, even offered rewards in money for such narratives about visualised
rows of coloured figures, and so on.
Clearly the psychologist, then, has no _prima facie_ right to object to
our anecdotes of experiences, which he regards as purely subjective. As
evidence, we only accept them at first hand, and, when possible, the
witnesses have been cross-examined personally. Our evidence then, where it
consists of travellers' tales, is on a level with that which satisfies the
anthropologist. Where it consists of modern statements of personal
experience, our evidence is often infinitely better than much which is
accepted by the nonexperimental psychologist. As for the agnostic writer
on the Non-Religion of the Future, M. Guyau actually illustrates the
Resurrection of our Lord by an American myth about a criminal, of whom a
hallucinatory phantasm appeared to each of his gaol companions, separately
and successively, on a day after his execution! For this prodigious fable
no hint of reference to authority is given.[10] Yet the evidence appears
to satisfy M. Guyau, and is used by him to reinforce his argument.
The anthropologist and psychologist, then, must either admit that their
evidence is no better than ours, if as good, or must say that they only
believe evidence as to 'possible' facts. They thus constitute themselves
judges of what is possible, and practically regard themselves as
omniscient. Science has had to accept so many things once scoffed at as
'impossible,' that this attitude of hers, as we shall show in chapter ii.,
ceases to command respect.
My suggestion is that the trivial, rejected, or unheeded phenomena
vouched for by the evidence here defended may, not inconceivably, be of
considerable importance. But, stating the case at the lowest, if we are
only concerned with illusions and fables, it cannot but be curious to note
their persistent uniformity in savage and civilised life.
To make the first of our two main positions clear, and in part to justify
ourselves in asking any attention for such matters, we now offer an
historical sketch of the relations between Science and the so-called
'Miraculous' in the past.
[Footnote 1: _Primitive Culture_, i. 156. London, 1891.]
[Footnote 2: _Ueber psychische Beobachiungen bei Naiurvülkern_. Leipzig,
Gunther, 1890.]
[Footnote 3: See especially pp. 922-926. The book is interesting in other
ways, and, indeed, touching, as it describes the founding of a new Red
Indian religion, on a basis of Hypnotism and Christianity.]
[Footnote 4: Programme of the Society, p. iv.]
[Footnote 5: Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i, 9, 10.]
[Footnote 6: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, ii. p. 240.]
[Footnote 7: _Hallucinations and Illusions_, English edition, pp. 69-70,
297.]
[Footnote 8: Sir William Hamilton's _Lectures_, i. 345.]
[Footnote 9: Maudsley, Kerner, Carpentor, Du Prel, Zangwill.]
[Footnote 10: Coleridge's mythical maid (p. 10) is set down by Mr. Samuel
Laing to an experiment of Braid's! No references are given.--Laing:
_Problems of the Future._]
II
SCIENCE AND 'MIRACLES'
_Historical Sketch_
Research in the X region is not a new thing under the sun. When Saul
disguised himself before his conference with the Witch of Endor, he made
an elementary attempt at a scientific test of the supernormal. Croesus,
the king, went much further, when he tested the clairvoyance of the
oracles of Greece, by sending an embassy to ask what he was doing at a
given hour on a given day, and by then doing something very _bizarre_. We
do not know how the Delphic oracle found out the right answer, but various
easy methods of fraud at once occur to the mind. However, the procedure of
Croesus, if he took certain precautions, was relatively scientific.
Relatively scientific also was the inquiry of Porphyry, with whose
position our own is not unlikely to be compared. Unable, or reluctant, to
accept Christianity, Porphyry 'sought after a sign' of an element of
supernormal truth in Paganism. But he began at the wrong end, namely at
Pagan spiritualistic _séances_, with the usual accompaniments of darkness
and fraud. His perplexed letter to Anebo, with the reply attributed to
Iamblichus, reveal Porphyry wandering puzzled among mediums, floating
lights, odd noises, queer dubious 'physical phenomena.' He did not begin
with accurate experiments as to the existence of rare, and apparently
supernormal human faculties, and he seems to have attained no conclusion
except that 'spirits' are 'deceitful.'[1]
Something more akin to modern research began about the time of the
Reformation, and lasted till about 1680. The fury for burning witches led
men of sense, learning, and humanity to ask whether there was any reality
in witchcraft, and, generally, in the marvels of popular belief. The
inquiries of Thyraeus, Lavaterus, Bodinus, Wierus, Le Loyer, Reginald
Scot, and many others, tended on the whole to the negative side as regards
the wilder fables about witches, but left the problems of ghosts and
haunted houses pretty much where they were before. It may be observed that
Lavaterus (circ. 1580) already put forth a form of the hypothesis of
telepathy (that 'ghosts' are hallucinations produced by the direct action
of one mind, or brain, upon another), while Thyraeus doubted whether the
noises heard in 'haunted houses' were not mere hallucinations of the sense
of hearing. But all these early writers, like Cardan, were very careless
of first-hand evidence, and, indeed, preferred ghosts vouched for by
classical authority, Pliny, Plutarch, or Suetonius. With the Rev. Joseph
Glanvil, F.R.S. (circ. 1666), a more careful examination of evidence came
into use. Among the marvels of Glanvil's and other tracts usually
published together in his 'Sadducismus Triumphatus' will be found letters
which show that he and his friends, like Henry More and Boyle, laboured to
collect first-hand evidence for second sight, haunted houses, ghosts, and
wraiths. The confessed object was to procure a 'Whip for the Droll,' a
reply to the laughing scepticism of the Restoration. The result was to
bring on Glanvil a throng of bores--he was 'worse haunted than Mr.
Mompesson's house,' he says-and Mr. Pepys found his arguments 'not very
convincing.' Mr. Pepys, however, was alarmed by 'our young gib-cat,'
which he mistook for a 'spright.' With Henry More, Baxter, and Glanvil
practically died, for the time, the attempt to investigate these topics
scientifically, though an impression of doubt was left on the mind of
Addison. Witchcraft ceased to win belief, and was abolished, as a crime,
in 1736. Some of the Scottish clergy, and John Wesley, clung fondly
to the old faith, but Wodrow, and Cotton Mather (about 1710-1730) were
singularly careless and unlucky in producing anything like evidence for
their narratives. Ghost stories continued to be told, but not to be
investigated.
Then one of the most acute of philosophers decided that investigation
ought never to be attempted. This scientific attitude towards X phenomena,
that of refusing to examine them, and denying them without examination,
was fixed by David Hume in his celebrated essay on 'Miracles.' Hume
derided the observation and study of what he called 'Miracles,' in the
field of experience, and he looked for an _a priori_ argument which would
for ever settle the question without examination of facts. In an age of
experimental philosophy, which derided _a priori_ methods, this was Hume's
great contribution to knowledge. His famous argument, the joy of many an
honest breast, is a tissue of fallacies which might be given for exposure
to beginners in logic, as an elementary exercise. In announcing his
discovery, Hume amusingly displays the self-complacency and the want of
humour with which we Scots are commonly charged by our critics:
'I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument which, if just,
will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds
of superstitious delusions, and consequently will be useful as long as
the world endures.'
He does not expect, however, to convince the multitude. Till the end of
the world, 'accounts of miracles and prodigies, I suppose, will be found
in all histories, sacred and profane.' Without saying here what he
means by a miracle, Hume argues that 'experience is our only guide in
reasoning.' He then defines a miracle as 'a violation of the laws
of nature.' By a 'law of nature' he means a uniformity, not of all
experience, but of each experience as he will deign to admit; while he
excludes, without examination, all evidence for experience of the absence
of such uniformity. That kind of experience cannot be considered. 'There
must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the
event would not merit that appellation.' If there be any experience in
favour of the event, that experience does not count. A miracle is counter
to universal experience, no event is counter to universal experience,
therefore no event is a miracle. If you produce evidence to what Hume
calls a miracle (we shall see examples) he replies that the evidence is
not valid, unless its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact.
Now no error of human evidence can be more miraculous than a 'miracle.'
Therefore there can be no valid evidence for 'miracles.' Fortunately,
Hume now gives an example of what he means by 'miracles.' He says:--
'For, first, there is _not to be found_, in _all history_, any miracle
attested by a _sufficient number_ of men, of such unquestioned _good
sense, education_, and _learning_, as to secure us against all delusion
in themselves; of such undoubted _integrity_, as to place them beyond
all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and
reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in
case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time
attesting facts performed in such a _public manner_, and in so
_celebrated a part of the world_, as to render the detection
unavoidable; all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full
assurance in the testimony of men.'[2]
Hume added a note at the end of his book, in which he contradicted every
assertion which he had made in the passage just cited; indeed, be
contradicted himself before he had written six pages.
'There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person
than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the
tomb of Abbé Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people
were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf,
and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the usual effects of
that holy sepulchre. But what is more extraordinary, many of the miracles
were _immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned
integrity_, attested by _witnesses of credit and distinction_, in _a
learned age_, and on the most _eminent theatre_ that is _now in the
world_. Nor is this all. A relation of them was published and dispersed
everywhere; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported
by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions,
in whose favour the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able
_distinctly to refute or detect them_. Where shall we find such a number
of circumstances, agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And what
have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute
_impossibility, or miraculous nature_ of the events which they relate?
And this, surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be
regarded as a sufficient refutation.'
Thus Hume, first denies the existence of such evidence, given in such
circumstances as he demands, and then he produces an example of that very
kind of evidence. Having done this, he abandons (as Mr. Wallace observes)
his original assertion that the evidence does not exist, and takes refuge
in alleging 'the absolute impossibility' of the events which the evidence
supports. Thus Hume poses as a perfect judge of the possible, in a kind of
omniscience. He takes his stand on the uniformity of all experience that
is not hostile to his idea of the possible, and dismisses all testimony to
other experience, even when it reaches his standard of evidence. He is
remote indeed from Virchow's position 'that what we call the laws of
nature must vary according to our frequent new experiences.'[3] In his
note, Hume buttresses and confirms his evidence for the Jansenist
miracles. They have even a martyr, M. Montgeron, who wrote an account of
the events, and, says Hume lightly, 'is now said to be somewhere in a
dungeon on account of his book.' 'Many of the miracles of the Abbé Paris
were proved immediately by witnesses before the Bishop's court at Paris,
under the eye of Cardinal Noailles....' 'His successor was an enemy to the
Jansenists, yet twenty-two _curés_ of Paris ... pressed him to examine
these miracles ... _But he wisely forbore_.' Hume adds his testimony to
the character of these _curés_. Thus it is wisdom, according to Hume, to
dismiss the most public and well-attested 'miracles' without examination.
This is experimental science of an odd kind.
The phenomena were cases of healing, many of them surprising, of
cataleptic rigidity, and of insensibility to pain, among visitors to the
tomb of the Abbé Paris (1731). Had the cases been judicially examined (all
medical evidence was in their favour), and had they been proved false, the
cause of Hume would have profited enormously. A strong presumption would
have been raised against the miracles of Christianity. But Hume applauds
the wisdom of not giving his own theory this chance of a triumph. The
cataleptic seizures were of the sort now familiar to science. These have,
therefore, emerged from the miraculous. In fact, the phenomena which
occurred at the tomb of the Abbé Paris have emerged almost too far, and
now seem in danger of being too readily and too easily accepted. In 1887
MM. Binet and Féré, of the school of the Salpêtrière, published in English
a popular manual styled 'Animal Magnetism.' These authors write with great
caution about such alleged phenomena as the reading, by the hypnotised
patient, of the thoughts in the mind of the hypnotiser. But as to the
phenomena at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, they say that 'suggestion
explains them.'[4] That is, in the opinion of MM. Binet and Féré
the so-called 'miracles' really occurred, and were worked by 'the
imagination,' by 'self-suggestion.'
The most famous case--that of Mlle. Coirin--has been carefully examined by
Dr. Charcot.[5]
Mlle. Coirin had a dangerous fall from her horse, in September 1716, in
her thirty-first year. The medical details may be looked for in Dr.
Charcot's essay or in Montgeron.[6] 'Her disease was diagnosed as cancer
of the left breast,' the nipple 'fell off bodily.' Amputation of the
breast was proposed, but Madame Coirin, believing the disease to be
radically incurable, refused her consent. Paralysis of the left side set
in (1718), the left leg shrivelling up. On August 9, 1731, Mlle. Coirin
'tried the off chance' of a miracle, put on a shift that had touched the
tomb of Paris, and used some earth from the grave. On August 11, Mlle.
Coirin could turn herself in bed; on the 12th the horrible wound 'was
staunched, and began to close up and heal.' The paralysed side recovered
life and its natural proportions. By September 3, Mlle. Coirin could go
out for a drive.
All her malady, says Dr. Charcot, paralysis, 'cancer,' and all, was
'hysterical;' 'hysterical oedema,' for which he quotes many French
authorities and one American. 'Under the physical [psychical?] influence
brought to bear by the application of the shift ... the oedema, which was
due to vaso-motor trouble, disappeared almost instantaneously. The breast
regained its normal size.'
Dr. Charcot generously adds that shrines, like Lourdes, have cured
patients in whom he could not 'inspire the operation of the faith cure.'
He certainly cannot explain everything which claims to be of supernatural
origin in the faith cure. We have to learn the lesson of patience. I am
among the first to recognise that Shakespeare's words hold good to-day:
'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
If Dr. Charcot had believed in what the French call _suggestion mentale_--
suggestion by thought-transference (which I think he did not)--he could
have explained the healing of the Centurion's servant, 'Say the word,
Lord, and my servant shall be healed,' by suggestion & distance
(telepathy), and by premising that the servant's palsy was 'hysterical.'
But what do we mean by 'hysterical'? Nobody knows. The 'mind,' somehow,
causes gangrenes, if not cancers, paralysis, shrinking of tissues; the
mind, somehow, cures them. And what is the 'mind'? As my object is to give
savage parallels to modern instances better vouched for. I quote a
singular Red Indian cure by 'suggestion.' Hearne, travelling in Canada, in
1770, met a native who had 'dead palsy,' affecting the whole of one side.
He was dragged on a sledge, 'reduced to a mere skeleton,' and so was
placed in the magic lodge. The first step in his cure was the public
swallowing by a conjurer of a board of wood, 'about the size of a
barrel-stave,' twice as wide across as his mouth. Hearne stood beside the
man, 'naked as he was born,' 'and, notwithstanding I was all attention, I
could not detect the deceit.' Of course, Hearne believes that this was
mere legerdemain, and (p. 216) mentions a most suspicious circumstance.
The account is amusing, and deserves the attention of Mr. Neville
Maskelyne. The same conjurer had previously swallowed a cradle! Now
bayonet swallowing, which he also did, is possible, though Hearne denies
it (p. 217).
The real object of these preliminary feats, however performed, is,
probably, to inspire _faith_, which Dr. Charcot might have done by
swallowing a cradle. The Indians explain that the barrel staves apparently
swallowed are merely dematerialised by 'spirits,' leaving only the forked
end sticking out of the conjurer's mouth. In fact, Hearne caught the
conjurer in the act of making a separate forked end.