sang, and danced round 'the poor paralytic, fasting.' 'And it is truly
wonderful, though the strictest truth, that when the poor man was taken
from the conjuring house ... he was able to move all the fingers and toes
of the side that had been so long dead.... At the end of six weeks he went
a-hunting for his family' (p. 219). Hearne kept up his acquaintance, and
adds, what is very curious, that he developed almost a secondary
personality. 'Before that dreadful paralytic stroke, he had been
distinguished for his good nature and benevolent disposition, was entirely
free from every appearance of avarice,... but after this event he was the
most fractious, quarrelsome, discontented, and covetous wretch alive'
(p. 220).
Dr. Charcot, if he had been acquainted with this case, would probably have
said that it 'is of the nature of those which Professor Russell Reynolds
has classified under the head of "paralysis dependent on idea."'[7]
Unluckily, Hearne does not tell us how his hunter, an untutored Indian,
became 'paralysed by idea.'
Dr. Charcot adds: 'In every case, science is a foe to systematic negation,
which the morrow may cause to melt away in the light of its new triumphs.'
The present 'new triumph' is a mere coincidence with the dicta of our
Lord, 'Thy faith hath made thee whole.... I have not found so great faith,
no, not in Israel.' There are cures, as there are maladies, caused 'by
idea.' So, in fact, we had always understood. But the point is that
science, wherever it agrees with David Hume, is not a foe, but a friend to
'systematic negation.'
A parallel case of a 'miracle,' the stigmata of St. Francis, was, of
course, regarded by science as a fable or a fraud. But, now that blisters
and other lesions can be produced by suggestion, the fable has become a
probable fact, and, therefore, not a miracle at all.[8] Mr. James remarks:
'As so often happens, a fact is denied till a welcome interpretation
comes with it. Then it is admitted readily enough, and evidence quite
insufficient to back a claim, so long as the Church had an interest
in making it, proves to be quite sufficient for modern scientific
enlightenment the moment it appears that a reputed saint can thereby be
claimed as a case of "hystero-epilepsy."'[9]
But the Church continues to have an interest in the matter. As the class
of facts which Hume declined to examine begins to be gradually admitted by
science, the thing becomes clear. The evidence which could safely convey
these now admittedly possible facts, say from the time of Christ, is so
far proved to be not necessarily mythical--proved to be not incapable of
carrying statements probably correct, which once seemed absolutely
false. If so, where, precisely, ends its power of carrying facts? Thus
considered, the kinds of marvellous events recorded in the Gospels,
for example, are no longer to be dismissed on _a priori_ grounds as
'mythical.' We cannot now discard evidence as necessarily false because
it clashes with our present ideas of the possible, when we have to
acknowledge that the very same evidence may safely convey to us facts
which clashed with our fathers' notions of what is possible, but which
are now accepted. Our notions of the possible cease to be a criterion of
truth or falsehood, and our contempt for the Gospels as myths must
slowly die, as 'miracle' after 'miracle' is brought within the realm of
acknowledged law. With each such admission the hypothesis that the Gospel
evidence is mythical must grow weaker, and weaker must grow the negative
certainty of popular science.
The occurrences which took place at and near the tomb of Paris were
attested, as Hume truly avers, by a great body of excellent evidence. But
the wisdom which declined to make a judicial examination has deprived us
of the best kind of record. Analogous if not exactly similar events now
confessedly take place, and are no longer looked upon as miraculous. But
as long as they were held to be miraculous, not to examine the evidence,
said Hume, was the policy of 'all reasonable people.' The result was to
deprive Science of the best sort of record of facts which she welcomes as
soon as she thinks she can explain them.[10] Examples of the folly of
_a priori_ negation are common. The British Association refused to hear
the essay which Braid, the inventor of the word 'hypnotism,' had written
upon the subject. Braid, Elliotson, and other English inquirers of the
mid-century, were subjected to such persecutions as official science could
inflict. We read of M. Deslon, a disciple of Mesmer, about 1783, that he
was 'condemned by the Faculty of Medicine, without any examination of the
facts.' The Inquisition proceeded more fairly than these scientific
obscurantists.
Another curious example may be cited. M. Guyau, in his work 'The
Non-Religion of the Future,' argues that Religion is doomed. 'Poetic
genius has withdrawn its services,' witness Tennyson and Browning! 'Among
orthodox Protestant nations miracles do not happen.'[11] But 'marvellous
facts' _do_ happen.[12] These 'marvellous facts,' accepted by M. Guyau,
are what Hume called 'miracles,' and advised the 'wise and learned' to
laugh at, without examination. They were not facts, and could not be, he
said. Now to M. Guyau's mind they _are_ facts, and therefore are not
miracles. He includes 'mental suggestion taking place even at a distance.'
A man 'can transmit an almost compulsive command, it appears nowadays, by
a simple tension of his will.' If this be so, if 'will' can affect matter
from a distance, obviously the relations of will and matter are not what
popular science tells us that they are. Again, if this truth is now
established, and won from that region which Hume and popular science
forbid us to investigate, who knows what other facts may be redeemed from
that limbo, or how far they may affect our views of possibilities? The
admission of mental action, operative _à distance_, is, of course,
personal only to M. Guyau, among friends of the new negative tradition.
We return to Hume. He next argues that the pleasures of wonder make all
accounts of 'miracles' worthless. He has just given an example of the
equivalent pleasures of dogmatic disbelief. Then Religion is a disturbing
force; but so, manifestly, is irreligion. 'The wise and learned are
content to deride the absurdity, without informing themselves of the
particular facts.' The wise and learned are applauded for their scientific
attitude. Again, miracles destroy each other, for all religions have their
miracles, but all religions cannot be true. This argument is no longer of
force with people who look on 'miracles' as = 'X phenomena,' not as divine
evidences to the truth of this or that creed. 'The gazing populace
receives, without examination, whatever soothes superstition,' and
Hume's whole purpose is to make the wise and learned imitate the gazing
populace by rejecting alleged facts 'without examination.' The populace
investigated more than did the wise and learned.
Hume has an alternative definition of a miracle--'a miracle is a
transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or
by the interposition of some invisible agent.' We reply that what
Hume calls a 'miracle' may result from the operation of some as yet
unascertained law of nature (say self-suggestion), and that our business,
at present, is to examine such events, not to account for them.
It may fairly be said that Hume is arguing against men who wished to make
so-called 'miracles' a test of the truth of Jansenism, for example, and
that he could not be expected to answer, by anticipation, ideas not
current in his day. But he remains guilty of denouncing the investigation
of apparent facts. No attitude can be less scientific than his, or more
common among many men of science.
According to the humorous wont of things in this world, the whole question
of the marvellous had no sooner been settled for ever by David Hume than
it was reopened by Emanuel Swedenborg. Now, Kant was familiar with certain
of the works of Hume, whether he had read his 'Essay on Miracles' or not.
Far from declining to examine the portentous 'visions' of Swedenborg, Kant
interested himself deeply in the topic. As early as 1758 he wrote his
first remarks on the seer, containing some reports of stories or legends
about Swedenborg's 'clairvoyance.' In the true spirit of psychical
research, Kant wrote a letter to Swedenborg, asking for information at
first hand. The seer got the letter, but he never answered it. Kant,
however, prints one or two examples of Swedenborg's successes. Madame
Harteville, widow of the Dutch envoy in Stockholm, was dunned by a
silversmith for a debt of her late husband's. She believed that it had
been paid, but could not find the receipt. She therefore asked Swedenborg
to use his renowned gifts. He promised to see what he could do, and, three
days later, arrived at the lady's house while she was giving a tea, or
rather a coffee, party. To the assembled society Swedenborg remarked, 'in
a cold-blooded way, that he had seen her man, and spoken to him.' The late
M. Harteville declared to Swedenborg that he had paid the bill, seven
months before his decease: the receipt was in a cupboard upstairs. Madame
Harteville replied that the cupboard had been thoroughly searched to no
purpose. Swedenborg answered that, as he learned from the ghost, there was
a secret drawer behind the side-plank within the cupboard. The drawer
contained diplomatic correspondence, and the missing receipt. The whole
company then went upstairs, found the secret drawer, and the receipt among
the other papers. Kant adds Swedenborg's clairvoyant vision, from
Gothenburg, of a great fire at Stockholm (dated September 1756). Kant
pined to see Swedenborg himself, and waited eagerly for his book, 'Arcana
Coelestia.' At last he obtained this work, at the ransom, ruinous to Kant
at that time, of 7£. But he was disappointed with what he read, and in
'Träume eines Geistersehers,' made a somewhat sarcastic attempt at a
metaphysical theory of apparitions.
'Velut aegri somnia vanae
Finguntur species'
is his motto.
Kant's real position about all these matters is, I venture to say, almost
identical with that of Sir Walter Scott. A Scot himself, by descent, Kant
may have heard tales of second-sight and bogles. Like Scott, he dearly
loved a ghost-story; like Scott he was canny enough to laugh, publicly, at
them and at himself for his interest in them. Yet both would take trouble
to inquire. As Kant vainly wrote to Swedenborg and others--as he vainly
spent 7£. on 'Arcana Coelestia,' so Sir Walter was anxious to go to Egypt
to examine the facts of ink-gazing clairvoyance. Kant confesses that each
individual ghost-story found him sceptical, whereas the cumulative mass
made a considerable impression.[13]
The first seventy pages of the 'Tribune' are devoted to a perfectly
serious discussion of the metaphysics of 'Spirits.' On page 73 he
pleasantly remarks, 'Now we shall understand that all said hitherto is
superfluous,' and he will not reproach the reader who regards seers _not_
as citizens of two worlds (Plotinus), but as candidates for Bedlam.
Kant's irony is peculiarly Scottish. He does not himself know how far he
is in earnest, and, to save his self-respect and character for canniness,
he 'jocks wi' deeficulty.' He amuses himself with trying how far he can
carry speculations on metaphysics (not yet reformed by himself) into the
realm of the ghostly. He makes admissions about his own tendency to think
that he has an immaterial soul, and that these points are, or may be, or
some day will be, scientifically solved. These admissions are eagerly
welcomed by Du Prel in his 'Philosophy of Mysticism;' but they are only
part of Kant's joke, and how far they are serious, Kant himself does not
know. If spiritualists knew their own business, they would translate and
publish Kant's first seventy pages of 'Träume.' Something like telepathy,
action of spirit, even discarnate, on spirit, is alluded to, but the idea
is as old as Lavaterus at least (p. 52). Kant has a good deal to say, like
Scott in his 'Demonology,' on the physics of Hallucination, but it is
antiquated matter. He thinks the whole topic of spiritual being only
important as bearing on hopes of a future life. As speculation, all is 'in
the air,' and as in such matters the learned and unlearned are on a level
of ignorance, science will not discuss them. He then repeats the
Swedenborg stories, and thinks it would be useful to posterity if some one
would investigate them while witnesses are alive and memories are fresh.
In fact, Kant asks for psychical research.
As for Swedenborg's so costly book, Kant laughs at it. There is in it no
evidence, only assertion. Kant ends, having pleased nobody, he says, and
as ignorant as when he began, by citing _cultivons notre jardin_.
Kant returned to the theme in 'Anthropologische Didaktik.' He discusses
the unconscious, or sub-conscious, which, till Sir William Hamilton
lectured, seems to have been an absolutely unknown topic to British
psychologists. 'So ist das Feld dunkler Vorstellungen das grösste in
Menschen.' He has a chapter on 'The Divining Faculty' (pp. 89-93). He will
not hear of presentiments, and, unlike Hegel, he scouts the Highland
second-sight. The 'possessed' of anthropology are epileptic patients.
Mystics (Swedenborg) are victims of _Schwärmerei_.
This reference to Swedenborg is remarked upon by Schubert in his preface
to the essay of Kant. He points out that 'it is interesting to compare the
circumspection, the almost uncertainty of Kant when he had to deliver a
judgment on the phenomena described by himself and as to which he had made
inquiry [i.e. in his letter _re_ Swedenborg to Mlle. de Knobloch], and the
very decided opinions he expressed forty years later on Swedenborg and
his companions' [in the work cited, sections 35-37. The opinion in
paragraph 35 is a general one as to mystics. There is no other mention of
Swedenborg].
On the whole Kant is interested, but despairing. He wants facts, and no
facts are given to him but the book of the Prophet Emanuel. But, as it
happened, a new, or a revived, order of facts was just about to solicit
scientific attention. Kant had (1766) heard rumours of healing by
magnetism, and of the alleged effect of the magnet on the human frame. The
subject was in the air, and had already won the attention of Mesmer, about
whom Kant had information. It were superfluous to tell again the familiar
story of Mesmer's performances at Paris. While Mesmer's theory of
'magnetism' was denounced by contemporary science, the discovery of the
hypnotic sleep was made by his pupil, Puységur. This gentleman was
persuaded that instances of 'thought-transference' (not through known
channels of sense) occurred between the patient and the magnetiser, and he
also believed that he had witnessed cases of 'clairvoyance,' 'lucidity,'
_vue à distance_, in which the patient apparently beheld places and events
remote in space. These things would now be explained by 'unconscious
suggestion' in the more sceptical schools of psychological science. The
Revolution interrupted scientific study in France to a great degree, but
'somnambulism' (the hypnotic sleep) and 'magnetism' were eagerly examined
in Germany. Modern manuals, for some reason, are apt to overlook these
German researches and speculations. (Compare Mr. Vincent's 'Elements of
Hypnotism,' p. 34.) The Schellings were interested; Ritter thought he had
detected a new force, 'Siderism.' Mr. Wallace, in his preface to Hegel's
'Philosophie des Geistes,' speaks as if Ritter had made experiments in
telepathy. He may have done so, but his 'Siderismus' (Tübingen, 1808)
is a Report undertaken for the Academy of Munich, on the doings of an
Italian water-finder, or 'dowser.' Ritter gives details of seventy-four
experiments in 'dowsing' for water, metals, or coal. He believes in the
faculty, but not in 'psychic' explanations, or the Devil. He talks
about 'electricity' (pp. 170, 190). He describes his precautions to
avoid vulgar fraud, but he took no precautions against unconscious
thought-transference. He reckoned the faculty 'temperamental' and useful.
Amoretti, at Milan, examined hundreds of cases of the so-called Divining
Rod, and Jung Stilling became an early spiritualist and 'full-welling
fountain head' of ghost stories.
Probably the most important philosophical result of the early German
researches into the hypnotic slumber is to be found in the writings of
Hegel. Owing to his peculiar use of a terminology, or scientific language,
all his own, it is extremely difficult to make Hegel's meaning even
moderately clear. Perhaps we may partly elucidate it by a similitude of
Mr. Frederic Myers. Suppose we compare the ordinary everyday consciousness
of each of us to a _spectrum_, whose ends towards each extremity fade out
of our view.
Beyond the range of sight there may be imagined a lower or physiological
end: for our ordinary consciousness, of course, is unaware of many
physiological processes which are eternally going on within us. Digestion,
so long as it is healthy, is an obvious example. But hypnotic experiment
makes it certain that a patient, in the _hypnotic_ condition, can
consciously, or at least purposefully, affect physiological processes to
which the _ordinary_ consciousness is blind--for example, by raising a
blister, when it is suggested that a blister must be raised. Again
(granting the facts hypothetically and merely for the sake of argument),
at the _upper_ end of the spectrum, beyond the view of ordinary everyday
consciousness, knowledge may be acquired of things which are out of the
view of the consciousness of every day. For example (for the sake of
argument let us admit it), unknown and remote people and places may be
seen and described by clairvoyance, or _vue à distance_.
Now Hegel accepted as genuine the facts which we here adduce merely for
the sake of argument, and by way of illustrations. But he did not regard
the clairvoyant consciousness (or whatever we call it) which, _ex
hypothesi_, is untrammelled by space, or even by time, as occupying what
we style the _upper_ end of the psychical spectrum. On the contrary, he
placed it at the _lower_ end. Hegel's upper end 'loses itself in light;'
the lower end, _qui voit tant de choses_, as La Fontaine's shepherd says,
is _not_ 'a sublime mental phase, and capable of conveying general
truths.' Time and space do not thwart the consciousness at Hegel's _lower_
end, which springs from 'the great soul of nature.' But that lower end,
though it may see for Jeanne d'Arc at Valcouleurs a battle at Rouvray, a
hundred leagues away, does not communicate any lofty philosophic
truths.[14] The phenomena of clairvoyance, in Hegel's opinion, merely
indicate that the 'material' is really 'ideal,' which, perhaps, is as much
as we can ask from them. 'The somnambulist and clairvoyant see without
eyes, and carry their visions directly into regions where the waiting
consciousness of orderly intelligence cannot enter' (Wallace). Hegel
admits, however, that 'in ordinary self-possessed conscious life' there
are traces of the 'magic tie,' 'especially between female friends of
delicate nerves,' to whom he adds husband and wife, and members of the
same family. He gives (without date or source) a case of a girl in Germany
who saw her brother lying dead in a hospital at Valladolid. Her brother
was at the time in the hospital, but it was another man in the nest bed
who was dead. 'It is thus impossible to make out whether what the
clairvoyants really see preponderates over what they deceive themselves
in.'
As long as the facts which Hegel accepted are not officially welcomed by
science, it may seem superfluous to dispute as to whether they are
attained by the lower or the higher stratum of our consciousness. But
perhaps the question here at issue may be elucidated by some remarks of
Dr. Max Dessoir. Psychology, he says, has proved that in every conception
and idea an image or group of images must be present. These mental images
are the recrudescence or recurrence of perceptions. We see a tree, or a
man, or a dog, and whenever we have before our minds the conception or
idea of any of these things the original perception of them returns,
though of course more faintly. But in Dr. Dessoir's opinion these revived
mental images would reach the height of actual hallucinations (so that the
man, dog, or tree would seem visibly present) if other memories and new
sensations did not compete with them and check their development.
Suppose, to use Mlle. Ferrand's metaphor, a human body, living, but with
all its channels of sensation hitherto unopened. Open the sense of sight
to receive a flash of green colour, and close it again. Apparently,
whenever the mind informing this body had the conception of green (and it
could have no other) it would also have an hallucination of green, thus
'Annihilating all that's made,
To a green thought in a green shade.'
Now, in sleep or hypnotic trance the competition of new sensations and
other memories is removed or diminished, and therefore the idea of a man,
dog, or tree once suggested to the hypnotised patient, does become an
actual hallucination. The hypnotised patient sees the absent object which
he is told to see, the sleeper sees things not really present.
Our primitive state, before the enormous competition of other memories and
new sensations set in, would thus be a state of hallucination. Our normal
present condition, in which hallucination is checked by competing memories
and new sensations, is a suppression of our original, primitive, natural
tendencies. Hallucination represents 'the main trunk of our psychical
existence.'[15] In Dr. Dessoir's theory this condition of hallucination
is man's original and most primitive condition, but it is not a _higher_,
rather a lower state of spiritual activity than the everyday practical
unhallucinated consciousness.
This is also the opinion of Hegel, who supposes our primitive mental
condition to be capable of descrying objects remote in space and time. Mr.
Myers, as we saw, is of the opposite opinion, as to the relative dignity
and relative reality of the present everyday self, and the old original
fundamental Self. Dr. Dessoir refrains from pronouncing a decided opinion
as to whether the original, primitive, hallucinated self within us does
'preside over powers and actions at a distance,' such as clairvoyance; but
he believes in hypnotisation at a distance. His theory, like Hegel's, is
that of 'atavism,' or 'throwing back' to some very remote ancestral
condition. This will prove of interest later.
Hegel, at all events, believed in the fact of clairvoyance (though deeming
it of little practical use); he accepted telepathy ('the magic tie'); he
accepted interchange of sensations between the hypnotiser and the
hypnotised; he believed in the divining rod, and, unlike Kant, even in
'Scottish second-sight.' 'The intuitive soul oversteps the conditions of
time and space; it beholds things remote, things long past, and things to
come.'[16]