of England, and one evening mention was made of a crystal ball, and our
hostess asked Miss A. to look in it, and, if possible, tell her what was
happening to a friend of hers. Miss A. took the crystal, and our hostess
put her hand on Miss A.'s forehead to "will her." I, not believing in
this, took up a book and went to the other side of the room. I was
suddenly very much startled to hear Miss A., in quite an agitated way,
describe a scene that had most certainly been very often in my thoughts,
but of which I had never mentioned a word, She accurately described a
race-course in Scotland, and an accident which happened to a friend of
mine only a week or two before, and she was evidently going through the
same doubt and anxiety that I did at the time as to whether he was
actually killed or only very much hurt. It really was a most wonderful
revelation to me, as it was the very first time I had seen a crystal.
Our hostess, of course, was very much annoyed that she had not been able
to influence Miss A., while I, who had appeared so very indifferent,
should have affected her.--November 28, 1897.'
Miss Angus herself writes:
'Another case was a rather interesting one, as I somehow got inside the
thoughts of _one_ lady while _another_ was doing her best to influence
me!
'Miss ----, a friend in Brighton, has strange "magnetic" powers, and
felt quite sure of success with me and the ball.
'Another lady, Miss H., who was present, laughed at the whole thing,
especially when Miss ---- insisted on holding my hand and patting her
other hand on my forehead! Miss H. in a scornful manner took up a book,
and, crossing to the other side of the room, left us to our folly.
'In a very short time I felt myself getting excited, which had never
happened before, when I looked in the crystal. I saw a crowd of people,
and in some strange way I felt I was in it, and we all seemed to be
waiting for something. Soon a rider came past, young, dressed for
racing. His horse ambled past, and he smiled and nodded to those he
knew in the crowd, and then was lost to sight.
'In a moment we all seemed to feel as if something had happened, and I
went through great agony of suspense trying to see what seemed _just_
beyond my view. Soon, however, two or three men approached, and carried
him past before my eyes, and again my anxiety was intense to discover if
he were only very badly hurt or if life were really extinct. All this
happened in a few moments, but long enough to have left me so agitated
that I could not realise it had only been a vision in a glass ball.
'By this time Miss H. had laid aside her book, and came forward quite
startled, and told me that I had accurately described a scene on a
race-course in Scotland which she had witnessed just a week or two
before--a scene that had very often been in her thoughts, but, as we
were strangers to each other, she had never mentioned. She also said I
had exactly described her own feelings at the time, and had brought it
all back in a most vivid manner.
'The other lady was rather disappointed that, after she had concentrated
her thoughts so hard, I should have been influenced instead by one who
had jeered at the whole affair.'
[This anecdote was also told to me, within a few days of the occurrence,
by Miss Angus. Her version was that she first saw a gentleman rider going
to the post and nodding to his friends. Then she saw him carried on a
stretcher through the crowd. She seemed, she said, to be actually present,
and felt somewhat agitated. The fact of the accident was, later, mentioned
to me in Scotland by another lady, a stranger to all the persons.--A.L.]
VI.--I may briefly add an experiment of December 21, 1897. A gentleman had
recently come from England to the Scottish town where Miss Angus lives. He
dined with her family, and about 10.15 to 10.30 P.M. she proposed to look
in the glass for a scene or person of whom he was to think. He called up a
mental picture of a ball at which he had recently been, and of a young
lady to whom he had there been introduced. The lady's face, however, he
could not clearly visualise, and Miss Angus reported nothing but a view of
an empty ball-room, with polished floor and many lights. The gentleman
made another effort, and remembered his partner with some distinctness.
Miss Angus then described another room, not a ball-room, comfortably
furnished, in which a girl with brown hair drawn back from her forehead,
and attired in a high-necked white blouse, was reading, or writing
letters, under a bright light in an unshaded glass globe. The description
of the features, figure, and height tallied with Mr. ----'s recollection;
but he had never seen this Geraldine of an hour except in ball dress. He
and Miss Angus noted the time by their watches (it was 10.30), and
Mr. ---- said that on the first opportunity he would ask the young lady
how she had been dressed and how employed at that hour on December 21. On
December 22 he met her at another dance, and her reply corroborated the
crystal picture. She had been writing letters, in a high-necked white
blouse, under an incandescent gas lamp with an unshaded glass globe. She
was entirely unknown to Miss Angus, and had only been seen once by
Mr. ----. Mr. ---- and the lady of the crystal picture corroborated all
this in writing.
I now suggested an experiment to Miss Angus, which, after all, was clearly
not of a nature to establish a 'test' for sceptics. The inquirer was to
write down, and inclose in an envelope, a statement of his thoughts; Miss
Angus was to do the same with her description of the picture seen by her;
and these documents were to be sent to me, without communication between
the inquirer and the crystal-gazer. Of course, this could in no way prove
absence of collusion, as the two parties might arrange privately
beforehand what the vision was to be.
Indeed, nobody is apt to be convinced, or shaken, unless he is himself the
inquirer and a stranger to the seeress, as the people in these experiments
were. Evidence interesting to _them_--and, in a secondary degree, to
others who know them--can thus be procured; but strangers are left to the
same choice of doubts as in all reports of psychological experiences,
'chromatic audition,' views of coloured numerals, and the other topics
illustrated by Mr. Galton's interesting researches.
In this affair of the envelopes the inquirer was a Mr. Pembroke, who had
just made Miss Angus's acquaintance, and was but a sojourner in the land.
He wrote, before knowing what Miss Angus had seen in the ball:
'VII.--On Sunday, January 23, 1898, whilst Miss Angus was looking in the
crystal ball, I was thinking of my brother, who was, I believe, at that
time, somewhere between Sabathu (Punjab, India) and Egypt. I was anxious
to know what stage of his journey he had reached.'
Miss Angus saw, and wrote, before telling Mr. Pembroke:
'A long and very white road, with tall trees at one side; on the other,
a river or lake of greyish water. Blue sky, with a crimson sunset. A
great black ship is anchored near, and on the deck I see a man lying,
apparently very ill. He is a powerful-looking man, fair, and very much
bronzed. Seven or eight Englishmen, in very light clothes, are standing
on the road beside the boat.
'January 28, 1898.'
'A great black ship,' anchored in 'a river or lake,' naturally suggests
the Suez Canal, where, in fact, Mr. Pembroke's brother was just arriving,
as was proved by a letter received from him eight days after the
experiment was recorded, on January 31. At that date Mr. Pembroke had not
yet been told the nature of Miss Angus's crystal picture, nor had she any
knowledge of his brother's whereabouts.
In February 1898, Miss Angus again came to the place where I was residing.
We visited together the scene of an historical crime, and Miss Angus
looked into the glass ball. It was easy for her to 'visualise' the
incidents of the crime (the murder of Cardinal Beaton), for they are
familiar enough to many people. What she did see in the ball was a tall,
pale lady, 'about forty, but looking thirty-five,' with hair drawn
back from the brows, standing beside a high chair, dressed in a wide
farthingale of stiff grey brocade, without a ruff. The costume corresponds
well (as we found) with that of 1546, and I said, 'I suppose it is
Mariotte Ogilvy'--to whom Miss Angus's historical knowledge (and perhaps
that of the general public) did not extend. Mariotte was the Cardinal's
lady-love, and was in the Castle on the night before the murder,
according to Knox. She had been in my mind, whence (on the theory of
thought transference) she may have passed to Miss Angus's mind; but I had
never speculated on Mariotte's costume. Nothing but conjecture, of course,
comes of these apparently 'retrospective' pictures; though a most singular
and picturesque coincidence occurred, which may be told in a very
different connection.
The next example was noted at the same town. The lady who furnishes it is
well known to me, and it was verbally corroborated by Miss Angus, to whom
the lady, her absent nephew, and all about her, were entirely strange.
'VIII.--I was very anxious to know whether my nephew would be sent to
India this year, so I told Miss Angus that I had thought of something,
and asked her to look in the glass ball. She did so, but almost
immediately turned round and looked out of the window at the sea, and
said, "I saw a ship so distinctly I thought it must be a reflection."
She looked in the ball again, and said, "It is a large ship, and it is
passing a huge rock with a lighthouse on it. I can't see who are on the
ship, but the sky is very clear and blue. Now I see a large building,
something like a club, and in front there are a great many people
sitting and walking about. I think it must be some place abroad, for the
people are all dressed in very light clothes, and it seems to be very
sunny and warm. I see a young man sitting on a chair, with his feet
straight out before him. He is not talking to anyone, but seems to be
listening to something. He is dark and slight, and not very tall; and
his eyebrows are dark and very distinctly marked."
'I had not had the pleasure of meeting Miss Angus before, and she knew
nothing whatever about my nephew; but the young man described was
exactly like him, both in his appearance and in the way he was sitting.'
In this case thought transference may be appealed to. The lady was
thinking of her nephew in connection with India. It is not maintained, of
course, that the picture was of a prophetic character.
The following examples have some curious and unusual features. On
Wednesday, February 2, 1897, Miss Angus was looking in the crystal,
to amuse six or seven people whose acquaintance she had that day made.
A gentleman, Mr. Bissett, asked her 'what letter was in his pocket,'
She then saw, under a bright sky, and, as it were, a long way off,
a large building, in and out of which many men were coming and going.
Her impression was that the scene must be abroad. In the little company
present, it should be added, was a lady, Mrs. Cockburn, who had
considerable reason to think of her young married daughter, then at a
place about fifty miles away. After Miss Angus had described the large
building and crowds of men, some one asked, 'Is it an exchange?' 'It
might be,' she said. 'Now comes a man in a great hurry. He has a broad
brow, and short, curly hair;[12] hat pressed low down on his eyes. The
face is very serious; but he has a delightful smile.' Mr. and Mrs.
Bissett now both recognised their friend and stockbroker, whose letter was
in Mr. Bissett's pocket.
The vision, which interested Miss Angus, passed away, and was interrupted
by that of a hospital nurse, and of a lady in a _peignoir_, lying on a
sofa, _with bare feet_.[13] Miss Angus mentioned this vision as a bore,
she being more interested in the stockbroker, who seems to have inherited
what was once in the possession of another stockbroker--'the smile of
Charles Lamb.' Mrs. Cockburn, for whom no pictures appeared, was rather
vexed, and privately expressed with freedom a very sceptical opinion
about the whole affair. But, on Saturday, February 5, 1897, Miss Angus was
again with Mr. and Mrs. Bissett. When Mrs. Bissett announced that she had
'thought of something,' Miss Angus saw a walk in a wood or garden, beside
a river, under a brilliant blue sky. Here was a lady, very well dressed,
twirling a white parasol on her shoulder as she walked, in a curious
'stumpy' way, beside a gentleman in light clothes, such as are worn in
India. He was broad-shouldered, had a short neck and a straight nose, and
seemed to listen, laughing, but indifferent, to his obviously vivacious
companion. The lady had a 'drawn' face, indicative of ill health. Then
followed a scene in which the man, without the lady, was looking on at a
number of Orientals busy in the felling of trees. Mrs. Bissett recognised,
in the lady, her sister, Mrs. Clifton, in India--above all, when Miss
Angus gave a realistic imitation of Mrs. Clifton's walk, the peculiarity
of which was caused by an illness some years ago. Mrs. and Mr. Bissett
also recognised their brother-in-law in the gentleman seen in both
pictures. On being shown a portrait of Mrs. Clifton as a girl, Miss Angus
said it was 'like, but too pretty.' A photograph done recently, however,
showed her 'the drawn face' of the crystal picture.[14]
Next day, Sunday, February 6, Mrs. Bissett received, what was not
usual--a letter from her sister in India, Mrs. Clifton, dated January 20.
Mrs. Clifton described a place in a native State, where she had been at a
great 'function,' in certain gardens beside a river. She added that they
were going to another place for a certain purpose, 'and then we go into
camp till the end of February.' One of Mr. Clifton's duties is to direct
the clearing of wood preparatory to the formation of the camp, as in Miss
Angus's crystal picture.[15] The sceptical Mrs. Cockburn heard of these
coincidences, and an idea occurred to her. She wrote to her daughter, who
has been mentioned, and asked whether, on Wednesday, February 2, she had
been lying on a sofa in her bed-room, with bare feet. The young lady
confessed that it was indeed so;[16] and, when she heard how the fact came
to be known, expressed herself with some warmth on the abuse of glass
balls, which tend to rob life of its privacy.
In this case the _prima facie_ aspect of things is that a thought
of Mr. Bissett's about his stockbroker, _dulce ridentem_, somehow
reflected itself into Miss Angus's mind by way of the glass ball, and
was interrupted by a thought of Mrs. Cockburn's, as to her daughter. But
how these thoughts came to display the unknown facts concerning the
garden by the river, the felling of trees for a camp, and the bare feet,
is a question about which it is vain to theorise.[17]
On the vanishing of the jungle scene there appeared a picture of a man in
a dark undress uniform, beside a great bay, in which were ships of war.
Wooden huts, as in a plague district, were on shore. Mr. Bissett asked,
'What is the man's expression?' 'He looks as if he had been giving a lot
of last orders.' Then appeared 'a place like a hospital, with five or six
beds--no, berths: it is a ship. Here is the man again.' He was minutely
described, one peculiarity being the way in which his hair grew--or,
rather, did not grow--on his temples.
Miss Angus now asked, 'Where is my little lady?'--meaning the lady of the
twirling parasol and _staccato_ walk. 'Oh, I've left off thinking of her,'
said Mrs. Bissett, who had been thinking of, and recognised in the
officer in undress uniform, her brother, the man with the singular hair,
whose face, in fact, had been scarred in that way by an encounter with a
tiger. He was expected to sail from Bombay, but news of his setting
forth has not been received (February 10) at the moment when this is
written.[18]
In these Indian cases, 'thought transference' may account for the
correspondence between the figures seen by Miss Angus and the ideas in the
mind of Mr. and Mrs. Bissett. But the hypothesis of thought transference,
while it would cover the wooden huts at Bombay (Mrs. Bissett knowing that
her brother was about to leave that place), can scarcely explain the scene
in the garden by the river and the scene with the trees. The incident of
the bare feet may be regarded as a fortuitous coincidence, since Miss
Angus saw the young lady foreshortened, and could not describe her face.
In the Introductory Chapter it was observed that the phenomena which
apparently point to some unaccountable supernormal faculty of acquiring
knowledge are 'trivial.' These anecdotes illustrate the triviality; but
the facts certainly left a number of people, wholly unfamiliar with such
experiments, under the impression that Miss Angus's glass ball was like
Prince Ali's magical telescope in the 'Arabian Nights.'[19] These
experiments, however, occasionally touch on intimate personal matters,
and cannot be reported in such instances.
It will be remarked that the faculty is freakish, and does not always
respond to conscious exertion of thought in the mind of the inquirer.
Thus, in Case I. a connection of the person thought of is discerned; in
another the mind of a stranger present seems to be read. In another
case (not given here) the inquirer tried to visualise a card for a
person present to guess, while Miss Angus was asked to describe an object
which the inquirer was acquainted with, but which he banished from his
conscious thought. The double experiment was a double-barrelled success.
It seems hardly necessary to point out that chance coincidence will not
cover this set of cases, where in each 'guess' the field of conjecture
is boundless, and is not even narrowed by the crystal-gazer's knowledge
of the persons for whose diversion she makes the experiment. As
'muscle-reading' is not in question (in the one case of contact between
inquirer and crystal-gazer the results were unexpected), and as no
unconsciously made signs could convey, for example, the idea of a cavalry
soldier in uniform, or an accident on a race-course in two _tableaux_, I
do not at present see any more plausible explanation than that of thought
transference, though how that is to account for some of the cases given I
do not precisely understand.
Any one who can accept the assurance of my personal belief in the
good faith of all concerned will see how very useful this faculty of
crystal-gazing must be to the Apache or Australian medicine-man or
Polynesian priest. Freakish as the faculty is, a few real successes, well
exploited and eked out by fraud, would set up a wizard's reputation. That
a faculty of being thus affected is genuine seems proved, apart from
modern evidence, by the world-wide prevalence of crystal-gazing in the
ethnographic region. But the discovery of this prevalence had not been
made, to my knowledge, before modern instances induced me to notice the
circumstances, sporadically recorded in books of travel.
The phenomena are certainly of a kind to encourage the savage theory of
the wandering soul. How else, thinkers would say, can the seer visit the
distant place or person, and correctly describe men and scenes which, in
the body, he never saw? Or they would encourage the Polynesian belief
that the 'spirit' of the thing or person looked for is suspended by a god
over the water, crystal, blood, ink, or whatever it may be. Thus, to
anthropologists, the discovery of crystal-gazing as a thing widely
diffused and still flourishing ought to be grateful, however much they
may blame my childish credulity. I may add that I have no ground to
suppose that crystal-gazing will ever be of practical service to the
police or to persons who have lost articles of portable property. But I
have no objection to experiments being made at Scotland Yard.[20]
[Footnote 1: Information, with a photograph of the stones, from a
correspondent in West Maitland, Australia.]
[Footnote 2: _Report Ethnol. Bureau_, 1887-88, p. 460; vol. ii. p. 69.
Captain Bourke's volume on _The Medicine Men of the Apaches_ may also be
consulted.]
[Footnote 3: Fitzroy, _Adventure_, vol. ii. p. 389.]
[Footnote 4: _L'Histoire de la grand Ile Madagascar_, par le Sieur de
Flacourt. Paris, 1661, ch. 76. Veue de deux Navires de France predite par
les Negres, avant que l'on en peust sçavoir des Nouvelles, &c.]
[Footnote 5: _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 341.]
[Footnote 6: _J.A.I_., November 1894, p. 155. Ryckov is cited; _Zhurnal_,
p. 86.]
[Footnote 7: _Rites and Laws of the Yncas_, Christoval de Molina, p. 12.]
[Footnote 8: See Miss X's article, S.P.R. _Proceedings_, v. 486.]
[Footnote 9: Op. cit. v. 505.]
[Footnote 10: If any reader wishes to make experiments, he, or she, should
not be astonished if the first crystal figure represents 'the sheeted
dead,' or a person ill in bed. For some reason, or no reason, this is
rather a usual prelude, signifying nothing.]
[Footnote 11: Sunday afternoon. It is not implied that the pictures on
Friday were prophetic. Probably Miss Rose saw what Miss Angus had seen by
aid of 'suggestion.']
[Footnote 12: Miss Angus could not be sure of the colour of the hair.]
[Footnote 13: The position was such that Miss Angus could not see the face
of the lady.]
[Footnote 14: I saw the photographs.]
[Footnote 15: I have been shown the letter of January 20, which confirmed
the evidence of the crystal pictures. The camp was formed for official
purposes in which Mr. Clifton was concerned. A letter of February 9
unconsciously corroborates.]
[Footnote 16: The incident of the feet occurred at 4.30 to 7.30 P.M. The
crystal picture was about 10 P.M.]
[Footnote 17: Miss Angus had only within the week made the acquaintance of
Mrs. Cockburn and the Bissetts. Of these relations of theirs at a distance
she had no knowledge.]
[Footnote 18: I have seen a photograph of this gentleman, Major Hamilton,
which tallies with the full description given by Miss Angus, as reported
by Mrs. Bissett. All the proper names here, as throughout, are altered.
This account I wrote from the verbal statement of Mrs. Bissett. It
was then read and corroborated by herself, Mr. Bissett, Mr. Cockburn,
Mrs. Cockburn, and Miss Angus, who added dates and signatures.]
[Footnote 19: The letters attesting each of these experiments are in my
possession. The real names are in no case given in this account, by my own
desire, but (with permission of the persona concerned) can be communicated
privately.]
[Footnote 20: The faculty of seeing 'fancy pictures' in the glass is
far from uncommon. I have only met with three other persons besides
Miss Angus, two of them men, who had any success in 'telepathic'
crystal-gazing. In correcting 'revises' (March 16), I leant that the
brother of Mr. Pembroke (p. 105) wrote from Cairo on January 27. The
'scry' of January 23 represented his ship in the Suez Canal. He was, as
his letter shows, in quarantine at Suez, at Moses's Wells, from January 25
to January 26. Major Hamilton (pp. 109, 110), on the other hand, left
Bombay, indeed, but not by sea, as in the crystal-picture. See Appendix C.
Mr. Starr, an American critic, adds Cherokees, Aztecs, and Tonkaways to
the ranks of crystal gazers.]
VI
ANTHROPOLOGY AND HALLUCINATIONS
We have been examining cases, savage or civilised, in which knowledge is
believed to be acquired through no known channel of sense. All such
instances among savages, whether of the nature of clairvoyance simple,
or by aid of gazing in a smooth surface, or in dreams, or in trance, or
through second sight, would confirm if they did not originate the belief
in the separable soul. The soul, if it is to visit distant places and
collect information, must leave the body, it would be argued, and must so
far be capable of leading an independent life. Perhaps we ought next to
study cases of 'possession,' when knowledge is supposed to be conveyed by
an alien soul, ghost, spirit, or god, taking up its abode in a man, and
speaking out of his lips. But it seems better first to consider the
alleged super-normal phenomena which may have led the savage reasoner to
believe that _he_ was not the only owner of a separable soul: that other
people were equally gifted.
The sense, as of separation, which a savage dreamer or seer would feel
after a dream or vision in which he visited remote places, would satisfy
him that _his_ soul, at least, was volatile. But some experience of what
he would take to be visits from the spirits of others, would be needed
before he recognised that other men, as well as he, had the faculty of
sending their souls a journeying.