Great results often flow from small causes. Pascal said that if
Cleopatra's nose had been shorter the history of the world would have
been different. Similarly it may be truly said that if a peasant girl of
Domremy had not had hallucinations, France would now have been a British
province. And it is curious to reflect that the Church which burnt her
as a heretic and sorcerer has her, and her only, to thank for such
hold as it still maintains on France, for the latter would have become
Protestant if England had won. The Roman church now recognises this, and
has beatified the Maid. The next step will be her canonisation as a
saint. Thus does the whirligig of Time bring its revenges.
Jeanne d'Arc was born in the village of Domremy near Vaucouleurs, on the
border of Champagne and Lorraine, on January 6th, 1412. She was taught
to spin and to sew, but not to read or write, these accomplishments
being beyond what was necessary for people in her station of life. Her
parents were devout, and she was brought up piously. Her nature was
gentle, modest, and religious, but with no physical weakness or morbid
abnormality--on the contrary, she was exceptionally strong, as her later
history proves.
At or about the age of thirteen, Jeanne began to experience what
psychology now calls "auditory hallucinations". That is, she heard
voices--usually accompanied by a bright light--when no visible person
was present. This, of course, is a common symptom of impending mental
disorder; but no insanity developed in Jeanne d'Arc. Startled she
naturally was at first, but continuation led to familiarity and trust.
The voices gave good counsel of a commonplace kind, as, for instance,
that she "must be a good girl and go regularly to church." Soon,
however, she began to have visions: saw St Michael, St Catherine, and St
Margaret; was given instructions as to her mission; eventually made her
way to the Dauphin; put herself at the head of 6,000 men, and advanced
to the relief of Orleans, which was besieged by the conquering English.
After a fortnight of hard fighting the siege was raised, and the enemy
driven off. The tide of war had turned, and in three months the Dauphin
was crowned King at Rheims, as Charles the Seventh.
At this point Jeanne felt that her mission was accomplished. But her
wish to return to her family was over-ruled by king and archbishop, and
she took part in the further fighting against the allied English and
Burgundian forces, showing great bravery and tactical skill. But in
November, 1430, in a desperate sally from Compiegne--which was besieged
by the Duke of Burgundy--she fell into the enemy's hands, was sold to
the English, and thrown into a dungeon at their headquarters in Rouen.
After a year's imprisonment she was brought to trial--a mock trial
before the Bishop of Beauvais, in an ecclesiastical court. Learned
doctors of the church did their best to entangle the simple girl in
their dialectical toils; but she showed a remarkable power of keeping to
her simple affirmations and of avoiding heretical statements. "God has
always been my Lord in all that I have done". But the trial was only
pretence, for her fate was already decided. She was burnt to death,
amid the jeers and execration of a rabble of brutal soldiery, in a Rouen
market-place on May 30th, 1431.
The life of the Maid supplies a problem which orthodox science cannot
solve. She was a simple peasant girl, with no ambitions hankering after
a career. She rebelled pathetically against her mission. "I had far
rather rest and spin by my mother's side, for this is no work of my
choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it." She cannot be
dismissed on the "simple idiot" theory of Voltaire, for her genius in
war and her aptitude in repartee undoubtedly prove exceptional mental
powers, unschooled though she was in what we call education. We cannot
call her a mere hysteric, for her health and strength were superb. A man
of science once said to an Abbe: "Come to the Salpetriere Hospital, and
I will show you twenty Jeannes d'Arc." To which the Abbe responded: "Has
one of them given us back Alsace and Lorraine?"
There is the crux, as Andrew Lang quietly remarked.
The retort was certainly neat. Still, though the Salpetriere hysterics
have not won back Alsace and Lorraine, it is nevertheless true that a
great movement may be started, or kept going when started, by fraud,
hallucination, and credulity. The Mormons, for example, are a strong
body, but the origins of their faith will not bear much criticism. _The
Book of Mormon_, handed down from heaven by an angel, is more than we
can swallow. No one saw its "metal leaves"--from which Joseph Smith
translated--except Joseph himself. We have our own opinion about
Joseph's truthfulness. Somewhat similarly with spiritualism. The great
movement is there, based partly on fact as I believe, but supported by
some fraud and much ignorance and credulity. May it not have been
somewhat thus with Jeanne? She delivered France, and her importance in
history is great; but may not her mission and her doings have been the
outcome of merely subjective hallucinations, induced by the brooding of
her specially religious and patriotic mind on the woes of her country?
The army, being ignorant and superstitious, would readily believe in the
supernatural character of her mission, and great energy and valour would
follow as a matter of course--for a man fights well when he believes
that Providence is on his side.
That is the usual kind of theory in explanation of the facts. But it is
not fully satisfactory. How came it--one may ask--that this untutored
peasant girl could persuade not only the rude soldiery, but also the
Dauphin and the court, of her Divine appointment? How came she to be
given the command of an army? Surely a post of such responsibility and
power would not be given to a peasant girl of eighteen, on the mere
strength of her own claim to inspiration. It seems, at least, very
improbable.
Now it seems (though the materialistic school of historians conveniently
ignore or belittle it) that there is strong evidence in support of the
idea that Jeanne gave the Dauphin some proof of the possession of
supernormal faculties. In fact, the evidence is so strong that Mr Lang
called it "unimpeachable"--and Mr Lang did not usually err on the side
of credulity in these matters. Among other curious things, Jeanne seems
to have repeated to Charles the words of a prayer which he had made
mentally, and she also made some kind of clairvoyant discovery of a
sword hidden behind the altar of Fierbois church. Schiller's magnificent
dramatic poem "_Die Jungfrau von Orleans_," though unhistorical in some
details, is substantially accurate on these points concerning
clairvoyance and mind-reading.
As to the voices and visions, a Protestant will have a certain prejudice
with regard to the St Michael, St Catherine, and St Margaret stories,
though he may very possibly be wrong in his disbelief. But, waiving
that, it may be true that some genuine inspiration was truly given to
the Maid from the deeper strata of her own soul, and that these
monitions externalised themselves in the forms in which her thought
habitually ran. If she had been a Greek of two thousand years earlier,
her visions would probably have taken the form of Apollo and Pallas
Athene; yet they might equally well have contained truth and good
counsel, as did the utterances of the Oracles.
And, speaking of the Greeks, we may remember that the wisest of that
race had similar experiences. Socrates--the pre-eminent type of sanity
and mental burliness--was counselled by his "daimon"; by a warning Voice
which, truly, did not give positive advice like Jeanne's, but which
intervened to stop him when about to make some wrong decision. Again--to
jump suddenly down to modern times--Charles Dickens says in his letters
that the characters of his novels took on a kind of independent
existence, and that Mrs Gamp, his greatest creation, spoke to him
(generally in church) as with an actual voice. In fact, all cases of
creative genius, whether in literature, art, or invention, are examples
of an uprush from unknown mental depths: the process is not the same as
the intellectual process of reasoning. In these cases, as for instance
with Socrates, Jeanne d'Arc, Dickens, the deeper strata of the mind
may be supposed to send up thoughts so vigorously that they become
externalised as hallucinations; not necessarily morbid or injurious,
though of course many hallucinations are undoubtedly both. The
inspiration rises from below the conscious threshold. It is as if
"given"; and the normal conscious mind looks on in passive astonishment.
_Alles ist als wie geschenkt_, says Goethe--and he knew, if anybody did.
A similar thing happens, on a more ordinary plane, when a problem that
has baffled the working mind is solved in sleep. In short, the normal
consciousness is not all there is of us; there are levels and powers
below the threshold. And it seems likely that the new psychology is on
the track of a better explanation of Socrates and Jeanne d'Arc, as well
as of the nature of genius in general, than has yet been excogitated by
the philosophers. Certainly these things supply interesting material for
study, and many curious discoveries are now being made in this field of
research.