what was a miracle in apostolic times remained in the eyes of the
multitude a miracle to our day, when performed by saints of the
church--it became a crime and an abomination when the authors were
laymen, and yet both differed in no single feature. The most remarkable
representative of this dual nature of supernatural performances is, no
doubt, Dr. Faust, whom the great and pious Melanchthon states to have
well known as a native of the little village of Knittlingen, near his
own birth-place, and as a man of dissolute habits, whom the Devil
carried off in person. His motto, which has been discovered under a
portrait of his (Hauber's "Bibl. Mag."), was characteristic of his
faith: _Omne bonum et perfectum a Deo, imperfectum a diabolo_. His vast
learning, his great power over the elements, and the popular story of
his pact with the Evil One, made him a hero among the Germans, of whose
national tendencies he was then the typical representative.
Unfortunately, however, nearly every Christian land has had its own
Faust; such was, for instance, in Spain the famous Dr. Toralba, who
lived in the sixteenth century, and by the aid of a servile demon read
the future, healed the sick, traveled through the air, and even when he
fell into the hands of the Inquisition, obtained his release through the
Great Admiral of Castile. Gilles de Laval, who was publicly burnt in
1440, and Lady Fowlis, of Scotland, are parallel cases.
One of the most absurd ceremonies belonging to black magic, was the
well-known Taigheirm, of the Scotch Highlands, a demoniac sacrifice
evidently handed down from pagan times. The so-called magician procured
a large number of black cats, and devoted them, with solemn
incantations, and while burning offensive incense of various kinds, to
the evil spirits. Then the poor victims were spitted and slowly roasted
over a fire of coals, one after the other, but so that not a second's
pause occurred between the death of one and the sufferings of the next.
This horridly absurd sacrifice had to be continued for three days and
nights, during which the magician was not allowed to take any food or
drink. The consequence was, that if he did not drop down exhausted and
perish miserably, he became fearfully excited, and finally saw demons in
the shape of black cats who granted him all he desired (Horst.
"Deuteroscopia," ii. 184). It need hardly be added that in the state of
clairvoyance which he had reached, he only asked for what he well knew
was going to happen, and that all the fearful visions of hellish spirits
existed only in his overwrought imagination. But it will surprise many
to learn that such "taigheirms" were held as late as the last century,
and that a place is still shown on the island of Mull, where Allan
Maclean with his assistant, Lachlain Maclean, sacrificed black cats for
four days and nights in succession. The elder of the two passed for a
kind of high-priest and chief magician with the superstitious islanders;
the other was a young unmarried man of fine appearance, and more than
ordinary intelligence. Both survived the fearful ceremony, but sank
utterly exhausted to the ground, unable to obtain the revelation which
they had expected; nevertheless they retained the gift of second sight
for their lives.
It must not be imagined, finally, that the summoning of spirits is a
lost art; even in our day men are found who are willing to call the
departed from their resting-place, and to exhibit them to the eyes of
living men. The best explanation of this branch of magic was once given
by a learned professor, whom the Prince Elector of Brandenburg,
Frederick II., sent for from Halle, in order to learn from him how
spirits could be summoned. The savant declared that nothing was easier,
and supported his assertion by a number of actual performances. First
the spectator was prepared by strong beverages, such as the Egyptian
sorcerers already used to employ on similar occasions, and by the
burning of incense. Soon he fell into a kind of half-sleep, in which he
could still understand what was said, but no longer reflect upon the
sense of the words; gradually his brain became so disturbed, and his
imagination so highly excited, that he pictured to himself images
corresponding to the words which he heard, and called them up before his
mind's eye as realities. The magician, protected against the effects of
the incense by a sponge filled with an alcoholic mixture, then began to
converse with his visitor, and tried to learn from him all he could
concerning the person the latter wished to see, his shape, his clothes,
etc. Finally the victim was conducted into a dark room, where he was
suddenly asked by a stern, imperious voice: "Do you not see that woman
in white?" (or whatever the person might be,) and at once his
over-excited imagination led him to think that he really beheld what he
expected or wished to see. This was allowed to go on till he sank down
exhausted, or actually fainted away. When he recovered his
consciousness, he naturally recollected but imperfectly what he had seen
while in a state of great excitement, and his memory, impaired by the
intermediate utter exhaustion and fainting, failed to recall the small
errors or minute inaccuracies of his vision. All that was left of the
whole proceeding was a terrifying impression on his mind that he had
really seen the spirits of departed friends.
Such skillful manoeuvres were more than once employed for sinister
purposes. Thus it is a well-known historical fact that the men who
obtained control over King Frederick William II., after his ascension to
the throne, and held it for a time by the visions which they showed him,
employed means like these to summon the spirits he wished to see. The
master in this branch of black magic was undoubtedly Joseph Balsamo, the
Count Cagliostro of French history. He was neither a magician in the
true sense of the word, nor even a religious enthusiast, but merely an
accomplished juggler and swindler, who had acquired, by natural
endowment, patient study, and consummate art, a great power over the
minds of others. He played upon the imagination of men as upon a
familiar instrument, and the greatest philosophers were as easily
victimized by him as the most clear-sighted women, in spite of the
natural instinct which generally protects the latter against such
imposition. His secret--as far as the summoning of the spirits of the
departed is concerned--has died with him, but that enlightened,
conscientious men candidly believed they had been shown disembodied
spirits, is too well established by memories of French and Dutch writers
to be doubted. In the meetings of his "lodges of Egyptian Freemasons"
he, as Grand Cophtha, or those whom he had qualified by breathing upon
them, employed a boy or a girl, frequently called up at haphazard from
the street, but at other times carefully prepared for the purpose, to
look into the hand or a basin of water. The poor child was, however,
first made half-unconscious, being anointed with the "oil of wisdom," no
doubt an intoxicating compound, and after numerous ceremonies, carried
into a recess called the Tabernacle, and ordered to look into the hand
or a basin of water. After the assembly had prayed for some time, the
"Dove," as they called the child, was asked what he saw. Ordinarily he
beheld first an angel or a priest--probably the image of Cagliostro
himself in his sacerdotal robes--but frequently also monkeys, the
offspring of a skeptical imagination. Then followed more or less
interesting revelations, some utterly absurd, others of real interest,
and at times actual predictions of future events. Cagliostro himself,
during his last trial before the Inquisition of Rome, while readily
confessing a large number of impostures, stoutly maintained the
genuineness of these communications and insisted that they were the
effects of a special power granted by God. His assertion has some value,
as the shrewd man knew very well how much more he was likely to gain by
a prompt avowal than by such a denial; his wife, also, although his
accomplice in former years, and now by no means disposed to spare her
quasi-husband, always stated that this was a true mystery which she had
never been able to fathom. If we add to these considerations the fact
that numerous masters of lodges, even in Holland and England, obtained
the same results, and that they cannot all have been impostors or
deluded victims, there remains enough in these well-established
phenomena to ascribe them to a mysterious, magic power. (_Compendio
della vita, etc. di G. Balsamo_, Roma, 1791.) It is in fact quite
evident that the unfortunate juggler possessed in a very rare degree a
power akin to that practised by a Mesmer, a Home, and other men of that
class, without having the sense to understand its true nature or the
ambition to employ it for other than the lowest selfish purposes. Trials
of magicians, who have conjured up the dead and compelled them to reveal
the future, are still taking place every now and then; in the year 1850
not less than four men, together with their associates, were accused of
this crime in enlightened Germany, and the proceedings in one case,
which occurred in Munich, created no small sensation.
Black magic, therefore, must also be looked upon as by no means a mere
illusion, much less as the work of evil spirits. The results it obtains
at times are the work of man himself, and exist only within his own
conscience. But if man can produce such marvelous effects, which lie
apparently beyond the range of the material world, how much more must
the Creator and Preserver of all things be able to call forth events
which transcend--to our mind--the limits of the tangible world. Such
occurrences, when they have a higher moral or religious purpose in view,
we call Miracles, and they remain incomprehensible for all whose
knowledge is confined to the physical world. Above the laws of nature
there rules the Divine Will, which can do what Nature cannot do, and
which we can only begin to understand when we bear in mind the fact that
by the side of the visible order of the world or above it, there exist
spiritual laws as well as spiritual beings. In a miracle, powers are
rendered active which ordinarily remain inactive, but which exist none
the less permanently in the world. Hence all great thinkers have readily
admitted the existence of miracles: a Locke and a Leibnitz as well as,
more recently, a Stahl and a Schopenhauer. Locke, in his "Discourse of
Miracles," goes so far as to call them the very credentials of a
messenger sent from God, and asserts that Moses and Christ have alike
authenticated the truth and the divine character of their revelations by
miracles. Even their possible continuance is believed in by those who
hope that men will ever continue among us who "have tasted the good word
of God and _the powers of the world to come_." (Hebrews vi. 5.)
III.
DREAMS.
"To sleep--perchance to dream."
--HAMLET.
Of the two parts of our being, one, spiritual and heaven-born, is always
active, the other, the bodily, earth-born part, requires frequent and
regular rest in sleep. During this time of repose, however, the mind
also ceases apparently its operations, merely, however, because it has
no longer servants at its command, who are willing and able to give
expression to its activity. When the senses are asleep the mind is
deprived of the usual means of communication with the outer world; but
this does not necessarily condemn it to inaction. On the contrary, it
has often been maintained that the mind is most active and capable of
the highest achievements when released from its usual bondage to the
senses. Already AEschylus in his "Eumenides" says:
The mind of sleepers acts more cunningly;
The glare of day conceals the fate of men.
It seems, however, as if the intermediate state between the full
activity of wakeful life and the complete repose of the senses in sound
sleep, is most favorable to the development of such magic phenomena as
occur in dreams. The fact that the susceptibility of the mind is at
that time peculiarly great is intimately connected with the statement
recorded in Holy Writ, that God frequently revealed His will to men in
dreams. If we admit the antiquity of the book of Job, we see there the
earliest known announcement of this connection. "In a dream, in a vision
of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the
bed; then He openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction"
(xxxiii. 15). Next we are told that "God came to Abimelech in a dream by
night" (Gen. xx. 3), and from that time we hear of similar revelations
made by night in dreams throughout the whole history of the chosen
people. Frequently, however, the dreams are called visions. Thus Balaam
prophesied: "He hath said, which heard the words of God and knew the
knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty,
falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." Daniel had his secret
"revealed in a night vision," but such favor was denied to Saul, for
"the Lord answered him not, neither by dream nor by Urim, nor by
prophets." To Solomon, on the contrary, "the Lord appeared in a dream by
night" many times; Joel was promised that "old men should dream dreams
and young men shall see visions," a pledge quoted by St. Peter as having
been amply fulfilled in his day (Acts ii. 17). For dreams did not lose
their importance at the coming of Christ. To his reputed father "the
Angel of the Lord appeared in a dream," bidding him to take Mary to his
wife; again he was warned in a dream "not to return to Herod," and the
Lord spake "to Paul in the night by a vision" more than once, as he was
by a dream also sent to Macedonia.
What in these and similar cases is accepted as divine inspiration, is in
secular history generally looked upon as mysterious, magic revelation;
but the phenomena remain the same in all instances, and those appearing
in dreams are identical with the symptoms exhibited in revelations
occurring during the day, when the favored recipient is wide awake.
Clairvoyance by night differs in no way from clairvoyance during the
day; a state of ecstasy, a trance, is necessary in either case. That
prophetic dreams generally remain unknown--outside of Holy Writ--must be
ascribed to the fact that they leave no recollection behind, unless they
are continued into a state of half-sleep, from which a sudden awakening
takes place; and soon then they are invariably clothed in some allegoric
form, and become liable to be erroneously or, at least, imperfectly
interpreted. Thus dreams, like trances, often prefigure death under the
form of a journey, and represent the dying man as an uprooted tree, a
withered flower, or a drowning swimmer. The early Christians, foreseeing
martyrdom, very frequently received in dreams an intimation of their
impending fate under such symbolic forms, and, what was quite peculiar
to their visions was that they often extended to the pagan jailors and
keepers, whose minds had been excited by witnessing the sufferings and
the constancy of their victims, and who, in many cases, became, in
consequence of these dreams, converts to the new faith. The facility,
however, with which such symbols can be misunderstood, has been as fatal
to dreams in the estimation of most men, as the inaccurate manner in
which the real revelation is often presented to the still half-sleeping
mind. Hence the popular belief that dreams "go by contraries," as vulgar
slang expresses it. This faith is based upon the well-established fact
that a genuine dream, in the act of impressing itself upon memory, often
suffers not only mutilation but actual reversion. Thus Rogers saw, in a
dream, Hikey, a small, weak man, murder a powerful giant, Caulfield--in
the actual encounter, which he had really foreseen, the latter killed
his puny antagonist. It is, therefore, as dangerous to "believe in
dreams," as to deny their value altogether and to ascribe all
realizations of dreams, with, Macnish, to mere accident. ("Sleep," p.
81.) Men of cool judgment and clear mind have at all times been found on
the side of believers, and even our great Franklin, with his eminently
practical mind and well-known aversion to every kind of superstition,
firmly trusted in views which he believed to have come to him in dreams.
Antiquity believed in dreams, not only as means by which the Gods
revealed their will, but as special favors accorded to fortunate men.
Thus we are told that once two men were traveling together from Arcadia
to Megara; when they reached the city, one of the two remained at an
inn, while the other went to stay with a a friend. Both, wearied by the
journey, retired to rest; but the traveler who was at a private house
dreamt in the night that his friend urged him to come to his assistance,
as the innkeeper was about to murder him. Terrified by the vivid dream,
he jumped up; but, upon reflection, he concluded that the whole was but
an idle fancy, and lay down again. Thereupon the dream was repeated; but
this time his friend added, that it was too late to come to his aid now,
as he had been murdered, and his body would in the morning be carried
out of the city, concealed under a load of manure. This second dream
made such an impression upon the Arcadian that he went at an early hour
to the city gate, and to his amazement soon saw a wagon loaded with
manure approaching the place where he stood. He stopped the driver and
asked him what he had hidden in his wagon? The man fled, trembling; the
body of the murdered friend was found, and the treacherous innkeeper
paid with his life for his crime. (Cicero, _De divin._)
One of the oldest of well-authenticated dreams in Christian times,
revealed to St. Basil the death of Julian the Apostate. It seemed to him
in his sleep that he saw the martyr Mercurius receive from God the order
to kill the tyrant, and after a short time return and say: "O Lord,
Julian is killed as Thou hast commanded!" The saint was so firmly
convinced of having received a direct revelation from heaven, that he
immediately made the news known to the people, and thus gained new honor
when the official information at last arrived. (_Vita S. Basil._, etc.,
p. 692.) Here, also, the deep-seated hatred of the Christian priest
against the Emperor, who dared to renew the worship of the ancient gods
of the Pagans, no doubt suggested the vivid dream, while, on the other
hand, the transmission of the actual revelation was so imperfect as to
change the real occurrence--Julian's death by a Persian lance--according
to the familiar way of thinking of St. Basil, into his execution at
divine command by a holy martyr. There is no lack of renowned men of all
ages who have had their remarkable dreams, and who have, fortunately for
future investigation, recorded them carefully. Thus Melanchthon tells us
that he was at a convent with a certain Dr. Jonas, when letters reached
him requesting him to convey to his friend the sad news of his
daughter's sudden death. The great reformer was at a loss how to
discharge the painful duty, and driven by an instinctive impulse, asked
Dr. Jonas whether he had ever had any remarkable dreams. The latter
replied that he had dreamt, during the preceding night, of his return
home, and of the joyful welcome he had met from all his family, except
his oldest daughter, who had not appeared. Thereupon Melanchthon told
him that his dream had been true, and that he would never see his
daughter again, as she had been summoned to her eternal home. Petrarch
had a dream which was evidently also the reflex of his thoughts in the
day-time, but accompanied by a direct revelation. He had been, for some
days, very anxious about the health of his patron, a Colonna, who was
Bishop of Lombez, and one night saw himself in a dream walking by his
friend's side, but unable to keep pace with him; the bishop walked
faster and faster, bidding him stay behind, and when the poet insisted
upon following him, he suddenly assumed a death-like appearance, and
said, "No, I will not have you go with me now!" During the same night in
which Petrarch had this dream in Parma, the bishop died at his palace in
Lombez. The well-known Thomas Wotton, also, dreamt a short time before
his death, while residing in Kent, that he saw five persons commit a
robbery at Oxford. On the following day he added a postscript to a
letter which he had written to his son Henry, then a student at that
university, in which he mentioned his dream, and asked if such a robbery
had really taken place. The letter reached the young man on the morning
after the crime had been committed, when town and university were alike
in a state of intense excitement. He made the letter immediately known
to the authorities, who found in the account of the dream so accurate a
description of the robbers, that they were enabled at once to ascertain
who were the guilty persons, and to have them arrested before they could
escape. (Beaumont, p. 223.) The great German poet Gustav Schwab received
the first intimation of the French Revolution in 1848 through a
remarkable dream which his daughter had in the night preceding the 24th
of February. She had been attacked by a malignant fever, and was very
restless and nervously excited; during that night she saw, in her
feverish dreams, the streets of Paris filled with excited crowds, and
was forced to witness the most fearful scenes. When her father came to
her bedside next morning, she gave him a minute description of the
building of barricades, the bloody encounters between the troops and the
citizens, and of a number of sad tragedies which she had seen enacted in
the narrow and dark streets of the great city. The father, though deeply
impressed by the vivid character of the dream, ascribed it to a
reminiscence of the scenes enacted during the Revolution of 1789, and
dismissed the subject, although his child insisted upon the thoroughly
modern character of the buildings, and the costumes and manners of all
she had seen. Great was, therefore, the amazement of the poet and of all
who had heard of the dream, when, several days afterwards, the first
news reached them of the expulsion of the Orleans family, and much
greater still when the papers brought, one by one, descriptions of the
scenes which the feverish dream had enabled the girl to see in minute
detail, and yet with unerring accuracy. It is true that the poet, in
whose biography the dream with all the attending circumstances is
mentioned at full length, had for years anticipated such a revolution,
and often, with a poet's graphic power, conjured up the scenes that
were likely to happen whenever the day of the tempest should arrive.
Thus his daughter's mind had, no doubt, long been filled with images of
this kind, and was in a state peculiarly susceptible for impressions
connected with the subject. There remains, however, the magic phenomenon
that she saw, not a poet's fiction, but actual occurrences with all
their details, and saw them in the very night during which they
happened. In the papers of Sir Robert Peel was found a note concerning
his journey from Antibes to Nice, in 1854. He was on board the steamer
Erculano, which, on the 25th of April, so violently collided with
another steamer, the Sicilia, that it sank immediately, and two-thirds
of the passengers perished. Among those who were rescued were the great
English statesman and the maid of two ladies, the wife and the daughter
of a counselor of a French court of justice at Dijon. The young girl had
had a presentiment of impending evil, but her wish to postpone the
journey had been overruled. The father, also, though knowing nothing of
the precise whereabouts of his beloved ones, had been much troubled in
mind about their safety, and in the very night in which the accident
happened, saw the whole occurrence in a harassing dream. He distinctly
beheld the vessel disappear in the waves, and a number of victims, among
whom were his wife and his child, struggling for life, till they finally
perished. He awoke in a state of great anguish, summoned his servants to
keep him company, and told them what he had dreamt. A few hours later
the telegraph informed him of the accident, and of his own grievous
affliction. (_Journ. de l'ame_, Fevr. 1857, p. 253.)
While in these dreams events were made known which happened at the same
time, in other dreams the future itself is revealed. Cicero, in his work
on Divination (I. 27, and II. 66), and Valerius Maximus have preserved a
number of such dream-visions, which were famous already in the days of
antiquity; a dream concerning the tyrant Dionysius was especially well
known.