enters within the limits of magic, and in this form was well known to
the ancients. The Neo-Platonic Plotinus is reported by Porphyrius to
have been almost marvelously endowed with such divining powers; he
revealed to his pupils the past and the future events of their lives
alike, and once charged the author himself with cherishing thoughts of
suicide, when no one else suspected such a purpose. In like manner, we
are told, Ancus Naevius, the famous augur of the first Tarquins, could
read all he desired to know in the faces of others. The saints of the
church were naturally as richly endowed, and from Filipo Neri to Xavier
nearly all possessed this peculiar gift of divination. But other men,
also, and by no means always those most abundantly endowed with mental
superiority, have frequently a peculiar talent of this kind. Thus the
well-known writer Zschokke, the author of the admirable work, "Hours of
Devotion," gives in his autobiographical work, _Selbstschau_, a full
account of his peculiar gifts as a seer, which contains the following
principal facts: At the moment when an utter stranger was first
introduced to him, he saw a picture of his whole previous life rising
gradually before his mind's eye, resembling somewhat a long dream, but
clear and closely connected. During this time he would, contrary to his
general custom, lose sight of the visitor's face and no longer hear his
voice. He used to treat these involuntary revelations at first as mere
idle fancies, till one day he was led by a kind of sportive impulse to
tell his family the secret history of a seamstress who had just left the
room, and whom he had never seen before. It was soon ascertained that
all he had stated was perfectly true, though known only to very few
persons. From that time he treated these visions more seriously, taking
pains to repeat them in a number of cases to the persons whom they
concerned, and to his own great amazement they turned out in every case
to be perfectly accurate. The author adds one case of peculiarly
striking nature: "One day," he says, "I reached the town of Waldshut,
accompanied by two young foresters, who are still alive. It was dusk,
and tired by our walk we entered an inn called The Grapevine. We took
our supper at the public table in company with numerous guests, who
happened to be laughing at the oddities and the simplicity of the Swiss,
their faith in Mesmer, in Lavater's 'System of the Physiognomy,' etc.
One of my companions, hurt in his national pride, asked me to make a
reply, especially with regard to a young man sitting opposite to us,
whose pretentious airs and merciless laughter had been peculiarly
offensive. It so happened that, a few moments before, the main events in
the life of this person had passed before my mind's eye. I turned to him
and asked him if he would answer me candidly upon being told the most
secret parts of his life by a man who was so complete a stranger to him
as I was? That, I added, would certainly go even beyond Lavater's power
to read faces. He promised to confess it openly, if I stated facts.
Thereupon I related all I had seen in my mind, and informed thus the
whole company at table of the young man's history, the events of his
life at school, his petty sins, and at last a robbery which he had
committed by pilfering his employer's strong-box. I described the empty
room with its whitewashed walls and brown door, near which on the right
hand, a small black money-box had been standing on a table, and other
details. As long as I spoke there reigned a deathlike silence in the
room, which was only interrupted by my asking the young man, from time
to time, if all I said was not true. He admitted everything, although
evidently in a state of utter consternation, and at last, deeply touched
by his candor, I offered him my hand across the table and closed my
recital."
This popular writer, a man of unblemished character, who died in 1850,
regretted by a whole nation, makes this account of his own prophetic
power still more interesting by adding that he met at least once in his
life another man similarly endowed. "I once encountered," he says,
"while travelling with two of my sons, an old Tyrolese, a peddler of
oranges and lemons, in a small inn half concealed in one of the narrow
passes of the Jura Mountains. He fixed his eyes for some time upon my
face, and then entered into conversation with me, stating that he knew
me, although I did not know him, and then began, to the intense delight
of the peasants who sat around us and of my children, to chat about
myself and my past life. How the old man had acquired his strange
knowledge he could not explain to himself or to others, but he evidently
valued it highly, while my sons were not a little astonished to discover
that other men possessed the same gift which they had only known to
exist in their father."
It must not be forgotten that the human eye has, beyond question, often
a power which far transcends the ordinary purposes of sight, and
approaches the boundaries of magic. There is probably no one who cannot
recall scenes in which the soothing and cheering expression of gentle
eyes has acted like healing balm on wounded hearts; or others, in which
glances of fury and hatred have caused genuine terror and frightened the
conscience. History records a number of instances, from the glance of
the Saviour, which made Peter go out and weep bitterly, to the piercing
eye of a well-known English judge, which made criminals of every rank in
society feel as if their very hearts lay open to the divining eye of a
master. This peculiar and almost irresistible power of the eye has not
inaptly been traced back to the gorgon head of antiquity--a frightful
image from Hades with a dread glance of the eye, as it is called by
Homer (Il. viii. 349; Odyss. xi. 633). The same fearful expression,
chilling the blood and almost arresting the beating of the heart, is
frequently mentioned in modern accounts of visions. Thus the Demon of
Tedworth recorded by Glanvil ("Sadd. Triumph." 4th ed. p. 270),
consisted of the vague outlines of a human face, in which only two
bright, piercing eyes could be distinguished. In other cases, a faint
vapor, barely recalling a human shape, arises before the beholder, and
above it are seen the same terrible eyes
"Sent from the palace of Ais by fearful Persephoneia."
Magic divination in point of time includes the class of generally very
vague and indefinite perceptions, which we call presentiments. These
are, unfortunately, so universally mixed up with impressions produced
after the occurrence--_vaticinium post eventum_--that their value as
interesting phenomena of magic is seriously impaired. There remains,
however, in a number of cases, enough that is free from all spurious
admixture, to admit of being examined seriously. The ancients not only
believed in this kind of foresight, but ascribed it with Pythagoras to
revelations made by friendly spirits; in Holy Writ it rises almost
invariably, under direct inspiration from on high, to genuine prophecy.
It reveals not only the fate of the seer, but also that of others, and
even of whole nations; the details vary, of course, according to the
prevailing spirit of the times.
When Narses was ruling over Italy, a young shepherd in the service of
Valerianus, a lawyer, was seized by the plague and fell into syncope. He
recovered for a time, and then declared that he had been carried to
heaven, where he had heard the names of all who in his master's house
should die of the plague, adding that Valerianus himself would escape.
After his death everything occurred as he had predicted. An English
minister, Mr. Dodd, one night felt an irresistible impulse to visit a
friend of his who lived at some distance. He walked to his house, found
the family asleep, but the father still awake and ready to open the door
to his late visitor. The latter, very much embarrassed, thought it best
to state the matter candidly, and confessed that he came for no
ostensible purpose, and really did not know himself what made him do so.
"But God knew it," was the answer, "for here is the rope with which I
was just about to hang myself." It may well be presumed that the Rev.
Mr. Dodd had some apprehensions of the state of mind of his friend; but
that he should have felt prompted to call upon him just at that hour,
was certainly not a mere accident.
The family of the great Goethe was singularly endowed with this power of
presentiment. The poet's grandfather predicted both a great
conflagration and the unexpected arrival of the German Emperor, and a
dream informed him beforehand of his election as alderman and then as
mayor of his native city. His mother's sister saw hidden things in her
dreams. His grandmother once entered her daughter's chamber long after
midnight in a state of great and painful excitement; she had heard in
her own room a noise like the rustling of papers, and then deep sighs,
and after a while a cold breath had struck her. Some time after this
event a stranger was announced, and when he appeared before her holding
a crumbled paper in his hand, she had barely strength enough to keep
from fainting. When she recovered, her visitor stated that in the night
of her vision a dear friend of hers, lying on his deathbed, had asked
for paper in order to impart to her an important secret; before he could
write, however, he had been seized by the death-struggle, and after
crumpling up the paper and uttering two deep sighs he had expired. An
indistinct scrawl was all that could be seen; still the stranger had
thought it best to bring the paper. The secret concerned his now
orphaned child, a girl whom Goethe's grandparents thereupon took home
and cared for affectionately (_Goethe's Briefwechsel_, 3d ed., II. p.
268).
Bourrienne tells us in his _Memoires_ several instances of remarkable
forebodings on the part of Napoleon's first wife, Josephine. Her mind
was probably, by her education and the peculiar surroundings in which
she passed her childhood, predisposed to receive vivid impressions of
this kind, and to observe them with great care and deep interest. Thus
she almost invariably predicted the failure of such of her husband's
enterprises as proved unsuccessful. After Bonaparte had moved into the
Tuileries on the 18th Brumaire, she saw, while sitting in the room of
poor Marie Antoinette, the shadow of the unfortunate queen rise from the
floor, pass gently through the apartment, and vanish through the window.
She fainted, and from that day predicted her own sad fate. On another
occasion the spirit of her first husband, Beauharnais, appeared before
her with a gesture of solemn warning; she immediately turned to
Napoleon, exclaiming: "Awake, awake, you are threatened by a great
danger!" There seemed to be, for some days, no ground for apprehension,
but so strong were her fears that she secretly sent for the minister of
police and entreated him to take special measures for the safety of the
First Consul. At eight o'clock of the evening of the same day the latter
left the Tuileries on his way to the opera; a terrible explosion was
heard in the Rue St. Nicaise, where conspirators attempted to blow up
the dictator, and he narrowly escaped with his life. Josephine at once
hastened to his side, and after having most tenderly cared for the
wounded, embraced Napoleon in public with tears streaming down her face,
and implored him hereafter to listen more attentively to her warnings.
Napoleon, however, though superstitious enough firmly to believe in what
he called his "star," and even to see it shining in the heavens when no
one else beheld it, never would admit the value of his wife's
forebodings.
Presentiments of this kind are most frequently felt before death, and it
is now almost universally believed that the impending dissolution of the
body relieves the spirit in many cases fully enough from its bondage to
endow it with a clear and distinct anticipation of the coming event. A
large number of historical personages have thus been enabled to predict
the day, and many even the hour of their own death. The Connetable de
Bourbon, who was besieging Rome, addressed, according to Brantome (_Vies
des gr. capitaines_, ch. 28), on the day of the final assault, his
troops, and told them he would certainly fall before the Eternal City,
but without regret if they but proved victorious. Henry IV. of France,
felt his death coming, according to the unanimous evidence of Sully,
L'Etoile, and Bassompierre, and said, before he entered his coach on the
fatal day: "My friend, I would rather not go out to-day; I know I shall
meet with misfortune." On the 16th of May, 1813, four days before the
battle of Bautzen, two of Napoleon's great officers, the Duke of Vicenza
and Marshal Duroc, were in attendance at Dresden while the emperor was
holding a protracted conference with the Austrian ambassador. The clock
was striking midnight, when suddenly Duroc seized his companion by the
arm and with frightfully altered features, looking intently at him, said
in trembling tones: "My friend, this lasts too long; we shall all of us
perish, and he last of all. A secret voice tells me that I shall never
see France again." It is well known that on the day of the battle a
cannon-ball which had already killed General Kirchner, wounded Duroc
also mortally, and when he lay on his deathbed he once more turned to
the Duke of Vicenza and reminded him of the words he had spoken in
Dresden.
The trustworthy author of "Eight Months in Japan," N. Luehdorf, tells us
(p. 158) a remarkable instance of unconscious foreboding on the part of
a common sailor. The American barque _Greta_ was in 1855 chartered to
carry a great number of Russians, who had been shipwrecked on board the
frigate _Diana_ during an earthquake at Simoda to the Russian port of
Ayan. A sailor on board was very ill, and shortly before his death told
his comrades that he would soon die, but that he was rather glad of it,
as they would all be captured by the English, with whom Russia was then
at war. The report of his prediction reached the captain's cabin, but
all the officers agreed that such an event was next to impossible; a
dense fog was making the ship perfectly invisible, and no English fleet
had as yet appeared in the Sea of Okhotsk, where the Russians had
neither vessels nor forts to tempt the British. The whole force of
England in those waters was at that moment engaged in blockading the
Russian fleet in the Bay of Castris in the Gulf of Tartary. Nevertheless
it so chanced that a British steamer, the corvette _Barracouta_, hove in
sight on the 1st of August and captured the vessel, making the Russians
prisoners of war.
SECOND SIGHT.
A special kind of divination, which has at times been evidenced in
certain parts of Europe, and is not unknown to our North-western
Indians, consists in the perception of contemporaneous or future events,
during a brief trance. Generally the seer looks with painfully raised
eyelids, fixedly into space, evidently utterly unconscious of all around
him, and engaged in watching a distant occurrence. A peculiar feature of
this phenomenon, familiar to all readers as second sight, is the
exclusion of religious or supernatural matters; the visions are always
strictly limited to events of daily life: deaths and births, battles and
skirmishes, baptisms and weddings. The actors in these scenes are often
personally unknown to the seer, and the transactions are as frequently
beheld in symbols as in reality. A man who is to die a violent death,
may be seen with a rope around his neck or headless, with a dagger
plunged into his breast, or sinking into the water up to his neck; the
sick man who is to expire in his bed, will appear wrapped up in his
winding sheet, in which case his person is more or less completely
concealed as his death is nearer or farther off. A friend or a messenger
coming from a great distance, is seen as a faint shadow, and a murderer
or a thief, as a wolf or a fox. Another peculiar feature of second sight
is the fact that the same visions are very frequently beheld by several
persons, although the latter may live far apart and have nothing in
common with each other. The phenomena are sporadic in Germany and
Switzerland, in the Dauphine and the Cevennes; they occur in larger
numbers and are often hereditary in certain families, in Denmark, the
Scotch Highlands and the Faroe Islands. In Gaelic, the persons thus
gifted are called Taishatrim, seers of shadows, or Phissichin,
possessing knowledge beforehand. Hence, they have been most thoroughly
studied in those countries, and Mr. Martin has gathered all that could
be learnt of second sight in the Shetlands, in a work of great
interest. Here the phenomena are not unfrequently accompanied by magic
hearing also, as when funerals are seen in visions, and at the same time
the chants of the bystanders and even the words of the preacher are
distinctly heard. The most marked form of this feature is the taisk or
wraith, a cry uttered by a person who is soon to die, and heard by the
seer. The dwellers on those remote islands are also in the habit of
smelling an odor of fish, often weeks and months before the latter
appear in their waters. A special kind of divination exists in Wales and
on the Isle of Man, where the approaching death of friends is revealed
by so-called body lights, caulawillan cyrth.
The entirely unselfish character of second sight must not be overlooked,
as far as it increases in a high degree the value of such phenomena and
adds to their authenticity. In the great majority of cases the persons
and events seen under such circumstances are of no interest to the seer;
they are frequently utterly strange and unknown to him, and hence find
no sympathy in his heart. It appears as if, by some unknown and hence
magic process, a window was opened for the soul to look out and behold
whatever may happen to be presented to the inner vision; this image is
then transferred to the outer eye, and the seer's imagination makes him
believe that he sees in reality what is revealed to him by this
mysterious process. Hence also the facts that the persons gifted with
second sight, so far from laboring under diseases of any kind, are
almost without exception simple, frugal men, free from chronic
affections, and perfect strangers to hysterics, spasms, or nervous
sufferings. Insanity and suicide are as unknown to them as drunkenness,
and no case of selfish interest or willful imposture has ever been
recorded in connection with second sight. This does not imply, however,
that efforts have not been made by others to profit by the strange gifts
of such persons; but even the career of the famous Duncan Campbell, a
deaf and dumb Scot, who, in the beginning of the last century, created
an immense sensation in London, only proved anew the well-known
disinterestedness of these seers. In many instances the gift of second
sight is treated with indifference, and hardly noticed. Such was the
case with Lord Nelson, who is reported to have exhibited the gift of a
kind of second sight, at least in two well-authenticated cases, related
by Sir Thomas Hardy to Admiral Dundas, and quoted by Dr. Mayo, as he had
the account from the latter. Captain Hardy heard Nelson order the
commander of a frigate to shake out all sails to sail towards a certain
place where he would in all probability meet the French fleet, and as
soon as he had made it out, to run into a certain port and there to wait
for Nelson's arrival. When the officer had left the cabin, Nelson turned
to Hardy, saying: "He will go to the West Indies; he will see the
French; he will make the port I told him to make, but he will not wait
for me--he will sail for England." The commander actually did so. In
this case, however, Nelson may possibly have only given a striking
evidence of his power to read the character of men, and to draw his
conclusions as to their probable action. In the following instance his
knowledge appeared, on the contrary, as a magic phenomenon. It was
shortly before the battle of Trafalgar, when an English frigate was made
out at such a distance that her position could not be accurately
ascertained. Suddenly Nelson turned to Hardy, who was standing by his
side, and said: "The frigate has sighted the French." Hardy had nothing
to say in reply. "She sights the French; she will fire presently." In an
instant the low sound of a signal-shot was heard afar off!
In other cases the curious gift is borne with great impatience, and
becomes a source of intense suffering. This is certainly very pardonable
in men who read impending death in the features of others, and hence are
continually subject to heart-rending impressions. Sometimes the moribund
appears as if he had been lying in his grave already for several days,
at other times he is seen wrapped up in his shroud or in the act of
expiring. In some parts of Germany the approaching death of a neighbor
is announced by the appearance of Death itself, not in the familiar
mythological form, but as a white, luminous appearance, which either
stops before the house of the person who is to die soon, or actually
enters it and places itself by the side of the latter. Occasionally the
image is seen to fill the seat or to walk in a procession in the place
of a man as yet in perfect health, who nevertheless soon falls a victim
to some disease or sudden attack.
Second sight is, like all similar magic phenomena, frequently mentioned
in the writings of the ancients. Homer mentions a case in his "Odyssey"
(xx. v. 351). Apollonius of Tyana was delivering an oration at Ephesus,
when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence and beheld in a
vision the Emperor Domitian at Rome, in the act of succumbing to his
murderers. He fell into a kind of trance, his eyes became fixed, and he
exclaimed in an unnatural voice: "Down with the tyrant!" (_Vita Apoll.
Zenobis Anolo interprete._ Paris, 1555, l. viii. p. 562.) Henry IV.,
when still Prince of Navarre, saw on the eve of St. Bartholomew several
drops of blood falling upon the green cloth of the card-table at which
he was seated in company with several courtiers; the latter beheld the
fearful and ominous sight as well as he himself. German writings abound
with instances of men having seen their own funeral several days before
their death, and in many instances the warning is reported to have had a
most salutary effect in causing them to repent of their sins and to
prepare for the impending summons. One of the most remarkable instances
is that of a distinguished professor of divinity, Dr. Lysius, in
Koenigsberg. He had inherited special magic powers through many
generations from an early ancestor, who saw a funeral of very peculiar
nature, with all the attending circumstances, long before it actually
took place. He himself had his first revelation when, lying in bed
awake, he saw suddenly his chamber quite light, and something like a
man's shadow pass him, while on his mind, not on his ear, fell the
words: _Umbra matris tuae_. Although his mother had just written to him
that she was in unusually good health and spirits, she had died that
very night. On another occasion he astonished his friends by telling
them what a superb new building he had seen erected in Koenigsberg,
giving all the details of church and school-room to a little gate in a
narrow alley. Many years afterwards such a building was really erected
there, and he himself called to occupy part of it, when that little gate
became his favorite entrance. Although he had many such visions, and his
wife, succumbing to the contagious influence of magic powers, also
foresaw more than one important event, he sternly refused to attach any
weight to his own forebodings or those of other persons. Thus a poor
woman, possessing the gift of second sight, once came to some members of
his family and told them she had seen seven funerals leave his house;
when this was reported to him, he denounced the superstition as
unchristian, and forbade its being mentioned again in his presence. But,
although there was not a sick person in the house at the time, and even
the older members of the family were unusually hale and hearty, in a few
weeks every one in the house was dangerously ill, the head of the family
alone excepted, and as three only escaped, the seven deaths which had
been foreseen actually took place.
The annals of Swedish history (Arndt, _Schwed. Gesch._ p. 317) record a
remarkable case of this kind. The scene was the old castle of Gripsholm,
near Stockholm, a place full of terrible reminiscences, and more than
once made famous by strange mysteries. A great state dinner given to a
prince of Baden, had just ended, when one of the guests, Count Froelich,
suddenly gazed fixedly at the great door of the dining-hall, and when he
regained his composure, declared he had just seen their princely guest
walk in, wearing a different uniform from that in which he was actually
dressed, as he sat in the place of honor. It was, however, a custom of
the prince's to wear one costume one day and another the next day, and
thus to change regularly; Count Froelich had seen him in that which he
would accordingly wear the next day. The impression was beginning to
wear away, and the accident was nearly forgotten, when suddenly a great
disturbance was heard without, servants came running in, women were
heard crying, and even the officers on guard were seriously disturbed.
The report was that "King Eric's ghost" had been seen. On the following
day the Prince of Baden was thrown from his carriage and instantly
killed; his body was brought back to Gripsholm.
Here also we meet again with the exceptional powers granted to Goethe.
He had just parted with one of his many loves, the fair daughter of the
minister of Drusenheim, Friederike, and was riding in deep thought upon
the footpath, when he suddenly saw, "not with the eyes of the body, but
of the spirit," his own self in a new light gray coat, laced with gold,
riding towards him. When he made an effort to shake off the impression,
the vision disappeared. "It is strange, however," he tells us himself,
"that I found myself eight years later riding on that same road, in
order to see Friederike once more, and was then dressed, by accident and
not from choice, in the costume of which I had dreamt" (_Aus Meinem
Leben_, iii. p. 84). A kindred spirit, Sir Humphry Davy, had once a
vision, which strangely enough was fulfilled more than once. In his
attractive work ("Consolations in Travel," p. 63), he relates how he
saw, when suffering of jail fever, the image of a beautiful woman, with
whom he soon entered into a most interesting conversation. He was at the
time warmly attached to a lady, but the vision represented a girl with
brown hair, blue eyes and blooming complexion, while his lady-love was
pale and had dark eyes and dark hair. His mysterious visitor came
frequently, as long as he was really sick, but as his strength returned,
her visits became rarer, and at last ceased altogether. He forgot it
entirely; but ten years later he suddenly met in Illyria, a girl of
about fourteen or fifteen years, who strikingly resembled the image he
had seen, and now recalled in all its details. Another ten years passed,
and the great chemist met once more in traveling, a person who as
strikingly resembled his first vision, and became indebted to her tender
care and kindness for the preservation of his life.