peculiar forms. In Africa, for instance, and especially in the countries
adjoining the Sahara, men and women are found who possess alike the
power of seeing coming events beforehand. More than once European
travelers have been hospitably received by natives who had been warned
of their coming. Richardson tells us in his graphic account of his
"Mission to Central Africa," that his arrival had thus been announced to
the chief and the people of Tintalus in these words: "A caravan of
Englishmen is on the way from Tripoli, to come to you." The seer was an
old negro-woman, a reputed witch, who had a great reputation for
anticipating events. In the Isle of France--we learn from James Prior in
his "Voyage in the Indian Seas"--there are many men who can see vessels
at a distance of several hundred miles. One of them described accurately
and minutely the wreck of a ship on the coast of Madagascar, from whence
it was to bring provisions. A woman expecting her lover on board another
ship, inquired of one of these seers if he could give her any comfort:
he replied promptly that the vessel was only three days' sail from the
island, and that her friend was then engaged in washing his linen. The
ship arrived at the appointed time, and the man corroborated the seer's
statement. The great navigator relates even more surprising feats
accomplished by the director of signals, Faillafe, who saw vessels
distinctly at a distance of from sixty to one hundred sea miles. Their
image appeared to him on the horizon in the shape of a light brown
cloud with faint outlines, but yet distinctly enough to enable him to
distinguish the size of the vessel, the nature of its rigging, and the
direction in which it was sailing.
Second hearing seems to be limited to the eastern part of Scotland,
where it occurs occasionally in whole families. Mrs. Crowe mentions, for
instance, a man and his wife in Berwickshire, who were both aroused at
night by a loud cry which they at once recognized as peculiar to their
son. It appeared afterwards that he had perished at sea in that night
and at the same hour when the cry was heard (I. p. 161). In another case
a man in Perthshire was waked by his wife, who told him that no doubt
their son had been drowned, for she had distinctly heard the splash as
he fell into the water, and had been aroused by the noise. Here also the
foreboding proved true: the man had fallen from the yardarm, and
disappeared before a boat could be lowered, although his fall had been
heard by all aboard.
It must finally be mentioned that second sight has been noticed not in
men only, but even in animals. Horses especially seem to be extremely
sensitive to all magic influences, and accounts of their peculiar
conduct under trying circumstances are both numerous and perfectly well
authenticated. Thus a minister in Lindholm, the Rev. Mr. Hansen, owned a
perfectly gentle and good-natured horse, which all of a sudden refused
to stand still in his stable, began to tremble and give all signs of
great fear, and finally kicked and reared so wildly that he had to be
removed. As soon as he was placed in another stable he calmed down and
became perfectly quiet. It was at last discovered that a person endowed
with second sight had ascribed the strange behavior of the horse to the
fact that a coffin was being made before his open stable, and that the
horse could not bear the sight. The man was laughed at, but not long
after the minister's wife died, and for some special reasons the coffin
was actually made in full view of the former stable of the horse (Kies.
_Arch._ viii. p. 111). Dogs also have been reported in almost
innumerable cases to have set up a most painful howling before the
approaching death of inmates of a house where they were kept.
In England and in Germany especially, they are considered capable of
seeing supernatural beings. When they are seen to cower down of a
sudden, and to press close to the feet of their masters, trembling often
in all their limbs, and looking up most piteously, as if for help,
popular belief says: "All is not right with the dog," or "He sees more
than men can see." The memory of Balaam's ass rises instinctively in our
mind, and we feel that this part of creation, which groaneth with us for
salvation, and which was included among those for whose sake the Lord
spared Nineveh, may see what is concealed from our eyes. Samuel Wesley
tells us expressly how a dog, specially bought for the purpose of
frightening away the evil-disposed men who were at first suspected of
causing the nightly disturbances at the parsonage, barked but once the
first night, and after that exhibited, upon the recurrence of those
noises, quite as much terror as the children.
Nor are dogs and horses the only animals considered capable of
perceiving by a special instinct of their own the working of
supernatural agencies. During a series of mysterious disturbances in a
German village, the chickens fled in terror from the garden, and the
cattle refused to enter the enclosure, when the appearances were seen.
Swiss herdsmen have a number of stories concerning "feyed" places in the
Alps, to which neither caress nor compulsion can induce their herds to
go, even when pasture is rare everywhere else, and rich grass seems to
tempt them to come to the abhorred meadows. Storks have been known to
have abandoned the rooftree on which for years they had built their
nest, and in every case the forsaken house was burnt during the summer.
This and other peculiarities of sagacious animals have been especially
noticed in Denmark, where all animals are called _synsk_, seers, when
they are believed to possess the gift of second sight.
ORACLES AND PROPHECIES.
The highest degree of divination is the actual foretelling of events
which are yet to happen. The immediate causes which awaken the gift are
of the most varied character, and often very curious. Thus a young
Florentine, Gasparo, who had been wounded by an arrow, and could not be
relieved, began in his fearful suffering to pray incessantly, day and
night; this excited him to such a degree that he finally foretold not
only the name of his visitors, but also the hour at which they would
come, and finally the day of his complete recovery; he also knew, by the
same instinct, that later in life he would go to Rome and die there.
When the iron point was at last removed from his wound, his health began
to improve, and at once his prophetic gift left him and never returned.
He went, however, to Rome, and really died in the Eternal City
(Colquhoun, p. 333). The priests of Apollo, at Colophon, intoxicated
themselves with the water of his fountain, which was as famous for
bestowing the gift of prophecy as AEsculapius' well at Pergamus and the
springs near his temple at Pellena. In other temples vapors were inhaled
by the prophetic priests. In the prophet-schools of the Israelites music
seems to have played a prominent part, for Samuel told Saul he would
meet at the hill of Gad "a company of prophets coming down from the high
place with a psaltery and a tabret and a pipe before them." The Jews
possessed, however, also other means to aid in divining: Joseph had his
cup, a custom still prevalent in the East; and the High Priest, before
entering into the Holiest, put on the Thummim with its six dark jewels
and the Urim with its six light-colored jewels, whereupon the brilliant
sparkling of the precious stones and the rich fumes of incense combined
with the awful sense of the presence of Jehovah in predisposing his
mind to receive revelations from on high. The false prophets of Baal, on
the contrary, tried to produce like effects by bloody means: "They cut
themselves with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them,"
and then they prophesied. It has already been mentioned that in India
the glance was fixed upon the navel, until the divine light began to
shine before the mind's eye--in other words, until a trance is induced,
and visions begin to appear. The changes which immediately precede
dissolution seem, finally, to be most favorable to a development of
prophetic powers. Already Aretaeus, the Cappadocian, said that the mind
of many dying persons was perfectly clear, penetrating and prophetic,
and mentions a number of cases in which the dying had begun to converse
with the dead, or foretold the fate of those who stood by their bedside.
Thus Homer also makes dying Hector warn Achilles of his approaching end,
and Calanus, when in the act of ascending the funeral pile, replies to
Alexander's question if he had any request to make: "No, I have nothing
to ask, for I shall see you the day after to-morrow!" And on that day
the young conqueror died.
Suetonius reports that the Emperor Augustus was passing away almost
imperceptibly, when he suddenly shuddered and said that forty youths
were carrying him off. It so happened that when the end came, forty men
of his body-guard were ordered to raise and convey the body to another
room in the palace. There are a few cases known in which apparently
dying persons, after delivering such prophecies, have recovered and
retained the exceptional gift during the remainder of their lives, but
these instances are rare and require confirmation.
As all magic phenomena are liable to be mixed up with delusion and
imposture, so divination of this kind also has been frequently imitated
for personal or political purposes. The ancient oracles already gave
frequently answers full of irony and sly humor. The story of King
Alexander of Epirus is well known, who was warned by the oracle at
Dodona to keep away from the Acherusian waters, and then perished in the
river Acheros, in Italy. Thus Henry IV. of England had been told that he
would die at Jerusalem; he thought only of Palestine, but met his death
unconsciously in a room belonging to the Abbey of Westminster, which
bore the name of the holy city. In Spain, Ferdinand the Catholic
received warning that he would die at Madrigal, and hence carefully
avoided the city of that name; but when his last illness overtook him at
an obscure little town, he found that it was called Madrigaola, or
Little Madrigal. The historian Mariana (_Hist. de rebus Hisp._, l. xxii.
chap. 66) also mentions the despair of the famous favorite Don Alvarez
de Luna, whom an astrologer had warned against Cadahalso, a village near
Toledo; the unfortunate man died on the scaffold which is also called
cadahalso. In France it was the fate of the superstitious queen,
Catherine de Medici, to experience a similar mortification: the famous
Nostradamus had predicted that she would die in St. Germain, and she
carefully avoided that palace; but when her last end came, she found
herself sinking helpless into the arms of a courtier called St. Germain.
Nor is there any want of false prophecies from the time when Jeremiah
complained that "a wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the
land; the people prophesy falsely" (Jer. v. 30), to the great money
crisis in 1857, which filled the land with predictions of the
approaching end. Periods of great political or religious excitement
invariably produce a few genuine and a host of spurious prophets, which
represent the sad forebodings filling the mind of a distressed nation
and avail themselves of the credulity of all great sufferers. Some of
the most absurd prophecies have nevertheless caused a perfect panic,
extending in some cases throughout whole countries. Thus in 1578 a
famous astrologer, the father of all weather prophecies in our almanacs,
predicted that in the month of February, 1524, when three planets should
enter at once the constellation of the fishes, a second deluge would
destroy the earth. The report reached the Emperor Charles V., who
submitted the matter to his Spanish theologians and astrologers. They
investigated it with solemn gravity and found it very formidable; from
Spain the panic spread through the whole of Europe. When February came
thousands left their houses and sought refuge on mountain and hill-top;
others hoped to escape on board ships, and a rich president at Toulouse
actually built himself a second ark. When the deluge did not take place,
divines and diviners were by no means abashed; they declared that God
had this time also taken pity upon sinful men in consideration of the
fervent prayer of the faithful, as he had done before in the case of
Nineveh. The fear of the last judgment has at all times so filled the
minds of men as to make them readily believe a prediction of the
approaching end of the world, an event which, it is well known, the
apostles, Martin Luther, and certain modern divines, have persistently
thought immediately impending. Sects have arisen at various epochs who
have looked forward to the second Advent with a sincerity of conviction
of which they gave striking and even most fearful evidence. The
Millerites of the Union have more than once predicted the coming of
Christ, and in anticipation of the near Advent, disposed of their
property, assumed the white robes in which they were to ascend to
heaven, and even mounted into the topmost branches of trees to shorten
the journey. In Switzerland a young woman of Berne became so excited by
the coming of judgment, which she fixed upon the next Easter day, that
she prophesied daily, gathered a number of followers around her, and
actually had her own grandfather strangled in order to save his soul
before the approaching Advent. (Stilling, "Jenseits," p. 117.)
Not unfrequently prophecies are apparently delivered by intermediate
agents, angels, demons or peculiarly marked persons. It was no doubt an
effect of the deep and continued excitement felt by Caius Cassius, that
his mind was filled with the image of murdered Caesar, and hence he could
very easily fancy he saw his victim in his purple cloak, horse and rider
of gigantic proportions, suddenly appear in the din of the battle at
Philippi, riding down upon him with wild passion. It is well known that
the impression was strong enough to make him, who had never yet turned
his back upon the enemy, seek safety in flight, and cry out: "What more
do you want if murder does not finish you?" (Valer. Max. I. 8.)
It must lastly be borne in mind, that prophecies have not remained as
sterile as other magical phenomena. Already Herder mentions the
advantages of ancient oracles. He says (_Ideen zur Phil. d. Geschichte_,
iii. p. 211): "Many a tyrant and criminal was publicly marked by the
divine voice (of oracles), when it foretold their fate; in like manner
it has saved many an innocent person, given good advice to the helpless,
lent divine authority to noble institutions, made known works of art,
and sanctioned great moral truths as well as wholesome maxims of state
policy." It need hardly be added that the prophets of Israel were the
main upholders of the religious life as well as of the morality of the
chosen people; while the priests remained stationary in their views, and
contented themselves with performing the ceremonial service of the
temple, the prophets preserved the true faith, and furthered its
gradually widening revelation. In their case, however, divination was so
clearly the result of divine inspiration, that their prophecies can
hardly be classed among magic phenomena. The ground which they have in
common with merely human forebodings and divinings, is the state of
trance in which alone prophets seem to have foretold the future, whether
we believe this ecstatic condition to have been caused by music,
long-protracted prayer or the direct agency of the Holy Spirit.
This ecstasy was in the case of almost all the oracles of antiquity
brought on by inhaling certain gases which rose from the soil and
produced often most fearful symptoms in the unfortunate persons employed
for the purpose. At the same time they were rarely free from an addition
of artifice, as the priests not only filled the mind of the pythoness
beforehand with thoughts suggested by their own wisdom and political
experience, but the latter also frequently employed her skill as a
ventriloquist, in order to increase the force of her revelations. Hence
the fact, that almost all the Greek oracles proceeded from deep caves,
in which, as at Dodona and Delphi, carbonic gas was developed in
abundance; hence, also, the name of _ventriloqua vates_, which was
commonly given to the Delphi Pythia. The oldest of these oracles, that
at Dodona, foretold events for nearly two thousand years, and even
survived the almost universal destruction of such institutions at the
time of Christ; it did not actually cease till the third century, when
an Illyrian robber cut down the sacred tree. The oracle of Zeus
Trophonius in Boeotia spoke through the patients who were brought to the
caves, where they became somnambulists, had visions and answered the
questions of the priests while they were in this condition. The Romans
also had their somnambulist prophets from the earliest days, and
whenever the state was in danger, the Sibylline books were consulted.
Christianity made an end to all such divination in Italy as in Greece.
It is strange that the vast scheme of Egyptian superstition shows us no
oracles whatever; but among the Germans prophets were all the more
numerous. They foretold war or peace, success or failure, and exercised
a powerful influence on all affairs. One of the older prophetesses,
Veleda, who lived in an isolated tower, and allowed herself to be but
rarely consulted, was held in high esteem even by the Romans. The Celts
had in like manner prophet-Druids, some of whom became well known to the
Romans, and are reported to have foretold the fate of the emperors
Aurelian, Diocletian and Severus.
We have the authority of Josephus for the continuance of prophetic power
in Israel even after the coming of Christ. He tells us of Jesus, the son
of Ananus, who ran for seven years and five months through the streets
of Jerusalem, proclaiming the coming ruin, and, while crying out "Woe is
me!" was struck and instantly killed by a stone from one of the siege
engines of the Romans. (Jos., l. vi. c. 31.) Josephus himself passes
for a prophet, having predicted the fall of the city of Jotapata
forty-seven days in advance, his own captivity, and the imperial dignity
of Vespasian as well as of Titus. Of northern prophets, Merlin is
probably the most widely known; he was a Celtic bard, called Myrdhin,
and his poems, written in the seventh century, were looked upon as
accurate descriptions of many subsequent events, such as the exploits of
Joan of Arc. In the sixteenth century Nostradamus took his place, whose
prophetic verses, _Vraies Centuries et Propheties_, are to this day
current among the people, and now and then reappear in leading journals.
He had been a professor of medicine in the University of Montpellier,
and died in 1566, enjoying a world-wide reputation as an astrologer. His
brief and often enigmatical verses have never lost their hold on
credulous minds, and a few striking instances have, even in our century,
largely revived his credit. Such was, for instance, the stanza (No. 10):
_Un empereur naitre pres d'Italie,
Qui a l'empire sera vendu tres cher;
Diront avec quels gens il se rallie,
Qu'on trouvera moins prince que boucher,_
which was naturally applied to the great Napoleon and his marshals.
Another northern prophet, whose predictions are still quoted, was the
Archbishop of Armagh, Malachias, who, in 1130, foretold the fate of all
coming popes; as in almost all similar cases, here also the accidental
coincidences have been carefully noted and pompously proclaimed, while
the many unfulfilled prophecies have been as studiously concealed. It is
curious, however, that he distinctly predicted the fate of Pius VI.,
whom he spoke of as "_Vir apostolicus moriens in exilo_" (he died, 1799,
an exile, in Valence), and that he characterized Pius IX. as "Crux de
Cruce." St. Bridget of Sweden had the satisfaction of seeing her
prophecies approved of by the Council of Basle; they were translated
subsequently into almost every living language, and are still held in
high esteem by thousands in every part of Europe. The most prominent
name among English prophets is probably that of Archbishop Usher, who
predicted Cromwell's fate, and many events in England and Ireland, the
result, no doubt, of great sagacity and a remarkable power of
combination, but exceeding in many instances the ordinary measure of
human wisdom. An entirely different prophet was Rice Evans (Jortin,
"Rem. on Eccles. Hist.," p. 377), who, fixing his eye upon the hollow of
his hand, saw there images of Lord Fairfax, Cromwell, and four other
crowned heads appearing one after another; thus, it is said, he
predicted the Protectorate and the reign of the four sovereigns of the
house of Stuart. Jane Leade, a most extraordinary and mysterious person,
founded in 1697, when she had reached the age of seventy-four, her
so-called Philadelphian Society, a prominent member of which was the
famous Pordage, formerly a minister and then a physician. This very vain
woman maintained that she was inspired in the same manner as St. John
in Patmos, and that she was compelled by the power of the Holy Spirit to
foretell the future. In spite of her erroneous announcement of the near
Millennium, she foretold many minor events with great accuracy, and was
highly esteemed as a prophet. Dr. Pordage had mainly visions of the
future world, which were all characterized by a great purity of heart
and wildness of imagination. Swedenborg also had many prophetic visions,
but their fulfillment belongs exclusively to future life, and their
genuineness, firmly believed by the numerous and enlightened members of
the New Church, cannot be proved to others in this world.