held him in his chair, an unseen power kept him mute. For an instant he
fancied that he must be dreaming; but the noises from outdoors and the
sight of the table and food before him brought conviction that he was in
full possession of his senses. Now his visitor spoke, and spoke only
four words, which astonished no less than alarmed him. "Eat not so
much." Only this--then utter silence. Again the enveloping
darkness--frogs, toads, snakes, faded in its depths--and with returning
light Swedenborg was once more alone in the room.
Small wonder that the remaining hours of the day were spent in fruitless
cogitation of this weird and disagreeable experience which far
transcended metaphysician's normal ken. Nor is it surprising to find him
naively admitting that "this unexpected event hastened my return home."
Imagination can easily round out the picture,--the rising in terror, the
overturning of the chair, the seizing of cocked hat and gold-headed
cane, the few explanatory words to the astonished innkeeper, the hurried
departure, and the progress, perchance at a more rapid gait than usual,
to the sleeping quarters in another section of the town. Arrived there,
safe in the refuge of his commodious bed-room, sage argument would
follow in the effort to attain persuasion that the terrifying vision had
been but "the effect of accidental causes." Be sure, though, that our
philosopher, dreading a return of the specter if he permitted food to
pass his lips, would go hungry to bed that night.
That night--more visions. To the wakeful, restless, perturbed Swedenborg
the same figure appeared, this time without snakes or frogs or toads,
and not in darkness, but in the midst of a great white light that filled
the bed chamber with a wonderful radiance. Then a voice spoke:
"I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen
thee to lay before men the spiritual sense of the Holy Word. I will
teach thee what thou art to write."
Slowly the light faded, the figure disappeared. And now the astounded
philosopher, his amazement growing with each passing moment, found
himself transported as it seemed to another world,--the world of the
dead. Men and women of his acquaintance greeted him as they had been
wont to do when on earth, pressed about him, eagerly questioned him.
Their faces still wore the familiar expressions of kindliness, anxiety,
sincerity, ill will, as the case might be. In every way they appeared to
be still numbered among the living. They were clad in the clothes they
had been accustomed to wear, they ate and drank, they lived in houses
and towns. The philosophers among them continued to dispute, the clergy
to admonish, the authors to write.
But, his perception enlarging, Swedenborg presently discovered that this
was in reality only an intermediate state of existence; that beyond it
at the one end was heaven and at the other hell, to one or the other of
which the dead ultimately gravitated according to their desires and
conduct. For, as he was to learn later, the spiritual world was a world
of law and order fully as much as was the natural world. Men were free
to do as they chose; but they must bear the consequences. If they were
evil-minded, it would be their wish to consort with those of like mind,
and in time they must pass to the abode of the wicked; if pure-minded,
they would seek out kindred spirits, and, when finally purged of the
dross of earth, be translated to the realm of bliss. To heaven, then,
voyaged Swedenborg, on a journey of discovery; and to hell likewise.
What he saw he has set down in many bulky volumes, than which
philosopher has written none more strange.[E]
With the return of daylight it might seem that he would be prompt to
dismiss all memory of these peculiar experiences as fantasies of sleep.
But he was satisfied that he had not slept; that on the contrary he had
been preternaturally conscious throughout the long, eventful night. In
solemn retrospect he retraced his past career. He remembered that for
some years he had had symbolic dreams and symbolic hallucinations--as of
a golden key, a tongue of flame, and voices--which had at the time
baffled his understanding, but which he now interpreted as premonitory
warnings that God had set him apart for a great mission. He remembered
too that when still a child his mind had been engrossed by thoughts of
God, and that in talking with his parents he had uttered words which
caused them to declare that the angels spoke through his mouth.
Remembering all these things, he could no longer doubt that Divinity had
actually visited him in his humble London boarding house, and he made up
his mind that he must bestir himself to carry out the divine command of
expounding to his fellow men the hidden meaning of Holy Writ.
Forthwith, being still fired with the true scientist's passion for
original research, he set himself to the task of learning Hebrew. He
was, it will be remembered, approaching sixty, an age when the
acquisition of a new language is exceedingly difficult and rare. Yet
such progress did he make that within a very few months he was writing
notes in explanation of the book of Genesis. And thus he continued not
for months but years, patiently traversing the entire Bible, and at the
same time carefully committing to paper everything "seen and heard" in
the spiritual world; for his London excursion beyond the borderland
which separates the here from the hereafter had been only the first of
similar journeys taken not merely by night but in broad daylight. To use
his own phraseology: "The Lord opened daily, very often, my bodily eyes;
so that in the middle of the day I could see into the other world, and
in a state of perfect wakefulness converse with angels and spirits."
His increasing absorption--absent-mindedness, his friends would call
it--his habit of falling into trances, and his claim to interworld
communication, could not fail to excite the surprise of all who had
known him as scientist and philosopher. But these vagaries, as people
deemed them, met the greater toleration because of the evident fact that
they did not dim his intellectual powers and did not interfere with his
activities in behalf of the public good. True, in 1747 he resigned his
office of assessor of mines in order to have more leisure to prosecute
his adventures into the unknown; but as a member of the Swedish Diet he
continued to play a prominent part in the affairs of the Kingdom, giving
long and profound study to the critical problems of administration,
economics, and finance with which the nation's leaders were confronted
during the third quarter of the century. So that--bearing in mind the
further fact that he was no blatant advocate of his opinions--it seems
altogether likely his spiritistic ideas would have gained no great
measure of attention, had it not been for a series of singular
occurrences that took place between 1759 and 1762.
Toward the end of July in the first of these years, Swedenborg (whose
fondness for travel ceased only with his death) arrived in Gottenburg
homeward bound from England, and on the invitation of a friend decided
to break his journey by spending a few days in that city. Two hours
after his arrival, while attending a small reception given in his honor,
he electrified the company by abruptly declaring that at that moment a
dangerous fire had broken out at Stockholm, three hundred miles away,
and was spreading rapidly. Becoming excited, he rushed from the room, to
reenter with the news that the house of one of his friends was in ashes,
and that his own house was threatened. Anxious moments passed, while he
restlessly paced up and down, in and out. Then, with a cry of joy, he
exclaimed, "Thank God the fire is out, the third door from my house!"
Like wild the tidings spread through Gottenburg, and the greatest
commotion prevailed. Some were inclined to give credence to Swedenborg's
statements; more, who did not know the man, derided him as a sensation
monger. But all had to wait with what patience they could, for those
were the days before steam engine and telegraph. Forty-eight anxious
hours passed. Then letters were received confirming the philosopher's
announcement, and, we are assured, showing that the fire had taken
precisely the path described by him, and had stopped where he had
indicated.
No peace now for Swedenborg. His home at Stockholm, with its quaint
gambrel roof, its summer houses, its neat flower beds, its curious box
trees, instantly became a Mecca for the inquisitive, burning to see the
man who held converse with the dead and was instructed by the latter in
many portentous secrets. Most of those who gained admission, and through
him sought to be put into touch with departed friends, received a
courteous but firm refusal, accompanied by the explanation: "God having
for wise and good purposes separated the world of spirits from ours, a
communication is never granted without cogent reasons." When, however,
his visitors satisfied him that they were imbued with something more
than curiosity, he made an effort to meet their wishes, and occasionally
with astonishing results.
It was thus in the case of Madam Marteville, widow of the Dutch
Ambassador to Sweden. In 1761, some months after her husband's death, a
goldsmith demanded from her payment for a silver service the Ambassador
had bought from him. Feeling sure that the bill had already been paid,
she made search for the receipt, but could find none. The sum involved
was large, and she sought Swedenborg and asked him to seek her husband
in the world of spirits and ascertain whether the debt had been settled.
Three days later, when she was entertaining some friends, Swedenborg
called, and in the most matter of fact way stated that he had had a
conversation with Marteville, and had learned from him that the debt had
been canceled seven months before his death, and that the receipt would
be found in a certain bureau.
"But I have searched all through it," protested Madam Marteville.
"Ah," was Swedenborg's rejoinder; "but it has a secret drawer of which
you know nothing."
At once all present hurried to the bureau, and there, in the private
compartment which he quickly located, lay the missing receipt.
In similar fashion did Swedenborg relate to the Queen of Sweden, Louisa
Ulrica, the substance of the last interview between her and her dead
brother, the Crown Prince of Prussia, an interview which had been
strictly private, and the subject of which, she affirmed, was such that
no third person could possibly have known what passed between them.
More startling still was his declaration to a merry company at Amsterdam
that at that same hour, in far away Russia, the Emperor Peter III. was
being foully done to death in prison. Once more time proved that the
spirit seer, as Swedenborg was now popularly known, had told the truth.
A decade more, and again we meet him in London, his whole being, at
eighty-four, animated with the same energy and enthusiasm that had led
him to seek and attain in his earlier manhood such a vast store of
knowledge. And here, as Christmas drew near, he found lodging with two
old friends, a wig maker and his wife. But ere Christmas dawned he lay a
helpless victim of that dread disease paralysis. Not a word, not a
movement, for full three weeks.
Then, with returning consciousness, a call for pen and paper. He would,
he muttered with thickened speech, send a note to inform a certain John
Wesley that the spirits had made known to him Wesley's desire to meet
him, and that he would be glad to receive a visit at any time. In reply
came word that the great evangelist had indeed wished to make the great
mystic's acquaintance, and that after returning from a six months'
circuit he would give himself the pleasure of waiting upon Swedenborg.
"Too late," was the aged philosopher's comment as the story goes, "too
late; for on the 29th of March I shall be in the world of spirits never
more to return."
March came and went, and with it went his soul on the day predicted, if
prediction there were. They buried him in London, and there in early
season, out of his grave blossomed the religion that has preserved his
name, his fame, his doctrines. To the dead Swedenborg succeeded the
living Swedenborgianism.
* * * * *
But what shall those of us who are not Swedenborgians think of the
master? Shall we accept at face value the story of his life as gathered
from the documents left behind him and as set forth here; and, accepting
it, believe that he was in reality a man set apart by God and granted
the rare favor of insight into that unknown world to which all of us
must some day go?
The true explanation, it seems to me, can be had only when we view
Swedenborg in the light of the marvelous discoveries made during the
last few years in the field of abnormal psychology. Beginning in France,
and continuing more recently in the United States and other countries,
investigations have been set on foot resulting in the solution of many
human problems not unlike the riddle of Swedenborg, and occasionally far
more complicated than that presented in his case. All these solutions,
in the last analysis, rest on the basic discovery that human personality
is by no means the single indivisible entity it is commonly supposed to
be, but is instead singularly unstable and singularly complex. It has
been found that under some unusual stimulus--such as an injury, an
illness, or the strain of an intense emotion--there may result a
disintegration, or, as it is technically termed, a dissociation, of
personality, giving rise it may be to hysteria, it may be to
hallucinations, it may even be to a complete disappearance of the
original personality and its replacement by a new personality,
sometimes of radically different characteristics.[F]
It has also been found, by another group of investigators working
principally in England, that side by side with the original, the waking,
personality of every-day life, there coexists a hidden personality
possessing faculties far transcending those enjoyed by the waking
personality, but as a rule coming into play only at moments of crisis,
though by some favored mortals invocable more frequently. To this hidden
personality, as distinguished from the secondary personality of
dissociation, has been given the name of the subliminal self, and to its
operation some attribute alike the productions of men of genius and the
phenomena of clairvoyance and thought transference that have puzzled
mankind from time immemorial.
Now, arguing by analogy from the cases scattered through the writings of
Janet, Sidis, Prince, Myers, Gurney, and many others whose works the
reader may consult for himself in any good public library, it is my
belief that in Swedenborg we have a preeminent illustration both of
dissociation and of subliminal action, and that it is therefore equally
unnecessary to stigmatize him as insane or to adopt the spiritistic
hypothesis in explanation of his utterances. The records show that from
his father he inherited a tendency to hallucinations, checked for a time
by the nature of his studies, but fostered as these expanded into
pursuit of the absolute and the infinite. They further show that for a
long time before the London visions he was in a disturbed state of
health, his nervous system unstrung, his whole being so unhinged that at
times he suffered from attacks of what was probably hystero-epilepsy.
It seems altogether likely, then, that in London the process of
dissociation, after this period of gradual growth, suddenly leaped into
activity. Thereafter his hallucinations, from being sporadic and vague,
became habitual and definite, his hystero-epileptic attacks more
frequent. But, happily for him, the dissociation never became complete.
He was left in command of his original personality, his mental powers
continued unabated; and he was still able to adjust himself to the
environment of the world about him.
But, it may be objected, how explain his revelations in the matter of
the fire at Stockholm, the missing receipt, the message to Queen Ulrica,
and the death of Peter III.? This brings us to the question of
subliminal action. Swedenborg himself, far in advance of his generation
in this as in much else, appears to have realized that there was no need
of invoking spirits to account for such transactions. "I need not
mention," he once wrote, "the manifest sympathies acknowledged to exist
in this lower world, and which are too many to be recounted; so great
being the sympathy and magnetism of man that communication often takes
place between those who are miles apart."
Here, in language that admits of no misinterpretation, we see stated the
doctrine of telepathy, which is only now beginning to find acceptance
among scientific men, but which, as I view it, has been amply
demonstrated by the experiments of recent years and by the thousands of
cases of spontaneous occurrence recorded in such publications as the
"Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research." And if these
experiments and spontaneous instances prove anything, they prove that
telepathy is distinctively a faculty of the subliminal self; and that a
greater or less degree of dissociation is essential, not to the receipt,
but to the objective realization, of telepathic messages. Thus, the
entranced "medium" of modern days extracts from the depths of his
sitter's subconsciousness facts which the sitter has consciously
forgotten, facts even of which he may never have been consciously aware,
but which have been transmitted telepathically to his subliminal self by
the subliminal self of some third person.[G]
So with Swedenborg. Admitting the authenticity of the afore-mentioned
anecdotes--none of which, it is as well to point out, reaches us
supported by first-hand evidence--it is quite unnecessary to appeal to
spirits as his purveyors of knowledge. In every instance telepathy--or
clairvoyance, which is after all explicable itself only by
telepathy--will suffice. In the Marteville affair, for example, it is
not unreasonable to assume that before his death the Ambassador
telepathically told his devoted wife of the existence of the secret
drawer and its contents; if, indeed, she had not known and forgotten. It
would then be an exceedingly simple matter for the dissociated
Swedenborg to acquire the desired information from the wife's
subconsciousness. Nor does this reflect on his honesty. Doubtless he
believed, as he represented, that he had actually had a conversation
with the dead Marteville, and had learned from him the whereabouts of
the missing receipt. In the form his dissociation took he could no more
escape such a hallucination than can the twentieth-century medium avoid
the belief that he is a veritable intermediary between the visible and
the invisible world.
Not that I would put Swedenborg on a par with the ordinary medium. He
was unquestionably a man of gigantic intellect, and he was
unquestionably inspired, if by inspiration be understood the gift of
combining subliminal with supraliminal powers to a degree granted to few
of those whom the world counts truly great. If his fanciful and
fantastic pictures of life in heaven and hell and in our neighboring
planets welled up from the depths of his inmost mind, far more did the
noble truths to which he gave expression. It is by these he should be
judged; it is in these, not in his hallucinations nor in his telepathic
exhibitions, that lies the secret of the commanding, if not always
recognized, influence he has exercised on the thought of posterity. A
solitary figure? True: but a grand figure, even in his saddest moment of
delusion.
FOOTNOTES:
[E] The most complete enumeration of the writings of Swedenborg will be
found in the Rev. James Hyde's "A Bibliography of the Works of Emanuel
Swedenborg," published in 1906 by the Swedenborg Society of London.
Including books on Swedenborg, this bibliography contains no fewer than
thirty-five hundred items. For a detailed account of Swedenborg's life
the reader may consult Dr. R. L. Tafel's "Documents concerning the Life
and Character of Swedenborg," or the biographies by William White,
Benjamin Worcester, James J. G. Wilkinson, and Nathaniel Hobart. Of
these, the White biography is the most critical.
[F] Illustrative cases will be cited in the discussion of "The Watseka
Wonder" on a later page. For a detailed explanation of "dissociation"
the reader is referred to Dr. Morton Prince's "The Dissociation of a
Personality," or Dr. Boris Sidis's "Multiple Personality."
[G] This point is more fully discussed in my earlier book, "The Riddle
of Personality."
V
THE COCK LANE GHOST
The quaint old London church of St. Sepulchre's could not by any stretch
of the imagination be called a fashionable place of worship. It stood in
a crowded quarter of the city, and the gentry were content to leave it
to the small tradesfolk and humble working people who made up its
parish. Now and again a stray antiquarian paid it a fleeting visit; but,
speaking generally, the coming of a stranger was so rare as to be
accounted an event.
It is easy, then, to understand the sensation occasioned by the
appearance at prayers one morning, in the year of grace, 1759, of a
young and well dressed couple whose natural habitat was obviously in
quite other surroundings. As they waited in the aisle--the man tall,
erect, and easy of bearing, the woman fair and graceful--there was an
instant craning of necks and vast nudging of one's neighbor; and long
after they had seated themselves a subdued whispering bore further, if
unnecessary, testimony to the curiosity they had aroused.
Probably no one felt a more lively interest than did the parish clerk,
who, in showing them to a pew, had noted the tenderness with which they
regarded each other. It needed nothing more to persuade him that they
were eloping lovers, and that a snug gratuity was as good as in his
pocket. All through the service he fidgeted impatiently in the shadows
near the door, and as soon as the congregation was dismissed and he
perceived that the visitors were lingering in their places, he hurried
forward and accosted them. His name, he volubly explained, was Parsons;
he was officiating clerk of the parish; likewise master in the charity
school nearby. No doubt they would like to inspect the church, perhaps
to visit the school; it might even be they were desirous of meeting the
pastor? He would be delighted if he could serve them in any way.
"Possibly you can," said the man, "for you doubtless know the
neighborhood like a book. My name is Knight, and this lady is my wife.
We--" He stopped short at sight of the changed expression on the
other's face, and breesquely demanded, "How now, man? What are you
gaping at?"
"No offense, sir, no offense," stammered the disappointed and
embarrassed clerk. "I beg your pardon, sir and madam."
There was an awkward pause before the man began again. "As I was saying,
my name is Knight and this lady is my wife. We have only recently come
to London and are in search of lodgings. If you know of any good place
to which you can recommend us, we shall be heartily obliged to you."
Whatever he was, Clerk Parsons was not a fool, and these few words
showed him plainly that he was face to face with a mystery. Elopers or
no, such a well born couple would not from choice bury themselves in
this forbidding section of London. With a cunning fostered by long years
of precarious livelihood, he at once resolved to profit if he could from
their need.
"I fear, sir," said he, "that I know of no lodgings that would be at all
suitable for you. We are poor folk, all of us, and--"
"If you are honest folk," interrupted the lady, with an enchanting
smile, "we ask no more."
Her husband checked her with a gesture and a look that was not lost on
the now all-observing clerk, though it was long before he understood its
significance.
"We are willing to pay a reasonable charge, and shall require only a
bed-room and a sitting-room. If possible, we should prefer to be where
there are no other lodgers."
"In that case," responded the clerk, with an eagerness he could scarcely
veil, "I can accommodate you in my own house. It is simple but
commodious, and I can answer that my wife will deal fairly by you."
"What think you, Fanny?" asked the man, turning to his wife.
"We can at least go and see."