3. Her intense patriotic enthusiasm, which may, for all that we know,
have been her mood before the voices announced to her the mission.
Let us then examine the evidence as to the origin and nature of the
alleged phenomena.
I shall begin with the letter of the Senechal de Berry, Perceval de
Boulainvilliers, to the Duke of Milan.* The date is June 21st, 1429, six
weeks after the relief of Orleans. After a few such tales as that the
cocks crowed when Jeanne was born, and that her flock was lucky, he
dates her first vision peractis aetatis suae duodecim annis, ‘after she
was twelve.’ Briefly, the tale is that, in a rustic race for flowers,
one of the other children cried, ‘Joanna, video te volantem juxta
terrain,’ ‘Joan, I see you flying near the ground.’ This is the one
solitary hint of ‘levitation’ (so common in hagiology and witchcraft)
which occurs in the career of the Maid. This kind of story is so
persistent that I knew it must have been told in connection with the
Irvingite movement in Scotland. And it was! There is, perhaps, just one
trace that flying was believed to be an accomplishment of Jeanne’s. When
Frere Richard came to her at Troyes, he made, she says, the sign of the
cross.** She answered, ‘Approchez hardiment, je ne m’envouleray pas.’
Now the contemporary St. Colette was not infrequently ‘levitated’!
*Proces, v. 115.
**Proces, i. 100.
To return to the Voices. After her race, Jeanne was quasi rapta et a
sensibus alienata [‘dissociated’), then juxta eam affuit juvenis quidam,
a youth stood by her who bade her ‘go home, for her mother needed her.’
‘Thinking that it was her brother or a neighbour’ (apparently she only
heard the voice, and did not see the speaker), she hurried home, and
found that she had not been sent for. Next, as she was on the point of
returning to her friends, ‘a very bright cloud appeared to her, and out
of the cloud came a voice,’ bidding her take up her mission. She was
merely puzzled, but the experiences were often renewed. This letter,
being contemporary, represents current belief, based either on Jeanne’s
own statements before the clergy at Poictiers (April 1429) or on the
gossip of Domremy. It should be observed that till Jeanne told her own
tale at Rouen (1431) we hear not one word about saints or angels. She
merely spoke of ‘my voices,’ ‘my counsel,’ ‘my Master.’ If she was
more explicit at Poictiers, her confessions did not find their way into
surviving letters and journals, not even into the journal of the hostile
Bourgeois de Paris. We may glance at examples.
The ‘Journal du Siege d’Orleans’ is in parts a late document, in
parts ‘evidently copied from a journal kept in presence of the actual
events.’* The ‘Journal,’ in February 1429, vaguely says that, ‘about
this time’ our Lord used to appear to a maid, as she was guarding her
flock, or ‘cousant et filant.’ A St. Victor MS. has courant et saillant
(running and jumping), which curiously agrees with Boulainvilliers. The
‘Journal,’ after telling of the Battle of the Herrings (February 12th,
1429), in which the Scots and French were cut up in an attack on an
English convoy, declares that Jeanne ‘knew of it by grace divine,’
and that her vue a distance induced Baudricourt to send her to the
Dauphin.** This was attested by Baudricourt’s letters.***
*Quicherat. In Proces, iv. 95.
**Proces, iv. 125.
***Proces, iv. 125.
All this may have been written as late as 1468, but a vague reference to
an apparition of our Lord rather suggests contemporary hearsay, before
Jeanne came to Orleans. Jeanne never claimed any such visions of our
Lord. The story of the clairvoyance as to the Battle of the Herrings is
also given in the ‘Chronique de la Pucelle.’* M. Quicherat thinks that
the passage is amplified from the ‘Journal du Siege.’ On the other hand,
M. Vallet (de Viriville) attributes with assurance the ‘Chronique de la
Pucelle’ to Cousinot de Montreuil, who was the Dauphin’s secretary at
Poictiers, when the Maid was examined there in April 1429.** If Cousinot
was the author, he certainly did not write his chronicle till long after
date. However, he avers that the story of clairvoyance was current in
the spring of 1429. The dates exactly harmonise; that is to say, between
the day of the battle, February 12th, and the setting forth of the Maid
from Vaucouleurs, there is just time for the bad news from Rouvray to
arrive, confirming her statement, and for a day or two of preparation.
But perhaps, after the arrival of the bad news, Baudricourt may have
sent Jeanne to the King in a kind of despair. Things could not be worse.
If she could do no good, she could do no harm.
*Proces, iv. 206.
**Histoire de Charles VII., ii. 62.
The documents, whether contemporary or written later by contemporaries,
contain none of the references to visions of St. Margaret, St.
Catherine, and St. Michael, which we find in Jeanne’s own replies at
Rouen. For this omission it is not easy to account, even if we suppose
that, except when giving evidence on oath, the Maid was extremely
reticent. That she was reticent, we shall prove from evidence of d’Aulon
and Dunois. Turning to the Maid’s own evidence in court (1431) we must
remember that she was most averse to speaking at all, that she often
asked leave to wait for advice and permission from her voices before
replying, that on one point she constantly declared that, if compelled
to speak, she would not speak the truth. This point was the King’s
secret. There is absolutely contemporary evidence, from Alain Chartier,
that, before she was accepted, she told Charles SOMETHING which filled
him with surprise, joy, and belief.* The secret was connected with
Charles’s doubts of his own legitimacy, and Jeanne at her trial was
driven to obscure the truth in a mist of allegory, as, indeed, she
confessed. Jeanne’s extreme reluctance to adopt even this loyal and
laudable evasion is the measure of her truthfulness in general. Still,
she did say some words which, as they stand, it is difficult to believe,
to explain, or to account for. From any other prisoner, so unjustly
menaced with a doom so dreadful, from Mary Stuart, for example, at
Fotheringay, we do not expect the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The Maid is a witness of another kind, and where we cannot understand
her, we must say, like herself, passez outre!
*Proces, v. 131. Letter of July 1429. See supra, ‘The False
Pucelle.’
When she was ‘about thirteen,’ this is her own account, she had a voice
from God, to aid her in governing herself. ‘And the first time she was
in great fear. And it came, that voice, about noonday, in summer, in her
father’s garden’ (where other girls of old France hear the birds sing,
‘Marry, maidens, marry!’) ‘and Jeanne had NOT fasted on the day before.*
She heard the voice from the right side, towards the church, and seldom
heard it without seeing a bright light. The light was not in front,
but at the side whence the voice came. If she were in a wood’ (as
distinguished from the noise of the crowded and tumultuous court) ‘she
could well hear the voices coming to her.’ Asked what sign for her
soul’s health the voice gave, she said it bade her behave well, and go
to church, and used to tell her to go into France on her mission. (I do
not know why the advice about going to church is generally said to have
been given FIRST.) Jeanne kept objecting that she was a poor girl who
could not ride, or lead in war. She resisted the voice with all her
energy. She asserted that she knew the Dauphin, on their first meeting,
by aid of her voices.** She declared that the Dauphin himself ‘multas
habuit revelationes et apparitiones pulchras.’ In its literal sense,
there is no evidence for this, but rather the reverse. She may mean
‘revelations’ through herself, or may refer to some circumstance
unknown. ‘Those of my party saw and knew that voice,’ she said, but
later would only accept them as witnesses if they were allowed to come
and see her.***
*The reading is NEC not ET, as in Quicherat, Proces, i. 52, compare
i. 216.
**Proces, i. 56.
***Proces, i. 57.
This is the most puzzling point in Jeanne’s confession. She had no
motive for telling an untruth, unless she hoped that these remarks would
establish the objectivity of her visions. Of course, one of her strange
experiences may have occurred in the presence of Charles and his court,
and she may have believed that they shared in it. The point is one which
French writers appear to avoid as a rule.
She said that she heard the voice daily in prison, ‘and stood in sore
need of it.’ The voice bade her remain at St. Denis (after the repulse
from Paris in September 1429), but she was not allowed to remain.
On the next day (the third of the trial) she told Beaupere that she was
fasting since yesterday afternoon. Beaupere, as we saw, conceived that
her experiences were mere subjective hallucinations, caused by fasting,
by the sound of church-bells, and so on. As to the noise of bells,
Coleridge writes that their music fell on his ears, ‘MOST LIKE
ARTICULATE SOUNDS OF THINGS TO COME.’ Beaupere’s sober common-sense did
not avail to help the Maid, but at the Rehabilitation (1456) he still
maintained his old opinion. ‘Yesterday she had heard the voices in the
morning, at vespers, and at the late ringing for Ave Maria, and she
heard them much more frequently than she mentioned.’ ‘Yesterday she
had been asleep when the voice aroused her. She sat up and clasped her
hands, and the voice bade her answer boldly. Other words she half heard
before she was quite awake, but failed to understand.’*
*Proces, i. 62.
She denied that the voices ever contradicted themselves. On this
occasion, as not having received leave from her voices, she refused to
say anything as to her visions.
At the next meeting she admitted having heard the voices in court, but
in court she could not distinguish the words, owing to the tumult. She
had now, however, leave to speak more fully. The voices were those of
St. Catherine and St. Margaret. Later she was asked if St. Margaret
‘spoke English.’ Apparently the querist thought that the English
Margaret, wife of Malcolm of Scotland, was intended. They were crowned
with fair crowns, as she had said at Poictiers two years before. She
now appealed to the record of her examination there, but it was not in
court, nor was it used in the trial of Rehabilitation. It has never been
recovered. A witness who had examined her at Poictiers threw no light
(twenty years later) on the saints and voices. Seven years ago (that
is, when she was twelve) she first saw the saints. On the attire of the
saints she had not leave to speak. They were preceded by St. Michael
‘with the angels of heaven.’ ‘I saw them as clearly as I see you, and
I used to weep when they departed, and would fain that they should have
taken me with them.’
As to the famous sword at Fierbois, she averred that she had been in the
church there, on her way to Chinon, that the voices later bade her use
a sword which was hidden under earth--she thinks behind, but possibly
in front of the altar--at Fierbois. A man unknown to her was sent from
Tours to fetch the sword, which after search was found, and she wore it.
Asked whether she had prophesied her wound by an arrow at Orleans, and
her recovery, she said ‘Yes.’
This prediction is singular in that it was recorded before the event.
The record was copied into the registre of Brabant, from a letter
written on April 22nd, 1429, by a Flemish diplomatist, De Rotselaer,
then at Lyons.* De Rotselaer had the prophecy from an officer of the
court of the Dauphin. The prediction was thus noted on April 22nd; the
event, the arrow-wound in the shoulder, occurred on May 7th. On the
fifth day of the trial Jeanne announced that, before seven years were
gone, the English ‘shall lose a dearer gage than Orleans; this I know by
revelation, and am wroth that it is to be so long deferred.’ Mr. Myers
observes that ‘the prediction of a great victory over the English within
seven years was not fulfilled in any exact way.’ The words of the Maid
are ‘Angli demittent majus vadium quam fecerunt coram Aurelianis,’ and,
as prophecies go, their loss of Paris (1436) corresponds very well to
the Maid’s announcement. She went on, indeed, to say that the English
‘will have greater loss than ever they had, through a great French
victory,’ but this reads like a gloss on her original prediction. ‘She
knew it as well as that we were there.’** ‘You shall not have the exact
year, but well I wish it might be before the St. John;’ however, she had
already expressed her sorrow that this was NOT to be. Asked, on March
1st, whether her liberation was promised, she said, ‘Ask me in three
months, and I will tell you.’ In three months exactly, her stainless
soul was free.
*Proces, iv. 425.
**Proces, i. 84.
On the appearance, garb, and so on of her saints, she declined to answer
questions.
She had once disobeyed her voices, when they forbade her to leap from
the tower of Beaurevoir. She leaped, but they forgave her, and told
her that Compiegne (where she was captured on May 23rd, 1430) would be
relieved ‘before Martinmas.’ It was relieved on October 26th, after a
siege of five months. On March 10th an effort was made to prove that
her voices had lied to her, and that she had lied about her voices.
The enemy maintained that on May 23rd, 1430, she announced a promised
victory to the people of Compiegne, vowing that St. Margaret and St.
Catherine had revealed it to her. Two hostile priests of Compiegne
were at Rouen, and may have carried this tale, which is reported by
two Burgundian chroniclers, but NOT by Monstrelet, who was with the
besieging army.* In court she said n’eust autre commandement de yssir:
she had no command from her voices to make her fatal sally. She was not
asked whether she had pretended to have received such an order. She
told the touching story of how, at Melun, in April 1430, the voices had
warned her that she would be taken prisoner before midsummer; how she
had prayed for death, or for tidings as to the day and hour. But no
tidings were given to her, and her old belief, often expressed, that
she ‘should last but one year or little more,’ was confirmed. The Duc
d’Alencon had heard her say this several times; for the prophecy at
Melun we have only her own word.
*I have examined the evidence in Macmillan’s Magazine for May 1894,
and, to myself, it seems inadequate.
She was now led into the allegory intended to veil the King’s secret,
the allegory about the Angel (herself) and the Crown (the coronation at
Rheims). This allegory was fatal, but does not bear on her real belief
about her experiences. She averred, returning to genuine confessions,
that her voices often came spontaneously; if they did not, she summoned
them by a simple prayer to God. She had seen the angelic figures moving,
invisible save to her, among men. The voices HAD promised her the
release of Charles d’Orleans, but time had failed her. This was as near
a confession of failure as she ever made, till the day of her burning,
if she really made one then.* But here, as always, she had predicted
that she would do this or that if she were sans empeschement. She had no
revelation bidding her attack Paris when she did, and after the day
at Melun she submitted to the advice of the other captains. As to her
release, she was only bidden ‘to bear all cheerfully; be not vexed
with thy martyrdom, thence shalt thou come at last into the kingdom of
Paradise.’
*As to her ‘abjuration’ and alleged doubts, see L’Abjuration du
Cimetiere Saint-Ouen, by Abbe Ph. H. Dunard; Poussielgue, Paris, 1901.
To us, this is explicit enough, but the poor child explained to her
judges that by martire she understood the pains of prison, and she
referred it to her Lord, whether there were more to bear. In this
passage the original French exists, as well as the Latin translation.
The French is better.
‘Ne te chaille de ton martire, tu t’en vendras enfin en royaulme de
Paradis.’
‘Non cures de martyrio tuo: tu venies finaliter in regnum paradisi.’
The word hinc is omitted in the bad Latin. Unluckily we have only a
fragment of the original French, as taken down in court. The Latin
version, by Courcelles, one of the prosecutors, is in places inaccurate,
in others is actually garbled to the disadvantage of the Maid.
This passage, with some others, may perhaps be regarded as indicating
that the contents of the communications received by Jeanne were not
always intelligible to her.
That her saints could be, and were, touched physically by her, she
admitted.* Here I am inclined to think that she had touched with her
ring (as the custom was) a RELIC of St. Catherine at Fierbois. Such
relics, brought from the monastery of Sinai, lay at Fierbois, and we
know that women loved to rub their rings on the ring of Jeanne, in
spite of her laughing remonstrances. But apart from this conjecture,
she regarded her saints as tangible by her. She had embraced both St.
Margaret and St. Catherine.**
*Proces, i. 185.
**Proces, i. 186.
For the rest, Jeanne recanted her so-called recantation, averring that
she was unaware of the contents or full significance of the document,
which certainly is not the very brief writing to which she set her mark.
Her voices recalled her to her duty, for them she went to the stake, and
if there was a moment of wavering on the day of her doom, her belief in
the objective reality of the phenomena remained firm, and she recovered
her faith in the agony of her death.
Of EXTERNAL evidence as to her accounts of these experiences, the best
is probably that of d’Aulon, the maitre d’Hotel of the Maid, and her
companion through her career. He and she were reposing in the same room
at Orleans, her hostess being in the chamber (May 1429), and d’Aulon had
just fallen asleep, when the Maid awoke him with a cry. Her voices bade
her go against the English, but in what direction she knew not. In fact,
the French leaders had begun, without her knowledge, an attack on
St. Loup, whither she galloped and took the fort.* It is, of course,
conceivable that the din of onset, which presently became audible,
had vaguely reached the senses of the sleeping Maid. Her page confirms
d’Aulon’s testimony.
*Proces, iii. 212.
D’Aulon states that when the Maid had any martial adventure in prospect,
she told him that her ‘counsel’ had given her this or that advice. He
questioned her as to the nature of this ‘counsel.’ She said ‘she had
three councillors, of whom one was always with her, a second went and
came to her, and the third was he with whom the others deliberated.’
D’Aulon ‘was not worthy to see this counsel.’ From the moment when
he heard this, d’Aulon asked no more questions. Dunois also gave some
evidence as to the ‘counsel.’ At Loches, when Jeanne was urging the
journey to Rheims, Harcourt asked her, before the King, what the nature
(modus) of the council was; HOW it communicated with her. She replied
that when she was met with incredulity, she went apart and prayed to
God. Then she heard a voice say, Fille De, va, va, va, je serai a ton
aide, va! ‘And when she heard that voice she was right glad, and
would fain be ever in that state.’ ‘As she spoke thus, ipsa miro modo
exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.’* (She seemed wondrous glad,
raising her eyes to heaven.) Finally, that Jeanne maintained her belief
to the moment of her death, we learn from the priest, Martin Ladvenu,
who was with her to the last.** There is no sign anywhere that at
the moment of an ‘experience’ the Maid’s aspect seemed that of one
‘dissociated,’ or uncanny, or abnormal, in the eyes of those who were in
her company.
*Proces, iii. 12.
**Proces, iii. 170.
These depositions were given twenty years later (1452-56), and, of
course, allowance must be made for weakness of memory and desire to
glorify the Maid. But there is really nothing of a suspicious character
about them. In fact, the ‘growth of legend’ was very slight, and is
mainly confined to the events of the martyrdom, the White Dove, the name
of Christ blazoned in flame, and so forth.* It should also have been
mentioned that at the taking of St. Pierre de Moustier (November 1429)
Jeanne, when deserted by her forces, declared to d’Aulon that she
was ‘not alone, but surrounded by fifty thousand of her own.’ The men
therefore rallied and stormed the place.
This is the sum of the external evidence as to the phenomena.
*For German fables see Lefevre-Pontalis, Les Sources Allemandes,
Paris, 1903. They are scanty, and, in some cases, are distortions of
real events.
As to the contents of the communications to Jeanne, they were certainly
sane, judicious, and heroic. M. Quicherat (Apercus Nouveaux, p. 61)
distinguishes three classes of abnormally conveyed knowledge, all on
unimpeachable evidence.
(1.) THOUGHT-READING, as in the case of the King’s secret; she repeated
to him the words of a prayer which he had made mentally in his oratory.
(2.) CLAIRVOYANCE, as exhibited in the affair of the sword of Fierbois.
(3.) PRESCIENCE, as in the prophecy of her arrow-wound at Orleans.
According to her confessor, Pasquerel, she repeated the prophecy and
indicated the spot in which she would be wounded (under the right
shoulder) on the night of May 6. But this is later evidence given in the
trial of Rehabilitation. Neither Pasquerel nor any other of the Maid’s
party was heard at the trial of 1431.
To these we might add the view, from Vaucouleurs, a hundred leagues
away, of the defeat at Rouvray; the prophecy that she ‘would last but
a year or little more;’ the prophecy, at Melun, of her capture; the
prophecy of the relief of Compiegne; and the strange affair of the bon
conduit at the battle of Pathay.* For several of these predictions we
have only the Maid’s word, but to be plain, we can scarcely have more
unimpeachable testimony.
*Proces, iv. 371, 372. Here the authority is Monstrelet, a
Burgundian.
Here the compiler leaves his task: the inferences may be drawn by
experts. The old theory of imposture, the Voltairean theory of a ‘poor
idiot,’ the vague charge of ‘hysteria,’ are untenable. The honesty and
the genius of Jeanne are no longer denied. If hysteria be named, it
is plain that we must argue that, because hysteria is accompanied by
visionary symptoms, all visions are proofs of hysteria. Michelet holds
by hallucinations which were unconsciously externalised by the mind
of Jeanne. That mind must have been a very peculiar intellect, and the
modus is precisely the difficulty. Henri Martin believes in some kind of
manifestation revealed to the individual mind by the Absolute: perhaps
this word is here equivalent to ‘the subliminal self’ of Mr. Myers. Many
Catholics, as yet unauthorised, I conceive, by the Church, accept the
theory of Jeanne herself; her saints were true saints from Paradise.
On the other hand it is manifest that visions of a bright light and
‘auditions’ of voices are common enough phenomena in madness, and in the
experiences of very uninspired sane men and women. From the sensations
of these people Jeanne’s phenomena are only differentiated by their
number, by their persistence through seven years of an almost abnormally
healthy life, by their importance, orderliness, and veracity, as well as
by their heroic character.
Mr. Myers has justly compared the case of Jeanne with that of Socrates.
A much humbler parallel, curiously close in one respect, may be cited
from M. Janet’s article, ‘Les Actes Inconscients dans le Somnambulisme’
[‘Revue Philosophique,’ March 1888).
The case is that of Madame B., a peasant woman near Cherbourg. She has
her common work-a-day personality, called, for convenience, ‘Leonie.’
There is also her hypnotic personality, ‘Leontine.’ Now Leontine (that
is, Madame B. in a somnambulistic state) was one day hysterical and
troublesome. Suddenly she exclaimed in terror that she heard A VOICE ON
THE LEFT, crying, ‘Enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance.’ She hunted in
vain for the speaker, who, of course, was inaudible to M. Janet, though
he was present. This sagacious speaker (a faculty of Madame B.’s own
nature) is ‘brought out’ by repeated passes, and when this moral and
sensible phase of her character is thus evoked, Madame B. is ‘Leonore.’
Madame B. now sometimes assumes an expression of beatitude, smiling and
looking upwards. As Dunois said of Jeanne when she was recalling her
visions, ‘miro modo exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.’ This
ecstasy Madame B. (as Leonie) dimly remembers, averring that ‘she has
been dazzled BY A LIGHT ON THE LEFT SIDE.’ Here apparently we have the
best aspect of poor Madame B. revealing itself in a mixture of hysterics
and hypnotism, and associating itself with an audible sagacious voice
and a dazzling light on the left, both hallucinatory.
The coincidence (not observed by M. Janet) with Jeanne’s earliest
experience is most curious. Audivit vocem a dextero latere.... claritas
est ab eodem latere in quo vox auditur, sed ibi communiter est magna
claritas. (She heard a voice from the right. There is usually a bright
light on the same side as the voice.) Like Madame B., Jeanne was at
first alarmed by these sensations.
The parallel, so far, is perfectly complete (except that ‘Leonore’
merely talks common sense, while Jeanne’s voices gave information
not normally acquired). But in Jeanne’s case I have found no hint of
temporary unconsciousness or ‘dissociation.’ When strung up to the most
intense mental eagerness in court, she still heard her voices, though,
because of the tumult of the assembly, she heard them indistinctly.
Thus her experiences are not associated with insanity, partial
unconsciousness, or any physical disturbance (as in some tales of second
sight), while the sagacity of the communications and their veracity
distinguish them from the hallucinations of mad people. As far as the
affair of Rouvray, the prophecy of the instant death of an insolent
soldier at Chinon (evidence of Pasquerel, her confessor), and such
things go, we have, of course, many alleged parallels in the predictions
of Mr. Peden and other seers of the Covenant. But Mr. Peden’s political
predictions are still unfulfilled, whereas concerning the ‘dear gage’
which the English should lose in France within seven years, Jeanne may
be called successful.
On the whole, if we explain Jeanne’s experiences as the expressions
of her higher self (as Leonore is Madame B.’s higher self), we are
compelled to ask what is the nature of that self?
Another parallel, on a low level, to what may be called the mechanism
of Jeanne’s voices and visions is found in Professor Flournoy’s patient,
‘Helene Smith.’* Miss ‘Smith,’ a hardworking shopwoman in Geneva, had,
as a child, been dull but dreamy. At about twelve years of age she began
to see, and hear, a visionary being named Leopold, who, in life,
had been Cagliostro. His appearance was probably suggested by an
illustration in the Joseph Balsamo of Alexandre Dumas. The saints of
Jeanne, in the same way, may have been suggested by works of sacred art
in statues and church windows. To Miss Smith, Leopold played the part of
Jeanne’s saints. He appeared and warned her not to take such or such a
street when walking, not to try to lift a parcel which seemed light, but
was very heavy, and in other ways displayed knowledge not present to her
ordinary workaday self.
*See Flournoy, Des Indes a la Planete Mars. Alcan, Paris, 1900.
There was no real Leopold, and Jeanne’s St. Catherine cannot be shown to
have ever been a real historical personage.* These figures, in fact,
are more or less akin to the ‘invisible playmates’ familiar to many
children.** They are not objective personalities, but part of the
mechanism of a certain class of mind. The mind may be that of a person
devoid of genius, like Miss Smith, or of a genius like Goethe, Shelley,
or Jeanne d’Arc, or Socrates with his ‘Daemon,’ and its warnings. In the
case of Jeanne d’Arc, as of Socrates, the mind communicated knowledge
not in the conscious everyday intelligence of the Athenian or of la
Pucelle. This information, in Jeanne’s case, was presented in the shape
of hallucinations of eye and ear. It was sane, wise, noble, veracious,
and concerned not with trifles, but with great affairs. We are not
encouraged to suppose that saints or angels made themselves audible and
visible. But, by the mechanism of such appearances to the senses, that
which was divine in the Maid--in all of us, if we follow St. Paul--that
‘in which we live and move and have our being,’ made itself intelligible
to her ordinary consciousness, her workaday self, and led her to the
fulfilment of a task which seemed impossible to men.
*See the Life and Martyrdom of St. Katherine of Alexandria.
(Roxburghe Club, 1884, Introduction by Mr. Charles Hardwick). Also the
writer’s translation of the chapel record of the ‘Miracles of Madame St.
Catherine of Fierbois,’ in the Introduction. (London, Nutt.)
**See the writer’s preface to Miss Corbet’s Animal Land for a singular
example in our own time.