TRANCE-WAKING.—Instances of its spontaneous occurrence in the form
of catalepsy—Analysis of catalepsy—Its three elements: double
consciousness, or pure waking-trance; the spasmodic seizure; the
new mental powers displayed—Cases exemplifying catalepsy—Other
cases unattended with spasm, but of spontaneous occurrence, in
which new mental powers were manifested—Oracles of antiquity—Animal
instinct—Intuition.
Under this head are contained the most marvellous phenomena which
ever came as a group of facts in natural philosophy before the world;
and they are reaching that stage towards general reception when their
effect is most vivid and striking. Five-and-twenty years ago no one in
England dreamed of believing them, although the same positive evidence
of their genuineness then existed as now. Five-and-twenty years hence
the same facts will be matters of familiar knowledge. It is just at
the present moment (or am I anticipating the march of opinion by half
a century?) that their difference, and distinctness, and abhorrence
even, from our previous conceptions are most intensely felt; and that
the powers which they promise eventually to place within human control
excite our irrepressible wonder.
I shall narrate the facts which loom so large in the dawning light,
very simply and briefly, as they are manifested in catalepsy.
An uninformed person being in the room with a cataleptic patient, would
at first suppose her, putting aside the spasmodic affection of the
body, to be simply awake in the ordinary way. By-and-by her new powers
might or might not catch his observation. But a third point would
certainly escape his notice. I refer to her mental state of waking
trance, which gives, as it were, the local colouring to the whole
performance.
To elucidate this element, I may avail myself of a sketch ready
prepared by nature, tinted with the local colour alone—the case of
simple trance-waking, unattended by fits or by any marvellous powers,
as far as it has been yet observed, which is known to physicians under
the name of double consciousness.
A single fit of the disorder presents the following features:—The
young person (for the patient is most frequently a girl) seems to
lose herself for a moment or longer, then she recovers, and seems to
be herself again. The intervening short period, longer at first, and
by use rendered briefer and briefer, is a period of common initiatory
trance. When, having lost, the patient thus finds herself again, there
is nothing in her behaviour which would lead a stranger to suppose her
other than naturally awake. But her friends observe that she now does
every thing with more spirit and better than before—sings better, plays
better, has more readiness, moves even more gracefully, than in her
usual state. She manifests an innocent boldness and disregard of little
conventionalisms, which impart a peculiar charm to her behaviour.
Her mode of speaking is perhaps something altered; a supernumerary
consonant making its undue appearance, but upon a regular law, in
certain syllables. But the most striking thing is, that she has totally
forgotten all that has passed during the morning. Inquire what her last
recollections are, they leave off with the termination of her last fit
of this kind; the intervening period is for the present lost to her.
She was in her natural state of waking when I introduced her to your
notice; she lost herself for a few seconds, found herself again; but
found herself not in her natural train of recollections, but in those
of the last fit.
These fits occur sometimes at irregular intervals, sometimes
periodically and daily. In her ordinary waking state, she has her chain
of waking recollections. In her trance-waking state, she has her chain
of trance-waking recollections. The two are kept strictly apart. Hence
the ill-chosen term, double-consciousness. So at the occurrence of her
first fit, her mental existence may be said to have bifurcated into two
separate routes, in either of which her being is alternately passed.
It is curious to study, at the commencement of such a case, with how
much knowledge derived from her past life the patient embarks on her
trance-existence. The number of previously realized ideas retained by
different patients at the first fit is very various. It has happened
that the memory of facts and persons has been so defective that the
patient has had to learn even to know and to love her parents. To most
of her acquaintances she is observed to give new names, which she uses
to them in the trance-state alone. But her habits remain; her usual
propriety of conduct: the mind is singularly pure in trance. And she
very quickly picks up former ideas, and restores former intimacies,
but on a supposed new footing. To complete this curious history, if
the fits of trance recur frequently, and through some accidental
circumstance are more and more prolonged in duration, so that most
of her waking existence is passed in trance, it will follow that the
trance-development of her intellect and character may get ahead of
their development in her natural waking. Being told this, she may
become anxious to continue always in her entranced state, and to drop
the other: and I knew a case in which circumstances favoured this final
arrangement, and the patient at last retained her trance-recollections
alone, from long continuance in that state having made it, as it were,
her natural one. Her only fear was—for she had gradually learned her
own mental history, as she expressed it to me—that some day she should
of a sudden find herself a child again, thrown back to the point at
which she ceased her first order of recollections. This is, indeed, a
very extreme and monstrous case. Ordinarily, the recurrence of fits of
simple trance-waking does not extend over a longer period than three or
four months or half a year, after which they never reappear; and her
trance acquirements and feelings are lost to the patient’s recollection
for good. I will cite a case, as it was communicated to me by Dr. G.
Barlow, exemplifying some of the points of the preceding statement.
“This young lady has two states of existence. During the time that
the fit is on her, which varies from a few hours to three days, she
is occasionally merry and in spirits; occasionally she appears in
pain, and rolls about in uneasiness; but in general she seems so much
herself, that a stranger entering the room would not remark any thing
extraordinary: she amuses herself with reading or working, sometimes
plays on the piano—and better than at other times—knows every body, and
converses rationally, and makes very accurate observations on what she
has seen and read. The fit leaves her suddenly, and she then forgets
every thing that has passed during it, and imagines that she has been
asleep, and sometimes that she has dreamed of any circumstance that
has made a vivid impression upon her. During one of these fits she was
reading Miss Edgeworth’s Tales, and had in the morning been reading
a part of one of them to her mother, when she went for a few minutes
to the window, and suddenly exclaimed, “Mamma, I am quite well, my
headache is gone.” Returning to the table, she took up the open volume,
which she had been reading five minutes before, and said, “What book
is this?” She turned over the leaves, looked at the frontispiece, and
replaced it on the table. Seven or eight hours afterwards, when the fit
returned, she asked for the book, went on at the very paragraph where
she had left off, and remembered every circumstance of the narrative.
And so it always is; she reads one set of books during one state, and
another during the other. She seems to be conscious of her state; for
she said one day, “Mamma, this is a novel, but I may safely read it; it
will not hurt my morals, for, when I am well, I shall not remember a
word of it.””
To form a just idea of a case of catalepsy, the reader has to imagine
such a case as I have just instanced, with the physical feature added,
that the patient, when entranced, is motionless and fixed as a statue;
the spasmodic state, however, not confining itself closely to one
type, but running into catochus, or into partial rigid spasm, or into
convulsive seizures, (see Letter V.) capriciously.
The psychical phenomena exhibited by the patient when thus entranced,
are the following:—
1. The organs of sensation are deserted by their natural sensibility.
The patient neither feels with the skin, nor sees with the eyes, nor
hears with the ears, nor tastes with the mouth.
2. All these senses, however, are not lost. Sight and hearing, if not
smell and taste, reappear in some other part—at the pit of the stomach,
for instance, or the tips of the fingers.
3. The patient manifests new perceptive powers. She discerns objects
all around her, and through any obstructions, partitions, walls or
houses, and at an indefinite distance. She sees her own inside, as it
were, illuminated, and can tell what is wrong in the health of others.
She reads the thoughts of others, whether present or at indefinite
distances. The ordinary obstacles of space and matter vanish to her. So
likewise that of time; she foresees future events.
Such and more are the capabilities of cataleptic patients, most of whom
exhibit them all—but there is some caprice in their manifestation.
I first resigned myself to the belief that such statements as the above
might be true, upon being shown by the late Mr. Bulteel letters from an
eminent provincial physician in the year 1838, describing phenomena of
this description in a patient the latter was attending. In the spring
of 1839, Mr. Bulteel told me that he had himself in the interim often
seen the patient, who had allowed him to test in any way he pleased
the reality of the faculties she possessed when entranced. As usual,
in the hours which she passed daily in her natural state, she had no
recollection of her extraordinary trance performances. The following
are some of the facts, which Mr. Bulteel told me he had himself
verified.
When entranced, the patient’s expression of countenance was slightly
altered, and there was some peculiarity in her mode of speaking. To
each of her friends she had given a new name, which she used only
when in the state of trance. She could read with her skin. If she
pressed the palm of her hand against the whole surface of a printed
or written page deliberately, as it were, to take off an impression,
she became acquainted verbally with its contents, even to the extent
of criticising the type or the handwriting. One day, after a remark
made to put her off her guard, a line of a folded note was pressed
against the back of her neck; she had read it. She called this
sense-feeling—contact was necessary for its manifestation. But she had
a general perceptive power besides. She used to tell that persons,
whom she knew, were coming to the house, when they were yet at some
distance. Persons sitting in the room with her playing chess, to whom
her back was turned, if they made intentionally false moves, she would
ask them what they possibly could do that for.
The next three cases which I shall describe are from a memoir on
catalepsy (1787) by Dr. Petetin, an eminent civil and military
physician at Lyons.
M. Petetin attended a young married lady in a sort of fit. She lay
seemingly unconscious; when he raised her arm, it remained in the air
where he placed it. Being put to bed, she commenced singing. To stop
her, the doctor placed her limbs each in a different position. This
embarrassed her considerably, but she went on singing. She seemed
perfectly insensible. Pinching the skin, shouting in her ear, nothing
aroused her attention. Then it happened that, in arranging her, the
doctor’s foot slipped; and, as he recovered himself, half leaning over
her, he said, “How provoking we can’t make her leave off singing!”
“Ah, doctor,” she cried, “don’t be angry! I won’t sing any more,” and
she stopped. But shortly she began again; and in vain did the doctor
implore her, by the loudest entreaties, addressed to her ear, to keep
her promise and desist. It then occurred to him to place himself in the
same position as when she heard him before. He raised the bed-clothes,
bent his head towards her stomach, and said, in a loud voice, “Do you,
then, mean to sing for ever?” “Oh, what pain you have given me!” she
exclaimed; “I implore you speak lower.” At the same time she passed her
hand over the pit of her stomach. “In what way, then, do you hear?”
said Dr. Petetin. “Like any one else,” was the answer. “But I am
speaking to your stomach.” “Is it possible!” she said. He then tried
again whether she could hear with her ears, speaking even through a
tube to aggravate his voice—she heard nothing. On his asking her, at
the pit of her stomach, if she had not heard him,—“No,” said she, “I am
indeed unfortunate.”
A cognate phenomenon to the above is _the conversion of the patient’s
new sense of vision in a direction inwards_. He looks into himself,
and sees his own inside as it were illuminated or transfigured: that
is to say, his visual power is turned inwards, and he sees his organs
possibly by the Od-light they give out.
A few days after the scenes just described, Dr. Petetin’s patient
had another attack of catalepsy. She still heard at the pit of her
stomach, but the manner of hearing was modified. In the mean time her
countenance expressed astonishment. Dr. Petetin inquired the cause.
“It is not difficult,” she answered, “to explain to you why I look
astonished. I am singing, doctor, to divert my attention from a sight
which appals me. I see my inside, and the strange forms of the organs,
surrounded with a network of light. My countenance must express what I
feel—astonishment and fear. A physician who should have my complaint
for a quarter of an hour would think himself fortunate, as nature would
reveal all her secrets to him. If he was devoted to his profession,
he would not, as I do, desire to be quickly well.” “Do you see your
heart?” asked Dr. Petetin. “Yes, there it is; it beats at twice, the
two sides in agreement; when the upper part contracts, the lower part
swells, and immediately after that contracts. The blood rushes out
all luminous, and issues by two great vessels, which are but a little
apart.”
One morning (to quote from the latter part of this case) the access
of the fit took place, according to custom, at eight o’clock. Petetin
arrived later than usual; he announced himself by speaking to the
fingers of the patient, (by which he was heard.) “You are a very lazy
person this morning, doctor,” said she. “It is true, madam; but if
you knew the reason, you would not reproach me.” “Ah,” said she, “I
perceive you have had a headache for the last four hours: it will not
leave you till six in the evening. You are right to take nothing; no
human means can prevent it running its course.” “Can you tell me on
which side is the pain?” said Petetin. “On the right side; it occupies
the temple, the eye, the teeth: I warn you that it will invade the
left eye, and that you will suffer considerably between three and four
o’clock; at six you will be free from pain.” The prediction came out
literally true. “If you wish me to believe you, you must tell me what I
hold in my hand.” “I see through your hand an antique medal.”
Petetin inquired of his patient at what hour her own fit would cease:
“At eleven.” “And the evening accession—when will it come on?” “At
seven o’clock.” “In that case it will be later than usual.” “It is
true; the periods of its recurrence are going to change to so and
so.” During this conversation, the patient’s countenance expressed
annoyance. She then said to M. Petetin, “My uncle has just entered; he
is conversing with my husband behind the screen; his visit will fatigue
me; beg him to go away.” The uncle, leaving, took with him by mistake
her husband’s cloak, which she perceived, and sent her sister-in-law to
reclaim it.
In the evening there were assembled, in the lady’s apartment, a good
number of her relations and friends. Petetin had, intentionally, placed
a letter within his waistcoat, on his heart. He begged permission, on
arriving, to wear his cloak. Scarcely had the lady, the access having
come on, fallen into trance, when she said—“And how long, doctor, has
it come into fashion to wear letters next the heart?” Petetin pretended
to deny the fact: she insisted on her correctness; and, raising her
hands, designated the size, and indicated exactly the place of the
letter. Petetin drew forth the letter, and held it, closed, to the
fingers of the patient. “If I were not a discreet person,” she said,
“I should tell the contents; but to show you that I know them, they
form exactly two lines and a-half of writing;” which, on opening the
letter, was shown to be the fact.
A friend of the family, who was present, took out his purse, and put
it in Dr. Petetin’s bosom, and folded his cloak over his chest. As
soon as Petetin approached his patient, she told him that he had the
purse, and named its exact contents. She then gave an inventory of the
contents of the pockets of all present, adding some pointed remark
when the opportunity offered. She said to her sister-in-law that the
most interesting thing in _her_ possession was a letter;—much to her
surprise, for she had received the letter the same evening, and had
mentioned it to no one.
The patient, in the mean time, lost strength daily, and could take no
food. The means employed failed of giving her relief, and it never
occurred to M. Petetin to inquire of her how he should treat her. At
length, with some vague idea that she suffered from too great electric
tension of the brain, he tried, fantastically enough, the effect of
making deep inspirations, standing close in front of the patient. No
effect followed from this absurd proceeding. Then he placed one hand
on the forehead, the other on the pit of the stomach of the patient,
and continued his inspirations. The patient now opened her eyes; her
features lost their fixed look; she rallied rapidly from the fit, which
lasted but a few minutes instead of the usual period of two hours
more. In eight days, under a pursuance of this treatment, she entirely
recovered from her fits, and with them ceased her extraordinary
powers. But, during these eight days, her powers manifested a still
greater extension; she foretold what was going to happen to her; she
discussed with astonishing subtlety, questions of mental philosophy and
physiology; she caught what those around her meant to say before they
expressed their wishes, and either did what they desired, or begged
that they would not ask her to do what was beyond her strength.
A young lady, after much alarm during a revolutionary riot, fell
into catalepsy. In her fits she appeared to hear with the pit of
the stomach; and most of the phenomena described in the preceding
case were again manifested. She improved in health, under the care
of Dr. Petetin, up to the 29th of May, 1790, the memorable day when
the inhabitants of Lyons expelled the wretches who were making sport
of their fortunes, their liberties, and their lives. At the report
of the first cannon fired, Mdlle. —— fell into violent convulsions,
followed by catalepsy and tetanus. When in this state she discerned
Petetin distinguishing himself under the fire of a battery; and she
blamed him the following day for having so rashly exposed his life. In
the progress of the complaint, during the attacks of catalepsy, the
occurrences of which she exactly foresaw, she likewise predicted the
bloody day of the 29th of September, the surrender of the city on the
7th of October, the entrance of the republican troops on the 8th, and
the cruel proscriptions issued by the Committee of Public Safety.
The third case given by Petetin is that of Madame de Saint Paul,
who was attacked with catalepsy a few days after her marriage, in
consequence of seeing her father fall down in a fit of apoplexy at
table. The general features of her lucidity are the same as in the
former cases. I shall, therefore, content myself with quoting some
observations made by Dr. Prost, author of _La Médecine éclairée par
l’Observation et l’Anatomie pathologique_, on the authority of Dr.
Foissac, to whom he communicated them. Dr. Prost had studied this case
assiduously during nine months. “Her intellectual faculties,” observed
Dr. Prost, “acquired a great activity, and the richness of her fancy
made itself remarked in the picturesque images which she threw into
her descriptions. As she was telling her friends of an approaching
attack of catalepsy, suddenly she exclaimed,—‘I no longer see or hear
objects in the same manner; every thing is transparent round me, and
my observation extends to incalculable distances.’ She designated,
without an error, the people who were on the public promenade, whether
near the house, or still a quarter of an hour’s walk distant. She read
the thoughts of every one who came near her; she marked those who were
false and vicious; and repelled the approach of stupid people, who
bored her with their questions and aggravated her malady. ‘Just as
much as their pates excite my pity,’ said she, ‛do the heads of men of
information and intelligence, all whose thoughts I look into, fill me
with delight.’”
The following facts I cite corroboratively, from one of several cases
of hysteria communicated by Dr. Delpit, inspecting physician of the
waters at Barèges.—(_Bibliotheque Médicale_, t. lvi. p. 308.)
Mdlle. V——, aged thirteen, after seeing the curé administer extreme
unction, fainted away. There followed extreme disgust towards food.
During eighteen days she neither ate nor drank; there was no secretion;
her breathing remained tranquil and regular; the patient preserved
her embonpoint and complexion. During this complete suspension of the
functions of digestion, the organs of sensation would be alternately
paralyzed. One day the patient became blind; on the next, she could
see, but could not hear; another day she lost her speech. The
mutations were noticed generally in the night, upon her waking out
of sleep. “Nevertheless,” says M. Delpit, “her intellect preserved
all its vivacity and force, and, during the palsy of the organs of
sensation, nature supplied the loss in another way; when, with her
eyes, Mdlle. Caroline could not distinguish light, she yet read, and
read distinctly, by carrying her fingers over the letters. I have made
her thus read, in the daytime and in the profoundest darkness, either
printed pages out of the first book that came to hand, or written
passages that I had previously prepared.” In this, the alternation
of different states of recollections is not described as having been
observed. But I have little doubt that double consciousness was really
present. I believe that feature to be essential to waking trance. I
have little doubt, likewise, that double consciousness is attended by
more or less trance-perception. The co-existence of spasm, necessary to
constitute the case one of catalepsy, is accidental.
Sensorial illusions occasionally occur in catalepsy, but not
frequently; they are commoner in the inferior grades of trance. The
daimon of Socrates was, no doubt, a hallucination of this kind.
The trance-daimon, or sensorial illusion mixing itself with trance, is
exemplified in the following case of catalepsy, which occurred in the
person of the adopted daughter of the Baron de Strombeck.
Besides the ordinary features, on which I will not again dwell, at one
time it was her custom to apply to an imaginary being for directions
as to the treatment of her own case. Subsequently, she one day
observed—“It is not a phantom; I was in error in thinking it so; it
is a voice which speaks within me, and which I think without me. This
apparition comes because my sleep is less perfect. In that case, I seem
to see a white cloud rise out of the earth, from which a voice issues,
the echo of which reverberates within me.”
This patient had quintuple consciousness, or four morbid states, each
of which kept its own recollections to itself.
A final case I will quote, the authority of which is the Baron de
Fortis. It was treated by Dr. Despine of Aix-les-Bains.
The patient had had epilepsy, for the cure of which she went to Aix.
There she had all sorts of fits and day-somnambulism, during which
she waited at table, with her eyes shut, perfectly. She likewise saw
alternately with her fingers, the palm of her hand, and her elbow, and
would write with precision with her right hand, superintending the
process with her left elbow. These details are peculiarly gratifying
to myself, for in the little I have seen, I yet have seen a patient
walk about with her eyes shut, and well blinded besides, holding the
knuckles of one hand before her as a seeing lantern. However, the
special interest of this case is, that the patient was differently
affected by different kinds of matter; glass appeared to burn her,
porcelain was pleasantly warm, earthenware felt cold.
What comment can I make on the preceding wondrous details? Those to
whom they are new must have time to become familiar with them; in
order, reversing the process by which the eye gets to see in the dark,
to learn to distinguish objects in this flood of excessive light. Those
who are already acquainted with them will, I think, agree with me that
the principle which I have assumed—the possibility of an abnormal
relation of the mind and body allowing the former, either to shift the
place of its manifestations in the nervous system, or partially to
energize as free spirit—is the only one which at present offers any
solution of the new powers displayed in catalepsy. One regrets that
more was not made of the opportunities of observation which Petetin
enjoyed. But there are means, which I shall by-and-by have occasion to
specify, through which, in the practice of medicine, and in the proper
treatment of various disorders, like instances may be artificially
multiplied and modified so as to meet the exigencies of inductive
science. In the mean time, let me append one or two corollaries to the
preceding demonstration.
I. It is evident that the performances of catalepsy reduce the oracles
of antiquity to natural phenomena. Let us examine the tradition of that
of Delphi.
Diodorus relates, that goats feeding near an opening in the ground
were observed to jump about in a singular manner, and that a goatherd
approaching to examine the spot was taken with a fit and prophesied.
Then the priests took possession of the spot and built a temple.
Plutarch tells us that the priestess was an uneducated peasant-girl,
of good character and conduct. Placed upon the tripod, and affected
by the exhalation, she struggled and became convulsed, and foamed at
the mouth; and in that state she delivered the oracular answer. The
convulsions were sometimes so violent that the Pythia died. Plutarch
adds, that the answers were never in error, and that their established
truth filled the temple with offerings from the whole of Greece, and
from barbarian nations. Without supposing it to have been infallible,
we must, I think, infer that the oracle was too often right to have
been wholly a trick. The state of the Pythia was probably trance with
convulsions, the same with that in which cataleptic patients have
foreseen future events. The priestess was of blameless life, which
suits the production of trance, the fine susceptibility of which is
spoilt by irregular living. Finally, from what we know of the effects
of the few gases and vapours of which the inhalation has been tried, it
is any thing but improbable that one or other gaseous compound should
directly induce trance in predisposed subjects.
II. The performances of Zschokke are poor by the side of those of a
cataleptic. But then he was not entranced. Nevertheless, an approach to
that state manifested itself in his losing himself when inspecting his
visiter’s brains. So again, those who had the gift of second-sight are
represented to have been subject to fits of abstraction, in which they
stood rapt. The præternatural gifts of Socrates were probably those of
a Highland seer; in which character he is reported to have foretold
the death of an officer, if he pursued a route he contemplated. The
officer would not change his plans, and was met by the enemy, and
slain accordingly. In all these cases, the mind seems to have gone
out to seek its knowledge. Two of Mr. Williamson’s lucid patients, of
whom more afterwards, told him that their minds went out at the backs
of their heads, in starting on these occasions. They pointed to the
lower and back part of the head, opposite to the medulla oblongata.
In prophetic, and in true retrospective dreams, one may imagine the
phenomena taking the same course; most likely the dreamers have slipt
in their sleep into a brief lucid somnambulism. In the cases of ghosts
and of dreams, coincident with the period of the death of an absent
person, it seems simpler to suppose the visit to have come from the
other side. So the Vampyr-ghost was probably a visit made by the free
part of the mind of the patient who lay buried in death-trance. The
visit was fatal to the party visited, because trance is contagious.
III. The wonderful performances attributed to instinct in animals
appear less incomprehensible when viewed in juxtaposition with some of
the feats of lucid cataleptics. The term instinct is a very vague one.
It is commonly used to denote the intelligence of animals as opposed to
human reason. Instinct is, therefore, a compound phenomenon; and I must
begin by resolving it into its elements. They are three in number:—
1. Observation and reasoning of the same kind with that of man,
but limited in their scope. They are exercised only in immediate
self-preservation, and in the direct supply of the creature’s bodily
wants or simple impulses. A dog will whine to get admission into the
house, will open the latch of a gate; one rook will sit sentry for the
rest; a plover will fly low, and short distances, as if hurt, to wile
away a dog from her nest. But in this vein of intelligence, animals
make no further advance. Reflection, with the higher faculties and
sentiments which minister to it, and with it constitute reason, is
denied them. So they originate no objects of pursuit in the way that
man does, and have no source of self-improvement. But, in lack of human
reflection, some animals receive the help of—
2. Special conceptions, which are developed in their minds at fitting
seasons. Of this nature, to give an instance, is the notion of
nest-building in birds. It may be observed of these conceptions that
they appear to us arbitrary, though perfectly suited to the being of
each species: thus, in the example referred to, we may suppose that
the material and shape of the nest might be varied without its object
being the less perfectly attained,—at least, as far as we can see. The
conception spontaneously developed in the mind of the bird is then
carried out intelligently, through the same quick and just observation,
in a little way, which habitually ministers to its appetites, as I
explained in a preceding paragraph.
The special conception is sometimes characterized by the utmost
perfectness of mechanical design. Here, however, is nothing to surprise
us. The supreme wisdom which preordained the development of an idea
in an insect’s mind, might as easily as not have given it absolute
perfectness. But—
3. Some animals have the power of modifying the special conception,
when circumstances arise which prevent its being carried out in
the usual way; and of realizing it in a great many different ways,
on as many different occasions. And their work, on each of these
occasions, is as perfect as in their carrying out the ordinary form
of the conception. I beg leave to call the principle, by which
they see thus how to shape their course so perfectly under new
circumstances—intuition. To instance it, there is a beetle called
the rhynchites betulæ. Its habit is, towards the end of May, to cut
the leaves of the betula alba, or betula pubescens, into slips,
which it rolls up into funnel-shaped chambers, which form singularly
convenient cradles for its eggs. This is done after one pattern; and
one may suppose it the mechanical realization of an inborn idea, as
long as the leaf is perfect in shape. But if the leaf is imperfect,
intuition steps upon the scene to aid the insect to cut its coat after
its cloth. The sections made are then seen to vary with the varying
shape of the leaf. Many different sections made by the insect were
accurately drawn by a German naturalist, Dr. Debey. He submitted
them for examination to Professor Heis of Aix-la-Chapelle. Upon
carefully studying them, Dr. Heis found these cuttings of the leaves,
in suitableness to the end proposed, even to the minutest technical
detail, to be in accordance with calculations compassable only through
the higher mathematics, which, till modern times, were unknown to
human intelligence. Such is the marvellous power of “intuition,”
displayed by certain insects. I know not how to define it but as a
power of immediate reference to absolute truth, evinced by the insect
in carrying out its little plans. It is evident that the insect uses
the same power in realizing its ordinary special conception, when the
result displays equal perfectness. And the question even crosses one’s
mind, Are the seemingly arbitrary plans really arbitrary?—may they not
equally represent a highest type of design? But, be that as it may,
the intuition of insects, as we now apprehend it, no longer stands
an isolated phenomenon. The lucid cataleptic cannot less directly
communicate with the source of truth, as she proves by foreseeing
future events.
IV. The speculations of Berkeley and Boscovich on the non-existence
of matter; and of Kant and others on the arbitrariness of all our
notions, are interested in, for they appear to be refuted by, the
intuitions of cataleptics. The cataleptic apprehends or perceives
directly the objects around her; but they are the same as when realized
through her senses. She notices no difference; size, form, colour,
distance, are elements as real to her now as before. In respect again
to the future, she sees it, but not in the sense of the annihilation
of time; she foresees it; it is the future present to her; time she
measures, present and future, with strange precision,—strange, yet an
approximation, instead of this certainty, would have been still more
puzzling.
So that it appears that our notions of matter, force, and the like, and
of the conditions of space and time, apart from which we can conceive
nothing, are not figments to suit our human and temporary being, but
elements of eternal truth.