Part 9

Another case of this kind is connected with a curious token of gratitude exhibited by the gratified victim. A president of the Parliament of Toulouse, returning from Paris towards the end of the seventeenth century, was compelled by an accident to stop at a poor country tavern. During the night there appeared to him an old man, pale and bleeding, who declared that he was the father of the present owner of the house, that he had been murdered by his own son, cut to pieces, and buried in the garden. He appealed to the president to investigate the matter and to avenge his murder. The judge was so forcibly impressed by his vision that he ordered search to be made, and lo! the body of the murdered man was found, and the son, thunderstruck by the mysterious revelation, acknowledged his guilt, was tried, and in course of time died on the scaffold. But the murdered man was not satisfied yet; he showed himself once more to the president and asked how he could prove his gratitude? The latter asked to be informed of the hour of his death, that he might fitly prepare himself, and was promised that he should know it a week in advance. Many years afterwards a fierce knocking was heard at the gate of the president's house in Toulouse; the porter opened but saw no one; the knocking was repeated, but this time also the servants who had rushed to the spot found nobody there; when it was heard a third time they were thoroughly frightened and hastened to inform their master. The latter went to the door and there saw the well-remembered form of his nightly visitor, who told him that he would die in eight days. He told his friends and his family what had happened, but only met with laughter, as he was in perfect health and nothing seemed more improbable than his sudden death. But as he sat, on the eighth day, at table with his family, a book was mentioned which he wished to see, and he got up to look for it in his library. Instantly a shot is heard; the guests rush out and find him lying on the floor and weltering in his blood. Upon inquiry it appeared that a man, desperately in love with the chamber-maid and jealous of a rival, had mistaken the president for the latter and murdered him with a pistol (De Segur, Galerie morale et politique, p. 221).

Among the numerous accounts of visions which seem to have been caused by an instinctive and perfectly unconscious perception of human remains, the story of the Rev. Mr. Lindner, in Koenigsberg, is perhaps the best authenticated, and from the character of the man to whom the revelation was made, the most trustworthy. It is fully reported by Professor Ehrmann of Strasburg, in Kies. Archiv. x. iii., p. 143. The minister, a modest, pious man, awoke in the middle of the night, and saw, by the bright moonlight which was shining into the room, another minister in gown and bands, standing before his open bible, apparently searching for some quotation. He had a small child in his arms, and a larger child stood by his side. After some time spent in speechless astonishment, Mr. Lindner exclaimed: "All good spirits praise God!" whereupon the stranger turned round, went up to him and offered three times to shake hands with him. Mr. Lindner, however, refused to do so, gazing at the same time intently at his features, and after a while he found himself looking at the air, for all had disappeared. It was a long time afterwards, when sauntering through the cloisters of his church, he was suddenly arrested by a portrait which bore all the features of the minister he had seen on that night. It was one of his predecessors in office, who had died nearly fifty years ago in rather bad odor, reports having been current at the time, as very old men still living testified, that he had had several illegitimate children, of whose fate nothing was known. But there was a still further sequel to the minister's strange adventure. In the course of the next year his study was enlarged, and for that purpose the huge German stove had to be removed; to the horror of the workmen and of Mr. Lindner, who was promptly called to the spot, the remains of several children were found carefully concealed beneath the solid structure. As there is no reason to suspect self-delusion in the reverend man, and the vision cannot well be ascribed to any outward cause, it must be presumed that his sensitive nature was painfully affected by the skeletons in his immediate neighborhood, and that this unconscious feeling, acting through his imagination, gave form and shape to the impressions made upon his nerves.

In another case the principal person was a candidate of divinity, Billing, well known as being of a highly sensitive disposition and given to hallucinations; the extreme suffering which the presence of human remains caused to his whole system had been previously already observed. The great German fabulist, Pfeffel, a blind man, once took Billing's arm and went with him into the garden to take an airing. The poet noticed that when they came to a certain place, the young man hesitated and his arm trembled as if it had received an electric shock. When he was asked what was the matter, he replied, "Oh, nothing!" But upon passing over the spot a second time, the same tremor made itself felt. Pressed by Pfeffel, the young man at last acknowledged that he experienced at that spot the sensation which the presence of a corpse always produced in him, and offered to go there with the poet at night in order to prove to him the correctness of his feelings. When the two friends went to the garden after dark, Billing perceived at once a faint glimmer of light above the spot. He stopped at a distance of about ten yards, and after a while declared that he saw a female figure hovering above the place, about five feet high, with the right arm across her bosom and the left hand hanging down by her side. When the poet advanced and stood on the fatal spot, the young man affirmed that the image was on his right or his left, before or behind him, and when Pfeffel struck around him with his cane, it produced the effect as if he were cutting through a flame which instantly reunited. The same phenomena were witnessed a second time by a number of Pfeffel's relations. Several days afterwards, while the young man was absent, the poet caused the place in the garden to be dug up, and at a depth of several feet, beneath a layer of lime, a human skeleton was discovered. It was removed, the hole filled up, and all smoothed over again. After Billing's return the poet took him once more into the garden, and this time the young man walked over the fatal spot without experiencing the slightest sensation (Kieser, Archiv., etc., p. 326).

It was this remarkable experience which led Baron Reichenbach to verify it by leading one of his sensitive patients, a Miss Reichel, at night to the great cemetery of Vienna. As soon as she reached the place she perceived everywhere a sea of flames, brightest over the new graves, weaker over others, and quite faint here and there. In a few cases these lights reached a height of nearly four feet, but generally they had more the appearance of luminous mists, so that her hand, held over the place where she saw one, seemed to be enveloped in a cloud of fire. She was in no way troubled by the phenomena, which she had often previously observed, and Baron Reichenbach thought he saw in them a confirmation of his theory about the Od-light. There can be, however, little doubt that the luminous appearance, perceptible though it be only to unusually sensitive persons, is the result of chemical decomposition, which has a peculiar influence over these persons.

Hence, no doubt, the numerous accounts of will-o'-the-wisps and ghostly lights seen in graveyards; the frightened beholder is nearly always laughed at or heartily abused, and more than one poor child has fallen a victim to the absurd theory of "curing it of foolish fears." There can be no doubt that light does appear flickering above churchyards, and that there is something more than mere idle superstition in the "corpse-candles" of the Welsh and in the "elf-candles" of the Scotch, which are seen, with foreboding weight, in the house of sickness, betokening near dissolution. At the same time, it is well known that living persons also have, under certain circumstances, given out light, and especially from their head. The cases of Moses, whose face shone with unbearable brightness, and of the martyr Stephen, are familiar to all, and the halo with which artists surround the heads of saints bears eloquent evidence of the universal and deeply-rooted belief. But science also has fully established the fact that light appears as a real and unmistakable luminous efflux from the human body, alike in health and in mortal sickness. By far the most common case of such emission of light is the emission of sparks from the hair when combed. Before and during the electrical "dust-storms" in India, this phenomenon is of frequent occurrence in the hair of both sexes. In dry weather, and when the hair also is dry, and especially immediately before thunderstorms, the same sparks are seen in all countries. Dr. Phipson mentions the case of a relative of his, "whose hair (exactly one yard and a quarter long), when combed somewhat rapidly with a black gutta-percha comb, emits sheets of light upward of a foot in length," the light being "composed of hundreds of small electric sparks, the snapping noise of which is distinctly heard."

But electric light is sometimes given off by the human body itself, not merely from the hair. A memorable instance of this phenomenon is recorded by Dr. Kane in the journal of his last voyage to the Polar regions. He and a companion, Petersen, had gone to sleep in a hut during intense cold, and on awaking in the night, found, to their horror, that their lamp--their only hope--had gone out. Petersen tried in vain to get light from a pocket-pistol, and then Kane resolved to take the pistol himself. "It was so intensely dark," he says, "that I had to grope for it, and in so doing, I touched his hand. At that instant the pistol--in Petersen's hand--became distinctly visible. A pale bluish light, slightly tremulous, but not broken, covered the metallic parts of it. The stock, too, was distinctly visible as if by reflected light, and to the amazement of both of us, also the thumb and two fingers with which Petersen was holding it--the creases, wrinkles and circuit of nails being clearly defined upon the skin. As I took the pistol my hand became illuminated also." This luminous and doubtless electric phenomenon took place in highly exceptional circumstances, and is the only case recorded in recent times. But a far more remarkable phenomenon of a similar kind is mentioned by Bartholin, who gives an account of a lady in Italy, whom he rightly styles mulier splendens, whose body became phosphorescent--or rather shone with electric radiations--when slightly rubbed with a piece of dry linen. In this case the luminosity appears to have been normal, certainly very frequent under ordinary circumstances, and the fact is well attested. Mr. B. H. Patterson mentions in the journal Belgravia (Oct., 1872), that he saw the flannel with which he had rubbed his body, emit blue sparks, while at the same time he heard a "crackling" sound. These facts prove that the human body even in ordinary life, is capable of giving out luminous undulations, while science teaches us that they appear quite frequently in disease. Here again, Dr. Phipson mentions several cases as the result of his reading. One of these is that of a woman in Milan, during whose illness a so-called phosphoric light glimmered about her bed. Another remarkable case is recorded by Dr. Marsh, in a volume on the "Evolution of Light from the Human Subject," and reads thus: "About an hour and a half before my sister's death, we were struck by luminous appearances proceeding from her head in a diagonal direction. She was at the time in a half-recumbent position, and perfectly tranquil. The light was pale as the moon, but quite evident to mamma, myself, and sisters, who were watching over her at the time. One of us at first thought it was lightning, till shortly afterwards we perceived a sort of tremulous glimmer playing around the head of the bed, and then, recollecting that we had read something of a similar nature having been observed previous to dissolution, we had candles brought into the room, fearing that our dear sister would perceive the luminosity, and that it might disturb the tranquillity of her last moments."

The other case relates to an Irish peasant, and is recorded from personal observation by Dr. Donovan, in the Dublin Medical Press, in 1870, as follows: "I was sent to see Harrington in December. He had been under the care of my predecessor, and had been entered as a phthisical patient. He was under my care for about five years, and I had discontinued my visits, when the report became general that mysterious lights were seen every night in his cabin. The subject attracted a great deal of attention. I determined to submit the matter to the ordeal of my own senses, and for this purpose I visited the cabin for fourteen nights. On three nights only I witnessed anything unusual. Once I perceived a luminous fog resembling the aurora borealis; and twice I saw scintillations like the sparkling phosphorescence exhibited by sea-infusoria. From the close scrutiny I made, I can with certainty say, that no imposition was either employed or attempted."

The only explanation ever offered by competent authority of the luminous radiations from persons in disease, ascribes them to an efflux or escape of the nerve-force, which is known to be kindred in its nature to electricity, transmuting itself into luminosity as it leaves the body. The Seeress of Prevorst reported that she saw the nerves as shining threads, and even from the eyes of some persons rays of light seemed to her to flash continually. Other somnambulists also, as well as mesmerized persons, have seen the hair of persons shine with a multitude of sparks, while the breath of their mouth appeared as a faint luminous mist.

The same luminosity is, finally, perceived at times in graveyards, and would, no doubt, have led to careful investigation more frequently, if observers had not so often been suspected of superstitious apprehensions. In the case of Baron Reichenbach's patients, however, no such difficulty was to be feared; they saw invariably light, bluish flames hovering over many graves, and what made the phenomena more striking still, was the fact that these moving lights were only seen on recent graves, as if naturally dependent upon the process of decomposition. If we connect this with our experience of luminosity seen in decaying vegetables, in spoiled meat, and in diseased persons, we shall be prepared to believe that even so-called ghost stories, in which mysterious lights play a prominent part, are by no means necessarily without foundation.

Cases in which deceased persons have made themselves known to survivors, or have produced, by some as yet unexplained agency, an impression upon them through other senses than the sight, are very rare. Occasionally, however, the hearing is thus affected, and sweet music is heard, in token, as it were, of the continued intercourse between the dead and the living. One instance may serve as an illustration.

The Countess A. had all her life been remarkable for the strange delight she took in clocks; not a room in her castle but had its large or small clock, and all these she insisted upon winding up herself at the proper time. Her favorite, however, was a very curious and most costly clock in her sitting-room, which had the form of a Gothic church, and displayed in the steeple a small dial, behind which the works were concealed; at the full hour a hymn was played by a kind of music-box attached to the mechanism. She allowed no one to touch this clock, and used to sit before it, as the hand approached the hour, waiting for the hymn to be heard. At last she was taken ill and confined for seven weeks, during which the clock could not be wound up, and then she died. For special reasons the interment had to take place on the evening of the next day, and, as the castle was far from any town, the preparations took so much time that it was nearly midnight before the body could be moved from the bedroom to the drawing-room, where the usual ceremonies were to be performed. The transfer was accomplished under the superintendence of her husband, who followed the coffin, and in the presence of a large number of friends and dependents, while the minister led the sad cortege. At the moment when the coffin approached the favorite clock, it suddenly began to strike; but instead of twelve, it gave out thirteen strokes, and then followed the melody of a well-known hymn:

"Let us with boldness now proceed On the dark path to a new life."

The minister, who happened to have been sitting a little while before by the count's side, just beneath the clock, and had mournfully noticed its silence after so many years, was thunderstruck, and could not recover his self-control for some time. The count, on the contrary, saw in the accident a solemn warning from on high, and henceforth laid aside the frivolity which he had so far shown in his life as well as in his principles ("Evening Post" [Germ.], 1840. No. 187).

There are finally certain phenomena belonging to this part of magic, which have been very generally attributed to an agency in which natural forces and supernatural beings held a nearly equal share. They suggest the interesting but difficult question, whether visions and ecstasy can extend to large numbers of men at once? And yet without some such supposition the armies in the clouds, the wild huntsman of the Ardennes, and like appearances cannot well be explained. Here also no little weight must be attached to ancient superstitions which have become, as it were, a part of a nation's faith. Thus all Northern Germany has from the earliest days been familiar with the idea of the great Woden ranging through its dark forests, at the head of the Walkyries and the heroes fallen in battle, while his wolves and his raven followed him on his nightly course. When Christianity changed the old gods of the German race into devils and demons, Woden became very naturally the wild huntsman, who was now escorted by men of violence, bloody tyrants, and criminals, often grievously mutilated or altogether headless. There can be little doubt but that these visions also rested upon some natural substructure: exceptional atmospheric disturbances, hurricanes coming from afar and crashing through mighty forests, or even the modest tramp of a band of poachers heard afar off, under favorable circumstances by timid ears. The very fact that the favorite time for such phenomena is the winter solstice favors this supposition. They are, however, by no means limited to seasons and days, for as late as 1842 a number of wheat-cutters left in a panic the field in which they were engaged, because they believed they heard Frau Holle with her hellish company, and saw Faithful Eckhard, as he walked steadily before the procession, warning all he met to stand aside and escape from the fatal sight. An occurrence of the kind, which took place in 1857, was fortunately fully explained by careful observers: the cause was an immense flock of wild geese, whose strange cries resembled in a surprising manner the barking of a pack of hounds during a hunt. Another occurrence during the night of January 30, 1849, threw the whole neighborhood of Basle in Switzerland into painful consternation. The air was suddenly filled with a multitude of whining voices, whose agony pierced the hearts of all who heard them; men and beasts seemed to be suffering unutterable anguish, and to be driven with furious speed from the mountain-side into a valley near Magden; here all ended in an instant amid rolling thunder and fearful flashes of lightning. A fierce storm arising in distant clefts and crevices, and carrying possibly fragments of rock, ice, and moraine along with it, seems here to have been the determining cause.

Another class of phenomena of this kind relates to the great battles that have at times decided the fate of the world. Thus Pausanias already tells us ("Attica," 32), and so do other historians of Greece, how the Plain of Marathon resounded for nearly four centuries every year with the clash of arms and the cries of soldiers. It was evidently the deep and lasting impression made upon a highly sensitive nation, which here was bequeathed from generation to generation, and on the day of the battle, when all was excitement, resulted in the perception of sounds which had no real existence. Events of such colossal proportions, which determine in a few hours the fate of great nations, leave naturally a powerful impress upon contemporaries not only, but also upon the children of that race. Such was, among others, the fearful battle on the Catalaunian Fields, in which the Visi-Goths and Aetius conquered Attila, and one hundred and sixty-two thousand warriors were slain. It was at the time reported that the intense bitterness and exasperation of the armies continued even after the battle, and that for three days the spirits of the fallen were contending with each other with unabated fury. The report grew into a legend, till a firm belief was established that the battle was fought year after year on the memorable day, and that any visitor might behold the passionate spirits as they rose from their graves, armed with their ancient weapons and filled with undiminished fury. One by one the soldiers of the two armies, it was said, leave their lowly graves, rise high into the air, and engage in deadly but silent strife, till they vanish in the clouds. It is well known how successfully the great German painter, Kaulbach, has reproduced the vision in his magnificent fresco of the "Hunnenschlacht." In other countries these ghostly visions assume different forms. Thus the neighborhood of Kerope, in Livonia, is in like manner renowned for a long series of fearful butcheries during the wars between the German knights and the Muscovites. There also, night after night, the shadowy battle is fought over again; but the clashing of arms and the hoarse war-cries are distinctly heard, and the pious traveler hastens away from the blood-soaked plains, uttering his prayers for the souls of the slain. In the Highlands of Scotland also, and on the adjoining islands, most weird and gruesome sights have been watched by young and old in every generation. The dark, dismal atmosphere of those regions, the dense fogs and impenetrable mists, now rising from the sea, and now descending from the mountains, and the fierce, inclement climate, have all combined for ages to predispose the mind for the perception of such strange and mysterious phenomena. Nearly every clan and every family has its own particular ghost, and besides these the whole nation claims a number of common visions and prophetic spirits, whose harps and wild songs are heard faintly and fearfully sounding on high. A friend of Mr. Martin, the author of a work on "Second Sight," used to recite several stanzas belonging to such a prophetic song, which he had heard himself on a sad November day, as it came to him through the drooping clouds and sweeping mists from the summit of a lonely mountain. At funerals also, wonderful voices were heard high in the air, as they accompanied the chanting of the people below, with a music not born upon earth, and filling the heart with strange but sweet sadness. Nearly the same visions are seen and the same songs are heard in Sweden and Norway, proving conclusively that like climatic influences produce also a similar magic life, in individuals not only, but in whole nations. For even if we are disposed to look upon these phenomena as merely strange appearances of clouds and mists, accompanied by the howling and whistling of the wind and the tumbling down of rocks and gravel, there remains the uniformity with which thousands of every generation interpret these sights and sounds into weird visions and solemn chantings.

It is, however, not quite so evident why the peculiar class of visions which is often erroneously called second sight--the beholding of a "double"--should be almost entirely confined to these same northern regions. It is, of course, not unknown to other lands also, and even Holy Writ seems to justify the presumption that the idea of a "double" was familiar to the people of Palestine. For the poor damsel Rhoda, who "for gladness" did not open the door at which Peter knocked, after he had been miraculously liberated, but ran to announce his presence to the friends who were assembled at the house of Mark's brother, was first called mad, and then told: "It is his angel" (Acts xii. 13). They evidently meant, not that it was the spirit of their deceased friend, since they would have been made aware of his death, but a phantom representing his living body. But the number of authentic cases of persons who have seen their own form, is vastly greater at the North than anywhere else. The Celtic superstition of the "fetch," as the appearance of a person's "double" is there called, is too well known to require explanation. But the vision itself is one of the most interesting in the study of magic, since it exhibits most strikingly the great power which the human soul may, under peculiar circumstances, gain and exercise over its own self, leading to complete self-delusion.

A case in which this strange abdication of all self-control led to most desirable consequences, is mentioned by Dr. Mayo. A young man recently from Oxford once saw a friend of his enter the room in which he was dining with some companions. The new comer, just returning from hunting, seemed to them to look unusually pale and was evidently in a state of great excitement. After much urging he at last confessed that he had been seriously disturbed in mind by a man who had kept him close company all the way home. This stranger, on horseback like himself, had been his exact image, down to a new bridle, his own invention, which he had tried that day for the first time. He fancied that this "double" was his own ghost and an omen of his impending death. His friends advised him to confer with the head of his college; this was done, and the latter gave him much good advice, adding the hope that the warning would not be allowed to pass unimproved. It is certain that the apparition made so strong an impression upon the young man as to lead to his entire reformation, at least for a time.

It is claimed by many writers that there are persons who continually have visions, because they live in constant communication with spirits, although in all cases they have to pay a fearful penalty for this sad privilege. They are invariably diseased people, mostly women, who fall into trances, have cataleptic attacks, or suffer of even more painful maladies, and during the time of their affliction behold and converse with the inmates of another world. The most renowned of these seers was a Mrs. Hauffe, who has become well known to the reading world through Dr. J. Kerner's famous work, "The Seeress of Prevorst." A peculiar feature in her case was the fact that the visions she had were invariably announced to bystanders by peculiar sounds, heard by all who were present. The forms assumed by her mysterious visitors varied almost infinitely; now it was a man in a brown gown, and now a woman in white. Often, when the spirits appeared in the open air, and she tried to escape from them by running, she was bodily lifted up and hurried along so fast that her companions could not keep pace with her. It was only later in life that she fell as a patient into the hands of Dr. Kerner, who was quite distinguished as a poet, and had a great renown as a physician for insane people of a special class. His house at Weinsberg in Wuertemberg, was filled to overflowing with persons of all classes of society, from the highest to the lowest, and all had visions. Nor was the doctor himself excluded; he also was a seer, and has given in the above-mentioned book a full and most interesting account of the diseases in connection with which magic phenomena are most frequently observed. By the aid of careful observation of actual facts, and using such revelations vouchsafed to him and others as he believed fully trustworthy, he formed a regular theory of visions. First of all he admits that the privilege of communing with spirits is a grievous affliction, and that all of his more thoughtful patients continually prayed to be delivered of the burden. It is evident from all he states that not only the body, but the mind also suffers--and in many cases suffers unto destruction--under the effects of such exceptional powers; that in fact the lines of separation between this life and another life can never be crossed with impunity. His most interesting patient, Mrs. Hauffe, presents the usual mixture of mere fanciful imagery with occasional flashes of truth; her genuine revelations were marvelous, and can only be explained upon the ground of real magic; but with them are mixed up the most absurd theories and the most startling contradictions. She insisted, however, upon the fact that only those spirits could commune with mortal man who were detained in the middle realm--between heaven and hell--the spirits of men who were in this life unable, though not unwilling, to believe that "God could forgive their sins for the sake of Christ's death." She was often tried by Dr. Kerner and others; she was told that certain still living persons had died, and asked to summon their spirits, but she was never misled. There can be no doubt that the poor woman was sincere in her statements; but she was apparently unable to distinguish between real visions in a trance and the mere offspring of her imagination. That her peculiarities were closely connected with her bodily condition is, moreover, proved by the fact that her whole family suffered in similar manner and enjoyed similar powers; a brother and a sister, as well as her young son, all had visions and heard mysterious noises. The latter were, in fact, perceptible to all the inmates of the strange house; even the great skeptic, Dr. Strausz, who once visited it, heard "long, fearful groanings" close to his amiable hostess, who had fallen asleep on her sofa. Nor were the ghosts content with disturbing the patients and their excellent physician; they made themselves known to their friends and neighbors, also, and even the good minister in the little town had much to suffer from nightly knockings and strange utterances.

Dr. Kerner himself heard many spirits, but saw only one, and that only as "a grayish pillar;" on the other hand he witnessed countless mysterious phenomena which occurred in his patients' bedrooms. Now he beheld Mrs. Hauffe's boots pulled off by invisible hands, while she herself was lying almost inanimate, in a trance, on her bed, and now he heard her reveal secrets which, upon writing to utterly unknown persons at a great distance, proved to be correctly stated. What makes a thorough investigation of all these phenomena peculiarly difficult, is the fact that Dr. Kerner's house became an asylum for somnambulists as well as for real patients, and that by this mixture the scientific value of his observations, as regards their psychological interest, is seriously impaired. He himself was a sincere believer in magic phenomena; almost all of his friends and neighbors, from the humblest peasant to the most cultivated men of science, believed in him and his statements, and there can be no doubt that astonishing revelations were made and extraordinary powers became manifest in his house. But here, also, the difficulty of separating the few grains of truth from the great mass of willful, as well as of unconscious delusion, is almost overwhelming, and our final judgment must be held in suspense, till more light has been thrown on the subject. Dr. Kerner's son, who succeeded his father at his death in 1862, still keeps up the remarkable establishment at Weinsberg; but exclusively for the cure of certain diseases by magnetism.

VI.

DIVINATION.

"There shall not be found among you any one that useth divination."

--DEUT. xviii. 9.

The usual activity of our mind is limited to the perception of the world around us, and its life, as far as the power of our senses reaches; it must, therefore, necessarily be confined within the limits of space and time. There are, however, specially favored men among us who profess an additional power, or even ordinary men may be thus endowed under peculiar circumstances, as when they are under the influence of nervous affections, trances, or even merely in an unusual state of excitement. Then they are no longer subject to the usual laws of distance in space, or remoteness in time; they perceive as immediately present what lies beyond the reach of others, and the magic power by which this is accomplished is called Divination. This vision is never quite clear, nor always complete or correct, for even such exceptionable powers are in all cases more or less subject to the imperfections of our nature; habitual notions, an ill-executed imagination, and often a disordered state of the system, all interfere with its perfect success. These imperfections, moreover, not only affect the value of such magic perceptions, but obscure the genuine features by a number of false statements and of erroneous impressions, which quite legitimately excite a strong prejudice against the whole subject. Hence, especially, the rigor of the Church against divination in every form; it has ever ascribed the errors mixed up with the true parts of such revelations to the direct influence of the Evil One. The difficulty, however, arises that such magic powers have nothing at all to do with the question of morality; the saint and the criminal may possess them alike, since they are elements of our common nature, hidden in the vast majority of cases, and coming into view and into life only in rare exceptional instances.

Divination, as freed from the ordinary limits of our perceptions, appears either as clairvoyance, when things are seen which are beyond the range of natural vision, or as prophecy, when the boundary lines of time are overstepped. The latter appears again in its weakest form as a mere anticipation of things to come, or rises to perfection in the actual foretelling of future events. It is sad enough to learn from the experience of all nations that the occurrences thus foreseen are almost invariably great misfortunes, yet our surprise will cease if we remember that the tragic in life exercises by far the greatest influence on our mind, and excites it far beyond all other events. Nor must we overlook the marvelous unanimity with which such magic powers are admitted to exist in Man by all nations on earth. The explanation, also, is invariably the same, namely, that Man possessed originally the command over space and time as well as God himself, but that when sin came into the world and affected his earth-born body, this power was lost, and preserved only to appear in exceptional and invariably most painful cases. So thought the ancients even long before revelation had spoken. They believed that Man had had a previous god-like existence before appearing upon earth, where he was condemned to expiate the sins of his former life, while his immortal and divine soul was chained to a perishing earthy body. Plato, Plutarch, and Pythagoras, Cicero (in his book De Divinatione), and even Porphyrius, all admit without hesitation the power of divination, and speak of its special vigor in the moments preceding death. Melanchthon ascribed warning dreams to the prophetic power of the human soul. Brierre de Boismont also is forced to admit that not all cases of clairvoyance and prophesying are the results of hallucination by diseased persons; he speaks, on the contrary, and in spite of his bitter skepticism, of instances in which the increased powers of perception are the effect of "supernatural intuition."

One of the most prolific sources of error in Divination has ever been the variety of means employed for the purpose of causing the preparatory state of trance. It is well known in our day that the mind may be most strangely affected by innumerable agencies which are apparently purely mechanical, and often utterly absurd. Such are an intent gazing at highly-polished surfaces of metal, or into the bright inside of a gold cup, at the shining sides of a crystal, or the varying hues of a glass globe; now vessels filled with pure water, and now ink poured into the hand of a child, answer the same purpose. Fortune-telling from the lines of the hand or the chance combinations of playing-cards are, in this aspect, on a par with the prophecies of astrologers drawn from the constellations in the heavens. It need hardly be added that this almost infinite variety of more or less absurd measures has nothing at all to do with the awaking of magic power, and continues in use only from the prestige which some of the means, like the cup of Joseph and the mirror of Varro, derive from their antiquity. Their sole purpose is uniformly to withdraw the seer's attention from all outward objects, and to make him, by steadily gazing at one and the same object, concentrate his thoughts and feelings exclusively upon his own self. Experience has taught that such efforts, long continued, result finally in utter loss of feeling, in unconsciousness, and frequently even in catalepsy. It is generally only under such peculiarly painful circumstances that the unusual powers of our being can become visible and begin to operate. While these results may be obtained, as recent experiments have proved, even by mere continued squinting, barbarous nations employ the most violent means for the same purpose--the whirling of dervishes, the drumming and dancing of northern shamans, the deafening music of the Moors, are all means of the same kind to excite the rude and fierce nature of savages to a state of excessive excitement. In all cases, however, we must notice the comparative sterility of such divination, and the penalty which has to be paid for most meagre results by injuries inflicted upon the body, and by troubles caused in the mind, which, if they do not become fatal to life, are invariably so to happiness and peace. That the sad privilege may have to be paid for with life itself, we learn already from Plutarch's account of a priestess who became so furious while prophesying, that not only the strangers but the priests themselves fled in dismay, while she herself expired a few hours later (II. p. 438).

The state in which all forms of divination are most apt to show themselves is by theologians called ecstasis, when it is caused by means specially employed for the purpose and appears as a literally "being beside one's self"; by its side they speak of raptus, when the abnormal state suddenly begins during an act of ordinary life, such as walking, working, or even praying. The distinction is of no value as to the nature of the magic powers themselves, which are in all cases the same; it refers exclusively to the outer form.

One of the simplest methods is the Deasil-walking of the Scotch Highlanders: the seer walks rapidly three times, with the sun, around the person whose future is to be foretold, and thus produces a trance, in which his magic powers become available. Walter Scott's "Chronicles of the Canongate" gives a full account of this ceremony. Robin Oig's aunt performs the ceremony, and then warns him in great terror, that she has seen a bloody dagger in his hand, stained with English blood, and beseeches him to stay at home. He disregards the omen, kills the same night an Englishman, a cattle-dealer, and pays for the crime with his life.