Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

The cover was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS,

AND

THE TRUTHS CONTAINED THEREIN,

WITH AN

ACCOUNT OF MESMERISM.

BY

HERBERT MAYO, M.D.,
FORMERLY SENIOR SURGEON OF MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL; PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN KING’S COLLEGE; PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY IN THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, LONDON. F.R.S., F.G.S., ETC.

FROM THE THIRD LONDON EDITION.

PHILADELPHIA:
LINDSAY AND BLAKISTON.
1852.

WM. S. YOUNG, PRINTER.

[PREFATORY REMARKS.]

In the following Letters I have endeavoured to exhibit in their true light the singular natural phenomena of which old superstition and modern charlatanism in turn availed themselves—to indicate their laws, and to develop their theory. The subject is so important that I might well have approached it in a severer guise. But, slight as this performance may appear, I profess to have employed upon it the keenest and most patient efforts of reflection of which I am capable. And as to its tone at the commencement, and the prominence given to popular and trivial topics, I candidly avow that, without some such artifice, I doubt whether I should have found a publisher of repute to publish, or a circle of readers to read, my lucubrations.

“Cosi all’ egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi

Di soave licor gli orli del vaso;

Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve,

E dall’ inganno suo vita riceve.”

It was in the winter of 1846 that the original seven Letters were written, of which the present fourteen are the third and expanded reprint. The hour had come for successfully assailing certain already shaking prejudices of the reading public. The Selbstschau of Zschokke, and the researches of Von Reichenbach, were in the hands of the literary and philosophic. The seer-gift of the former (see Letter IV.) had established the fact that one mind can enter into direct though one-sided communion with another. The undenied Od-force of the latter (see Letter I.) is evidently the same influence with that, the first crude announcement of which, by Mesmer, had scared the world into disbelief. It had now become possible to explain ghostly warnings, and popular prophecies, the wonders of natural trance, and of animal magnetism, without having recourse to a single unproven principle. I therefore made the attempt; other more efficient labourers have co-operated in the same object; and public opinion is no longer hostile to this class of inquiries.

Bad Weilbach, near Mayence,
1st August, 1851.

CONTENTS.

ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

LETTER I.

The Divining Rod.—Description of and mode of using the same—Mr. Fairholm’s statement—M. de Tristan’s statement—Account of Von Reichenbach’s Od force—The Author’s own observations.

Dear Archy,—As a resource in the solitary evenings of commencing winter, it occurred to me to look into the long-neglected lore of the marvellous, the mystical, the supernatural. I remembered the deep awe with which I had listened, many a year ago, to tales of seers, ghosts, vampyrs, and all the dark brood of night. And I thought it would be infinitely agreeable to thrill again with mysterious terrors, to start in my chair at the closing of a distant door, to raise my eyes with uneasy apprehension towards the mirror opposite, and to feel my skin creep through the sensible “afflatus” of an invisible presence. I entered, accordingly, upon a very promising course of appalling reading. But, a-lack and well-a-day! a change had come over me since the good old times when fancy, with fear and superstition behind her, would creep on tiptoe to catch a shuddering glimpse of Kobbold, Fay, or incubus. Vain were all my efforts to revive the pleasant horrors of earlier years: it was as if I had planned going to a play to enjoy again the full gusto of scenic illusion, and, through absence of mind, was attending a morning rehearsal only; when, instead of what I had anticipated, great-coats, hats, umbrellas, and ordinary men and women, masks, tinsel, trap-doors, pulleys, and a world of intricate machinery, lit by a partial gleam of sunshine, had met my view. The enchantment was no longer there—the spell was broken.

Yet, on second thoughts, the daylight scene was worth contemplating. A new object, of stronger interest, suggested itself. I might examine and learn the mechanism of the illusions which had failed to furnish me the projected entertainment. In the books I had looked into, I discerned a clue to the explanation of many wonderful stories, which I could hitherto only seriously meet by disbelief. I saw that phenomena, which before had appeared isolated, depended upon a common principle, itself allied with a variety of other singular facts and observations, which wanted only to be placed in philosophical juxtaposition to be recognised as belonging to science. So I determined to employ the leisure before me upon an inquiry into the amount of truth in popular superstitions, certain that, if the attempt were not premature, the labour would be well repaid. There must be a real foundation for the belief of ages. There can be no prevalent delusion without a corresponding truth. The visionary promises of alchemy foreshadowed the solid performances of modern chemistry, as the debased worship of the Egyptians implied the existence of a proper object of worship.

Among the immortal productions of the Scottish Shakspeare—you smile, but that phrase contains the true belief, not a popular delusion; for the spirit of the poet lives not in the form of his works, but in his creative power and vivid intuitions of nature; and the form even is often nearer than you think:—but this excursiveness will never do; so, to begin again.

Among the novels of Scott—I intended to say—there is not one more wins upon us than the Antiquary. Nowhere has the great author more gently and indulgently, never with happier humour, portrayed the mixed web of strength and infirmity in human character; never, besides, with more facile power evoked pathos and terror, and disported himself amid the sublimity and beauty of nature. Yet, gentle as is his mood, he misses not the opportunity—albeit, in general, he displays an honest leaning towards old superstitions—mercilessly to crush one of the humblest. Do you remember the Priory of St. Ruth, and the summer-party made to visit it, and the preparations for the subsequent rogueries of Dousterswivel in the tale of Martin Waldeck, and the discovery of a spring of water by means of the divining rod?

I am inclined, do you know, to dispute the verdict of the novelist on this occasion, and to take the part of the charlatan against the author of his being; as far, at least, as regards the genuineness of the art the said charlatan then and there affected to practise. There exists, in fact, strong evidence to show that, in competent hands, the divining rod really does what is pretended of it. This evidence I propose to put before you in the present letter. But, as the subject may be entirely new to you, I had best begin by describing what is meant by a divining rod, and in what the imputed jugglery consists.

Then you are to learn that, in mining districts, a superstition prevails among the people that some are born gifted with an occult power of detecting the proximity of veins of metal, and of underground currents of water. In Cornwall, they hold that about one in forty possesses this faculty. The mode of exercising it is very simple. They cut a hazel twig, just below where it forks. Having stripped the leaves off, they cut each branch to something more than a foot in length, leaving the stump three inches long. This implement is the divining rod. The hazel is selected for the purpose, because it branches more symmetrically than its neighbours. The hazel-fork is to be held by the branches, one in either hand, the stump or point projecting straight forwards. The arms of the experimenter hang by his sides; but the elbows being bent at a right angle, the fore-arms are advanced horizontally; the hands are held eight to ten inches apart; the knuckles down, and the thumbs outwards. The ends of the branches of the divining fork appear between the roots of the thumbs and fore-fingers.

The operator, thus armed, walks over the ground he intends exploring, in the full expectation that, if he possesses the mystic gift, as soon as he passes over a vein of metal, or an underground spring, the hazel-fork will begin to move spontaneously in his hands, rising or falling as the case may be.

You are possibly amused at my gravely stating, as a fact, an event so unlikely. It is, indeed, natural that you should suppose the whole a juggle, and think the seemingly spontaneous motion of the divining fork to be really communicated to it by the hands of the conjurer—by a sleight, in fact, which he puts in practice when he believes that he is walking over a hidden water-course, or wishes you to believe that there is a vein of metal near. Well, I thought as you do the greater part of my life; and probably the likeliest way of combating your skepticism, will be to tell you how my own conversion took place.

In the summer of 1843 I dwelt under the same roof with a Scottish gentleman, well informed, of a serious turn of mind, fully endowed with the national allowance of shrewdness and caution. I saw a good deal of him; and one day, by chance, this subject of the divining rod was mentioned. He told me, that at one time his curiosity having been raised upon the subject, he had taken pains to ascertain what there is in it. With this object in view he had obtained an introduction to Mrs. R., sister of Sir G. R., then living at Southampton, whom he had learned to be one of those in whose hands the divining rod moved. He visited the lady, who was polite enough to show him in what the performance consists, and to answer all his questions, and to assist him in making experiments calculated to test the reality of the phenomenon, and to elucidate its cause.

Mrs. R. told my friend that, being at Cheltenham in 1806, she saw, for the first time, the divining rod used by Mrs. Colonel Beaumont, who possessed the power of imparting motion to it in a very remarkable degree. Mrs. R. tried the experiment herself at that time, but without any success. She was, as it happened, very far from well. Afterwards, in the year 1815, being asked by a friend how the divining rod is held, and how it is to be used, on showing it she was surprised to see that the instrument now moved in her hands.

Since then, whenever she had repeated the experiment, the power had always manifested itself, though with varying degrees of energy.

Mrs. R. then took my friend to a part of the shrubbery where she knew, from former trials, the divining rod would move in her hands. It did so, to my friend’s extreme astonishment; and even continued to move, when, availing himself of Mrs. R.’s permission, my friend grasped her hands with sufficient firmness to prevent, as he supposed, any muscular action of her wrists or fingers influencing the result.

On a subsequent day my friend having thought over what he had seen, repeated his visit to the lady. He provided himself, as substitutes for the hazel-fork which he had seen her employ, with portions of copper and iron wire about a foot and a half long, bent something into the form of the letter V. He had made, in fact, divining forks of wire, wanting only the projecting point. He found that these instruments moved quite as freely in Mrs. R.’s hands as the hazel-fork had done. Then he coated the two handles of one of them with sealing-wax, leaving, however, the extreme ends free and uncovered. When Mrs. R. tried the rod so prepared, holding the parts alone which were covered with sealing-wax, and walked on the same piece of ground as in the former experiments, the rod remained perfectly still. As often, however, as—with no greater change than adjusting her hands so as to touch the free ends of the wire with her thumbs—Mrs. R. renewed direct contact with the instrument, it again moved. The motion ceased again as often as the direct contact was interrupted.

This simple narrative, made to me by the late Mr. George Fairholm, carried conviction to my mind of the reality of the phenomenon. I asked my friend why he had not pursued the subject further. He said he had often thought of doing so, and had, he believed, mainly been deterred by meeting with the work of the Compte de Tristan, entitled Recherches sur quelques effluves terrestres, Paris, 1829, in which facts similar to those which he had himself verified were given, and a number of additional curious experiments detailed.

At Mr. Fairholm’s instance I procured the book, and, at a later period, read it. I may say that it both satisfied and disappointed me. It satisfied me, inasmuch as it fully confirmed all that Mr. Fairholm had stated. It disappointed me, for it threw no additional light upon the phenomena. M. de Tristan had in fact brought too little physical knowledge to the investigation, so that a large proportion of his experiments are puerile. However, his simpler experiments are valuable and suggestive. These I will presently describe. In the mean time, you shall hear the Count’s own narrative of his initiation into the mysteries of the divining rod.

“The history of my researches,” says M. de Tristan, “is simply this. Some twenty years ago, a gentleman who, from his position in society, could have no object to gain by deception, showed to me, for my amusement, the movement of the divining rod. He attributed the motion to the influence of a current of water, which appeared to me a probable supposition. But my attention was more engaged with the action produced by the influence, let the latter be what it might. My informant assured me he had met with many others in whom the same effects were manifested. When I returned home, and had opportunities of making trials under favourable circumstances, I found that I myself possessed the same endowment. Since then I have induced many to make the experiment, and I have found a fourth, or certainly a fifth, of the number capable of setting the divining rod in motion at the very first attempt. Since that time, during these twenty years, I have often tried my hand, but for amusement only, and desultorily, and without any idea of making the thing an object of scientific investigation. But at length, in the year 1822, being in the country, and removed from my ordinary pursuits, the subject again came across me, and I determined forthwith to try and ascertain the cause of this phenomena. Accordingly, I commenced a long series of experiments, from fifteen to eighteen hundred in number, which occupied me nearly fifteen months. The results of above twelve hundred were written down at the time of their performance.”

The scene of the Count’s operations was in the valley of the Loire, five leagues from Vendôme, in the park of the Chateau de Ranac. The surface of ground which gave the desired results was from seventy to eighty feet in breadth. But there was another spot equally efficient at the Count’s ordinary residence at Emerillon, near Clery, four leagues south of Orleans, ten leagues south of the Loire, at the commencement of the plains of Solonge. The surface ran from north to south, and had the same breadth with the other. These “exciting tracts” form, in general, bands or zones of undetermined, and often very great length. Their breadth is very variable; some are only three or four feet across, while others are one hundred paces. These tracts are sometimes sinuous; in other instances they ramify. To the most susceptible they are broader than to those who are less so.

M. de Tristan thus describes what happens when a competent person, armed with a hazel-fork, walks over the exciting districts:—

When two or three steps have been made upon the exciting tract of ground, the fork, which at starting is held horizontally, with the point forwards, begins gently to ascend; it gradually attains a vertical position; sometimes it passes beyond that, and lowering itself, with its point to the chest of the operator, it becomes again horizontal. If the motion continues, the rod descending becomes vertical, with the point downwards. Finally, the rod may again ascend and resume its first position. When the action is very lively, the rod immediately commences a second revolution; and so it goes on, as long as the operator continues to walk over the exciting surface of ground.

A few of those in whose hands the divining fork moves exhibit a remarkable peculiarity. The instrument, instead of commencing its motion by ascending, descends; the point then becomes directed vertically downwards; afterwards it reascends, and completes a revolution in a course the opposite of the usual one; and as often and as long as its motion is excited, it pursues this abnormal course.

Of the numerous experiments made by M. de Tristan, the following are among the simplest and the best:—

He covered both handles of a divining rod with a thick silk stuff. The result of using the instrument so prepared was the same which Mr. Fairholm obtained by coating the handles with sealing-wax. The motion of the divining rod was extinguished.

He covered both handles with one layer of a thin silk. He then found that the motion of the divining rod took place, but it was less lively and vigorous than ordinary.

By covering one handle of the divining rod, and that the right, with a layer of thin silk, a very singular and instructive result was obtained. The motion of the instrument was now reversed. It commenced by descending.

After covering the point of the divining rod with a thick layer of silk stuff, the motion was sensibly more brisk than it had been before.

When the Count held in his hands a straight rod of the same substance conjointly with the ordinary divining rod, no movement of the latter whatsoever ensued.

Finally, the Count discovered that he could cause the divining rod to move when he walked over a non-exciting surface—as, for instance, in his own chamber—by various processes. Of these the most interesting consisted in touching the point of the instrument with either pole of a magnetic needle. The instrument shortly began to move, ascending or descending, according as the northward or southward pole of the needle had been applied to it.

It is unnecessary to add that these, and all M. de Tristan’s experiments, were repeated by him many times. The results of those which I have narrated were constant.

Let me now attempt to realize something out of the preceding statements.

1. It is shown, by the testimony adduced, that whereas in the hands of most persons the divining rod remains motionless, in the hands of some it moves promptly and briskly when the requisite conditions are observed.

2. It is no less certain that the motion of the divining rod has appeared, to various intelligent and honest persons, who have succeeded in producing it, to be entirely spontaneous; or that the said persons were not conscious of having excited or promoted the motion by the slightest help of their own.

3. It appears that in the ordinary use of the divining rod by competent persons, its motion only manifests itself in certain localities.

4. It being assumed that the operator does not, however unconsciously, by the muscular action of his hands and wrists produce the motion of the divining rod, the likeliest way of accounting for the phenomenon is to suppose that the divining rod may become the conductor of some fluid or force, emanating from or disturbed in the body by a terrestrial agency.

But here a difficulty arises: How can it happen that the hypothetical force makes so long and round-about a course? Why, communicated to the body through the legs, does not the supposed fluid complete a circuit at once in the lower part of the trunk?

Such, at all events, would be the course an electric current so circumstanced would take.

The difficulty raised admits of being removed by aid derived from a novel and unexpected source. I allude to the discovery, by Von Reichenbach, of a new force or principle in the physical world, which, whether or not it is identical with that which gives motion to the divining rod, exhibits, at all events, the very property which the hypothetical principle should possess to explain the phenomena which we have been considering.

No attempts have indeed been made to identify the two as one; and my conjecture that they may prove so, should it even appear plausible, is so vague, that I should have contented myself with referring to Von Reichenbach’s new principle as to an established truth, and have introduced no account of it into this Letter, had I not a second motive for insuring your cognisance of the curious facts which the Viennese philosopher has brought to light. It is less with the view of furnishing a leg to the theory of the divining rod, than in order to provide the means of elucidating more interesting problems, that I now proceed briefly to sketch the leading experiments made by Von Reichenbach, and their results.

Objections have been taken against these experiments, on the ground that their effects are purely subjective; that the results must be received on the testimony of the party employed; and that the best parties for the purpose are persons whose natural sensibility is exalted by disorder of the nerves; a class of persons always suspected of exaggeration, and even, and in part with justice, of a tendency to trickery and deception. But this was well known to Von Reichenbach, who appears to have taken every precaution necessary to secure his observations against error. And when I add, that many of the results which he obtained upon the most sensitive and the highly nervous, were likewise manifested in persons of established character and in good health, and that the fidelity of the author and of his researches is authenticated by the publication of the latter in Woehler and Liebig’s Chemical Annals, (Supplement to volume 53, Heidelberg, 1845,) I think you will not withhold from them complete reliance.

In general, persons in health and of a strong constitution are insensible to the influence of Von Reichenbach’s new force. But all persons, the tone of whose health has been lowered by their mode of life—men of sedentary habits, clerks, and the like, and women who employ their whole time in needlework, whose pale complexions show the relaxed and therefore irritable state of their frames—all such, or nearly all—evince more or less susceptibility to the influence I am about to describe.

Von Reichenbach found that persons of the latter class, when slow passes are made with the poles of a strong magnet moved parallel to the surface—down the back, for instance, or down the limbs, and only distant enough just not to touch the clothes—feel sensations rather unpleasant than otherwise, as of a light draft of air blown upon them in the path of the magnet.

In the progress of his researches, Von Reichenbach found that the more sensitive among his subjects could detect the presence of his new agent by another sense. In the dark they saw dim flames of light issuing and waving from the poles of the magnet. The experiments suggested by this discovery afford the most satisfactory proofs of the reality of the phenomena. They were the following:—A horse-shoe magnet having been adjusted upon a table, with the poles directed upwards, the sensitive subject saw, at the distance of ten feet, the appearance of flames issuing from it. The armature of the magnet—a bar of soft iron—was then applied. Upon this the flames disappeared. They reappeared, she said, as often as the armature was removed from the magnet.

A similar experiment was made with a yet more sensitive subject. This person saw, in the first instance, flames as the first had done; but when the armature of the magnet was applied, the flames did not disappear: she saw flames still: only they were fainter, and their disposition was different. They seemed now to issue from every part of the surface of the magnet equally.

It is hardly necessary to add, that these experiments were made in a well-darkened room, and that none of the bystanders could discern what the sensitive subjects saw.

Then the following experiment was made:—A powerful lens was so placed as that it should concentrate the light of the flames (if real light they were) upon a point of the wall of the room. The patient at once saw the light upon the wall at the right place; and when the inclination of the lens was shifted, so as to throw the focus in succession on different points, the sensitive observer never failed in pointing out the right spot.

To his new force, which Von Reichenbach had now found to emanate likewise from the poles of crystals and the wires of the voltaic pile, he gave the arbitrary but convenient name of Od, or the Od force.

His next step was to ascertain the existence of a difference among the sensations produced by Od. Sometimes the current of air was described as warm, sometimes as cool. He found this difference to depend upon the following cause: Whenever the northward pole of a magnet, or one definite pole of a large crystal, or the negative wire of a voltaic battery, is employed in the experiment, the sensation produced is that of a draft of cool air. On the contrary, the southward pole of the magnet, the opposite pole of the crystal, the positive voltaic wire, excite the sensation of a draft of warm air.

So the new force appeared to be a polar force, and Von Reichenbach called the first series of the above described manifestations Od-negative effects, the second Od-positive effects.

From among his numerous experiments towards establishing the polarity of Od, I select the following:—One of the most sensitive of his subjects held, at his desire, a piece of copper wire, by the middle with the right hand—by one end with the left. Then Von Reichenbach touched the free end of the wire with one pole of a large crystal, in order to charge it with Od. The patient immediately felt a sensation in the right hand, which disappeared as quickly, to be felt by the left hand instead, at the further end of the piece of wire. She then was bidden to take hold of the wire with both her hands at the middle, and then to slide them away from each other to the opposite ends: she observed, on doing so, that sensations were produced which were strong and decided when her hands held the two ends of the wire, and diminished in intensity in proportion as the hands were nearer its middle.

Von Reichenbach next came upon the observation that the human hand gives out the Od force; and that the right hand displays the characters of negative Od, the left those of positive Od. The more sensitive subjects recognised, in the dark, the appearance of dim flames proceeding from the tips of his fingers; and all felt the corresponding sensations of drafts of cool or of warm air. Subsequently the whole body was found to share the properties of the hands; the entire right side to manifest negative Od, the entire left side positive Od.

So, in reference to this new force, the human body exhibits a transverse polarity; the condition is thus realized which is required to belong to the hypothetical force through which the divining rod might be supposed to move. If any terrestrial influence were capable of disturbing the Od force in the body, however it might affect its intensity, a current or circuit could only be established through the arms and hands; unless, indeed, some extraordinary means were taken, such as employing an artificial conductor, arched half round the body, to connect the two sides.

The sensations which attend the establishment of a current of Od and interferences with it, in sensitive subjects, are exemplified in the following observations:—

A bar magnet was laid on the palm of the left hand of one of the most sensitive subjects, with its southward pole resting on the end of her middle finger, the northward pole on the fore-arm above the wrist. It thus corresponded with the natural polar arrangement of the Od force in the patient’s hand and arm. Accordingly, no sensation was excited. But when the position of the magnet was reversed, and the northward pole lay on the end of the middle finger of the left hand, an uneasy sense of an inward conflict arose in the hand and wrist, which disappeared when the magnet was removed or its original direction restored. On laying the magnet reversed on the fore-arm, the sense of an inward struggle returned, which was heightened on joining the hands and establishing a circuit.

When the patient completed the circuit in another way—namely, by holding a bar magnet by the ends, if the latter were disposed normally, (that is, if the northward pole was held in the left hand, the southward pole in the right,) a lively consciousness of some inward action ensued. A normal circulation of Od was in progress. When the direction of the magnet was reversed, the phenomenon mentioned in the last paragraph recurred. The patient experienced a high degree of uneasiness, a feeling as of an inward struggle extending itself to the chest, with a sense of whirling round, and confusion in the head. These symptoms disappeared immediately upon her letting go the magnet.

Similar results ensued when Von Reichenbach substituted himself for the magnet. When he took Miss Maix’s hands in his normally—that is to say, her left in his right, her right in his left—she felt a circulation moving up the right arm through the chest down the left arm, attended with a sense of giddiness. When he changed hands, the disagreeableness of the sensation was suddenly heightened, the sense of inward conflict arose, attended with a sort of undulation up and down the arms, and through the chest, which quickly became intolerable.

A singular but consistent difference in the result ensued when Von Reichenbach repeated the last two experiments upon Herr Schuh. Herr Schuh was a strong man, thirty years of age, in full health, but highly impressible by Od. When Von Reichenbach took his two hands in his own normally, Herr Schuh felt the normal establishment of the Od current in his arms and chest. In a few seconds headache and vertigo ensued, and the experiment was too disagreeable to be prolonged. But when Von Reichenbach took his hands abnormally, no sensible effect ensued. Being equally strong with Von Reichenbach, Herr Schuh’s frame repelled the counter-current, which the latter arrangement tended to throw into him. In the first or normal arrangement, the Od current had met with no resistance, but had simply gone its natural course. The distress occurred from its being felt through Herr Schuh’s accidental sensitiveness to Od; of the freaks of which in their systems people in general are unconscious.

I have concluded my case in favour of the pretensions of the divining rod. It seems to me, at all events, strong enough to justify any one who has leisure, in cutting a hazel-fork, and walking about with it in suitable places, holding it in the manner described. I doubt, however, whether I should recommend a friend to make the experiment. If, by good luck, the divining rod should refuse to move in his hands, he might accuse himself of credulity, and feel silly, and hope nobody had seen him, for the rest of the day. If, unfortunately, the first trial should succeed, and he should be led to pursue the inquiry, the consequences would be more serious: his probable fate would be to fall at once several degrees in the estimation of his friends, and to pass with the world, all the rest of his life, for a crotchety person of weak intellects.

As for the divining rod itself, if my argument prove sound, it will be a credit to the family of superstitions; for without any reduction, or clipping, or trimming, it may at once assume the rank of a new truth. But, alas! the trials which await it in that character!—what an ordeal is before it! A new truth has to encounter three normal stages of opposition. In the first, it is denounced as an imposture; in the second—that is, when it is beginning to force itself into notice—it is cursorily examined, and plausibly explained away; in the third, or cui bono stage, it is decried as useless, and hostile to religion. And when it is fully admitted, it passes only under a protest that it has been perfectly known for ages—a proceeding intended to make the new truth ashamed of itself, and wish it had never been born.

I congratulate the sea-serpent on having arrived at the second stage of belief. Since Professor Owen (no disrespect to his genuine ability and eminent knowledge) has explained it into a sea-elephant, its chance of being itself is much improved; and as it will skip the third stage—for who will venture to question the good of a sea-serpent?—it is liable now any morning “to wake and find itself famous,” and to be received even at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where its remains may commemoratively be ticketed the Ex-Great-Seal.

Postscript, (1850.)—It may save trouble to some future experimenter to narrate my own exploits with the divining rod.

In the spring of 1847, being then at Weilbach in Nassau, a region teeming with underground sources of water, I requested the son of the proprietor of the bathing establishment—a tall, thin, pale, white-haired youth, by name Edward Seebold—to walk in my presence up and down a promising spot of ground, holding a divining fork of hazel, with the accessories recommended by M. de Tristan to beginners—that is to say, he held in his right hand three pieces of silver, besides one handle of the rod, while the handle which he held in his left hand was covered with a thin silk.

The lad had not made five steps when the point of the divining fork began to ascend. He laughed with astonishment at the event, which was totally unexpected by him; and he said that he experienced a tickling or thrilling sensation in his hands. He continued to walk up and down before me. The fork had soon described a complete circle; then it described another; and so it continued to do as long as he walked thus, and as often as, after stopping, he resumed his walk. The experiment was repeated by him in my presence, with like success, several times during the ensuing month. Then the lad fell into ill health, and I rarely saw him. However, one day I sent for him, and begged him to do me the favour of making another trial with the divining fork. He did so, but the instrument moved slowly and sluggishly; and when, having completed a semicircle, it pointed backwards towards the pit of his stomach, it stopped, and would go no farther. At the same time the lad said he felt an uneasy sensation, which quickly increased to pain, at the pit of the stomach, and he became alarmed, when I bade him quit hold of one handle of the divining rod, and the pain ceased. Ten minutes afterwards I induced him to make another trial; the results were the same. A few days later, when the lad seemed still more out of health, I induced him to repeat the experiment. Now, however, the divining fork would not move at all.

I entertain little doubt that the above performances of Edward Seebold were genuine. I thought the same of the performances of three English gentlemen, and of a German, in whose hands, however, the divining rod never moved through an entire circle. In the hands of one of them its motion was retrograde, or abnormal: that is to say, it began by descending.

But I met with other cases, which were less satisfactory, though not uninstructive. I should observe that, in the hands of several who tried to use it in my presence, the divining fork would not move an inch. But there were two younger brothers of Edward Seebold, and a bath-maid, and my own man, in whose hands the rod played new pranks. When these parties walked forwards the instrument ascended, or moved normally; but when, by my desire, they walked backwards, the instrument immediately went the other way. I should observe that, in the hands of Edward Seebold, the instrument moved in the same direction whether he walked forwards or backwards; and I have mentioned that at first it described in his hands a complete circle. But with the four parties I have just been speaking of, the motion of the fork was always limited in extent. When it moved normally at starting, it stopped after describing an arc of about 225°; in the same way, when it moved abnormally at starting, it would stop after describing an arc of about 135°; that is to say, there was one spot the same for the two cases, beyond which it could not get. Then I found that, in the hands of my man, the divining rod would move even when he was standing still, although with a less lively action; still it stopped as before, nearly at the same point. Sometimes it ascended, sometimes descended. Then I tried some experiments, touching the point with a magnetic needle. I found, in the course of them, that when my man knew which way I expected the fork to move, it invariably answered my expectations; but when I had the man blindfolded, the results were uncertain and contradictory. The end of all this was, that I became certain that several of those in whose hands the divining rod moves, set it in motion and direct its motion by the pressure of their fingers, and by carrying their hands nearer to, or farther apart. In walking forwards, the hands are unconsciously borne towards each other; in walking backwards, the reverse is the case.

Therefore, I recommend no one to prosecute these experiments unless he can execute them himself, and unless the divining rod describes a complete circle in his hands; and even then he should be on his guard against self-deception.

Postscript II.—I am now (May, 1851) again residing at the bathing establishment of Weilbach, near Mayence; and it was with some interest and curiosity that the other day I requested Mr. Edward Seebold, now a well-grown young man, in full health, to try his hand again with the divining-rod. He readily assented to my request; and he this time knew exactly what result I expected. But the experiment entirely failed. The point of the divining rod rose, as he walked, not more than two or three inches; but this it does with every one who presses the two handles towards each other during the experiment. Afterwards the implement remained perfectly stationary. I think I am not at liberty to withhold this result from the reader, whom it may lead to question, though it cannot induce myself to doubt, the genuineness of the former performances of Mr. E. S.

LETTER II.

Vampyrism.—Tale exemplifying the superstition—The Vampyr state of the body in the grave—Various instances of death-trance—The risk of premature interment considered—The Vampyr visit.

In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager desire to learn, as you phrase it, “all about Vampyrs, if there ever were such things.” I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, although by so doing I interrupt the logical order of my communications. It is, perhaps, all the better. The proper place of this subject falls in the midst of a philosophical disquisition; and it would have been a pity not to present it to you in its pristine colouring. But how came your late tutor, Mr. H., to leave you in ignorance upon a point on which, in my time, schoolboys much your juniors entertained decided opinions?

Were there ever such things as Vampyrs? Tantamne rem tam negligenter! I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings whose existence you have ventured to consider problematical.

“A Vampyr is a dead body which continues to live in the grave; which it leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, whereby it is nourished and preserved in good condition, instead of being decomposed like other dead bodies.”

Upon my word, you really deserve, since Mr. George Combe has clearly shown, in his admirable work on the Constitution of Man, and its adaptation to the surrounding world, that ignorance is a statutable crime before nature, and punished by the laws of Providence—you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr. H. your substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of the nocturnal visit of a Vampyr. Your skepticism will abate pretty considerably when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye—when you are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and nearer approach—when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision in your jugular, preparatory to his commencing his plain but nutritive repast.

You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all for the moment; for Fischer informs us that the bite of a Vampyr leaves in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, “it (the bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal,” unless the bitten person protect himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the Vampyr, and smearing himself with his blood. Unfortunately, indeed, these measures are seldom, if ever, of more than temporary use. Fischer adds, “if through these precautions the life of the victim be prolonged for a period, sooner or later he ends with becoming a Vampyr himself; that is to say, he dies and is buried, but continues to lead a Vampyr life in the grave, nourishing himself by infecting others, and promiscuously propagating Vampyrism.”

This is no romancer’s dream. It is a succinct account of a superstition which to this day services in the east of Europe, where little more than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that period Vampyrism spread like a pestilence through Servia and Wallachia, causing numerous deaths, and disturbing all the land with fear of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt himself secure.

Here is something like a good, solid, practical popular delusion. Do I believe it? To be sure I do. The facts are matter of history: the people died like rotted sheep; and the cause and method of their dying was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died frightened out of their lives, as men have died whose pardon has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would still be worth examining. But there is more in it than that, as the following o’er true tale will convince you, the essential points of which are authenticated by documentary evidence.

In the spring of 1727, there returned from the Levant to the village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years of military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase a cottage and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he gave out that he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept his word. Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and though he must have encountered the rough as well as the smooth of life, and have mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet his naturally good disposition and honest principles had preserved him unscathed in the scenes he had passed through. At all events, such were the thoughts expressed by his neighbours as they discussed his return and settlement among them in the Stube of the village Hof. Nor did the frank and open countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits and steady conduct, argue their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was something occasionally noticeable in his ways—a look and tone that betrayed inward disquiet. Often would he refuse to join his friends, or on some sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his pretty neighbour Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to his own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture of youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence, as you could have seen in all the world. You could not look into her limpid eyes, which steadily returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure and transparent spring of her thoughts. Why, then, did Arnod shrink from meeting her? He was young; had a little property; had health and industry; and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering care? But he did so; yet less and less resolutely, for he felt the charm of her presence. Who could have done otherwise? And how could he long resist—he didn’t—the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl who often sought to cheer his fits of depression?

And they were to be united—were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom would fitfully overcast his countenance, even in the sunshine of those hours.

“What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? It cannot be on my account, I know, for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and that, I think,” (and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her cheeks,) “surely first made me notice you.”

“Nina,” he answered, “I have done, I fear, a great wrong in trying to gain your affections. Nina, I have a fixed impression that I shall not live; yet, knowing this, I have selfishly made my existence necessary to your happiness.”

“How strangely you talk, dear Arnod! Who in the village is stronger and healthier than you? You feared no danger when you were a soldier. What danger do you fear as a villager of Meduegna?”

“It haunts me, Nina.”

“But, Arnod, you were sad before you thought of me. Did you then fear to die?”

“Ah, Nina, it is something worse than death.” And his vigorous frame shook with agony.

“Arnod, I conjure you, tell me.”

“It was in Cossova this fate befell me. Here you have hitherto escaped the terrible scourge. But there they died, and the dead visited the living. I experienced the first frightful visitation, and I fled; but not till I had sought his grave, and exacted the dread expiation from the Vampyr.”

Nina’s blood ran cold. She stood horror-stricken. But her young heart soon mastered her first despair. With a touching voice she spoke—

“Fear not, dear Arnod; fear not now. I will be your shield, or I will die with you!”

And she encircled his neck with her gentle arms, and returning hope shone, Iris-like, amid her falling tears. Afterwards they found a reasonable ground for banishing or allaying their apprehension in the length of time which had elapsed since Arnod left Cossova, during which no fearful visitant had again approached him; and they fondly trusted that gave them security.

It is a strange world. The ills we fear are commonly not those which overwhelm us. The blows that reach us are for the most part unforeseen. One day, about a week after this conversation, Arnod missed his footing when on the top of a loaded hay-wagon, and fell from it to the ground. He was picked up insensible, and carried home, where, after lingering a short time, he died. His interment, as usual, followed immediately. His fate was sad and premature. But what pencil could paint Nina’s grief!

Twenty or thirty days after his decease, says the perfectly authenticated report of these transactions, several of the neighbourhood complained that they were haunted by the deceased Arnod; and, what was more to the purpose, four of them died. The evil, looked at skeptically, was bad enough, but aggravated by the suggestions of superstition, it spread a panic through the whole district. To allay the popular terror, and if possible to get at the root of the evil, a determination was come to publicly to disinter the body of Arnod, with the view of ascertaining whether he really was a Vampyr, and, in that event, of treating him conformably. The day fixed for this proceeding was the fortieth after his burial.

It was on a gray morning in early August that the commission visited the quiet cemetery of Meduegna, which, surrounded with a wall of unhewn stone, lies sheltered by the mountain that, rising in undulating green slopes, irregularly planted with fruit trees, ends in an abrupt craggy ridge, feathered with underwood. The graves were, for the most part, neatly kept, with borders of box, or something like it, and flowers between; and at the head of most a small wooden cross, painted black, bearing the name of the tenant. Here and there a stone had been raised. One of considerable height, a single narrow slab, ornamented with grotesque Gothic carvings, dominated over the rest. Near this lay the grave of Arnod Paole, towards which the party moved. The work of throwing out the earth was begun by the gray, crooked old sexton, who lived in the Leichenhaus, beyond the great crucifix. He seemed unconcerned enough; no Vampyr would think of extracting a supper out of him. Nearest the grave stood two military surgeons, or feldscherers, from Belgrade, and a drummer-boy, who held their case of instruments. The boy looked on with keen interest; and when the coffin was exposed and rather roughly drawn out of the grave, his pale face and bright intent eye showed how the scene moved him. The sexton lifted the lid of the coffin: the body had become inclined to one side. Then turning it straight, “Ha! ha!” said he, pointing to fresh blood upon the lips—“Ha! ha! What! Your mouth not wiped since last night’s work?” The spectators shuddered; the drummer-boy sank forward, fainting, and upset the instrument-case, scattering its contents; the senior surgeon, infected with the horror of the scene, repressed a hasty exclamation, and simply crossed himself. They threw water on the drummer-boy, and he recovered, but would not leave the spot. Then they inspected the body of Arnod. It looked as if it had not been dead a day. On handling it, the scarf-skin came off, but below were new skin and new nails! How could they have come there but from its foul feeding! The case was clear enough; there lay before them the thing they dreaded—the Vampyr. So, without more ado, they simply drove a stake through poor Arnod’s chest, whereupon a quantity of blood gushed forth, and the corpse uttered an audible groan. “Murder! oh, murder!” shrieked the drummer-boy, as he rushed wildly, with convulsed gestures, from the cemetery.

The drummer-boy was not far from the mark. But, quitting the romancing vein, which had led me to try and restore the original colours of the picture, let me confine myself, in describing the rest of the scene and what followed, to the words of my authority.

The body of Arnod was then burnt to ashes, which were returned to the grave. The authorities further staked and burnt the bodies of the four others which were supposed to have been infected by Arnod. No mention is made of the state in which they were found. The adoption of these decisive measures failed, however, entirely to extinguish the evil, which continued still to hang about the village. About five years afterwards it had again become very rife, and many died through it; whereupon the authorities determined to make another and a complete clearance of the Vampyrs in the cemetery, and with that object they had all the graves, to which present suspicion attached, opened, and their contents officially anatomized, of which procedure the following is the medical report, here and there abridged only:—

1. A woman of the name of Stana, twenty years of age, who had died three months before of a three days’ illness following her confinement. She had before her death avowed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a Vampyr, to liberate herself from his persecution. Nevertheless, she, as well as her infant, whose body through careless interment had been half eaten by the dogs, had died. Her body was entirely free from decomposition. On opening it, the chest was found full of recently effused blood, and the bowels had exactly the appearances of sound health. The skin and nails of her hands and feet were loose and came off, but underneath lay new skin and nails.

2. A woman of the name of Miliza, who had died at the end of a three months’ illness. The body had been buried ninety and odd days. In the chest was liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance. The body was declared by a heyduk, who recognised it, to be in better condition, and fatter, than it had been in the woman’s legitimate lifetime.

3. The body of a child eight years old, that had likewise been buried ninety days: it was in the Vampyr condition.

4. The son of a heyduk named Milloc, sixteen years old. The body had lain in the grave nine weeks. He had died after three days’ indisposition, and was in the condition of a Vampyr.

5. Joachim, likewise son of a heyduk, seventeen years old. He had died after three days’ illness; had been buried eight weeks and some days; was found in the Vampyr state.

6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of ten days’ duration, and had been six weeks buried, in whom likewise fresh blood was found in the chest.

(The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest, it is first necessary to cut the chest open.)

7. The body of a girl of ten years of age, who had died two months before. It was likewise in the Vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood in the chest.

8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried seven weeks before; and that of her infant, eight weeks old, buried only twenty-one days. They were both in a state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely adjoining the others.

9. A servant, by name Rhade, twenty-three years of age; he had died after an illness of three months’ duration, and the body had been buried five weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.

10. The body of the heyduk Stanco, sixty years of age, who had died six weeks previously. There was much blood and other fluid in the chest and abdomen, and the body was in the Vampyr condition.

11. Millac, a heyduk, twenty-five years old. The body had been in the earth six weeks. It was perfectly in the Vampyr condition.

12. Stanjoika, the wife of a heyduk, twenty years old; had died after an illness of three days, and had been buried eighteen. The countenance was florid. There was blood in the chest and in the heart. The viscera were perfectly sound; the skin remarkably fresh.

The document which gives the above particulars is signed by three regimental surgeons, and formally countersigned by a lieutenant-colonel and sub-lieutenant. It bears the date of “June 7, 1732, Meduegna near Belgrade.” No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, or of its general fidelity; the less that it does not stand alone, but is supported by a mass of evidence to the same effect. It appears to establish, beyond question, that where the fear of Vampyrism prevails, and there occur several deaths, in the popular belief connected with it, the bodies, when disinterred weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses from which life has only recently departed.

What inference shall we draw from this fact?—that Vampyrism is true in the popular sense?—and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned corpses had some mysterious source of preternatural nourishment? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let us content ourselves with a notion not so monstrous, but still startling enough: that the bodies, which were found in the so-called Vampyr state, instead of being in a new or mystical condition, were simply alive in the common way, or had been so for some time subsequent to their interment; that, in short, they were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive, and whose life, where it yet lingered, was finally extinguished through the ignorance and barbarity of those who disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that above described, the correctness of this inference comes out with terrific force.

Erasmus Francisci, in his remarks upon the description of the Dukedom of Krain by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a Vampyr, and as such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.

“When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face was found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of movements, as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth as if he would inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called in a loud voice, ‘See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul from hell, and died for you.’ After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing, and he had connected perhaps some ideas with it, tears began to flow from the dead man’s eyes. Finally, when after a short prayer for his poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive—and the grave was full of blood.”

We have thus succeeded in interpreting one of the unknown terms in the Vampyr theorem. The suspicious character, who had some dark way of nourishing himself in the grave, turns out to be an unfortunate gentleman (or lady) whom his friends had buried under a mistake while he was still alive, and who, if they afterwards mercifully let him alone, died sooner or later either naturally or of the premature interment—in either case, it is to be hoped, with no interval of restored consciousness. The state which thus passed for death and led to such fatal consequences, apart from superstition, deserves our serious consideration; for, although of very rare, it is of continual occurrence, and society is not sufficiently on its guard against a contingency so dreadful when overlooked. When the nurse or the doctor has announced that all is over—that the valued friend or relative has breathed his last—no doubt crosses any one’s mind of the reality of the sad event. Disease is now so well understood—every step in its march laid down and foreseen—the approach of danger accurately estimated—the liability of the patient, according to his powers of resisting it, to succumb earlier or to hold out longer—all is theoretically so clear that a wholesome suspicion of error in the verdict of the attendants seldom suggests itself. The evil I am considering ought not, however, to be attributed to redundance of knowledge: it arises from its partial lack—from a too general neglect of one very important section in pathological science. The laity, if not the doctors too, constantly lose sight of the fact, that there exists an alternative to the fatal event of ordinary disease; that a patient is liable at any period of illness to deviate, or, as it were, to slide off, from the customary line of disease into another and a deceptive route—instead of death, to encounter apparent death.

The Germans express this condition of the living body by the term “scheintod,” which signifies exactly apparent death; and it is perhaps a better term than our English equivalent, “suspended animation.” But both these expressions are generic terms, and a specific term is still wanted to denote the present class of instances. To meet this exigency, I propose, for reasons which will afterwards appear, to employ the term “death-trance” to designate the cases we are investigating.

Death-trance is, then, one of the forms of suspended animation: there are several others. After incomplete poisoning, after suffocation in either of its various ways, after exposure to cold in infants newly born, a state is occasionally met with, of which (however each may still differ from the rest) the common feature is an apparent suspension of the vital actions. But all of these so-cited instances agree in another important respect, which second inter-agreement separates them as a class from death-trance. They represent, each and all, a period of conflict between the effects of certain deleterious impressions and the vital principle, the latter struggling against the weight and force of the former. Such is not the case in death-trance.

Death-trance is a positive status—a period of repose —the duration of which is sometimes definite and predetermined, though unknown. Thus the patient, the term of the death-trance having expired, occasionally suddenly wakes, entirely and at once restored. Oftener, however, the machinery which has been stopped seems to require to be jogged—then it goes on again.

The basis of death-trance is suspension of the action of the heart, and of the breathing, and of voluntary motion; generally likewise feeling and intelligence, and the vegetative changes in the body, are suspended. With these phenomena is joined loss of external warmth; so that the usual evidence of life is gone. But there have occurred varieties of this condition, in which occasional slight manifestations of one or other of the vital actions have been observed.

Death-trance may occur as a primary affection, suddenly or gradually. The diseases the course of which it is liable, as it were, to bifurcate, or to graft itself upon, are first and principally all disorders of the nervous system. But in any form of disease, when the body is brought to a certain degree of debility, death-trance may supervene. Age and sex have to do with its occurrence; which is more frequent in the young than in the old, in women than in men—differences evidently connected with greater irritability of the nervous system. Accordingly, women in labour are among the most liable to death-trance, and it is from such a case that I will give a first instance of the affection as portrayed by a medical witness. (Journal des Savans, 1749.)

M. Rigaudeaux, surgeon to the military hospital, and licensed accoucher at Douai, was sent for on the 8th of September, 1745, to attend the wife of Francis Dumont, residing two leagues from the town. He was late in getting there; it was half-past eight, A. M.—too late, it seemed; the patient was declared to have died at six o’clock, after eighteen hours of ineffectual labour-pains. M. Rigaudeaux inspected the body; there was no pulse or breath; the mouth was full of froth, the abdomen tumid. He brought away the infant, which he committed to the care of the nurses, who, after trying to reanimate it for three hours, gave up the attempt, and prepared to lay it out, when it opened its mouth. They then gave it wine, and it was speedily recovered. M. Rigaudeaux, who returned to the house as this occurred, inspected again the body of the mother. (It had been already nailed down in a coffin.) He examined it with the utmost care; but he came to the conclusion that it was certainly dead. Nevertheless, as the joints of the limbs were still flexible, although seven hours had elapsed since its apparent death, he left the strictest injunctions to watch the body carefully, to apply stimulants to the nostrils from time to time, to slap the palms of the hands, and the like. At half-past three o’clock symptoms of returning animation showed themselves, and the patient recovered.

The period during which every ordinary sign of life may be absent, without the prevention of their return, is unknown, but in well-authenticated cases it has much exceeded the period observed in the above instance. Here is an example borrowed from the Journal des Savans, 1741.

There was a Colonel Russell, whose wife, to whom he was affectionately attached, died, or appeared to do so. But he would not allow the body to be buried; and threatened to shoot any one who should interfere to remove it for that purpose. His conduct was guided by reason as well as by affection and instinct. He said he would not part from the body till its decomposition had begun. Eight days had passed, during which the body of his wife gave no sign of life: when, as he sat bedewing her hand with his tears, the church-bell tolled, and, to his unspeakable amazement, his wife sat up and said—“That is the last bell; we shall be too late.” She recovered.

There are cases on record of persons, who could spontaneously fall into death-trance. Monti, in a letter to Haller, adverts to several; and mentions, in particular, a peasant upon whom, when he assumed this state, the flies would settle; breathing, the pulse, and all ordinary signs of life disappeared. A priest of the name of Cælius Rhodaginus had the same faculty. But the most celebrated instance is that of Colonel Townshend, mentioned in the surgical works of Gooch, by whom and by Dr. Cheyne and Dr. Baynard, and by Mr. Shrine, an apothecary, the performance of Colonel Townshend was seen and attested. They had long attended him, for he was an habitual invalid, and he had often invited them to witness the phenomenon of his dying and coming to life again; but they had hitherto refused, from fear of the consequences to himself: at last they assented. Accordingly, in their presence, Colonel Townshend laid himself down on his back, and Dr. Cheyne undertook to observe his pulse; Dr. Baynard laid his hand on his heart, and Mr. Shrine had a looking-glass to hold to his mouth. After a few seconds, pulse, breathing, and the action of the heart, were no longer to be observed. Each of the witnesses satisfied himself of the entire cessation of these phenomena. When the death-trance had lasted half-an-hour, the doctors began to fear that their patient had pushed the experiment too far, and was dead in earnest; and they were preparing to leave the house, when a slight movement of the body attracted their attention. They renewed their routine of observation; when the pulse and sensible motion of the heart gradually returned, and breathing, and consciousness. The tale ends abruptly. Colonel Townshend, on recovering, sent for his attorney, made his will, and died, for good and all, six hours afterwards.

Although many have recovered from death-trance, and there seems to be in each case a definite period to its duration, yet its event is not always so fortunate. The patient sometimes really dies during its continuance, either unavoidably, or in consequence of adequate measures not being taken to stimulate him to waken, or to support life. The following very good instance rests on the authority of Dr. Schmidt, a physician of the hospital of Paderborn, where it occurred, (Rheinisch-Westphälischer Anzeiger, 1835, No. 57 and 58.)

A young man of the name of Caspar Kreite, from Berne, died in the hospital of Paderborn, but his body could not be interred for three weeks, for the following reasons. During the first twenty-four hours after drawing its last breath, the corpse opened its eyes, and the pulse could be felt, for a few minutes, beating feebly and irregularly. On the third and fourth day, points of the skin, which had been burned to test the reality of his death, suppurated. On the fifth day the corpse changed the position of one hand: on the ninth day a vesicular eruption appeared on the back. For nine days there was a vertical fold of the skin of the forehead—a sort of frown—and the features had not the character of death. The lips remained red till the eighteenth day; and the joints preserved their flexibility from first to last. He lay in this state in a warm room for nineteen days, without any farther alteration than a sensible wasting in flesh. Till after the nineteenth day no discoloration of the body, or odour of putrefaction, was observed. He had been cured of ague, and laboured under a slight chest affection; but there had been no adequate cause for his death. It is evident that this person was much more alive than many are in the death-trance; and one half suspects that stimulants and nourishment, properly introduced, might have entirely reanimated him.

I might exemplify death-trance by many a well authenticated romantic story.—A noise heard in a vault; the people, instead of breaking open the door, go for the keys, and for authority to act, and return too late; the unfortunate person is found dead, having previously gnawn her hand and arm in agony.—A lady is buried with a jewel of value on her finger; thieves open the vault to possess themselves of the treasure; the ring cannot be drawn from the finger, and the thieves proceed to cut the finger off; the lady, wakening from her trance, scares the thieves away, and recovers.—A young married lady dies and is buried; a former admirer, to whom her parents had refused her hand, bribes the sexton to let him see once more the form he loved. The body opportunely comes to life at this moment, and flies from Paris with its first lover to England, where they are married. Venturing to return to France, the lady is recognised, and is reclaimed by her previous husband through a suit at law; her counsel demurs, on the ground of the desertion and burial; but the law not admitting this plea, she flies again to England with her preserver, to avoid the judgment of the parliament of Paris, in the acts of which the case stands recorded. There are one or two other cases that I dare not cite, the particulars of which transcend the wildest flights of imagination.

It may be thought that these are all tales of the olden time; and that the very case I have given from the hospital at Paderborn shows that now medical men are sufficiently circumspect, and the public really on its guard to prevent a living person being interred as one dead. And I grant that in England, among all but the poorest class, the danger is practically inconsiderable of being buried alive. But that it still exists for every class, and that for the poor the danger is great and serious, I am afraid there is too much reason for believing. It is stated in Froriep’s Notizen, 1829, No. 522, that, agreeably to a then recent ordinance in New York, coffins presented for burial were kept above ground eight days, open at the head, and so arranged, that the least movement of the body would ring a bell, through strings attached to the hands and feet. It will hardly be credited, that out of twelve hundred whose interment had been thus postponed, six returned to life—one in every two hundred! The arrangement thus beneficently adopted at New York is, however, imperfect, as it makes time the criterion for interment. The time is not known during which a body in death-trance may remain alive. Nothing but one positive condition of the body, which I will presently mention, authenticates death. It is frightful to think how, in the south of Europe, within twenty-four hours after the last breath bodies are shovelled into pits among heaped corpses; and to imagine what fearful agonies of despair must sometimes be encountered by unhappy beings, who wake amid the unutterable horrors of such a grave. But it is enough to look at home, and to make no delay in providing there for the careful watching of the bodies of the poor, till life has certainly departed. Many do not dream how barbarous and backward the vaunted nineteenth century will appear to posterity!

But there is another danger to which society is obnoxious through not making sufficient account of the contingency of death-trance, that appears to me more urgent and menacing than even the risk of being buried alive.

The danger I advert to is not this; but this is something—

The Cardinal Espinosa, prime minister under Philip the Second of Spain, died, as it was supposed, after a short illness. His rank entitled him to be embalmed. Accordingly, the body was opened for that purpose. The lungs and heart had just been brought into view, when the latter was seen to beat. The cardinal awakening at the fatal moment, had still strength enough left to seize with his hand the knife of the anatomist!

But it is this—

On the 23d of September, 1763, the Abbé Prevost, the French novelist and compiler of travels, was seized with a fit in the forest of Chantilly. The body was found, and conveyed to the residence of the nearest clergyman. It was supposed that death had taken place through apoplexy. But the local authorities, desiring to be satisfied of the fact, ordered the body to be examined. During the process, the poor abbé uttered a cry of agony.—It was too late.

It is to be observed that cases of sudden and unexplained death are, on the one hand, the cases most likely to furnish a large percentage of death-trance; and, on the other, are just those in which the anxiety of friends or the over-zealousness of a coroner is liable to lead to premature anatomization. Nor does it even follow that, because the body happily did not wake while being dissected, the spark of life was therefore extinct. This view, however, is too painful to be followed out in reference to the past. But it imperatively suggests the necessity of forbidding necroscopic examinations, before there is perfect evidence that life has departed—that is, of extending to this practice the rule which ought to be made absolute in reference to interment.

Thus comes out the practical importance of the question, how is it to be known that the body is no longer alive?

The entire absence of the ordinary signs of life is insufficient to prove the absence of life. The body may be externally cold; the pulse not be felt; breathing may have ceased; no bodily motion may occur; the limbs may be stiff (through spasm); the sphincter muscles relaxed; no blood may flow from an opened vein; the eyes may have become glassy; there may be partial mortification to offend the sense with the smell of death; and yet the body may be alive.

The only security we at present know of, that life has left the body, is the supervention of chemical decomposition, shown in commencing change of colour of the integuments of the abdomen and throat to blue and green, and an attendant cadaverous fetor.

To return from this important digression to the former subject of the Vampyr superstition. The second element which we have yet to explain is the Vampyr visit and its consequence—the lapse of the party visited into death-trance. There are two ways of dealing with this knot; one is to cut it, the other to untie it.

It may be cut, by denying the supposed connexion between the Vampyr visit and the supervention of death-trance in the second party. Nor is the explanation thus obtained devoid of plausibility. There is no reason why death-trance should not, in certain seasons and places, be epidemic. Then the persons most liable to it would be those of weak and irritable nervous systems. Again, a first effect of the epidemic might be further to shake the nerves of weaker subjects. These are exactly the persons who are likely to be infected with imaginary terrors, and to dream, or even to fancy, they have seen Mr. or Mrs. such a one, the last victims of the epidemic. The dream or impression upon the senses might again recur, and the sickening patient have already talked of it to his neighbours, before he himself was seized with death-trance. On this supposition, the Vampyr visit would sink into the subordinate rank of a mere premonitory symptom.

To myself, I must confess, this explanation, the best I am yet in a position to offer, appears barren and jejune; and not at all to do justice to the force and frequency, or, as tradition represents the matter, the universality of the Vampyr visit as a precursor of the victim’s fate. Imagine how strong must have been the conviction of the reality of the apparition, how common a feature it must have been, to have led to the laying down of the unnatural and repulsive process customarily followed at the Vampyr’s grave, as the regular and proper preventive of ulterior consequences.

I am disposed, therefore, rather to try and untie this knot, and with that object to wait, hoping that something may turn up in the progress of these inquiries to assist me in its solution. In the mean time, I would beg leave to consider this second half of the problem a compound phenomenon, the solutions of the two parts of which may not emerge simultaneously. The Vampyr visit is one thing; its presumed contagious effect another.

The Vampyr visit! Well, it is clear the Vampyr could not have left his grave bodily—or, at all events, if he could, he never could have buried himself again. Yet in his grave they always found him. So the body could not have been the visitant. Then, in popular language, it was the ghost of the Vampyr that haunted its future victim. The ghostly nature of the visitant could not have been identified at a luckier moment. The very subject which I next propose to undertake is the analysis of ghosts. I have, therefore, only to throw the Vampyr ghost into the crucible with the rest; and to-morrow I may perhaps be able to report the rational composition of the whole batch.

LETTER III.

Unreal Ghosts—Law of Sensorial Illusions—Cases of Nicolai, Schwedenborg, Joan of Arc—Fetches—Churchyard ghosts.

The projected analysis has been crowned with success. The fumes of superstition have been driven off, and the ghosts have been reduced to rational elements. All trace of supernatural agency has vanished; and in its place are found three principles—one physical, two psychical—by the help of which every conceivable ghost may in future be alternately decomposed and recompounded by the merest tyro.

The first of which I shall describe the nature and operation is a psychical truth, already known to most persons of education. It is of very general use in ghost-building; it forms the immediate personnel of every ghost; and is of so active a nature that alone, or assisted by a little credulity, it is enough to constitute the simplest kind—a common fetch. Mixed with a dose of mental anxiety, or as much remorse as will lie on the point of a dagger, it will form a troublesome retrospective ghost. The second principle—a physical one, less generally known—is the basis of that sturdy apparition the churchyard ghost, which it will turn out in very fair style aided by fancy alone; but, to perfect the illusive result, the co-operation of the first principle is necessary. The third, an entirely new one, is the foundation of real ghosts—that is, of ghosts which announce unexpected events, distant in space or time; the same principle is concerned in true dreams, and in second-sight.

The first of the three principles adverted to is the physiological fact that, when the blood is heated, the nervous system overstrained, or digestion out of sorts, the thereby directly or sympathetically disordered brain is liable to project before us illusory forms, which are coloured and move like life, and are so far undistinguishable from reality. Sometimes a second sense is drawn into the phantasmagoria, and the fictitious beings speak as you do. Almost always the illusion stops there. But in one or two marvellous cases, the touch has been involved in the hallucination, and the ghost has been tangible. These phenomena are termed sensorial illusions. The visual part of them, the first and commonest, has been the most attended to. The cause immediately producing it appears to be an affection, not of the organ of vision, but of that part of the brain in which the nerves of seeing take their origin. This organ it is which in health realizes our sensations of colour, and converts them into visual perceptions. Like other parts of the brain, it is stored with memories of its past impressions, ready to be evoked—either pure and true by conception, or any how combined by fancy. In perfect health, a chance moment of warm recollection will call up from this source the once familiar face transiently, but how distinctly!

In its morbid state, the beings it projects before us are for the most part strangers, just as the personages we meet in our dreams are exceptionally only our living and present acquaintance.

The most instructive case of sensorial illusions on record, as containing the largest illustration of the phenomena, is that of Nicolai, the bookseller of Berlin. The narrative was read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, in 1799. Its substance runs thus:—Nicolai had met with some family troubles, which much disturbed him. Then, on the first of January, 1791, there stood before him, at the distance of ten paces, the ghost of his eldest son. He pointed at it, directing his wife to look. She saw it not, and tried to convince Nicolai that it was an illusion. In a quarter of an hour it vanished. In the afternoon, at four o’clock, it came again. Nicolai was alone. He went to his wife’s room, the ghost followed him. About six other apparitions joined the first, and they walked about among each other. After some days the apparition of his son stayed away; but its place was filled with the figures of a number of persons, some known, some unknown to Nicolai—some of dead, others of living persons. The known ones represented distant acquaintances only. The figures of none of Nicolai’s habitual friends were there. The appearances were almost always human; occasionally a man on horseback, and birds, and dogs, would present themselves. The apparitions came mostly after dinner, at the commencement of digestion; they were just like real persons, the colouring a thought fainter. The apparitions were equally distinct whether Nicolai was alone or in society, in the dark as by day; in his own house or in those of others; but in the latter case they were less frequent, and they very seldom made their appearance in the streets. During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of one another, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and there communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or of the remarks he addressed regarding them to his wife and physician. No effort of his would dismiss them, or bring an absent one back. When he shut his eyes, they sometimes disappeared, sometimes remained; when he opened his eyes, they were there as before. After a week they became more numerous, and began to converse. They conversed with one another first, and then addressed him. Their remarks were short and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His acquaintances inquired after his health, and expressed sympathy with him, and spoke in terms comforting him. The apparitions were most conversable when he was alone; nevertheless, they mingled in the conversation when others were by, and their voices had the same sound as those of real persons. The illusion went on thus from the 24th of February to the 20th of April; so that Nicolai, who was in good bodily health, had time to become tranquillized about the nature of his visiters, and to observe them at his ease. At last they rather amused him; then the doctors thought of an efficient plan of treatment. They prescribed leeches; and then followed the “denouement” of this interesting representation. The apparitions became pale, and vanished. On the 20th of April, at the time of applying the leeches, Nicolai’s room was full of figures moving about among each other. They first began to have a less lively motion; shortly afterwards their colours became paler, in another half hour paler still, though the forms still remained. About seven o’clock in the evening the figures had become colourless, and they moved scarcely at all; but their outline was still tolerably perfect. Gradually that became less and less defined; at last they disappeared, breaking into air, fragments only remaining, which at last all vanished. By eight o’clock all were gone, and Nicolai subsequently saw no more of them.

In general, as in Nicolai’s case, the sight is the sense at first and alone affected. Illusions of the hearing, if they occur, follow later. In some most extraordinary cases, I have observed that the touch has likewise participated in the affection; the following is an instance:—

Herr von Baczko, already subject to visual hallucinations of a diseased nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening shortly after the battle of Jena, as he tells in his autobiography, in translating a pamphlet into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy, seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the whole was an illusion, he thought it best to knock the apparition down, when he felt that it offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then attacked him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable twist, when Baczko again pushed him off. The Negro continued to visit him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, finally appearing as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl’s head, he took his leave.

Sensorial illusions, technically speaking, are not mental delusions; or they become so only when they are believed to be realities. So sensorial illusions are not insanity, neither do they menace that disorder: they are not its customary precursors. Nevertheless, they may accompany the first outbreak of madness; and they occur much more frequently in lunatics than in persons of sound mind. In insanity they are firmly believed in by the patient, whose delusions they may either suggest or be shaped by. In insanity, illusions of the hearing often occur alone, which is comparatively rare in sane people.

The objects of visual illusions are commonly men and women; but animals, and even inanimate objects, sometimes constitute them. A lady whose sight was failing her had long visions every day of rows of buildings, houses, and parks, and such like. The subjects of visual illusions are generally perfectly trivial, like the events of a common dream. But, though susceptible of change, their custom is to recur with much the same character daily. One patient could at will summon the apparition of an acquaintance to join the rest; but, once there, he could not get rid of him.

Sometimes it happens that sensorial illusions are in accordance with a congenial train of thought—for instance, with peculiar impressions referring to religion. They are then very liable to be construed by the patient into realities, and to materially influence his conversation and conduct. He remains, no doubt, strictly sane in the midst of these delusions. But he is apt not to be thought so; or, to use a figure, the world’s opinion of such a person becomes a polar force, and society is divided into his admiring followers and those who think him a lunatic. Such was, and remains, the fate of Schwedenborg.

Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg, ennobled as Schwedenborg, was up to the year 1743, which was the fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished only in literature, having written many volumes on philosophy and science, and being professor in the Mineralogical School, where he was much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their revelations, but was in the habit of detailing their daily chat with him. Thus he says, “I had a conversation the other day on that very point with the apostle Paul,” or with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what he believed to be constant communion with spirits till his death, in 1772. He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wurtemburg Prelate, Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words: “If I have spoken with the apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St. Paul during a whole year, particularly with reference to the text, Romans iii. 28. I have three times conversed with St. John, once with Moses, and a hundred times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an angel that he professed fidem solam, and that he stood alone upon the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these twenty years conversed, and converse daily.”

Of the angels, he says, “They have human forms, the appearance of men, as I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them as a man with other men—often with several together—and I have seen nothing in the least to distinguish them from other men.” They had, in fact, exactly the same appearance as Nicolai’s visiters. “Lest any one should call this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I am accustomed to see them when myself perfectly wide awake, and in full exercise of my observation. The speech of an angel, or of a spirit, sounds like and as loud as that of a man; but it is not heard by the bystanders. The reason is, that the speech of an angel, or a spirit, finds entrance first into a man’s thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing from within.” A wonderful instance this last reason how it is possible cum ratione insanire; he analyzes the illusion perfectly, even when he is most deceived by it.

“The angels who converse with men speak not in their own language, but in the language of the country; and likewise in other languages which are known to a man, not in languages which he does not understand.” Schwedenborg here interrupted the angels, and, to explain the matter, observed that they most likely appeared to speak his mother tongue, because, in fact, it was not they who spoke, but himself after their suggestions. The angels would not allow this, and went away at the close of the conversation unpersuaded.

The following fiction is very fine: “When approaching, the angels often appear like a ball of light; and they travel in companies so grouped together—they are allowed so to unite by the Lord—that they may act as one being, and share each other’s ideas and knowledge; and in this form they bound through the universe, from planet to planet.”

A still more interesting example of the influence of sensorial illusions on human conduct is furnished by the touching history of Joan of Arc.

“It is now seven years ago,” so spoke before her judges the simple but high-minded maiden—“it was a summer day, towards the middle hour, I was about thirteen years old, and was in my father’s garden, that I heard for the first time, on my right hand, towards the church, a voice, and there stood a figure in a bright radiance before my eyes. It had the appearance and look of a right good and virtuous man, bore wings, was surrounded with light on all sides, and by the angels of heaven. It was the archangel Michael. The voice seemed to me to command respect; but I was yet a child, and was frightened at the figure, and doubted very much whether it were the archangel. I saw him and the angels as distinctly before my eyes as I now see you, my judges.” With words of encouragement the archangel announced to her that God had taken pity upon France, and that she must hasten to the assistance of the King. At the same time he promised her that St. Catharine and St. Margaret would shortly visit her: he told her that she should do what they commanded her, because they were sent by God to guide and conduct her. “Upon this,” continued Joan, “St. Catharine and St. Margaret appeared to me, as the archangel had foretold. They ordered me to get ready to go to Robert de Beaudricourt, the King’s captain. He would several times refuse me, but at last would consent, and give me people who would conduct me to the King. Then should I raise the siege of Orleans. I replied to them that I was a poor child, who understood nothing about riding on horseback and making war. They said I should carry my banner with courage; God would help me, and win back for my king his entire kingdom. As soon as I knew,” continued Joan, “that I was to proceed on this errand, I avoided as much as I could taking part in the sports and amusements of my young companions.” “So have the saints conducted me during seven years, and have given me support and assistance in all my need and labours; and now at present,” said she to her judges, “no day goes by but they come to see me.” “I seldom see the saints that they are not surrounded with a halo of light; they wear rich and precious crowns, as it is reasonable they should. I see them always under the same forms, and have never found in their discourse any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the other, and distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by their salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when they do not come, I pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and never have I needed them but they have visited me.”

Such is part of the defence of the heroic Joan of Arc, who was taken prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23d of May, 1430—sold by him for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a heretic, idolatress, and magician—condemned, and finally burned alive on the 30th of May, 1431!

Her innocence, simplicity, and courage incense one sadly against her judges; but it is likely there were at that time many good and sensible persons who approved of her sentence, and never suspected its cruelty and injustice. Making allowance for the ignorance and barbarity of the age, her treatment was, perhaps, not worse than that of Abd-el-Kader now. Her visions—they were palpably the productions of her own fancy, the figures of saints and angels, which she had seen in missals, projected before her mental sight; and their cause the instinctive workings, unknown to herself, of her young high-couraged and enthusiastic heart, shaping its suggestions into holy prophesyings—the leading facts of which her resolute will realized, while their actual discrepancies with subsequent events she pardonably forgot.[1]

I will present yet another and less pleasing picture, where the subject of sensorial illusions was of infirm mind, and they struck upon the insane chord, and reason jangled harshly out of tune. It would be a curious question whether such a sensorial illusion as overthrew the young seer’s judgment in the following case, could have occurred to a mind previously sane; whether, for instance, it could have occurred to Schwedenborg, and, in that event, how he would have dealt with it.

Arnold (a German writer) relates, in his history of the church and of heresy, how there was a young man in Königsberg, well educated, the natural son of a priest, who had the impression that he was met near a crucifix on the wayside by seven angels, who revealed to him that he was to represent God the Father on earth, to drive all evil out of the world, &c. The poor fellow, after pondering upon this illusion a long time, issued a circular, beginning thus:

“We John, Albrecht, Adelgreif, Syrdos, Amata, Kanemata, Kilkis, Mataldis, Schmalkilimundis, Sabrandis, Elioris, Hyperarch-High-priest and Emperor, Prince of Peace of the whole world, Hyperarch-King of the holy kingdom of Heaven, Judge of the living and of the dead, God and Father, in whose divinity Christ will come on the last day to judge the world, Lord of all lords, King of all kings,” &c.

He was thereupon thrown into prison at Königsberg, where every means were used by the clergy to reclaim him from these blasphemous and heretical notions. To all their entreaties, however, he listened only with a smile of pity—“that they should think of reclaiming God the Father.” He was then put to the torture, and as what he endured made no alteration in his convictions, he was condemned to have his tongue torn out with red-hot tongs, to be cut in four quarters, and then burned under the gallows. He wept bitterly, not at his own fate, but that they should pronounce such a sentence on the Deity. The executioner was touched with pity, and implored him to make a final recantation. But he persisted that he was God the Father, whether they pulled his tongue out by the roots or not; and so he was executed!

From the preceding forcible illustrations of the working of sensorial illusions on individual minds, it is to descend a little in interest to trace their ministry in giving rise to the rickety forms of popular superstition. However, the material may be the same, whether it be cast for the commemoration of a striking event or coined for vulgar currency. And here is a piece of the latter description, with the recommendation of being at least fresh from the mint, and spic-and-span new—an instance of superstition surviving in England in the middle of the nineteenth century.

A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me that he was one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home, he had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him, the rider and horse being close facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even to the copy of a new fangled bit which he sported that day for the first time. He had, in fact, seen his “double” or “Fetch,” and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably. His friends advised him to consult the college-tutor, who failed not to give him some good advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown away. My informant, who thought the whole matter very serious, and was inclined to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added that it had made the ghost-seer, for the time at least, a wiser and better man.

Such a visionary duplicate of one’s-self—one’s fetch—is a not unfrequent form of sensorial illusion. In more ignorant days the appearance of a fetch excited much apprehension. It was supposed to menace death or serious calamity to its original. Properly viewed, unless it proceed from hard work and overstrained thought, (from which you can desist,) it indicates something wrong in your physical health, and its warning goes no further than to consult a doctor, to learn, “what rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug will drive the spectre hence.” The efficiency of such means was shown in the case of Nicolai. Yet in this case, I may remark, the originating cause of the attack had been anxiety about the very son whose apparition was the first of the throng to visit him. Had the illusion continued limited to the figure of the son, it would have been more questionable what art could do towards dismissing it. At all events, in such a case, the first thing is to remove the perilous stuff that weighs upon the mind. So the personage whose words I have been using was doubtless right, in his own case, to “throw physic to the dogs.”

In the tragedy of Macbeth, sensorial illusions are made to play their part with curious physiological correctness. The mind of Macbeth is worn by the conflict between ambition and duty. At last his better resolves give way; and his excited fancy projects before him the fetch of his own dagger, which marshals him the way that he shall go. The spectator is thus artistically prepared for the further working of the same infirmity in the apparition of Banquo, which, unseen by his guests, is visible only to the conscience-stricken murderer. With a scientific precision no less admirable, the partner of his guilt—a woman—is made to have attacks of trance, (to which women are more liable than men,) caused by her disturbed mind; and in her trance the exact physiological character of one form of that disorder is portrayed—she enacts a dream, which is the essence of somnambulism.

One almost doubts whether Shakspeare was aware of the philosophic truth displayed in these master-strokes of his own art. The apparitions conjured up in the witch scenes of the same play, and the ghost in Hamlet, are moulded on the pattern of vulgar superstition. He employs indifferently the baser metal and the truthful inspirations of his own genius—realizing Shelley’s strange figure of

“a poet hidden

In the light of thought.”

So they say the sun is himself dark as a planet, and his atmosphere alone the source of light, through the gaps in which his common earth is seen. I am tempted—but it would be idle, and I refrain—to quote an expression or two, or a passage, from Shakspeare, exemplifying his wonderful turn for approximating to truths of which he must have been ignorant—where lines of admired and unaccountable beauty have unexpectedly acquired lucidity and appositeness through modern science. While, to make a quaint comparison, his great contemporary, Bacon, employed the lamp of his imagination to illuminate the paths to the discovery of truth, Shakspeare would, with random intuition, seize on the undiscovered truths themselves, and use them to vivify the conceptions of his fancy.

Let me now turn to explain a ghost of a more positive description—the churchyard ghost. The ghost will perhaps exclaim against so trivial a title, and one so unjust in reference to old superstition; but it will be seen he deserves no better. In popular story he had a higher office; his duty was to watch the body over which church rites had not been performed, that had been rudely inearthed after violent death. As thus—

There was a cottage in a village I could name to which a bad report attached. More than one who had slept in it had seen, at midnight, the radiant apparition of a little child standing on the hearth-stone. At length suspicion was awakened. The hearth-stone was raised, and there were found buried beneath it the remains of an infant. A story was now divulged how the last tenant and a female of the village had abruptly quitted the neighbourhood. The ghost was real and significant enough.

But here is a still better instance from a trustworthy German work, P. Kieffer’s Archives. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of Strasburg, son-in-law of the well-known writer Pfeffel, from whom he received it.

The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age, of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves, had already experienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive to the presence of human remains, which made him tremble and shudder in all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm of this young man, and they walked thus together in Pfeffel’s garden, near Colmar. At one spot in the garden, Pfeffel remarked that his companion’s arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric shock. Being asked what was the matter, Billing replied, “Nothing.” But on their going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The young man being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed that it arose from a peculiar sensation which he always experienced when in the vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a human body must be interred there; but that, if Pfeffel would return with him at night, he should be able to speak with greater confidence. Accordingly they went together to the garden when it was dark, and as they approached the spot, Billing observed a faint light over it. At ten paces from it he stopped, and would go no farther, for he saw hovering over it, or self-supported in the air—its feet only a few inches from the ground—a luminous female figure, nearly five feet high, with the right arm folded on her breast, the left hanging by her side. When Pfeffel himself stepped forward and placed himself about where the figure appeared to be, Billing said it was now on his right hand, now on his left, now behind, now before him. When Pfeffel cut the air with his stick, it seemed as if it went through and divided a light flame, which then united again. The visit, repeated the next night, in company with some of Pfeffel’s relatives, gave the same result. They did not see any thing. Pfeffel then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had the ground dug up, when there was found at some depth, beneath a layer of quicklime, a human body in progress of decomposition. The remains were removed, and the earth carefully replaced. Three days afterwards, Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept concealed, was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now without experiencing any unusual impression whatever.

The explanation of this mysterious phenomenon has been but recently arrived at. The discoveries of Von Reichenbach, of which I gave a sketch in the first letter, announce the principle on which it depends. Among these discoveries is the fact that the Od force makes itself visible as a dim light or waving flame to highly sensitive subjects. Such persons, in the dark, see flames issuing from the poles of magnets and crystals. Von Reichenbach eventually discovered that the Od force is distributed universally, although in varying quantities. But among the causes which excite its evolution, one of the most active is chemical decomposition. Then, happening to remember Pfeffel’s ghost story, it occurred to Von Reichenbach that what Billing had seen was possibly Od light. To test the soundness of this conjecture, Miss Reichel, a very sensitive subject, was taken at night to an extensive burying-ground near Vienna, where interments take place daily, and there are many thousand graves. The result did not disappoint Von Reichenbach’s expectations. Whithersoever Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was not visible. She described the appearance as resembling less bright flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several instances the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When Miss Reichel placed her hand on it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed no alarm, being accustomed to the appearance.

The mystery has thus been entirely solved; for it is evident that the spectral character of the luminous apparition, in the two instances which I have narrated, had been supplied by the seers themselves. So the superstition has vanished; but, as usual, it veiled a truth.

LETTER IV.

True Ghosts.—The apparitions themselves always sensorial illusions—The truth of their communications accounted for—Zschokke’s Seer-gift described, to show the possibility of direct mental communication—Second-sight—The true relation of the mind to the living body.

The worst of a true ghost is, that, to be sure of his genuineness—that is, of his veracity—one must wait the event. He is distinguished by no sensible and positive characteristics from the commoner herd. There is nothing in his outward appearance to raise him in your opinion above a fetch. But even this fact is not barren. His dress,—it is in the ordinary mode of the time, in nothing overdone. To be dressed thus does credit to his taste, as to be dressed at all evinces his sense of propriety; but alas! the same elements convict him of objective unreality. Whence come that aerial coat and waistcoat, whence those visionary trousers?—alas! they can only have issued from the wardrobe in the seer’s fancy. And, like his dress, the wearer is imaginary, a mere sensorial illusion, without a shadow of externality; he is not more substantial than a dream.

But dreams have differences of quality no less than ghosts. All do not come through the ivory gate. Some are true and significant enough. See, there glides one skulking assassin-like into the shade,—he not long since killed his man; “Hilloa, ill-favoured Dream! come hither and give an account of yourself.” (Enter Dream.)

A Scottish gentleman and his wife were travelling four or five years ago in Switzerland. There travelled with them a third party, an intimate friend, a lady, who some time before had been the object of a deep attachment on the part of a foreigner, a Frenchman. Well, she would have nothing to say to him on the topic uppermost in his mind, but she gave him a good deal of serious advice, which she probably thought he wanted; and she ultimately promoted, or was a cognizant party to, his union with a lady whom she likewise knew. The so-married couple were now in America; and the lady occasionally heard from them, and had every reason to believe they were both in perfect health. One morning, on their meeting at breakfast, she told her companions that she had had a very impressive dream the night before, which had recurred twice. The scene was a room in which lay a coffin; near to it stood her ex-lover in a luminous transfigured resplendent state; his wife was by, looking much as usual. The dream had caused the lady some misgivings, but her companions exhorted her to view it as a trick of her fancy, and she was half persuaded so to do. The dream, however, was right, notwithstanding. In process of time, letters arrived announcing the death, after a short illness, of the French gentleman, within the twenty-four hours in which the vision appeared. (Sensation—applause, followed by cries of Shame; the Dream, hurrying away, is hurt by the horn of the gate.)

It would be difficult to persuade the lady who dreamed this dream that there was no connexion between it and the event it foreshadowed in her mind beyond the accidental coincidence of time. Nevertheless, to this conclusion an indifferent auditor would probably come; and upon the following reasoning: We sometimes dream of the death of an absent friend when he is alive and in health, just as we sometimes dream that long-lost friends are alive. And it is quite possible—nay, likely to occur in the chapter of accidents—nay, certain to turn up now and then among the dreams of millions during centuries—that a fortuitous dream, seemingly referring to the fact, should be coincident in point of time with the death of a distant friend. To explain one such case, we need look no further than to the operation of chance. Why, then, ever seek another principle?

Let us examine a parallel ghost-story. A gentleman has a relative in India, healthy, of good constitution, in the civil service, prosperous: he has no cause for anxiety, and entertains none, respecting his relative. But one day he sees his ghost. In due course letters arrive mentioning the occurrence of his relative’s death on that day. The case is more remarkable than the last; for the ghost-seer never in his life but that once experienced a sensorial illusion. Still, it is evidently possible that the two events were, through chance alone, coincident in time. And if in this case, why not in another?

Then let me adduce a more remarkable instance: A late General Wynyard, and the late General Sir John Sherbroke, when young men, were serving in Canada. One day—it was daylight—Mr. Wynyard and Mr. Sherbroke both saw pass through the room where they sat a figure, which Mr. Wynyard recognised as a brother then far away. One of the two walked to the door, and looked out upon the landing-place, but the stranger was not there; and a servant who was on the stairs had seen nobody pass out. In time news arrived that Mr. Wynyard’s brother had died about the time of the visit of the apparition.

I have had opportunities of inquiring of two near relations of this General Wynyard upon what evidence the above story rests. They told me they had each heard it from his own mouth. More recently, a gentleman, whose accuracy of recollection exceeds that of most people, has told me that he had heard the late Sir John Sherbroke, the other party in the ghost-story, tell it much in the same way at a dinner-table.

One does not feel as comfortably satisfied that the complicated coincidences in this tale admit of being referred to chance. The odds are enormous against two persons—young men in perfect health, neither of whom before or after this event experienced a sensorial illusion—being the subjects at the same moment of one, their common and only one, which concurred in point of time with an event that it foreshadowed, unless there were some real connexion between the event and the double apparition. And we feel a nascent inclination to inquire whether—in case such instances as the present occasionally recur, and instances like the two before narrated become, when looked for, startlingly multiplied—there exists any known mental or physical principle, by the help of which they may be explained into natural phenomena.

The more we look after facts of the above nature, the more urgent becomes the want of such a means of explanation. In every family circle, in every party of men accidentally brought together, you will be sure to hear, if the conversation fall on ghosts and dreams, one or more instances—which the narrators represent as well authenticated—of intimations of the deaths of absent persons conveyed to friends either through an apparition or a dream, or an equivalent unaccountable presentiment. A gentleman—himself of distinguished ability—told me that when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, he was secretary to a ghost society formed in sportive earnest by some of the cleverest young men of one of the best modern periods of the university. One of the results of their labours was the collection of about a dozen stories of the above description resting upon good evidence.

Then there transpire occasionally cases with more curious features still. Not only is the general intimation of an event given, but minute particulars attending it are figured in the dream, or communicated by the ghost. Such tales have sometimes been authenticated in courts of justice. Here is one out of last week’s newspaper:—

“In a Durham paper of last week, there was an account of the disappearance of Mr. Smith, gardener to Sir Clifford Constable, who, it was supposed, had fallen into the river Tees, his hat and stick having been found near the water-side. From that time up to Friday last the river had been dragged every day; but every effort so made to find the body proved ineffectual. On the night of Thursday, however, a person named Awde, residing at little Newsham, a small village about four miles from Wycliff, dreamt that Smith was laid under the ledge of a certain rock, about three hundred yards below Whorlton Bridge, and that his right arm was broken. Awde got up early on Friday, and his dream had such an effect upon him that he determined to go and search the river. He accordingly started off for that purpose, without mentioning the matter, being afraid that he would be laughed at by his neighbours. Nevertheless, on his arriving at the boat-house, he disclosed his object on the man asking him for what purpose he required the boat. He rowed to the spot he had seen in his dream; and there, strange to say, upon the very first trial that he made with his boat-hook, he pulled up the body of the unfortunate man, with his right arm actually broken."—(Herald, December, 1848.)

Reviewing all that I have advanced, it appears to me that there are two desiderata which pressingly require to be now supplied. First, some one should take the pains of authenticating at the time, and putting on permanent record, stories like the above, to be at the service of future speculators. But, secondly, so numerous and well attested are those already current, that the bringing forward into light of some principle by which they may be shown to be natural events is now peremptorily called for.

To lead to the supply of the second desideratum, I proceed to mention a physical phenomenon, which from time to time occurred to the late historian and novelist, Heinrich Zschokke. It is described by him in a sort of autobiography, entitled Selbstschau, which he published a few years ago. It was only last year that Zschokke died, having attained a good old age. Early brought into public life in the troubles of Switzerland, and afterwards maintaining his place in public consideration by his numerous writings, he was personally widely known: he was universally esteemed a man of strict veracity and integrity. He writes thus of himself:—

“If the reception of so many visiters was sometimes troublesome, it repaid itself occasionally either by making me acquainted with remarkable personages, or by bringing out a wonderful sort of seer-gift, which I called my inward vision, and which has always remained an enigma to me. I am almost afraid to say a word upon this subject; not for fear of the imputation of being superstitious, but lest I should encourage that disposition in others; and yet it forms a contribution to psychology. So to confess.

“It is acknowledged that the judgment which we form of strangers, on first meeting them, is frequently more correct than that which we adopt upon a longer acquaintance with them. The first impression which, through an instinct of the soul, attracts one towards, or repels one from, another, becomes, after a time, more dim, and is weakened, either through his appearing other than at first, or through our becoming accustomed to him. People speak, too, in reference to such cases of involuntary sympathies and aversions, and attach a special certainty to such manifestations in children, in whom knowledge of mankind by experience is wanting. Others, again, are incredulous, and attribute all to physiognomical skill. But of myself.

“It has happened to me occasionally, at the first meeting with a total stranger, when I have been listening in silence to his conversation, that his past life, up to the present moment, with many minute circumstances belonging to one or other particular scene in it, has come across me like a dream, but distinctly, entirely, involuntarily, and unsought, occupying in duration a few minutes. During this period I am usually so plunged into the representation of the stranger’s life, that at last I neither continue to see distinctly his face, on which I was idly speculating, nor to hear intelligently his voice, which at first I was using as a commentary to the text of his physiognomy. For a long time I was disposed to consider these fleeting visions as a trick of the fancy; the more so that my dream-vision displayed to me the dress and movements of the actors, the appearance of the room, the furniture, and other accidents of the scene; till, on one occasion, in a gamesome mood, I narrated to my family the secret history of a sempstress who had just before quitted the room. I had never seen the person before. Nevertheless the hearers were astonished, and laughed, and would not be persuaded but that I had a previous acquaintance with the former life of the person, inasmuch as what I had stated was perfectly true. I was not less astonished to find that my dream-vision agreed with reality. I then gave more attention to the subject, and, as often as propriety allowed of it, I related to those whose lives had so passed before me the substance of my dream-vision, to obtain from them its contradiction or confirmation. On every occasion its confirmation followed, not without amazement on the part of those who gave it.

“Least of all could I myself give faith to these conjuring tricks of my mind. Every time that I described to any one my dream-vision respecting him, I confidently expected him to answer it was not so. A secret thrill always came over me when the listener replied, ‘It happened as you say;’ or when, before he spoke, his astonishment betrayed that I was not wrong. Instead of recording many instances, I will give one which, at the time, made a strong impression upon me.

“On a fair day, I went into the town of Waldshut, accompanied by two young foresters who are still alive. It was evening, and, tired with our walk, we went into an inn called the Vine. We took our supper with a numerous company at the public table; when it happened that they made themselves merry over the peculiarities and simplicity of the Swiss, in connexion with the belief in Mesmerism, Lavater’s physiognomical system, and the like. One of my companions, whose national pride was touched by their raillery, begged me to make some reply, particularly in answer to a young man of superior appearance, who sat opposite, and had indulged in unrestrained ridicule. It happened that the events of this very person’s life had just previously passed before my mind. I turned to him with the question, whether he would reply to me with truth and candour, if I narrated to him the most secret passages of his history, he being as little known to me as I to him? That would, I suggested, go something beyond Lavater’s physiognomical skill. He promised, if I told the truth, to admit it openly. Then I narrated the events with which my dream-vision had furnished me, and the table learnt the history of the young tradesman’s life, of his school years, his peccadilloes, and, finally, of a little act of roguery committed by him on the strong box of his employer. I described the uninhabited room with its white walls, where, to the right of the brown door, there had stood upon the table the small black money-chest, &c. A dead silence reigned in the company during this recital, interrupted only when I occasionally asked if I spoke the truth. The man, much struck, admitted the correctness of each circumstance—even, which I could not expect, of the last. Touched with his frankness, I reached my hand to him across the table, and closed my narrative. He asked my name, which I gave him. We sat up late in the night conversing. He may be alive yet.

“Now I can well imagine how a lively imagination could picture, romance-fashion, from the obvious character of a person, how he would conduct himself under given circumstances. But whence came to me the involuntary knowledge of accessory details, which were without any sort of interest, and respected people who for the most part were utterly indifferent to me, with whom I neither had, nor wished to have, the slightest association? Or was it in each case mere coincidence? Or had the listener, to whom I described his history, each time other images in his mind than the accessory ones of my story, but, in surprise at the essential resemblance of my story to the truth, lost sight of the points of difference? Yet I have, in consideration of this possible source of error, several times taken pains to describe the most trivial circumstances that my dream-vision has shown me.

“Not another word about this strange seer-gift, which I can aver was of no use to me in a single instance, which manifested itself occasionally only, and quite independently of any volition, and often in relation to persons in whose history I took not the slightest interest. Nor am I the only one in possession of this faculty. In a journey with two of my sons, I fell in with an old Tyrolese who travelled about, selling lemons and oranges, at the inn at Unterhauerstein in one of the Jura passes. He fixed his eyes for some time upon me, joined in our conversation, observed that though I did not know him he knew me, and began to describe my acts and deeds, to the no little amusement of the peasants, and astonishment of my children, whom it interested to learn that another possessed the same gift as their father. How the old lemon-merchant acquired his knowledge he was not able to explain to himself nor to me. But he seemed to attach great importance to his hidden wisdom.”[2]

In the newness of such knowledge, it is worth while to note separately each of the particulars which attended the manifestation of this strange mental faculty, with his account of which Zschokke has enriched psychology.

1. Then, after the power of looking up the entire recollections of another, through some other channel than ordinary inquiry and observation—and as it seemed directly—we may note,—

2. The rapidity, minuteness, and precision, which characterized the act of inspection.

3. The feeling attending it of becoming absent or lost to what was going on around.

4. Its involuntariness and unexpectedness.

5. Its being practicable on some only; and

6. Those entire strangers, and at their first interview with the seer.

At present I shall avail myself of the first broad fact alone, remarking, however, of the conditions observed in it, that they clearly indicate the existence of a law on which the phenomenon depended. And I shall assume it to be proved by the above crucial instance, that the mind, or soul, of one human being can be brought, in the natural course of things, and under physiological laws hereafter to be determined, into immediate relation with the mind of another living person.

If this principle be admitted, it is adequate to explain all the puzzling phenomena of real ghosts and of true dreams. For example, the ghostly and intersomnial communications, with which we have as yet dealt, have been announcements of the deaths of absent parties. Suppose our new principle brought into play; the soul of the dying person is to be supposed to have come into direct communication with the mind of his friend, with the effect of suggesting his present condition. If the seer be dreaming, the suggestion shapes a corresponding dream; if he be awake, it originates a sensorial illusion. To speak figuratively, merely figuratively, in reference to the circulation of this partial mental obituary, I will suppose that the death of a human being throws a sort of gleam through the spiritual world, which may now and then touch with light some fittingly disposed object; or even two simultaneously, if chance have placed them in the right relation;—as the twin-spires of a cathedral may be momentarily illuminated by some far-off flash, which does not break the gloom upon the roofs below.

The same principle is applicable to the explanation of the vampyr visit. The soul of the buried man is to be supposed to be brought into communication with his friend’s mind. Thence follows, as a sensorial illusion, the apparition of the buried man. Perhaps the visit may have been an instinctive effort to draw the attention of his friend to his living grave. I beg to suggest that it would not be an act of superstition now, but of ordinary humane precaution, if one dreamed pertinaciously of a recently buried acquaintance, or saw his ghost, to take immediate steps to have the state of the body ascertained.

It is not my intention, in the present letter, to push the application of this principle further. With slight modifications it might be brought to explain several other wonderful stories, which we usually neglect just from not seeing how to explain them. One class of these instances is what was termed second-sight. The belief in it formerly prevailed in Scotland, and in the whole of the north of Europe. But the faculty, if it ever existed, seems to be disappearing now. However, it is difficult, one has heard so many examples of the correctness of its warnings and anticipations, not to believe that it once really manifested itself.

A much respected Scottish lady, not unknown in literature, told me very recently how a friend of her mother, whom she perfectly remembered, had been compelled to believe in second-sight through its occurrence in one of her servants. She had a cook, who was a continual annoyance to her through her possession of this gift. On one occasion, when the lady expected some friends, she learned, a short time before they were to arrive, that the culinary preparations she had ordered to honour them had not been made. Upon her remonstrating with the offending cook, the latter simply but doggedly assured her that come they would not; that she knew it to a certainty; and, true enough, they did not come. Some accident had occurred to prevent their visit. The same person frequently knew beforehand what her mistress’s plans were, and was as inconvenient in her kitchen as a calculating prodigy in a counting-house. Things went perfectly right, but the manner was irregular and provoking; so her mistress turned her away. Supposing this story true, the phenomena look just a modification of Zschokke’s seer-gift.

A number of incidents there are turning up, for the most part on trivial occasions, which we put aside for fear of being thought superstitious, because as yet a natural solution is not at hand for them. Sympathy in general, the spread of panic fears, the simultaneous occurrence of the same thoughts to two persons, the intuitive knowledge of mankind possessed by some, the magnetic fascination of others, may eventually be found to have to do with a special and unsuspected cause. Among anecdotes of no great conclusiveness that I have heard narrated of this sort, I will cite two of Lord Nelson, told by the late Sir Thomas Hardy to the late Admiral the Hon. G. Dundas, from whom I heard them. The first was mentioned to exemplify Nelson’s quick insight into character. Captain Hardy was present as Nelson gave directions to the commander of a frigate to make sail with all speed—to proceed to certain points, where he was likely to fall in with the French fleet—having seen the French, to go to a certain harbour, and there await Lord Nelson’s coming. After the commander had left the cabin, Nelson said to Hardy, “He will go to the West Indies, he will see the French; he will go to the harbour I have directed him to; but he will not wait for me—he will sail for England.” The commander did so. Shortly before the battle of Trafalgar an English frigate was in advance, looking out for the enemy; her place in the offing was hardly discernible. Of a sudden Nelson said to Hardy, who was at his side, “The Celeste,” (or whatever the frigate’s name was,) “the Celeste sees the French.” Hardy had nothing to say on the matter. “She sees the French; she’ll fire a gun.” Within a little time, the boom of the signal-gun was heard.[3]

I am not sure that my new principle will be a general favourite. It will be said that the cases, in which I suppose it manifested, are of too trivial a nature to justify so novel a hypothesis. My answer is, the cases are few and trivial only because the subject has not been attended to. For how many centuries were the laws of electricity preindicated by the single fact that a piece of amber, when rubbed, would attract light bodies! Again, the school of physiological materialists will of course be opposed to it. They hold that the mind is but a function or product of the brain, and cannot therefore consistently admit its separate action. But their fundamental tenet is unsound, even upon considering the analogies of matter alone.

What is meant by a product?—in what does production consist? Let us look for instances: a metal is produced from an ore; alcohol is produced from saccharine matter; the bones and sinews of an animal are produced from its food. Production, in the common signification of the word, means the conversion of one substance into another, weight for weight, agreeably with, or under, mechanical, chemical, and vital laws. I speak, of course, of material production. But the case of thought is parallel. The products of the poet’s brain are but recombinations of former ideas. Production, with him, is but a rearrangement of the elements of thought. His food may turn into or produce new brain; but it is the mental impressions he has stored which turn into new imagery. To say that the brain turns into thought, is to assert that consciousness and the brain are one and the same thing, which would be an idle abuse of language.

It is indeed true that, with the manifestation of each thought or feeling, a corresponding decomposition of the brain takes place. But it is equally true that, in a voltaic battery in action, each movement of electric force developed there is attended with a waste of the metal-plates which help to form it. But that waste is not converted into electric fluid. The exact quantity of pure zinc which disappears may be detected in the form of sulphate of zinc. The electricity was not produced, it was only set in motion, by the chemical decomposition. Here is the true material analogy of the relation of the brain to the mind. Mind, like electricity, is an imponderable force pervading the universe: and there happen to be known to us certain material arrangements, through which each may be influenced. We cannot, indeed, pursue the analogy beyond this step. Consciousness and electricity have nothing further in common. Their further relations to the dissimilar material arrangements, through which they may be excited or disturbed, are subjects of totally distinct studies, and resolvable into laws which have no affinity, and admit of no comparison.

It is singular how early in the history of mankind the belief in the separate existence of the soul developed itself as an instinct of our nature.

Timarchus, who was curious on the subject of the demon of Socrates, went to the cave of Trophonius to consult the oracle about it. There, having for a short time inhaled the mephitic vapour, he felt as if he had received a sudden blow on the head, and sank down insensible. Then his head appeared to him to open, and to give issue to his soul into the other world; and an imaginary being seemed to inform him that “the part of the soul engaged in the body, entrammelled in its organization, is the soul as ordinarily understood; but that there is another part or province of the soul which is the daimon. This has a certain control over the bodily soul, and among other offices constitutes conscience.”—“In three months,” the vision added, “you will know more of this.” At the end of three months Timarchus died.

LETTER V.

Trance.—Distinction of esoneural and exoneural mental phenomena—Abnormal relation of the mind and nervous system possible—Insanity—Sleep—Essential nature of Trance—Its alliance with spasmodic seizures—General characters of Trance—Enumeration of its kinds.

The time has now arrived for expounding the phenomena of Trance; an acquaintance with which is necessary to enable you to understand the source and nature of the delusions with which I have yet to deal.

You have already had glimpses of this condition. Arnod Paole was in a trance in the cemetery of Meduegna—Timarchus was in a trance in the cave of Trophonius.

Let me begin by developing certain preliminary conceptions relating to the subject.

I. Common observation, the spontaneous course of our reflections, our instinctive interpretation of nature, reveal to us matter, motion, and intelligence, as the co-existing phenomena of the universe. In the farthest distances of space cognisable to our senses, we discern matter and motion, and their subordination to intelligence. Upon the earth’s surface we discern, in the finely designed mechanism of each plant, the agency of life; and we recognise in the microcosm of each animal a living organization, fitted to be the recipient of individual consciousness, or of personal being.

II. The intelligence which is communicated to living beings becomes, to a great extent, dependent upon the organization with which it is combined. Thus every mental faculty is found to have its definite seat and habitat in the bodily frame. The principal successes of modern physiologists have been achieved in determining with what precise parts of the nervous system each affection of consciousness is functionally associated. Different classes of nerves are found to be appropriated to sensation and volition; different parts of the spinal cord are proved to minister to different offices; and of the subdivisions of the brain, each is thought to correspond with a separate faculty, or sentiment, or appetite. So far the mental forces, or operations of a living human being, may be conceived to be essentially esoneural, (εσω νευζον.) Each appears to have its proper and special workshop or laboratory in the nervous system.

III. But there are not wanting facts which make it reasonable to think that our mental forces or operations transcend occasionally and partially the limits of our corporeal frame. The phenomena adverted to in the preceding letter, in connexion with the narrative of Zschokke’s seer-gift, hardly seem to admit of explanation on any other supposition. Nor is it a very improbable conjecture, that phenomena of the same class form, as it were, the complements of many ordinary esoneural operations. Possibly in common perception the mind directly reaches the object perceived, being excited thereto by the antecedent material impressions on our organs, and the sensations which follow. To denote mental phenomena of the kind I am supposing, I propose the term exoneural, (εξω νευζον.) I venture even, following out this idea, to conjecture further, that the Od force may somehow furnish the dynamic bridge along which our exoneural apprehension travels.

IV. The affections of consciousness would thus be in part esoneural, in part exoneural, during the healthy and normal state of our being; the esoneural part being executed in immediate connexion with its appropriate organ, and every manifestation of it being attended with a physical change in the latter.

V. But it is conceivable, on the assumption of mind being a separate principle from matter, that the human soul may be capable of retaining its union with the body in a new, unusual, and abnormal relation. The hypothesis is startling enough. I adopt it only from seeing no other way of accounting for certain facts which, with the evidence of their reality, will presently be brought forward. I venture to suppose that the mind of a living man may energize abnormally in two ways: first, that a much larger share of its operations may be conducted exoneurally—that is, out of the body—than usual; secondly, that the esoneural mental functions may be conducted within the body in unaccustomed organs, deserting those naturally appropriated to them. Two or three instances have been already given, which favour, at all events, the supposition of the possibility of such an abnormal relation between the mind and the body being realized. But in most of the instances hitherto adverted to, the normal relation may be supposed to have remained.

VI. Thus all the ordinary phenomena of sensorial illusions at once are esoneural, and suppose the persistence of the normal relation of mind and body. The material organ to which the physical agencies preceding sensation are propagated being irritated, is to be supposed to excite in the mind sensuous recollections or fancies that are so vivid as to appear realities.

VII. In mental delusions, again, there is no reason for surmising the intervention of the abnormal relation. But what are mental delusions? They are a part of insanity. And what is insanity? I will summarily state its features; for some of the instances which remain for explanation are referrible to it, and because I delight to crush a volume into a paragraph.

The phenomena of insanity may be arranged under five heads: The first, the insane temperament; the next three the fundamental forms of mental derangement; the fifth, the paroxysmal state. The features of the insane temperament are various; some of them are incompatible with the simultaneous presence of others. When a group of them is present, as a change in natural character, without insanity, insanity is threatened: no form of insanity manifests itself without the presence of some of them. The features of the insane temperament are these: The patient withdraws his sympathies from those around him, is shy, reserved, cunning, suspicious, with a troubled air, as if he felt something to be wrong, and wonders if you see it; he is capricious, and has flaws of temper; being talkative, he is flighty and extravagant; he is hurried in his thoughts, and mode of speaking, and gestures; he has fits of absence, in which he talks aloud to himself; he is restless, and anxious for change of place. Of the elementary forms of insanity, one consists in the entertainment of mental delusions: the patient imagines himself the Deity, or a prophet, or a monarch, or that he has become enormously wealthy; or that he is possessed by the devil, or is persecuted by invisible beings, or is dead, or very poor, or that he is the victim of public or private injustice. The second form is moral perversion: the patient is depressed in spirits without a cause, perhaps to the extent of meditating suicide; or he feels an unaccountable desire to take the lives of others; or he is impelled to steal, or to do gratuitous mischief; or he is a sot; or he has fits of ungovernable and dangerous rage. The third form exhibits itself in loss of connexion of ideas, failure of memory, loss of common intelligence, disregard of the common decencies of life. Each of these three elementary forms is sometimes met with alone; generally two are combined. Sensorial illusions are common in insanity; auditory, unaccompanied by visual illusions, are almost peculiar to it, and to the cognate affection of delirium from fever or inflammation of the brain. To the head of the paroxysmal state belongs the history of exacerbations of insanity, of their sudden outbursts in persons of the insane temperament, of their preferential connexion with this or that antecedent condition of the patient, of their occasional periodicity.

VII. In congenital idiotcy and imbecility, the relation of the mind and brain is normal. Often the defective organization is apparent through which the intelligence is repressed. In many countries a popular belief prevails that the imbecile have occasional glimpses of higher knowledge. There is no reason evident why their minds should not be susceptible of the abnormal relation.

VIII. In sleep, the mind and brain are in the normal relation. But what is sleep, psychically considered?

It is best to begin by looking into the mental constituents of waking. There is then passing before us an endless current of images and reflections, furnished from our recollections, and suggested by our hopes and our fears, by pursuits that interest us, or by their own inter-associations. This current of thought is continually being changed or modified, through impressions made upon our senses. It is further liable to be still more importantly and systematically modified by the exercise of the faculty of Attention. The attention operates in a twofold manner. It enables us to detain at pleasure any subject of thought before the mind; and, when not on such urgent duty, it vigilantly inspects every idea which presents itself, and reports if it be palpably unsound or of questionable tendency. To speak with more precision, it is a power we have of controlling our thoughts, which we drill to warn us whenever the suggested ideas conflict with our experience or our principles.

Then of sleep. We catch glimpses of its nature at the moments of falling asleep and of waking. When it is the usual time for sleep, if our attention happen to be livelily excited, it is in vain we court sleep. When we are striving to contend against the sense of overwhelming fatigue, what we feel is, that we can no longer command our attention. Then we are lost, or are asleep. Then the head and body drop forwards; we have ceased to attend to the maintenance of our equilibrium. Any iteration of gentle, impressions, enough to divert attention from other objects, without arousing it, promotes sleep.

Thus we recognise as the psychical basis of sleep the suspension of the attention.

Are any other mental faculties suspended in sleep? Sensation and the influence of the will over the muscular system are not; for our dreams are liable to be shaped by what we hear. The sleeper, without waking, will turn his head away from a bright light, will withdraw his arm if you pinch it, will utter loud words which he dreams he is employing. The seeming insensibility in sleep, the apparent suspension of the influence of the will, are simply consequences of the suspension of attention.

I have, on another occasion, shown that the organs in which sensations are realized, and volition energizes, are the segments of the cranio-spinal cord in which the sentient and voluntary nerves are rooted. I think I see now that the seat of the attention is the “medulla oblongata.” For—alas for the imperfect conceptions into which the imperfection of language as an instrument of thought forces us!—what is the faculty of attention, which we have been considering almost as a separate element of mind, but the individual “ich” energizing, now keenly noticing impressions and thoughts, now allowing them to pass, while it looks on with lazy indifference; now, at length, worn out and exhausted, and incapable of further work? But this inspecting and contrasting operation, where should it more naturally find its bureau than at a point situated between the organs of the understanding and those of the will?—that is to say, somewhere at the junction of the spinal marrow and the brain. Well, Magendie ascertained that just at that region there is a small portion of nervous matter, pressure upon which causes immediately heavy sleep or stupor, while its destruction—for instance, the laceration of the little organ with the point of a needle—instantaneously and irrevocably extinguishes life.[4] This precious link in our system is, reasonably enough, stowed away in the securest part of our frame—that is to say, within the head, upon the strong central bone of the base of the skull. How came the fancy of Shakspeare by the happy figure which seems to adumbrate Magendie’s discovery of to-day, in poetry written three hundred years ago?

“Within the hollow crown,

That rounds the mortal temples of a king,

Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits

Mocking his state, and grinning at his pomp;

Allowing him a breath, a little hour,

To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks;

Infusing him with self and vain conceits,

As if the flesh that walls about our life

Were brass impregnable. Till, humoured thus,

He comes at last, and, with a little pin,

Bores through his castle wall—and farewell king!”

To return to our argument, Are the sentiments and higher faculties of the mind suspended during sleep? Certainly not, if dreaming be a part of natural sleep, as I hold it to be. For there are some who dream always; others, who say they seldom dream; others, who disavow dreaming at all. But the simplest view of these three cases is to suppose that in sleep all persons always dream, but that all do not remember their dreams. This imputed forgetfulness is not surprising, considering the importance of the attention to memory, and that in sleep the attention is suspended. Ordinary dreams present one remarkable feature; nothing in them appears wonderful. We meet and converse with friends long dead; the improbability of the event never crosses our minds. One sees a horse galloping by, and calls after it as one’s friend—Mr. so-and-so. We fly with agreeable facility, and explain to an admiring circle how we manage it. Every absurdity passes unchallenged. The attention is off duty. It is important to remark that there is nothing in common dreams to interfere with the purpose of sleep, which is repose. The cares and interests of our waking life never recur to us; or, if they do, are not recognised as our own. The faculties are not really energizing; their seeming exercise is sport; they are unharnessed, and are gambolling and rolling in idle relaxation. That is their refreshment.

The attention alone slumbers; or, through some slight organic change, it is unlinked from the other faculties, and they are put out of gear. This is the basis of sleep. The faculties are all in their places; but the attention is off duty; itself asleep, or indolently keeping watch of time alone.

In contrast with this picture of the sleeping and waking states, of the alternation of which our mental life consists, I have now to hold up to view another conception, resembling it, but different, vague, imposing, of gigantic proportions, the monstrous double of the first—like the mocking spectre of the Hartz, which yet is but your own shadow cast by the level sunbeams on the morning mist.

To answer to this conception, there is more than the ideal entity made up of the different forms of trance. For although trance may occur as a single sleep-like fit of moderate duration, yet it more frequently recurs—often periodically, dividing the night or day with common sleep or common waking; or it may be persistent for days and weeks—in which case, if it generally maintain one character, it is yet liable to have wakings of its own.

Then the first division of trance is into trance-sleep and trance-waking. In extreme cases it is easy to tell trance-sleep from common sleep, trance-waking from common waking; but there are varieties with less prominent features, in which it is difficult, at first, to say whether the patient is entranced at all.

There is, upon the whole, more alliance between sleep and trance, than between waking and trance. Or, in a large class of cases, the patient falls into trance when asleep. It is a cognate phenomenon to this that the common initiatory stage of trance is a trance-sleep.

Trance is of more frequent occurrence among the young than among the middle-aged or old people. It occurs more frequently among young women than among young men. In other words, the liability to trance is in proportion to delicacy of organization, and higher nervous susceptibility.

But what is trance? The question will be best answered by exhibiting its several phases. In the mean time, it may be laid down that the basis of trance is the supervention of the abnormal relation of the mind and nervous system. In almost all its forms it is easy to show that some of the mental functions are no longer located in their pristine organs. The most ordinary change is the departure of common sensation from the organ of touch. Next, sight leaves the organs of vision. To make up for these desertions, if the patient wake in trance, either the same senses reappear elsewhere, or some unaccountable mode of general perception manifests itself.

A strict alliance exists between trance and the whole family of spasms. Most of them are exclusively developed in connexion with it; all are liable to be combined with it; they are all capable of being excited by the same influences which produce trance; so they often occur vicariously, or alternate with trance. One kind is catalepsy; the body motionless, statue-like, but the tone of spasm maintained low, so that you may arrange the statue in what attitude you will, and it preserves it. A second is catochus, like the preceding, but with a higher power of spasm, so that the joints are rigidly fixed; and if you overcome one for a moment with superior strength, being let go, it flies back to where it was. A third, partial spasm of equal rigidity, arching the body forwards or backwards or laterally, or fixing one limb or more. The fourth, clonic spasm, for instance, the contortions and convulsive struggles of epilepsy. The fifth, an impulse to rapid and varied muscular actions, nearly equalling convulsions in violence, but combined so as to travesty ordinary voluntary motion; this is the dance of St. Veitz, which took its name from an epidemic outbreak in Germany in the thirteenth century, that was supposed to be cured by the interposition of the saint; then persons of all classes were seized in groups in public with a fury of kicking, shuffling, dancing together, till they dropt. Now, the same agency is manifested either in a violent rush, and disposition to climb with inconceivable agility and precision; or alternately to twist the features, roll the neck, and jerk and swing the limbs even to the extent of dislocating them.

The causes of trance are mostly mental. Trance appears to be contagious. Viewed medically, it is seldom directly dangerous. It is a product of over-excitability, which time blunts. The disposition to trance is seldom manifested beyond a few months, or, at most, two or three years. For epilepsy is not a form of trance; it is, however, a mixed mental and spasmodic seizure, much allied to trance. Those who suffer from its attacks are found to be among the most susceptible of induced trance.

But let me again ask, what then is trance?

Trance is a peculiar mental seizure, (totally distinct from insanity, with which again, however, it may be combined,) the patient taken with which appears profoundly absorbed or rapt, and as if lost more or less completely to surrounding objects or impressions, or at all events to the ordinary mode of perceiving them; he is likewise more or less entirely lost to his former recollections. The mental seizures may or may not occur simultaneously or alternately with spasmodic seizures of any and every character.

This definition of trance conveys, I am afraid, no very exact or distinct picture; but it is the definition of a genus, and a genus is necessarily an abstraction. However, it gives the features essential to all the forms of trance. A true general notion of trance can, indeed, only be realized by studying in detail each of the forms it includes. These are separated by the broadest colours. In the one extreme an entranced person appears dead, and no sign of life is recognisable in him; in the opposite, he appears to be much as usual, and perfectly impressible by any thing around him, so that it demands careful observation to establish that he is not simply awake.

Then trance presents no fewer than five specific forms, distinguished each from the other by clear characters, their essential identity being established by each at times passing into either of the others. The terms by which I propose to designate the five primary forms of trance are—Death-trance, Trance-coma, Initiatory Trance, Half-waking-trance, Waking-trance. The five, however, admit, as I have before said, of being arranged in two groups: the first three forms enumerated constituting varieties of trance-sleep; the two latter constituting varieties of waking-trance. The next letter will treat of the first group; the two following will treat of the two varieties of the second.

I have observed that the causes of trance are for the most part mental impressions; but it will be found that certain physical influences may produce the same results. The causes of trance, whether mental or physical, deserve again to be regarded in three lights. Either they have operated blindly and fortuitously, or they have been resorted to and used as agents to produce some vague and imperfectly understood result, or they have been skilfully and intelligently directed to bring out the exact phenomena which have followed. It is with trance supervening in the two former ways that I alone propose at present to deal; that is to say, with trance as it was imperfectly known as an agent in superstition, or as a rare and marvellous form of nervous disease. Of the third case of trance, as it may be artificially induced, I shall afterwards and finally speak.

LETTER VI.

Trance-Sleep—The phenomena of trance divided into those of trance-sleep, and those of trance-waking—Trance-sleep presents three forms; trance-waking two. The three forms of trance-sleep described: viz., death-trance, trance-coma, simple or initiatory trance.