Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847. Various
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after a short illness of the French gentleman, within the twenty-four hours in which the vision appeared. Exit Dream, with applause.
I adduce this individual instance, simply because it is the last I have heard, out of many that have come before me equally well attested. I should have observed, that my informant was the fellow-traveller himself: he told me the story in presence of his wife, who religiously attested its accuracy. You will meet with similar stories, implicitly believed, in every society you go into, varying in their circumstances—a ghost being sometimes put in the place of a dream, and sometimes a vague but strong mental impression, a foreboding only. But the common point exists in all, that all intimation of the death of an absent acquaintance has been in one or another way insinuated into the mind of his friend about the time the event really took place. Instances of this kind, it will be found, are far too numerous to permit one off-hand to conclude that they have arisen from accident; that the connexion between the event and its anticipation and foreshadowing has been merely coincidence.
If you ask me how I would otherwise explain these stories, I will frankly avow, that it appears to me neither impossible, nor absurdly improbable, that the soul, or the nervous system, as you like, of the dying man, should have put itself into direct communication with the thoughts of his absent friend.
Ah, ah! the last touch of the vampyr theory again! You were then very modest about your hobby, and pretended not to know him, and passed him off as my beast, and now you daringly mount him yourself, and expect to be allowed to pace him before us, in that easy and confident style, as if he were some well-known roadster of Stewart's, or Ferriar's, or Hibbert's, or Abercromby's. Now shall we shortly see you thrown, or run away with, or led by some will-o'-the-wisp into a bottomless slough.
Well, that at all events will amuse you.
But in the mean time did you ever hear of the Wynyard ghost? A late General Wynyard and the late Sir John Colebrook, when young men, were serving in Canada. One day—it was daylight—Mr Wynyard and Mr Colebrook both saw a figure pass through the room in which they were sitting, which Mr Wynyard recognised as a brother then far away. One of them 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 the news arrived, that Mr Wynyard's brother had died about the time of the visit of the apparition. Of this story, which I had heard narrated, I inquired the truth of two military men, each a General Wynyard, near relations of the ghost-seer of that name. They told me it was so narrated by him, certainly, and that it had the implicit belief of the family.
Another similar, double-barreled ghost story I recently had narrated to me, and was assured it rested on evidence equally good. I have heard of several others being in existence.
Now, if these stories be true, to suppose the events mere coincidences, or rather to believe them to be so, would be an immense stretch of credulity. The chances would be millions to one against two persons, neither of whom, before or after, experienced sensorial illusions, becoming the subject of one, and seemingly the same illusion at the same moment—the two hallucinations coinciding in point of time with an event which they served, in the mind of one of the parties at least, to foreshadow. I prefer supposing that the event so communicated really had to do with, and was the common idea of the sensorial illusion experienced by both parties. To speak figuratively, my dear Archy—mind, figuratively—I prefer to think, that the death of a human being throws a sort of gleam through the spiritual world, which may now and then touch some congenial object with sudden light, or even two, when they happen to be exactly in the proper position; as the twin spires of a cathedral may be momentarily illuminated by some far-off flash, while the countless roofs below lie in unbroken gloom.
Pretty well, indeed! I think I hear you say—Very easy, certainly! But, perhaps, you will be kind enough to give us a trifle more grounds for admitting your hypothesis than you have yet vouchsafed. Likewise a little explanation of what you exactly mean might be of use, if you seriously hope to reconcile us to this most prodigious prance.
I shall be happy to give you every reasonable satisfaction. Then, in the first place, I propose to establish beyond the possibility of doubt or question, and at once, that the mind of a living human being, in his ordinary state, may enter into communication with the mind of another human being, likewise in his every-day state, through some other channel than that of the senses, in their understood and ordinary operation, and as it would seem, immediately and directly; so that it becomes at once intimately acquainted with all the former affections, feelings, volitions, history of the second mind.
Heinrich Zschokke, I need hardly say, is one of the most eminent literary men now living in Europe; one, too, whose life has not been exclusively occupied with the cultivation of letters, but who, having been early engaged in public and official employments in Switzerland, the country of his adoption, has been practically tried and proved in sight of the world, in which he has always borne a high and unblemished character; one, finally, whose writings and whose life have happily concurred in winning for him general respect, esteem, and confidence. Then, in a sort of autobiography which Zschokke published a few years back, (Selbstschau, it is entitled—Self-retrospect,) there occurs the following passage, which I translate and give at length, from its marvellous interest, from its unquestioned fidelity, from the complete and irresistible evidence it affords that the phenomenon, enunciated in the last paragraph, occasionally turns up in men's experience.
"If the reception of so many visitors was occasionally 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 upon first seeing 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 being 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 completely 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 hear intelligently his voice, which at first I was using as a commentary on the test of his physiognomy. For a long time, I was disposed to consider those 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, in as much 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