Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847

This extraordinary phenomenon, it is now generally known, has been completely elucidated through the discoveries of Von Reichenbach, to which, in a former letter, I had occasion to make allusion.

You are probably aware, that the individuals whose nerves Von Reichenbach found to be so sensitive to the proximity of crystals, magnets, &c., would, in the dark, see flames issuing from the same substances. Then, in the progress of his inquiries, Von Reichenbach found that chemical decomposition was a rich source of the new power he had discovered, by its action on the nerves. And being acquainted with the story of the ghost in Pfeffel's garden at Colmar, it occurred to him as not unlikely, that Billing had just been in the same condition with his own sensitive patients, and that graves very likely would present to all of them a luminous aura; and that thus the mystery might find a very simple explanation.

Accordingly, Miss Reichel, one of his most sensitive subjects, was taken at night to an extensive burying-ground, near Vienna, where many interments take place daily, and there were some 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 in 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 I have narrated had been supplied by the imagination of the seers. So the superstition has vanished, leaving, as is usual, a very respectable truth behind it.

It is indeed a little unlucky for this new truth, which reveals either a new power in nature or an unexpected operation of familiar ones, that the phenomena which attest it are verifiable by a few only who are possessed of highly sensitive temperaments. And it is the use of the world to look upon these few as very suspicious subjects. This is unjust. Their evidence, the parties having otherwise a character for honesty, should be accepted with the same faith and the same distrust with which all evidence is to be viewed; with neither more nor less than in other cases. Nothing should be received in scientific inquiry which it is not compulsory on our understanding to believe. It is not a whit more difficult in these than in other cases to obtain inductive certainty. Nature is not here peculiarly coy or averse from being interrogated.

Philosophers occasionally regret the limited number of their senses, and think a world of knowledge would flow from their possessing but one more. Now, persons of highly-wrought nervous systems have what is equivalent to a new sense, in their augmentation of natural sensibility. But philosophers will not accept this equivalent. They must have the boon from nature their own way, or not at all.

To turn elsewhere.—We may now look into a broader seam of illusive power—one which lies entirely within ourselves, and needs no objective influence to bring its ghost-producing fertility into play. Let me exemplify it in operation.

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 facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even to the copy of a newfangled bit he sported that day for the first time. The apparition vanished on his entering the town. 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 disposed to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added, that it had made the ghost-seer, for the time at all events, a wiser and better man.

In more ignorant times, the appearance of one's fetch was held to be of very alarming import, and to menace either death or serious personal harm. Now, it is known to be one of the commonest forms in which sensorial illusions shape themselves. And these are matters of every-day occurrence.

It would seem, that when the blood is heated or the nervous system over-strained, we are liable to attach reality to the mere productions of the imagination. There must be few who have not had personal experience of this affection. In the first night of a febrile attack, and often in the progress of fever, the bed-hangings appear to the patient swarming with human faces, generally of a disagreeable and menacing expression. With some, opium will produce a host of similar visitants. In much illness, I have often myself taken this drug, and always hoped it would provide me a crop of apparitions that I might analyse. But I was disappointed; opium I found to give me only a great tranquillity and clearness of thought. Once or twice only have I had a vision, and that but a transitory landscape. I used in vain to look upon that black mixture which lies before one in the dark, and try to make its fragmentary lights arrange themselves into definite shapes. And I have imaged to my mind familiar scenes or faces, (as in the daytime a strong conception will half realise such,) but they were not more distinct then than formerly,—ideas only and perfectly transient. But, as I have said, once or twice I have had the satisfaction of seeing a bright and coloured landscape spread before my view; yet unlike reality, and more resembling a diorama, occupying a rectangle on the black mixture before my eyes. It was not a known and familiar scene, but a brilliant sketch, made out of materials I remembered, but could not by a deliberate effort have combined so effectively. It was a spontaneous throe of the imagination, which had force to overpersuade the organs of perception.

How well did Shakspeare understand this creative power of the fancy!—the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, and his test—"come, let me clutch thee!" are physiologically perfect. Nor less perfect or true to nature, is the conception of the ghost of Banquo haunting the kingly murderer. The ghost, it is obvious, however, should not in the play appear bodily. The audience are in the position of the guests at the royal supper-table, who saw it not. I wonder how in Shakspeare's time the stage-directions ran upon this point. Probably as now. Though Shakspeare wrote for all times, he was probably wise enough to act for the present. Or perhaps, with no disrespect to his unequalled genius, he understood not the principles of which he exactly portrayed the workings, and was, like Shelley's poet,

"Hidden in the light of thought."

So, some say the sun may be dark as another planet; and that the spots on it are its common earth seen through the gaps in its luminous atmosphere.

To the world, the alpha and omega of this piece of philosophy were furnished by the publication of the case of Nicolai, the bookseller of Berlin. Its details were read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, in 1799. The substance ran thus. Nicolai had had some family troubles which much annoyed him. Then, on the 21st of February 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 him 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, and through 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 were distant acquaintances only. The figures of none of Nicolai's habitual friends were there. The appearances were almost always human: exceptionally, a man on horseback, with dogs and birds 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, by day as in the dark, in his own house or those of others; but in the latter case they were less frequent, and they very seldom presented themselves in the streets. During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of each other, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and there communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or of his remarks about 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 each other, and then addressed him. Their remarks were short and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His acquaintances inquired after his health, and expressed sympathy for him, and spoke in terms comforting him. The apparitions were most conversible 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. This 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 tranquillised about them, 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 to 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 fainter still, though the forms still remained. About seven o'clock in the evening, the figures had became 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.

Other cases are on record in which there was still greater facility of ghost-production than Nicolai evinced. One patient could, for instance, by thinking of a person, summon his apparition to join the others. He could not, however, having done this, subsequently banish him. The sight is the sense most easily and frequently tricked; next, the hearing. In some extraordinary cases the touch, also, has participated in the delusion.

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 us in his autobiography, in translating a brochure 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 pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took his leave.

The illusion and its principle having been thus elucidated, it is hardly worth while to look into its operation in tales of vulgar terror. But it is highly interesting to trace its effects on minds of a high order, when its suggestions have been received and interpreted as the visits and communications of superior beings. You have heard, I dare say, my dear Archy, of the mysticism of Schwedenborg. Now that they are explained, the details of his hallucinations are highly gratifying to one's curiosity.

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 of 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, with the greatest equanimity, his daily chat with them. 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 daily 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 Wirtemburg 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 on 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-two years conversed, and converse daily.

"Of the angels," he says, "they have human forms, the appearance of men that I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them as a man with other men, often with several together; and have seen nothing in the least to distinguish them from ordinary men." [They had evidently just the appearance of Nicolai's visitors.] "Lest any one should call this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I am accustomed to see them, when perfectly myself 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 outwards." This is indeed cum ratione insanire! how just an analysis of the illusion, when he is most deceived by it!

"The angels who converse with men, speak not in their own language, but in the language of men, and likewise in other languages which are inwardly known to man, not in languages which he does not understand." Schwedenborg here took up the angels, and to explain their own ideas to them observed, that they most likely appeared to speak his mother tongue, because, in fact, it was not they who spoke, but himself by their suggestion. The angels held out, however, and went away unconvinced.

"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 others' ideas and knowledge; and in this form they bound through the universe, from planet to planet."

I will, in conclusion, add another different, but equally interesting sketch.

"It is now seven years ago," so spoke, before her judges, the simple, but high-minded Joan of Arc—"the beginning of the year 1431; 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 was 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 answered 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 Catherine 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 Catherine and St Margaret appeared to me, as the angel 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, afterwards 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 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 high-spirited 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, the 30th of May 1431. Ill-fated heroine! I seem to be thinking of writing her epitaph, but I am considering only that there is more to come out of her evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and it grows late—so good-night, dear Archy.

"Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum.""Cras ingens iterabimus æquor."Yours, &c.,Mac Davus.

A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

THE BATHS OF MONT DOR

There is a tremendous valley opening all the way down, from the central summits of the ridge of the Monts Dor, quite into the undulating, and thence into the flat country, lying westward of this mountain chain. Where the valley commences, it is nothing more than a combination of mountain gullies, and is like a wild and precipitous ravine; but by degrees it widens out into spacious amphitheatres, and at times contracts itself again so as barely to allow of a struggling river to make its way betwixt the rocky sides. In some places, the valley makes a straight reach four or five miles in extent, but in others, winds and turns about in abrupt and varied curves; its descent is now gradual, and now rapid, where the stream dashes over ledges of rock or cuts its way through some rough and stubborn pass. Nearly all the ravines and smaller valleys that open into it bring down their contributions of mountain torrents; and the whole collection of waters, thus wending their way to the ocean, form what is called the Dor. This river meets with the Dogne lower down in its course; and, under the joint name of the two waters, the flood rushes broad and strong through Guienne into the Gironde. The high and bare mountain whence the Dor derives its principal source is the Pic de Sancy, the loftiest hill in the middle of France; it is the king of all the volcanoes of this vast igneous chain, and has its sides deeply furrowed and excavated into immense craters or volcanic vents. From it proceed numerous branches or arms, composed of basaltic currents congealed into columnar masses in the early days of the world. These stretch out league after league, away from their parent head, and present on their tops vast plateaux of green and moory pasture-land; while their sides are either abrupt precipices of basaltic columns, or else are clothed with primeval forests, which have sprung up and still flourish on the rich materials of their decomposing slopes. The valley of the Dor is therefore shut in either by precipitous volcanic walls, or is guarded by sombre woods. Once on the tops of the plateaux, and you may ride a whole day on unbroken turf; or, if you penetrate within the forest lands, you may wander for any time you please, days or weeks, without seeing either their beginning or their end. On the summits of the mountains around, snow is to be found in patches, even in the hottest days of summer; and as the Pic de Sancy is more than six thousand feet above the level of the sea, almost every gradation of climate is to be found amongst these lonely hills. In the dog-days, the valleys are so hot that you gladly escape to the upper lands for air and coolness; but the winter sets in, in October, and the valley of the Dor is then covered deep with snow for many a long month. The Dor itself is a pleasant lively stream: it can boast of some picturesque falls here and there, but it is commonly a "brawling brook," winding about at its pleasure; allowing itself to be forded every now and then; and producing plenty of small trout for those who like to waste their time in fishing.

The urchins of the peasant tribe know how to get these finny creatures more cannily than the professed angler; you may see them on a summer's morning wading up the stream, and hunting under every stone, and in each little pool, for the objects of their search. As soon as they see a trout, they drive it into little convenient nooks that they know of, and there—how they manage it nobody knows, but the result is certain—they catch them with their hands or knock them on the head with their sticks; and will always produce you a respectable dish at a few hours' notice.

About a couple of leagues below the Pic de Sancy, towards the west, one of the plateaux on the northern side of the valley assumes an exceedingly bold and regular appearance; it is called the Plateau de l'Angle—perhaps from its making, by an abrupt termination, the corner of two valleys; and it towers out like a promontory at sea, soaring some four or five hundred feet above the bed of the river. Not very far from where this plateau is cut off—a mile or so—there is a bold cascade dashing over its side, and carrying off the superfluous waters of a pool and morass higher up in the bosom of the mountains. Here the basaltic precipice is hollowed out into a circling chasm, and over its black face rushes the impetuous stream upon a huge chaos of rocks and debris below, foaming and roaring until it finds its way into the Dor far down in the valley at its foot. A few hundred feet to the westward of this cascade, and at the lowest part of the precipitous columnar cliff, burst forth several copious fountains of hot mineral waters, half-way to boiling heat when they leave their rocky cells, and ever keeping up the same degree both of heat and quantity. These are the springs which give celebrity to the place, and constitute the baths of Mont Dor.