On another occasion when I made my visit, it happened to be the day of the races occurring at a well known track some ten miles away, and members of the household where she was residing had gone to witness them. Neither she nor I had ever attended these races--we knew nothing of the appearance of the place, of the events that were expected, nor even of the ordinary routine of the sport. She was put into the deep hypnotic sleep, and thinking it a good opportunity to test her clairvoyance, I requested her to go to the grounds and I carefully directed her on her journey. Once within the inclosure she described the bright and cheerful appearance--the pavilion, the judge"s stand, and the position of persons whom she knew.
She said there was no race at the time; but that boys were going around among the spectators and getting money; that the people seemed excited; that they stood up and held out money, and beckoned to the boys to come--but she did not know what it meant. I suggested that perhaps they were betting. She seemed to look carefully and then said: "That is just what they are doing." She then described the race which followed, was much excited, and told who of the persons she knew were winners. I then said: "You will remember all this and be able to tell M. when she comes home."
It was found that everything had transpired as she had described. One of the races had been a failure, the horses coming in neck and neck; all bets were cancelled and new bets were made, which caused the excitement which she had witnessed. She surprised those who were present by the accuracy of her description, both of the place and the events, especially of the excitement caused by making the new bets.
On the same occasion, before awakening her, I said to her: "Now, I have something very particular to say to you and I want you to pay close attention.
"This evening when your dinner is brought up to you--you, A. B."s second self, will make A. B. see me come in and stand here at the foot of the bed. I shall say to you: "h.e.l.lo! you are at dinner. Well, I won"t disturb you," and immediately I shall go. And you will write me about my visit." I then awoke her in the usual manner. This was Tuesday, July 3, 1894. On Thursday following I received this note, which I have in my possession.
"DEAR DR. MASON:--
"As I was eating my dinner on Tuesday I heard some one say "Good-evening." I turned around surprised, as I had heard no one enter the room, and there at the foot of the bed I saw _you_.
"I said "Halloo! won"t you sit down?" you said: "Are you taking your dinner? Then I won"t detain you," and before I could detain you, you disappeared as mysteriously as you had come. Why did you leave so suddenly? Were you angry? Mary, the nurse, says you were not here at all at dinner-time. I say you were. Which of us is right?
"Sincerely, "A. B."
(Full name signed.)
The clairvoyant faculty is sometimes exercised in sleep, and hence the importance so often attached to dreams. I have a patient, Miss M. L., thirty-five years of age, who has been under my observation for the past fifteen years, and for whose truthfulness and good sense I can fully vouch. From childhood she has been a constant and most troublesome somnambulist, walking almost every night, until two years ago when I first hypnotized her and suggested that she should not again leave her bed while asleep, and she has not done so.
This person"s dreams are marvellously vivid, but her most vivid ones she does not call dreams. She says, "When I dream I dream, but when I see I see."
Nine years ago, M. L., had a friend in New Mexico whom I will call G., from whom she had not heard for months, and of whose surroundings she knew absolutely nothing.
One night she dreamed, or, as she expresses it, _saw_ this friend in Albuquerque. She was, as it seemed to her, present in the room where he was, and saw everything in it with the same degree of distinctness as though she were actually present. She noticed the matting on the floor, the willowware furniture, bed, rocking-chair, footstool, and other articles. He was talking with a companion, a person of very striking appearance, whom she also minutely observed as regarded personal appearance, dress, and position in the room.
He was saying to this companion that he was about to start for New York for the purpose of interesting capitalists in a system of irrigation which he had proposed. His companion was laughing sarcastically and ridiculing the whole scheme. He persisted, and the conversation was animated--almost bitter.
Three weeks later, early one morning, she dreamed that this man was in New York. She saw him coming up the street leading to her house, and saw her father go forward to meet him. At breakfast she told her father her dream, and they also talked freely about her former dream or vision of three weeks before.
After breakfast her father sat upon the front stoop reading the morning paper, and M. L. went about some work. Suddenly she heard her father call out in a startled sort of way: "Mary, sure enough, here comes G.!" She stepped to the window and there was G. coming up the street and her father going forward to meet him exactly as she had seen him in her dream. He had just arrived from the West, and had come for the very purpose indicated by his conversation in M. L."s vision. After some general conversation M. L.
said to G.; "By the way, who was that remarkable person you were talking with about this journey, three weeks ago?" mentioning the night of her dream. With evident surprise he said:
"What do you mean?"
She then related the whole dream just as she had experienced it, even to the minutest details. His astonishment was profound. He declared that the details which she gave could never have been so exactly described except by some one actually present; and with some annoyance he accused her of playing the spy.
There are many other instances of remarkable clairvoyant vision on her part, and especially two which have occurred within the year--the visions having been fully described before the events were known.
Such are a few among hundreds of cases which might be adduced as examples of the clairvoyant power. They are from every period of history, from the earliest down to our own times. Looked at broadly, they at least show that a belief in the clairvoyant power of some specially endowed persons has existed throughout the historic period; they also exhibit a great similarity in their character and the circ.u.mstances under which they are observed.
Apollonius stops short in his discourse, apparently in his natural state, sees the a.s.sa.s.sination of Domitian, and shouts, "Strike the tyrant!"
Fitzgerald at Brunswick suddenly beholds the burning factories at Fall River, and shouts his orders to the firemen. Others spontaneously go into the somnambulic condition and only then become clairvoyant; while still others need the a.s.sistance of a second person to produce somnambulism and independent vision.
What is the nature and what the method of this peculiar vision which has been named clairvoyance?
Is it a quickening and extension of ordinary vision, or is it a visual perception obtained in some other manner, independent of the natural organ of sight?
It has been noted how vastly the action of the senses may be augmented by cultivation, but never has cultivation increased vision to such an extent as to discover a penny a thousand miles away and through opaque coverings.
Besides, the clairvoyant vision is exercised quite independent of the bodily eye. The eyes may be closed, they may be turned upward or inward so that no portion of the pupil is exposed to the action of light, or they may be covered with thick pads of cotton or closed with plasters or bandages, yet the clairvoyant vision in proper subjects is obtained in just the same degree and with just the same certainty as when the eyes are fully exposed to the light.
It is true there has been much doubt and discussion on this vital point, the objectors maintaining that sight was possible and practicable by experts, notwithstanding the precautions used in blindfolding; in short, that the whole thing might safely be set down as deception and fraud.
In the face of facts such as are here cited, and the thousand others that might be adduced, it is hardly possible to treat this charge seriously.
To such objectors, c.u.mulative evidence regarding facts out of their own mental horizon is useless. Their motto is: "No amount of evidence can establish a miracle;" and their definition of a miracle is something done, or alleged to have been done, contrary to the laws of nature. But the objector who refuses credence to well-attested facts on that ground alone, simply a.s.sumes that he is acquainted with all the laws of nature.
A miracle, really, is only something alleged to have been done, and we are not able to explain how; nevertheless, it may be perfectly in accordance with natural laws which we did not understand or even know existed. To the West Indian, whom Columbus found in the New World, an eclipse of the sun was a miracle of the most terrible character; to the astronomer it was a simple fact in nature. To the ignorant boor, "talking with Chicago" or cabling between New York and London is a miracle; to the electrician it is an everyday, well-understood affair. For a long time scientific men did not believe in the existence of globular, slowly-moving electricity; if such a thing had existed, it certainly should have put in an appearance before members of the "Academy," or "Royal Society" some time in the course of all these years; but it never had done so; only a few cooks, blacksmiths, or back-woodsmen had ever seen it, and they certainly were not the sort of people to report scientific matter; they did not know how to observe, and undoubtedly "they did not see what they thought they saw."
But for all that, globular, slowly-moving electricity is now a well known fact in nature.
Neither the West Indian, the ignorant boor, nor the man of science had, at the time these several facts were presented to him, "any place in the existing fabric of his thought into which such facts could be fitted." The fabric of thought in each case must be changed, enlarged, modified, before the alleged facts could be received or a.s.similated.
The objector to the fact of clairvoyance and other facts in the new psychology is often simply deficient in the knowledge which would enable him properly to judge of these facts; he may be an excellent mathematician, physicist, editor, or even physician, but he has been educated to deal with a certain cla.s.s of facts, and only by certain methods, and he is wholly unfitted to deal with another cla.s.s of facts, perhaps requiring quite different treatment.
An excellent chemist might not be just the man to a.n.a.lyze questions of finance or to testify as an expert on the tariff, or a suspension bridge; the "texture of his thought" would need some modifying to fit him for these duties; indeed, he is fortunate if he can even be quite sure of morphia when he sees it; it might be a ptomaine.
If, then, the objector to well authenticated facts in any department of research expects his objections to be seriously considered, he must, at least, exhibit some intelligence in that department of research to which his objection relates.
I shall then simply reiterate the statement that there is abundant evidence of visual perception by some specially const.i.tuted persons, independent of any use of the physical organ of sight.
What the exact nature or method of this supranormal vision is, may not yet be absolutely settled, any more than the exact nature of light or of life or even of electricity is settled, and each of their various methods of action known, though of the fact itself in any of these cases there is no doubt.
From a careful consideration of the best authenticated facts and examples, we are led to believe that the faculty of clairvoyance is no supernatural gift, but may be possessed, to some degree, by many, perhaps by all, people; that it is a natural condition, developed and brought into exercise by a few, but undeveloped and dormant in most; that the faculty may include not only the power of obtaining visual perceptions at a distance and under circ.u.mstances which render ordinary vision impossible, but also the perception of general truth and the relation of things in nature to such a degree as to render the person who possesses it a teacher and prophet of seemingly supernatural endowments. Carefully excluding cases of unusual extension, or skill in using normal perceptive faculties, and also thought-transference, which, although bearing a certain relation to clairvoyance, should not be confounded with it, the phenomena of independent clairvoyance appear in certain persons under the following conditions:--
In certain states, brought about by disease, and at the near approach of death, in the hypnotic condition, whether self-induced or produced by the influence of a second person, and especially in the condition known as trance; it may also appear in sleep of the ordinary kind--in dreams, and especially in the condition of reverie or the state between sleeping and waking; a few persons also possess the clairvoyant faculty while in their natural condition, without losing their normal consciousness. In general it may be said that the faculty is most likely to appear when there exists a condition of abstraction, and the mind is acting without the restraint and guidance of the usual consciousness--and it reaches its most perfect exercise when this usual guidance ceases entirely--the body becoming inactive and anaesthetic and the mind acting independent of its usual manifesting organs. Such is the condition in trance.
This view is, of course, in direct opposition to the materialistic philosophy which makes the mind simply a "group of phenomena," the result of organization, and absolutely dependent upon that organization for its action, and even for its existence. To discuss this question here would occupy too much s.p.a.ce; besides, one of the objects of these papers is to show this mind, spirit, psychos, mentality, "group of phenomena,"
whatever it may be, and whatever name may be applied to it, acting under circ.u.mstances which will enable us to consider with greater intelligence this very question, viz.: Whether the mind, under some circ.u.mstances, is not capable of intelligent action independent of the brain and the whole material organization through which it ordinarily manifests itself.
CHAPTER V.
DOUBLE OR MULTIPLEX PERSONALITY.
If there be any one thing in the empirical psychology of the past which has been considered settled past all controversy, it is the unity and continuity of human personality. Whatever might be believed or doubted concerning the after life, for this life at least believers and skeptics alike are united in the full a.s.surance of a true, permanent, and unmistakable self. The philosopher Reid, a hundred years ago, in discussing this subject, wrote as follows:--
"My thoughts and actions and feelings change every moment. They have no continued but a successive existence, but that self or I to which they belong is permanent, and has the same relation to all succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings which I call mine. The ident.i.ty of a person is perfect--it admits of no degrees--and is not divisible into parts."
Now, while this dogma, which still expresses the general consensus of mankind, may in a sense be well founded, still certain facts have been ascertained by the observant scouts in the outlying fields of psychology which, unless they can be interpreted to mean something different from their seeming and obvious import, make strongly against that stability and unquestioned oneness of human personality about which every individual in his own consciousness may feel so absolutely certain. What are these facts which have come to the notice of students of psychology?
The case of Felida X., reported by Dr. Azam of Bordeaux, is one of the earliest to attract the serious attention of medical men and students of psychology, and has become cla.s.sic in relation to the subject.
She was a nervous child, given to moody spells and hysterical attacks, and, in 1856, when she was about fourteen years of age, she also began to have more serious attacks of an epileptiform character, from which she would emerge into a new and unusual condition, which was at first taken to be somnambulism. In this condition her general appearance was quite changed, and she talked and acted in a manner altogether different from her usual self. These attacks were at first very brief, lasting only a few minutes, but gradually they increased in duration until they occupied hours, and even days.
In her usual state she had no recollection and no knowledge whatever of her second condition, and the whole time spent in that condition was to her a blank; on the other hand, all the different occasions when she had been in this second condition were linked together, const.i.tuting a distinct chain of memories and a personality just as consciously distinct and conspicuous as her original self. In her second state she not only had the distinct memories connected with her own secondary personality, but she also knew facts concerning the first or original self, but only as she might have knowledge of any other person.