Chapter 3
As to the idea of purposely evoking the dead, it is at least as impious, as absurd, as odious to taste and sentiment, as it is insane in the eyes of reason. This protest the writer feels obliged to make, for while he regards the traditional, historical and anthropological curiosities here collected as matters of some interest, in various aspects, he has nothing but abhorrence and contempt for modern efforts to converse with the manes, and for all the profane impostures of 'spiritualism'.
On the question of the real existence of the reported phenomena hereafter chronicled, and on the question of the portee of the facts, if genuine, the writer has been unable to reach any conclusion, negative or affirmative. Even the testimony of his senses, if they ever bore witness to any of the speciosa miracula, would fail to convince him on the affirmative side. There seems to be no good reason why one observer should set so much store by his own impressions of sense, while he regards those of all other witnesses as fallible. On the other hand, the writer feels unable to set wholly aside the concurrent testimony of the most diverse people, in times, lands and conditions of opinion the most various. The reported phenomena fall into regular groups, like the symptoms of a disease. Is it a disease of observation? If so, the topic is one of undeniable psychological interest. To urge this truth, to produce such examples as his reading affords, is the purpose of the author.
The topic has an historical aspect. In what sorts of periods, in what conditions of general thought and belief, are the alleged abnormal phenomena most current? Every one will answer: In ages and lands of ignorance and superstitions; or, again: In periods of religious, or, so to say, of irreligious crisis. As Mr. Lecky insists, belief in all such matters, from fairies to the miracles of the Gospel, declines as rationalism or enlightenment advances. Yet it is not as Mr. Lecky says, before reason that they vanish, not before learned argument and examination, but just before a kind of sentiment, or instinct, or feeling, that events contradictory of normal experience seem ridiculous, and incredible.
Now, if we set aside, for the present, ecclesiastical miracles, and judicial witchcraft, and fix our attention on such minor and useless marvels as clairvoyance, 'ghosts,' unexplained noises, unexplained movements of objects, one doubts whether the general opinion as to the ratio of marvels and ignorance is correct. The truth is that we have often very scanty evidence. If we take Athens in her lustre, we are, undeniably, in an age of enlightenment, of the Aufklarung. No rationalistic, philosophical, cool-headed contemporary of Middleton, of Hume, of Voltaire, could speak more contemptuously about ghosts, and about the immortality of the soul, than some of the Athenian gentlemen who converse with Socrates in the Dialogues. Yet we find that Socrates and Plato, men as well educated, as familiar with the refined enlightenment of Athens as the others, take to some extent the side of the old wives with their fables, and believe in earth-bound spirits of the dead. Again, the clear-headed Socrates, one of the pioneers of logic, credits himself with 'premonitions,' apparently with clairvoyance, and assuredly with warnings which, in the then existing state of psychology, he could only regard as 'spiritual'. Hence we must infer that belief, or disbelief, does not depend on education, enlightenment, pure reason, but on personal character and genius. The same proportionate distribution of these is likely to recur in any age.
Once more, Rome in the late Republic, the Rome of Cicero, was 'enlightened,' as was the Greece of Lucian; that is the educated classes were enlightened. Yet Lucretius, writing only for the educated classes, feels obliged to combat the belief in ghosts and the kind of Calvinism which, but for his poem, we should not know to have been widely prevalent. Lucian, too, mocks frequently at educated belief in just such minor and useless miracles as we are considering, but then Lucian lived in an age of cataclysm in religion. Looking back on history we find that most of historical time has either been covered with dark ignorance, among savages, among the populace, or in all classes; or, on the other hand, has been marked by enlightenment, which has produced, or accompanied, religious or irreligious crises. Now religious and irreligious crises both tend to beget belief in abnormal occurrences. Religion welcomes them as miracles divine or diabolical. Scepticism produces a reaction, and 'where no gods are spectres walk'. Thus men cannot, or, so far, men have not been able to escape from the conditions in which marvels flourish. If we are savages, then Vuis and Brewin beset the forest paths and knock in the lacustrine dwelling perched like a nest on reeds above the water; tornaks rout in the Eskimo hut, in the open wood, in the gunyeh, in the Medicine Lodge. If we are European peasants, we hear the Brownie at work, and see the fairies dance in their grassy ring. If we are devoutly Catholic we behold saints floating in mid-air, or we lay down our maladies and leave our crutches at Lourdes. If we are personally religious, and pass days in prayer, we hear voices like Bunyan; see visions like the brave Colonel Gardiner or like Pascal; walk environed by an atmosphere of light, like the seers in Iamblichus, and like a very savoury Covenanting Christian. We are attended by a virtuous sprite who raps and moves tables as was a pious man mentioned by Bodin and a minister cited by Wodrow. We work miracles and prophesy, like Mr. Blair of St. Andrews (1639-1662); we are clairvoyant, like Mr. Cameron, minister of Lochend, or Loch-Head, in Kintyre (1679). If we are dissolute, and irreligious like Lord Lyttelton, or like Middleton, that enemy of Covenanters, we see ghosts, as they did, and have premonitions. If we live in a time of witty scepticism, we take to the magnetism of Mesmer. If we exist in a period of learned and scientific scepticism, and are ourselves trained observers, we may still watch the beliefs of Mr. Wallace and the experiments witnessed by Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins.
Say we are Protestants, and sceptical, like Reginald Scot (1584), or Whigs, like De Foe, we then exclaim with Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), that minor miracles, moving tables, have gone out with benighted Popery, as De Foe also boasts in his History of the Devil. Alas, of the table we must admit eppur si muove; it moves, or is believed by foreign savants to move, for a peasant medium, Eusapia Paladino. Mr. Lecky declares (1865) that Church miracles have followed Hop o' my Thumb; they are lost, with no track of white pebbles, in the forest of Rationalism. {26a} And then Lourdes comes to contradict his expectation, and Church miracles are as common as blackberries. Enfin, mankind, in the whole course of its history, has never got quit of experiences which, whatever their cause, drive it back on the belief in the marvellous. {26b}
It is a noteworthy circumstance that (setting apart Church miracles, and the epidemic of witchcraft which broke out simultaneously with the new learning of the Renaissance, and was fostered by the enlightened Protestantism of the Reformers, the Puritans, and the Covenanters, in England, Scotland and America) the minor miracles, the hauntings and knockings, are not more common in one age than in another. Our evidence, it is true, does not quite permit us to judge of their frequency at certain periods. The reason is obvious. We have no newspapers, no miscellanies of daily life, from Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages. We have from Greece and Rome but few literary examples of 'Psychical Research,' few collections of books on 'Bogles' as Scott called them. We possess Palaephatus, the life of Apollonius of Tyana, jests in Lucian, argument and exposition from Pliny, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plutarch, hints from Plato, Plautus, Lucretius, from St. Augustine and other fathers. Suetonius chronicles noises and hauntings after the death of Caligula, but, naturally, the historian does not record similar disturbances in the pauperum tabernaae.
Classical evidence on these matters, as about Greek and Roman folklore in general, we have to sift painfully from the works of literary authors who were concerned with other topics. Still, in the region of the ghostly, as in folklore at large, we have relics enough to prove that the ancient practices and beliefs were on the ordinary level of today and of all days: and to show that the ordinary numbers of abnormal phenomena were supposed to be present in the ancient civilisations. In the Middle Ages--the 'dark ages'-- modern opinion would expect to find an inordinate quantity of ghostly material. But modern opinion would be disappointed. Setting aside saintly miracles, and accusations of witchcraft, the minor phenomena are very sparsely recorded. In the darkest of all 'dark ages,' when, on the current hypothesis, such tales as we examine ought to be most plentiful, even witch-trials are infrequent. Mr. Lecky attributes to these benighted centuries 'extreme superstition, with little terrorism, and, consequently, little sorcery'. The world was capable of believing anything, but it believed in the antidote as well as in the bane, in the efficacy of holy water as much as in the evil eye. When, with the dawn of enlightenment in the twelfth century, superstition became cruel, and burned witch and heretic, the charges against witches do not, as a rule, include the phenomena which we are studying. Witches are accused of raising storms, destroying crops, causing deaths and blighting marriages, by sympathetic magic; of assuming the shapes of beasts, of having intercourse with Satan, of attending the Sabbat. All these fables, except the last, are survivals from savage beliefs, but none of these occurrences are attested by modern witnesses of all sorts, like the 'knockings,' 'movements,' 'ghosts,' 'wraiths,' 'second sight,' and clairvoyance.
The more part of mediaeval witchcraft, therefore, is not quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. The facts were facts: people really died or were sterile, flocks suffered, ships were wrecked, fields were ruined; the mistake lay in attributing these things to witchcraft. On the other hand, the facts of rappings, ghosts, clairvoyance, in spite of the universally consentient evidence, are very doubtful facts after all. Their existence has to be established before we look about for their cause. Now, of records about _these_ phenomena the Middle Ages produce but a very scanty supply. The miracles which were so common were seldom of this kind; they were imposing visions of devils, or of angels, or of saints; processions of happy or unhappy souls; views of heaven, hell, or purgatory. The reason is not far to seek: ecclesiastical chroniclers, like classical men of letters, recorded events which interested themselves; a wraith, or common ghost ('matter of daily experience,' says Lavaterus, and, later, contradicts himself), or knocking sprite, was beneath their notice. In mediaeval sermons we meet a few edifying wraiths and ghosts, returning in obedience to a compact made while in the body. Here and there a chronicle, as of Rudolf of Fulda (858), vouches for communication with a rapping bogle. Grimm has collected several cases under the head of 'House- sprites,' including this ancient one at Capmunti, near Bingen. {30} Gervase of Tilbury, Marie de France, John Major, Froissart, mention an occasional follet, brownie, or knocking sprite. The prayers of the Church contain a petition against the spiritus percutiens, or spirit who produces 'percussive noises'. The Norsemen of the Viking age were given to second sight, and Glam 'riding the roofs,' made disturbances worthy of a spectre peculiarly able-bodied. But, not counting the evidence of the Icelandic sagas, mediaeval literature, like classical literature, needs to be carefully sifted before it yields a few grains of such facts as sane and educated witnesses even now aver to be matter of their personal experience. No doubt the beliefs were prevalent, the Latin prayer proves that, but examples were seldom recorded.
Thus the dark ages do _not_, as might have been expected, provide us with most of this material. The last forty enlightened years give us more bogles than all the ages between St. Augustine and the Restoration. When the dark ages were over, when learning revived, the learned turned their minds to 'Psychical Research,' and Wier, Bodin, Le Loyer, Georgius Pictorius, Petrus Thyraeus, James VI., collected many instances of the phenomena still said to survive. Then, for want of better materials, the unhappy, tortured witches dragged into their confessions all the folklore which they knew. Second sight, the fairy world, ghosts, 'wraiths,' 'astral bodies' of witches whose bodies of flesh are elsewhere, volatile chairs and tables, all were spoken of by witches under torture, and by sworn witnesses. {31} Resisting the scepticism of the Restoration, Glanvil, More, Boyle, and the rest, fought the Sadducee with the usual ghost stories. Wodrow, later (1701-1731), compiled the marvels of his Analecta. In spite of the cold common-sense of the eighteenth century, sporadic outbreaks of rappings and feats of impulsive pots, pans, beds and chairs insisted on making themselves notorious. The Wesley case would never have been celebrated if the sons of Samuel Wesley had not become prominent. John Wesley and the Methodists revelled in such narratives, and so the catena of testimonies was lengthened till Mesmer came, and, with Mesmer, the hypothesis of a 'fluidic force' which in various shapes has endured, and is not, even now, wholly extinct. Finally Modern Spiritualism arrived, and was, for the most part, an organised and fraudulent copy of the old popular phenomena, with a few cheap and vulgar variations on the theme.
In the face of these facts, it does not seem easy to aver that one kind of age, one sort of 'culture' is more favourable to the occurrence of, or belief in, these phenomena than another. Accidental circumstances, an increase, or a decrease of knowledge and education, an access of religion, or of irreligion, a fashion in intellectual temperament, may bring these experiences more into notice at one moment than at another, but they are always said to recur, at uncertain intervals, and are always essentially the same.
To prove this by examples is our present business. In a thoroughly scientific treatise, the foundation of the whole would, of course, be laid in a discussion of psychology, physiology, and the phenomena of hypnotism. But on these matters an amateur opinion is of less than no value. The various schools of psychologists, neurologists, 'alienists,' and employers of hypnotism for curative or experimental purposes, appear to differ very widely among themselves, and the layman may read but he cannot criticise their works. The essays which follow are historical, anthropological, antiquarian.
SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM.
'Shadow' or Magic of the Dene Hareskins: its four categories. These are characteristic of all Savage Spiritualism. The subject somewhat neglected by Anthropologists. Uniformity of phenomena. Mr. Tylor's theory of the origin of 'Animism'. Question whether there are any phenomena not explained by Mr. Tylor's theory. Examples of uniformity. The savage hypnotic trance. Hareskin examples. Cases from British Guiana. Australian rapping spirits. Maori oracles. A Maori 'seance'. The North American Indian Magic Lodge. Modern and old Jesuit descriptions. Movements of the Lodge. Insensibility of Red Indian Medium to fire. Similar case of D. D. Home. Flying table in Thibet. Other instances. Montezuma's 'astral body'. Miracles. Question of Diffusion by borrowing, or of independent evolution.
Philosophers among the Dene Hareskins in the extreme north of America recognise four classes of 'Shadow' or magic. Their categories apply sufficiently closely to all savage sorcery (excluding sympathetic magic), as far as it has been observed. We have, among the Hareskins:--
1. Beneficent magic, used for the healing of the sick.
2. Malevolent magic: the black art of witchcraft
3. Conjuring, or the working of merely sportive miracles.
4. Magic for ascertaining the truth about the future or the distant present--clairvoyance. This is called 'The Young Man Bound and Bounding,' from the widely-spread habit of tying-up the limbs of the medium, and from his customary convulsions.
To all of these forms of magic, or spiritualism, the presence and aid of 'spirits' is believed to be necessary, with, perhaps, the exception of the sportive or conjuring class. A spirit helps to cure and helps to kill. The free spirit of the clairvoyant in bondage meets other spirits in its wanderings. Anthropologists, taking it for granted that 'spirits' are a mere 'animistic hypothesis'--their appearances being counterfeited by imposture-- have paid little attention to the practical magic of savages, as far as it is not merely sympathetic, and based on the doctrine that 'like cures like'.
Thus Mr. Sproat, in his excellent work, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, frankly admits that in Vancouver Island the trickery and hocus-pocus of Aht sorcery were so repugnant to him that he could not occupy himself with the topic. Some other travellers have been more inquisitive; unlettered sojourners among the wilder peoples have shared their superstitions, and consulted their oracles, while one or two of the old Jesuit missionaries were close and puzzled observers of their 'mediumship'.
Thus enough is known to show that savage spiritualism wonderfully resembles, even in minute details, that of modern mediums and seances, while both have the most striking parallels in the old classical thaumaturgy.
This uniformity, to a certain extent, is not surprising, for savage, classical, and modern spiritualism all repose on the primaeval animistic hypothesis as their metaphysical foundation. The origin of this hypothesis--namely, that disembodied intelligences exist and are active--is explained by anthropologists as the result of early reasonings on life, death, sleep, dreams, trances, shadows, the phenomena of epilepsy, and the illusions of starvation. This scientific theory is, in itself, unimpeachable; normal phenomena, psychological and physical, might suggest most of the animistic beliefs. {35}
At the same time 'veridical hallucinations,' if there are any, and clairvoyance, if there is such a thing, would do much to originate and confirm the animistic opinions. Meanwhile, the extraordinary similarity of savage and classical spiritualistic rites, with the corresponding similarity of alleged modern phenomena, raises problems which it is more easy to state than to solve. For example, such occurrences as 'rappings,' as the movement of untouched objects, as the lights of the seance room, are all easily feigned. But that ignorant modern knaves should feign precisely the same raps, lights, and movements as the most remote and unsophisticated barbarians, and as the educated Platonists of the fourth century after Christ, and that many of the other phenomena should be identical in each case, is certainly noteworthy. This kind of folklore is the most persistent, the most apt to revive, and the most uniform. We have to decide between the theories of independent invention; of transmission, borrowing, and secular tradition; and of a substratum of actual fact.
Thus, either the rite of binding the sorcerer was invented, for no obvious reason, in a given place, and thence reached the Australian blacks, the Eskimo, the Dene Hareskins, the Davenport Brothers, and the Neoplatonists; or it was independently evolved in each of several remote regions; or it was found to have some actual effect-- what we cannot guess--on persons entranced. We are hampered by not knowing, in our comparatively rational state of development, what strange things it is natural for a savage to invent. That spirits should knock and rap seems to us about as improbable an idea as could well occur to the fancy. Were we inventing a form for a spirit's manifestations to take, we never should invent _that_. But what a savage might think an appropriate invention we do not know. Meanwhile we have the mediaeval and later tales of rapping, some of which, to be frank, have never been satisfactorily accounted for on any theory. But, on the other hand, each of us might readily invent another common 'manifestation'--the _wind_ which is said to accompany the spirit.
The very word spiritus suggests air in motion, and the very idea of abnormal power suggests the trembling and shaking of the place wherein it is present. Yet, on the other side, the 'cold non- natural wind' of seances, of Swedenborg, and of a hundred stories, old or new, is undeniably felt by some sceptical observers, even on occasions where no professional charlatan is engaged. As to the trembling and shaking of the house or hut, where the spirit is alleged to be, we shall examine some curious evidence, ancient and modern, savage and civilised. So of the other phenomena. Some seem to be of easy natural invention, others not so; and, in the latter case, independent evolution of an idea not obvious is a difficult hypothesis, while transmission from the Pole to Australia, though conceivable, is apt to give rise to doubt.
Meanwhile, one phenomenon, which is usually said to accompany others much more startling, may now be held to have won acceptance from science. This is what the Dene Hareskins call the Sleep of the Shadow, that is, the Magical Sleep, the hypnotic trance. Savages are well acquainted with this abnormal condition, and with means of producing it, and it is at the bottom of all their more mysterious non-sympathetic magic. Before Mesmer, and even till within the last thirty years, this phenomenon, too, would have been scouted; now it is a commonplace of physiology. For such physical symptoms as introverted eyes in seers we need look no further than Martin's account of the second-sighted men, in his book on the Hebrides. The phenomenon of anaesthesia, insensibility to pain, in trance, is not unfamiliar to science, but that red-hot coals should not burn a seer or medium is, perhaps, less easily accepted; while science, naturally, does not recognise the clairvoyance, and still less the 'spiritual' attendants of the seer in the Sleep of the Shadow. Nevertheless, classical, modern, and savage spiritualists are agreed in reporting these last and most startling phenomena of the magic slumber in certain cases.