The Phantom World Part 32

A hundred other similar facts might be cited, which might pa.s.s for magical operations, if we did not know that they are simple contrivances and tricks of art, performed by persons well exercised in such things. It may be that sometimes people have ascribed to magic and the evil spirit operations like those we have just related, and that what have been taken for the spirits of deceased persons were often arranged on purpose by young people to frighten pa.s.sers-by. They will cover themselves with white or black, and show themselves in a cemetery in the posture of persons requesting prayers; after that they will be the first to exclaim that they have seen a spirit: at other times it will be pick-pockets, or young men, who will hide their amorous intrigues, or their thefts and knavish tricks, under this disguise.

Sometimes a widow, or heirs, from interested motives, will publicly declare that the deceased husband appears in his house, and is in torment; that he has asked or commanded such and such things, or such and such rest.i.tutions. I own that this may happen, and does happen sometimes; but it does not follow that spirits never return. The return of souls is infinitely more rare than the common people believe; I say the same of pretended magical operations and apparitions of the demon.

It is remarked that the greater the ignorance which prevails in a country, the more superst.i.tion reigns there; and that the spirit of darkness there exercises greater power, in proportion as the nations we plunged in irregularity, and into deeper moral darkness. Louis Vivez[437] testifies that, in the newly-discovered countries in America, nothing is more common than to see spirits which appear at noonday, not only in the country, but in towns and villages, speaking, commanding, sometimes even striking men. Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsal, who has written on the antiquities of the northern nations, observes that in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Finmark, and Lapland, they frequently see spectres or spirits, which do many wonderful things; that there are even some amongst them who serve as domestics to men, and take the horses and other cattle to pasture.

The Laplanders, even at this day, as well those who have remained in idolatry as those who have embraced Christianity, believe the apparition of the manes or ghosts, and offer them a kind of sacrifice.

I believe that prepossession, and the prejudices of childhood, have much more to do with this belief than reason and experience. In effect, among the Tartars, where barbarism and ignorance reign as much as in any country in the world, they talk neither of spirits nor of apparitions, no more than among the Mahometans, although they admit the apparitions of angels made to Abraham and the patriarchs, and that of the Archangel Gabriel to Mahomet himself.

The Abyssinians, a very rude and ignorant people, believe neither in sorcerers, nor spells, nor magicians; they say that it is giving too much power to the demon, and by that they fall into the error of the Manichaeans, who admit two principles, the one of good, which is G.o.d, and the other of evil, which is the devil. The Minister Becker, in his work ent.i.tled "The Enchanted World," (Le Monde Enchante,) laughs at apparitions of spirits and evil angels, and ridicules all that is said of the effects of magic: he maintains that to believe in magic is contrary to Scripture and religion.

But whence comes it, then, that the Scriptures forbid us to consult magicians, and that they make mention of Simon the magician, of Elymas, another magician, and of the works of Satan? What will become of the apparitions of angels, so well noted in the Old and New Testaments? What will become of the apparitions of Onias to Judas Maccabeus, and of the devil to Jesus Christ himself, after his fast of forty days? What will be said of the apparition of Moses at the transfiguration of the Saviour; and an infinity of other appearances made to all kinds of persons, and related by wise, grave, and enlightened authors? Are the apparitions of devils and spirits more difficult to explain and conceive than those of angels, which we cannot rationally dispute without overthrowing the entire Scriptures, and practices and belief of the churches?

Does not the apostle tell us that the angel of darkness transforms himself into an angel of light? Is not the absolute renunciation of all belief in apparitions a.s.saulting Christianity in its most sacred authority, in the belief of another life, of a church still subsisting in another world, of rewards for good actions, and of punishments for bad ones; the utility of prayers for the dead, and the efficacy of exorcisms? We must then in these matters keep the medium between excessive credulity and extreme incredulity; we must be prudent, moderate, and enlightened; we must, according to the advice of St.

Paul, test everything, examine everything, yield only to evidence and known truth.

Footnotes:

[432] Ezek. xxi. 21.

[433] Hosea iv. 12.

[434] Aug. lib. xiv. de Civit. Dei, c. 24.

[435] Galen. de Differ. Sympt.

[436] By M. Fransquin Chanoine de Taul.

[437] Ludov. Vives, lib. i. de Veritate Fidei, p. 540.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE SECRETS OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY TAKEN FOR SUPERNATURAL THINGS.

It is possible to allege against my reasoning the secrets of physics and chemistry, which produce an infinity of wonderful effects, and appear beyond the power of natural agency. We have the composition of a phosphorus, with which they write; the characters do not appear by daylight, but in the dark we see them shine; with this phosphorus, figures can be traced which would surprise and even alarm during the night, as has been done more than once, apparently to cause maliciously useless fright. _La poudre ardente_ is another phosphorus, which, provided it is exposed to the air, sheds a light both by night and by day. How many people have been frightened by those little worms which are found in certain kinds of rotten wood, and which give a brilliant flame by night.

We have the daily experience of an infinite number of things, all of them natural, which appear above the ordinary course of nature,[438]

but which have nothing miraculous in them, and ought not to be attributed to angels or demons; for instance, teeth and noses taken from other persons, and applied to those who have lost similar parts; of this we find many instances in authors. These teeth and noses fall off directly when the person from whom they were taken dies, however great the distance between these two persons may be.

The presentiments experienced by certain persons of what happens to their relations and friends, and even of their own death, are not at all miraculous. There are many instances of persons who are in the habit of feeling these presentiments, and who in the night, even when asleep, will say that such a thing has happened, or is about to happen; that such messengers are coming, and will announce to them such and such things.

There are dogs that have the sense of smelling so keen that they scent from a good distance the approach of any person who has done them good or harm. This has been proved many times, and can only proceed from the diversity of organs in those animals, some of which have the scent much keener than others, and upon which the spirits which exhale from other bodies act more quickly and at a greater distance than in others. Certain persons have such an acute sense of hearing that they can hear what is whispered even in another chamber, of which the door is well closed. They cite as an example of this, a certain Marie Bucaille, to whom it was thought that her guardian angel discovered what was said at a great distance from her.

Others have the smell so keen that they distinguish by the odor all the men and animals they have ever seen, and scent their approach a long way off. Blind persons pretty often possess this faculty, as well as that of discerning the color of different stuffs by the touch, from horse-hair to playing-cards.

Others discern by the taste everything that composes a ragout, better than the most expert cook could do. Others possess so piercing a sight that at the first glance they can distinguish the most confused and distant objects, and remark the least change which takes place in them.

There are both men and women who, without intending to hurt, do a great deal of harm to children, and all the tender and delicate animals which they look at attentively, or which they touch. This happens particularly in hot countries; and many examples might be cited of it; from which arises what both ancients and moderns call fascination (or the evil eye); hence the precautions which were taken against these effects by amulets and preservatives, which were suspended to children's necks.

There have been known to be men from whose eyes there proceeded such venomous spirits that they did harm to everybody or thing they looked at, even to the breast of nurses, which they caused to dry up--to plants, flowers, the leaves of trees, which were seen to wither and fall off. They dare not enter any place till they had warned the people beforehand to send away the children and nurses, new-born animals, and, generally speaking, everything which they could infect by their breath or their looks.

We should laugh, and with reason, at those who, to explain all these singular effects, should have recourse to charms, spells, to the operations of demons, or of good angels. The evaporation of corpuscles, or atoms, or the insensible perspiration of the bodies which produce all these effects, suffice to account for it. We have recourse neither to miracles, nor to superior causes, above all when these effects are produced near, and at a short distance; but when the distance is great, the exhalation of the spirits, or essence, and of insensible corpuscles, does not equally satisfy us, no more than when we meet with things and effects which go beyond the known force of nature, such as foretelling future events, speaking unknown languages, _i. e._, languages unknown to the speaker, to be in such ecstasy that the person is beyond earthly feeling, to rise up from the ground, and remain so a long time.

The chemists demonstrate that the ____________________ or a sort of restoration or resurrection of animals, insects, and plants, is possible and natural. When the ashes of a plant are placed in a phial, these ashes rise, and arrange themselves as much as they can in the form which was first impressed on them by the Author of Nature.

Father Schol, a Jesuit, affirms that he has often seen a rose which was made to arise from its ashes every time they wished to see it done, by means of a little heat.

The secret of a mineral water has been found by means of which a dead plant which has its root can be made green again, and brought to the same state as if it were growing in the ground. Digby a.s.serts that he has drawn from dead animals, which were beaten and bruised in a mortar, the representation of these animals, or other animals of the same species.

d.u.c.h.esne, a famous chemist, relates that a physician of Cracow preserved in phials the ashes of almost every kind of plant, so that when any one from curiosity desired to see, for instance, a rose in these phials, he took that in which the ashes of the rose-bush were preserved, and placing it over a lighted candle, as soon as it felt a little warmth, they saw the ashes stir and rise like a little dark cloud, and, after some movements, they represented a rose as beautiful and fresh as if newly gathered from the rose-tree.

Gaffard a.s.sures us that M. de Cleves, a celebrated chemist, showed every day plants drawn from their own ashes. David Vanderbroch affirms that the blood of animals contains the idea of their species as well as their seed; he relates on this subject the experiment of M.

Borelli, who a.s.serts that the human blood, when warm, is still full of its spirits or sulphurs, acid and volatile, and that, being excited in cemeteries and in places where great battles are fought by some heat in the ground, the phantoms or ideas of the persons who are there interred are seen to rise; that we should see them as well by day as by night, were it not for the excess of light which prevents us even from seeing the stars. He adds that by this means we might behold the idea, and represent by a lawful and natural necromancy the figure or phantom of all the great men of antiquity, our friends and our ancestors, provided we possess their ashes.

These are the most plausible objections intended to destroy or obviate all that is said of the apparitions of spirits. Whence some conclude that these are either very natural phenomena and exhalations produced by the heat of the earth imbued with blood and the volatile spirit of the dead, above all, those dead by violence; or that they are the consequences of a stricken and prepossessed fancy, or simply illusions of the mind, or sports of persons who like to divert themselves by the panics into which they terrify others; or, lastly, movements produced naturally by men, rats, monkeys, and other animals; for it is true that the oftener we examine into what have been taken for apparitions, nothing is found that is real, extraordinary, or supernatural; but to conclude from thence that all the apparitions and operations attributed to angels, spirits or souls, and demons are chimerical, is carrying things to excess; it is to conclude that we mistake always, because we mistake often.

Footnotes:

[438] M. de S. Andre, Lett. iii. sur les Malefices.

CHAPTER L.

CONCLUSION OF THE TREATISE ON APPARITIONS.

After having made this exposition of my opinion concerning the apparitions of angels, demons, souls of the dead, and even of one living person to another, and having spoken of magic, of oracles, of obsessions and possessions of the demon; of sprites and familiar spirits; of sorcerers and witches; of spectres which predict the future; of those which haunt houses--after having stated the objections which are made against apparitions, and having replied to them in as weighty a manner as I possibly could, I think I may conclude that although this matter labors still under very great difficulties, as much respecting the foundation of the thing--I mean as regards the truth and reality of apparitions in general--as for the way in which they are made, still we cannot reasonably disallow that there may be true apparitions of all the kinds of which we have spoken, and that there may be also a great number very disputable, and some others which are manifestly the work of knavery, of maliciousness, of the art of charlatans, and flexibility of those who play sleight of hand tricks.

I acknowledge, moreover, that imagination, prepossession, simplicity, superst.i.tion, excess of credulity, and weakness of mind have given rise to several stories which are related; that ignorance of pure philosophy has caused to be taken for miraculous effects, and black magic, what is the simple effect of white magic, and the secrets of a philosophy hidden from the ignorant and common herd of men. Moreover, I confess that I see insurmountable difficulties in explaining the manner or properties of apparitions, whether we admit with several ancients that angels, demons, and disembodied souls have a sort of subtile transparent body of the nature of air, whether we believe them purely spiritual and disengaged from all matter, visible, gross, or subtile.

I lay down as a principle that to explain the affair of apparitions, and to give on this subject any certain rules, we should--

1st. Know perfectly the nature of spirits, angels and souls, and demons. We should know whether souls by nature are so spiritualized that they have no longer any relation to matter; or if they have, again, any alliance with an aerial, subtile, invisible body, which they still govern after death; or whether they exert any power over the body they once animated, to impel it to certain movements, as the soul which animates us gives to our bodies such impulsions as she thinks proper; or whether the soul determines simply by its will, as occasional or secondary cause, the first cause, which is G.o.d, to put in motion the machine which it once animated.

2d. If after death the soul still retains that power over its own body, or over others; for instance, over the air and other elements.

3d. If angels and demons have respectively the same power over sublunary bodies--for instance, to thicken air, inflame it, produce in it clouds and storms; to make phantoms appear in it; to spoil or preserve fruits and crops; to cause animals to perish, produce maladies, excite tempests and shipwrecks at sea; or even to fascinate the eyes and deceive the other senses.

4th. If they can do all these things naturally, and by their own virtue, as often as they think proper; or if there must be a particular order, or at least permission from G.o.d, for them to do what we have just said.

5th. Lastly, we should know exactly what power is possessed by these substances which we suppose to be purely spiritual, and how far the power of the angels, demons, and souls separated from their gross bodies, extends, in regard to the apparitions, operations and movements attributed to them. For whilst we are ignorant of the power which the Creator has given or left to disembodied souls, or to demons, we can in no way define what is miraculous, or prescribe the just bound to which may extend, or within which may be limited, the natural operations of spirits, angels, and demons.