Posthumous Humanity: A Study of Phantoms/Chapter 6

Somnambulism, properly speaking, is the most anciently known of the effects of mesmerism. A word or two upon this curious phenomenon.

What must we understand by the word somnambule? Etymology teaches us that it is a person who walks while asleep. This definition seems correct enough at first sight; but it is soon perceived that it is not general enough, and must be completed. A somnambule does not always walk, and we often observe in him facts not less singular than the ​nocturnal promenade. Let us attempt, by the analysis of some examples, well selected and authentic, to define the different modes of action which somnambulism presents. The study of these different manifestations will enable us to form an idea as to its nature and origin.

Burdach pretends that somnambulism is more common with men than women, notwithstanding that the nervous organization of the latter would make us suppose the contrary. All that I can say in this connection is, that the majority of the facts related to men have related to women. The same physiologist thinks that somnambulism is never witnessed in children and old men. This view of the case is comprehensible as connected with those who are approaching the end of their career and whose sensitiveness is blunted by age, but we could hardly admit it in the case of a child, and, in fact, numerous testimonies prove the contrary.^[1] I will quote only one example, which is just now occurring at Bastide-de-Sérou, at the moment when ​I am writing these lines (end of November, 1879). Briefly, here is the story it is the father who speaks:

"You know the youngest of my sons, little Léon, hardly eleven years old; you know he is an intelligent boy, studious, applying himself with ardour to all that interests him. For several months we had noticed in him unmistakable symptoms of somnambulism. He would rise in the middle of the night, in a state of extraordinary agitation, and jump out of bed, crying and gesticulating as if he were pursuing an intruder. Wishing to prevent all accidents, I made him sleep with his elder brother Pierre, who would hold and calm him by gentle words each time that an attack seized him. Recently, in the middle of the night, Pierre heard him talk of a waggon that he meant to build, the wood necessary to make it, and the tools that he must use, &c. As he saw us every day working in iron and wood, his imagination is naturally full of these things. Thinking that he was awake, Pierre conversed with him about the subject that was upon his mind. Suddenly, little Léon told him to go and get some hatchets to fell the trees that were to supply the wood for his waggon. Pierre then understood that his brother was in somnambulism, and tried to calm him by promising to give him a sou if he would remain quiet.

"'Where is the sou?'

"'I have put it on the table.'

​"Instantly, and before Pierre had time to hold him, little Léon jumped out of bed, went straight to the table to get the sou, and said that he did not find it. His mother, who slept in the same room, having heard all, then got up to go and put one there. The child seized it, and, his mind taking another direction, he thought of his brother Jérome, who was making a tour through France.

"'Give me,' said he, some paper and a pen. I want to write to Jérome.'

"Meanwhile the candle had been lighted, and we were all up to see this crisis. We gave him paper and a pen, and, seizing the latter, he wrote, very distinctly, Jérome, with his eyes closed, and his head turned rather towards us than towards the paper.

"'You should also write to your sister Marie,' said Pierre to him.

"It is not unimportant to remark that Marie was among us and at his very side.

"'You are right,' answered Léon; 'I shall also write to Marie.'

"And he proceeded to trace the name.

"'But you are mistaken, observed Pierre; you have written Maire.'

"'It's true, I have made a mistake;' and he re-wrote the name of his sister.

"This time he spelt the word correctly, all the while keeping his eyes closed and his head turned towards us.

​"As his movements were jerky and almost convulsive, I did not wish that this scene should be prolonged, and I took him into my bed, petting him with gentle words. He fell asleep after a few moments, and, upon awaking, had no recollection of what had happened."

I shall not analyze the circumstances of this narrative. While somnambulism is here undoubtedly exhibited, I prefer to cite other examples in which the characteristics peculiar to it display themselves in a broader manner. I will only add that I have learned fresh particulars relative to little Léon. Somnambulism developed in him after an accident which gave him a great fright, and it has been noticed that when he sleeps with his mother or his sister he is less agitated that when he shares the bed of his brother. This circumstance implies the action of the vital fluid of one person on another. It indicates at the same time that this fluid acts with less energy when it emanates from a female, especially if advanced in age; for little Léon finds himself calmer near his mother than near his sister.

The following fact occurred in the early part of this century at Saint Jean-de-Verges, a little village in the neighbourhood of Foix. It is related to me by a daughter of Mdme. I, the heroine of the story:

"Mdme. L. was still a young girl, and was one day busy at home about her household affairs. On the morrow a local festival was to be celebrated, ​and all the day was given to the preparations. But, despite her industry, she found no time to clean her kitchen utensils. She went to bed, intending to rise early in the morning to finish this task. In the middle of the night she leaves her bed, descends to the kitchen, puts her saucepans in the basket, and carries them to some distance away from the house, to the bank of the Ariège, to the spot where she was accustomed to wash her pots and pans. Her saucepans cleaned, she returned to the house, put everything back in its place, and returned to bed. In the morning she rose, as she had intended, very early, to complete her task Finding the work all done, and not being able to explain this wonder, she went to tell it to her parents. They replied that they had heard her in the night descend from her room, enter the kitchen, unhook the saucepans from the wall, and place them in the basket; then she had opened the door of the house, and gone towards the river. They had let her do it, thinking that she was awake, and that it must be near daylight. At the end of about an hour, they had heard her re-enter the kitchen, hang up her saucepans, and go back to her room." From this narrative, the prodigy gives its own explanation. She had cleaned her utensils in a crisis of somnambulism.

Two leading facts separate themselves from this story. We see Madame L. preoccupied about a certain thing, the cleaning of her saucepans. Being ​unable to finish the task in the day-time, she is obliged to put it off till the morning; she retired with the purpose well formed to rise very early, to finish this operation before the festival should begin. A fixed idea dominated her, and directed all the forces of her mind towards a determined result. And this is the first characteristic noticeable in somnambulism.

In the second place, if we follow Madame L. step by step, we see her accomplishing the intended task in the same manner as if she had done it in full day-light. Were her eyes open or closed? I do not know, but it is not important: both cases are equally common in somnambulism. But when a somnambule has the eyes open, they are fixed, motionless, insensible to light, consequently incapable of seeing. Madame L., walking with unfaltering step in the darkness, handling her utensils with the usual dexterity, finishing her work without interruption, was guided by an interior vision which replaced sight and directed her actions in a manner as sure as if she had been awake.

We can draw one other conclusion from this story. Madame L. was not naturally a somnambule; for they had never noticed in her any fact of this kind. She became so by accident on a single occasion, under the impulse of a fixed idea. Let a strong preoccupation control a person several days successively, and the state of somnambulism may be developed. Of this nature is the following example: ​it occurred at Pamiers, about forty years ago, and was told me by a midwife, Madame F., who was an eye-witness.

This young lady had gone to Pamiers to pursue her medical studies. She went to lodge with a woman who had three other boarders, young ladies like herself. Winter was approaching—the time when geese are fattened, and the mistress of the house used to rise early every morning to gorge hers. One day she came in, in very depressed mood, to tell her boarders that the geese seemed ill, that she had not been able to make them eat their food, although the dish was full of corn which she had given them the evening before. She took some comfort, that evening, in seeing that corn had, at any rate, been digested during the day. But, the same facts occurring on the next and following days, our hostess worried more and more. A boarder, having thought she heard some noise in the night, conceived some suspicion of somnambulism, and told her companions. All four adopted the means to verify the fact, and the following night the same noise recurring, they rose, went to see the geese, and found the mistress of the house in the act of stuffing them. They awakened her, and great was her astonishment when she found herself caught in the very act of somnambulism. At about the same time, another woman of Pamiers, who knitted woollen waistcoats, sometimes found, upon rising, her work more forward than she had left it the ​previous evening. After numerous fruitless re-searches, her neighbours discovered that she was a somnambule, and rose at night to work at her waist-coat in pitch darkness.

We may apply to these two cases of somnambulism the reflections that I have made with respect to Madame L. The woman who rose at night to stuff her geese, and she who worked at her knitting, were only accidentally somnambulistic, and fell into this state only under the power of a great preoccupation. The dexterity with which they accomplished their tasks shows that their members obeyed an inner intelligent force which guided them as surely as that which controlled them when awake.

When the mental tension which provokes somnambulism acts in a studious man, we notice still more surprising facts than the preceding ones. Scholars have been seen to rise at night, to compose their work for the next day; mathematicians, to find the solution of problems which they had vainly sought the evening before; persons devoid of poetic talent, to compose verses in irreproachable composition and style. The treatises upon physiology are full of narrations of this kind. The most rigorous logic seems to direct all the acts performed by accidental somnambulists. It is not always so with natural somnambulists. Burdach avows, in his Traité de Physiologie, that the latter sometimes do things quite contrary to reason. He cites in this connection an example personal to himself. ​From his eighteenth to his thirtieth year he was subject to attacks of somnambulism. One morning he found himself without his shirt. No one having entered his room, he could only attribute to himself the strange fact; but what had he done with the lost article? All his searches were useless, and it was only some time afterwards that he found his shirt, rolled up and put away in the wardrobe in an adjoining room. The night-walks of certain somnambules are also entirely unaccountable: they have been seen walking on the edges of roofs; others leaping from beam to beam with a marvellous precision. If perchance they fall, the fall is for them but a sort of leap, for they always find themselves on touching ground in the position that the best trained acrobat would take. If obstacles are placed in their way, they avoid them as they would do in broad daylight a manifest proof that they possess in themselves an intelligent force which guides and puts them in motion as the locomotive directs the train with which it is coupled.

It is to be remarked that somnambules preserve no recollection of their nocturnal exploits; but the strange thing is, that they will relate what they have done, if interrogated during the next following sleep. One would say that there exists in them a second personality, which only reveals itself during somnambulism, and has no relation with the ordinary personality. Burdach tells a very curious story about this. "One of my friends," says he, ​"learnt one morning that his wife had been seen on the roof of the church. At noon, although she was fast asleep, he asked her, speaking to her over the epigastric region, to give him some details about her nocturnal wandering. She gave him a detailed account, and said, among other things, that she had been wounded in her left foot by a nail projecting from the surface of the roof. After awaking, she answered affirmatively, but with surprise, the question that was put to her as to whether she felt any pain in this foot; but when she discovered a wound there, she could not account for it."

From the facts that I have just presented, the following conclusions may be drawn.

I. Somnambulism, spontaneous in some people, is in the latent state in all others. In the latter, one detects it but slightly; yet it may attain its full development under the influence of a strong mental tension, a moral commotion, or other physiological causes. These manifestations, frequent though in-complete in childhood, show themselves more strongly in youth, then decrease with age, and seem to disappear in the old.

II. The extraordinary things that the somnambule accomplishes, notably in the intellectual domain, testify the existence in him of an active and intelligent force, i.e., of an inner personality. This personality seems quite different from the ordinary one, and seems to have its seat in the nervous ganglia of the epigastric region, as we ​have seen in the somnambule mentioned by Burdach, and as we shall recognize in a degree more marked and precise in other manifestations of mesmerism. It is thus proven why the somnambule does not recognize the voices of persons with whom he is most intimate, and preserves no recollection of what has passed during his sleep. In like manner we notice the fact that there has never been detected in him any immoral act, as if his mysterious guide was freed from the bonds of animality.

III. The personality which appears in somnambulism displays an intelligence equal and sometimes superior to that of the ordinary personality; but, like the latter, it has also its equation, its obscurity, its exhaustion. To content myself with one example, I will revert to that somnambule mentioned by Burdach, who, after having put on his boots, mounted astride a window-sill, and put the spur to the wall to urge on an imaginary courser.

IV. Somnambulism is due to an abnormal disengagement of nervous fluid. Several causes may lead to this result: fright, great mental tension, exuberance of youth, &c.; in a word, all which tends to upset the equilibrium of the physiological functions whose seat is in the nervous system. When the fluid is not abundant, the effects of somnambulism are only displayed in an obscure manner, and seem to be confounded with those ​of dreaming. But as soon as there is disengaged a suitable quantity, the inner personality is immediately seen to appear, and the somnambule then presents the characteristics of a waking man, for he has a guide within him who possesses all the faculties of intelligence and movement. What I have said of the thaumaturgic fluid, and the personality it calls into action, will be confirmed by the other effects of mesmerism.

Let us now pass to the examination of the phenomena that are observed in the magnetic sleep.

When the nervous fluid which acts on an individual proceeds from another person there is produced a new order of facts. The patient submitted to the action of magnetic passes sleeps, then becomes clairvoyant, and answers the questions that are put to him. In other words, he is a sleep-talker. He is given, by analogy, the name of somnambule—an improper expression which leads to misunderstanding. But custom has prevailed, and by the side of natural somnambulism has ranged itself "magnetic" somnambulism—another improper designation, but also sanctioned by custom.

It was in 1784 that magnetic somnambulism was observed for the first time by a disciple of Mesmer—M. de Puységur. This discovery was, like many others, the result of chance. A gardener of M. de Puységur, Victor Rass, having fallen sick, his master took steps to magnetize him. After ​some passes M. de Puységur, seeing that he had his eyes closed, asked him if he slept. Great was his surprise when he heard him answer and begin a conversation with him about his sickness. Victor Rass indicated to him the organs which were diseased and the remedies which would cure him. M. de Puységur perceived that the patient had fallen into a new physiological state, which he likened to somnambulism. His discovery was soon noised about, and somnambulism studied in all its phases. I shall not enter into any detail as to the manner in which it is produced, nor as to the effects which are obtained in it.

These are matters familiar to everybody to-day, and moreover foreign to my subject. I shall confine myself to analyzing certain of its most essential characteristics, such as have been revealed by the practice of nearly a century.

The first phenomenon that the magnetic sleep exhibits is the modification that most somnambules experience in their nervous system. Sensitiveness is entirely abolished. The patient hears only the voice of the magnetizer and that of the person whom the latter places en rapport with him. His deafness is absolute for all noises that occur, of whatsoever intensity. In an experiment made at Paris, a sceptic fired a pistol near the ear of a somnambule. The latter heard nothing. The insensibility is not less complete in other parts of the body. We may bury needles in the flesh without the ​patient feeling the least pain. He suffers only when he awakes. The most painful surgical operations have been performed on magnetized subjects, and they had only learned what had happened after they had come out of their sleep.^[2] Before the discovery of chloroform the faculty had only at their disposal this means for abolishing suffering during operations, and a number of doctors employ it up to the present time. This insensibility resembles that which we have seen showing itself at the moment when a person is about to project the Double. It is the first point of resemblance which connects the phenomena of somnambulism with those of duplication.

The second character of the magnetic sleep is the lucidity which is observed in somnambules. Not all magnetized persons can attain to this state. Here, as everywhere else, the phenomena which present themselves follow an ascending scale, whose extreme terms are, if I may venture to so express myself, zero and the infinite. Certain subjects are found to be completely antipathetic to magnetism, whilst others fall asleep after a few passes. Those who fall into the sleep do not always reach ​somnambulism. This phenomenon shows itself but by imperceptible degrees; it commonly requires many sittings before the first symptoms appear.^[3] On the other hand, individuals not sensitive to-day to magnetic action may yield to it later on, and vice versâ. Sickness, and, more broadly speaking, any cause which tends to weaken the bodily tone and exaggerate nervous sensitiveness, predisposes to magnetic influence. It is for the latter reason that somnambulism more often shows itself in the female than in the male. Useless to add, all subjects are not equally lucid. Some privileged natures attain to an extraordinary clairvoyance, but this clairvoyance, far from applying itself to everything indiscriminately, as was formerly believed, does not transcend certain limits which I shall presently define.

The most immediate and curious application of the magnetic lucidity is in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. If a somnambule is suffering, he ​sees with a marvellous sagacity the organ which is the seat of the disease, predicts long in advance the return of the crises, fixes their length, and announces the day, hour, and exact minute when they ought to show themselves; at the same time he names the most appropriate remedies, and makes known the time when the cure will be accomplished. All physicians who have observed these facts attest that these prescriptions include nothing contrary to the principles of medical science. Sometimes very singular coincidences are noticed. A patient having consulted a somnambule, the latter advised the use of milk from a goat whose teats had been rubbed with mercurial ointment. Some days previously Dupuytren had ordered the same remedy. The somnambules exhibit an analogous discernment in the cases of patients whom the magnetizer places en rapport with them. It is regrettable that physicians, instead of seeking in magnetism a powerful auxiliary, only permit themselves to see in it quackery that they must leave to charlatans.

We shall find, then, in the somniloquist the characteristics which I have described in connection. with the somnambule properly so called. Under the action of the nervous fluid, the ordinary personality seems obliterated, and in its place we see arise the mesmeric personality. When the phenomena of the magnetic sleep are but feebly displayed, it is often difficult to recognize the physiognomy of the latter, and we are not quite sure to whom we must ​ascribe the answers of the sleep-talker. But as soon as the effects of magnetism attain all their fulness there is no longer room for doubt; it is then truly the mesmeric personality which acts. It presents itself with distinct characteristics clearly differentiating it from the cerebral personality. The magnetic subject does not recognize the voice of the persons with whom he is most familiar, unless the magnetizer places them en rapport with him. Upon his awaking he has no longer consciousness of what he has done. Like the natural somnambule, he has an extreme sensitiveness for everything which touches upon morality or modesty, and does not shrink from recalling to decorum persons who whisper dishonourable proposals. Questioned as to what concerns himself, it sometimes happens that he speaks of himself as an individual with whom he has no connection. He expresses himself in the third person, and exposes his own faults as though he were doing it of a stranger. In other words, the personality which the mesmeric fluid has evoked is entirely distinct from the individual who has just been submitted to mesmeric passes. If one asks this mysterious interlocutor what is his name, he does not know what to answer; he babbles like a child of three years, whom one asks about his origin. It is a statue which a supernatural potency has just animated for a moment with the breath of life. Deleuze cites the example of a woman named Adelaide, who, when she became somnambulic, no ​longer answered to this name; she declared that she was called Petite, and spoke of Adelaide as of an entire stranger. Others have been known to call themselves a demon, a spirit, the soul of a deceased person. We shall find analogous facts in mediums and the obsessed.^[4]

The individuality which appears in the magnetic sleep presents a trait not less remarkable than the preceding ones, and which completes its differentiation from the ordinary personality. Whilst the latter has its seat in the encephalon, the former appears to be localized in the bundle of nervous ganglia called the solar plexus. In certain eases, in fact, the voice of the somniloquist seems to come out of the epigastrium, as if the mesmeric fluid animated this region, crowded as we know it to be with nerve-filaments, and we observe a marked dualism between the somnambule, properly so called, and the ​epigastric personage. I shall have occasion to revert to this frequent fact in the obsessed, and which is also noticed in various cataleptics who only perceive sounds by the solar plexus.^[5] Especially it is, we think, in the magnetic sleep that this phenomenon attains its full development, and that it is easiest to study. At the commencement there is something like a struggle between the cerebral and the epigastric personalities.

The somnambule, if asked to read some lines upon a paper which is handed him, is not quite sure to whom he should apply. He carries the paper alternately to the forehead and the epigastrium, and it is usually in contact or close to this latter organ that the reading is done. When, as the result of predisposition in the subject, or of a considerable charging with aura, the mesmeric individuality acquires all its energies, there occurs another phenomenon quite common in the annals of magnetism. This is the projection of the Double. The epigastric personage, feeling himself strong enough to burst the bonds of his prison, escapes, and the somnambule falls into ecstasy; he becomes deaf to the voice of the magnetizer. It is now but an inert body, completely cut off from the world which surrounds it. Life has abandoned it, ​and it is in vain that the operator makes his passes to compel it to re-enter. This lethargy lasts sometimes for several hours.^[6] When the somnambule recovers consciousness, he tells of extraordinary visions, of distant journeys, which recall the tales of the ecstatics or of the sorcerers returning from their sabbath.

A final characteristic of the individuality born of the magnetic sleep is that its lucidity is not always without alloy. It sometimes presents spots, black lines, obscurities, which make it so that one can never have a complete faith in the answers of a sleep-talker. Even in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, which seem its proper domain, magnetic clairvoyance is sometimes at fault. "I have seen," says Dupotet, "somnambules who have told me, along with incontestible truths, unaccountable falsehoods." Deleuze goes farther, and does not fear to lay it down as a principle that, of a hundred persons who go to consult somnambules, ninety-five go away dissatisfied. This tissue of ​intuition mixed with errors, which will always be the hidden reef of magnetism, and which has brought it into discredit,^[7] is seen, as we have observed, although in perhaps a less marked manner, in the natural somnambule. We shall encounter it again in the talking-tables and the mediums.

To what causes may one ascribe the dark lines which so often come out athwart magnetic clairvoyance even in the most lucid subjects? The following are, I apprehend, the most important.

To begin with the personal equation of the magnetizer: his influence upon the somnambule is such that the latter's understanding unconsciously reflects the thought of the master who dominates it. If, then, the magnetizer has a fixed idea upon any question put to the somniloquist, it will infallibly give itself expression in the answer of the latter. Among many examples supporting this view, I shall cite the following.

A rich Brazilian, of the province of Rio Janeiro, one Baron d'Uba, happening to be in Paris in the years next after 1848, made the acquaintance of ​Baron du Potet, and became quite an expert in the practice of magnetism. His son having fallen very ill, and, seeing that the disease was rapidly becoming more and more dangerous, notwithstanding that he had called in one of the most eminent physicians of the capital, he at length feared for his life and sent for young Alexis,^[8] who had at that time a great renown as a lucid somnambule. The Baron d'Uba had consulted him frequently about different subjects, and had been invariably satisfied with the correctness of his answers. After having put him to sleep, he asked him if his son would get well. "No," answered Alexis. Yet the boy did recover, and was full of life when the father related to me the story. The latter was not in the least surprised to see that Alexis had failed, for he confessed that, when questioning him, he did not believe in his son's recovery, and he expected none other than such an answer. In other words, the fixed idea of the magnetizer is transferred into the brain of the sleeper.

Often, the personal equation of the somnambule acts as well as that of the magnetizer, and then the replies given are still wider from the truth. In 1870, being at Bordeaux some days before the disaster of Sedan, I met one of my friends, whom I knew to be interested in magnetism, and asked him, without attaching any importance to my question, ​if he had consulted some somnambule as to the issue of the war.

"Certainly," he replied; "I have access to a very lucid subject, and have put him that question."

"What did he tell you?"

"He said the French would be in Berlin before the Prussians came before Paris."

This answer seemed to me rather venturesome, for it was easy to see that our armies were not travelling the road to Prussia, much less to Berlin. The successive defeats we met with had disclosed the powerful organization of the German troops, their numerical superiority, the power of their artillery, and thoughtful persons could not deceive themselves with any illusions as to the issue of the campaign. It was, then, easy for a somnambule of even moderate lucidity to seize upon the bitter concatenation of facts which had developed within the previous six weeks, and from them draw a horoscope more in harmony with the truth. How had he of whom I speak, and who had a great reputation as a clairvoyant, fallen into so grave a mistake? Nothing is easier than to account for it. The master and subject were both old soldiers, and it could not enter the heads of such campaigners that the eagles of France could be humiliated by the Prussian eagles to the point of our seeing the latter even displayed before Paris. The answer of the somnambule could only ​be the fixed idea which ruled equally in the mind of both magnetizer and subject.

Let us suppose, now, that the master and the subject are both exempt from the personal equation. What degree of lucidity should one accord to the latter?

Before broaching this question, let us examine what must be understood by magnetic clairvoyance. Generally, we may perhaps define it—seeing at a distance. You hand a somnambule an object which has belonged to a person who lives in London, while you are in Paris or some other distant place, and you request him to put himself in communication with it, so as to give you some news about him. It is a telegraphic wire that we establish between two places, having as electric batteries, the one, the nervous system of the sleep-talker, the other, that of the person with whom he is placed en rapport; and for vehicle, the fluid which they disengage. This fluidic emanation forms round each of them an atmosphere whose undulations extend very far, because of the subtlety of the mesmeric atom. That of the magnetic subject, much more active than the other's, goes, as it were, in some sort in search of the latter, meets it, and the communication is thus established between the two poles. We now see the conditions which the telegraphic system prescribes so that it may give exact results. The somnambule will show himself proportionately lucid as his sensibility shall be more ​delicate (I mean more apt to perceive the contact of the etheric waves flowing from the opposite pole), as these waves shall be more distinctly marked, and as the distance between the two stations shall be shorter. Let us add that, for the despatch not to be interrupted, and to be free from all obscurities which alter its sense, it is necessary that the electric thread shall not be crossed by any opposing current from a mesmeric source. It is to guard against these disturbing currents that, at the commencement, you hand the somnambule some article belonging to the person with whom you are bringing him into rapport. This article, impregnated with the emanations of its proprietor, acts, if I may venture to say it, upon the magnetic subject in the same way as the track of game upon the pointer. From the moment of their contact, he has detected the nature of the aura special to him whom they are pointing out; he follows his trace, and identifies his auric wave among numberless etheric vibrations which are crossing each other about him.

The annals of magnetism teem with narratives of sight at a distance, displaying, on the part of the somnambule, a lucidity sometimes marvellous. I shall limit myself to quoting the following, which is of a personal character:

"In the month of July, 1870, I was at Cauterets when the war-cloud burst. Two or three days later, one of my acquaintances, who was at Paris, and to whom I had just written, having had the ​opportunity of attending a magnetic séance, handed my letter to a somnambule, and asked her to give him some news of me. She answered, after having, as it were, searched after me for some moments, that she saw me in a room on the second storey, which she described, seated before a table, occupied in reading a newspaper. She added that my countenance showed anxiety. All these details, which they reported to me, were quite correct. The anxiety which she had noticed on my face was but too well justified by the reading of the paper, quite filled with the campaign which was about opening, and the apprehensions which this war awakened in me. I knew the formidable organization of the Prussian army, and I counted little upon a General Bonaparte to restore the equilibrium of the situations, whilst I apprehended the presence of a Frederick II. in the ranks of the German armies."

Distant sight is sometimes met with elsewhere than in somnambules. Certain organizations, naturally endowed with a sensitiveness similar to that which the magnetic sleep develops, can, in certain cases, be impressed by etheric vibrations coming from a distant point and emanating from known persons. Apollonius of Tyana was, in his old age, in retirement at Ephesus, where he had founded a school of Pythagorean philosophy. One day, while discoursing in the midst of his disciples, he was noticed to suddenly stop, and to cry out in a voice full of emotion:

​"Courage, strike the tyrant!"

He paused yet a few moments in the attitude of a man who anxiously awaits the issue of a struggle, then again exclaimed:

"Fear not, Ephesians, the tyrant is no more; he has just been assassinated."

Some days later, it was learnt that, at the moment when the thaumaturge uttered this strange apostrophe, Domitian fell under the blows of the freed-man Stephanus. The murder could not occur without causing, as well on the part of the victim as on that of the assassin, movements which must set in vibration either the surrounding ether or the cerebral fluid disengaged by the two actors in the drama. These vibrations, starting from Rome, had instantaneously reached Ephesus, where they were perceived by the ultra-sensitive or subtle nerves of the celebrated seer. It is not unimportant to recall that, some time before, the philosopher had been thrown into fluidic rapport with the tyrant, after certain lively disentanglements which occurred between them, and that Apollonius was forced to leave Rome to escape death. If, from antiquity, we pass to modern times, we find a great number of analogous facts reported by different authors. Certain races, or rather certain regions, seem to favour second sight. Such are the high districts of Scotland. Seers there develop themselves quite often; occasionally Englishmen, sceptical about what has been told them in this matter, have made ​a tour in the highlands to convince themselves at first hand as to the truth of the allegations, and have returned fully convinced. On the Continent, intuitive sight is a rare phenomenon; however, we know of a number of examples. The biography of Swedenborg cites several. I will confine myself to the following, of which Kant guarantees the authenticity:

"On July 19th, 1759, the great theosophist, returning from England, stopped at Gothenburg, distant from Stockholm about fifty leagues. As he was lodging in a merchant's house of that city, where there were several friends, they saw him, at six o'clock in the evening, enter the drawing-room pale and agitated. He announced that a great fire had just broken out at Stockholm, in the Sudermahn, and that it was approaching his house. For two hours he was very restless, going out and coming in as if he were seeking news. At a certain moment he declared that the fire had just consumed the house of one of his friends whom he named, and that his own was in danger. At last, about eight o'clock, after a new exit, he cried out:

"Thank Heaven! the fire has stopped at the third door from my own."

Two days later, the governor of Gothenburg received a despatch announcing to him the disaster. Every detail given by Swedenborg was fully confirmed.

​An ordinary person, but with an exceptionally delicate sensitiveness, may become clairvoyant in certain circumstances, when a catastrophe has just happened to a near relative. Two causes, the one physical, organic similitude, the other moral, family affection, explain this fact.

Mirville, in the second volume of his work, cites several very remarkable examples. His father relates that in his youth, when playing at base with several officers of his regiment, he saw one of them suddenly stop in the middle of his run, and cry out while putting his hand over his two eyes:

"Ah! heavens! My brother has just broken his thigh while leaping a rail fence in America."

Three months afterwards, the news was minutely verified. A lady, living in Loraine, awoke one night with a start, and in a frenzy of grief exclaimed that her son had just been stabbed and thrown into the river. They wrote to Paris; search was made, and the authorities found the corpse at the place indicated, and bearing the fatal wound.

One of my friends at Carcassonne has told me that in 1815, while still a child, he was awakened one night by the report of firearms; at the same time he saw his uncle lying on the ground, struck by a bullet. The next day they learned that the unfortunate man, a veteran of the Empire, had fallen at the same hour, a victim of the Royalist rage of the times. Let us add that the place of the drama and the house of the child were at too ​great a distance apart for the noise of firearms to be heard there.

From these different instances it is easy to see that the intuition has its source in the family ties which unite two persons, and put their mesmeric sensitiveness in unison with each other. Among countless impressions which reach the seer from all sides, he perceives only those which emanate from his relative. His nerves, so sensitive as regards him who is bound to him by the ties of blood or affection, cannot act when they are solicited by vibrations coming from strangers or from persons for whom they feel indifference.^[9]

I will make another remark about second sight. This faculty usually shows itself during sleep, as if the relaxation of the bodily organs made the nervous sensitiveness more apt to let itself be affected by the mesmeric undulation.

Now let us return to magnetic clairvoyance. Can the somnambule predict the future? As a general proposition, the thing is not impossible, but is daily verified with lucid subjects, provided always that the question is confined within certain limits.

Each event can, in fact, be considered as the resultant of a certain number of forces, whether ​physical or moral, which obey laws as inflexible as those of rational mechanics. Chance is an expression to which we have recourse to disguise our ignorance of first causes, but which ought not to find a place in the glossary of nature. All is united and linked together in the universe, in such a way that contemporary events spring from anterior circumstances, just as the facts of the future are in germ in those which are occurring in our own time. It concerns us then to disentangle the unknown from a problem sharply determined and circumscribed, whose elements are represented by etheric undulations from cosmic or mesmeric sources, which place the somnambule simultaneously en rapport with the physical world and the world of idea. The lucidity of the magnetic subject consists in perceiving his fluidic impressions, of which some are occasionally of an infinite delicacy, and in tracing them out until they have given their resultant. It is, therefore, evident that his answer will become easier as his impressions shall be better marked, that is to say, as they spring from causes more immediate and relate to a future more near.^[10]

​The prevision of the future is not alone observable in somnambulism; it is equally accredited to the Scotch seers. One of them, passing with some friends through the district where, two years later, the battle of Culloden was destined to be fought, to the great astonishment of his companions, forwarned them of the bloody combat which was to decide the fate of the Stuarts.^[11] Besides seers properly so called, certain persons have occasionally prevision; but, as in the case of seeing at a distance, this faculty usually shows itself only in sleep. We find in the dream-book of Valerius Maximus a curious example of this sort. They were celebrating, at Syracuse, some gladiatorial sports. Aterius Ruffus, a Roman nobleman, saw himself in a dream pierced by the hand of a retiarius, and the next day, at the amphitheatre, he related his experience to several persons. A few minutes afterward, a retiarius entered the ​arena with his weapon, quite near the place where the nobleman was seated. Scarcely had the latter cast his eye upon him, than he exclaimed:

"The very retiarius by whom it seemed to me that I was killed."

At once he wished to go away. Those who were about him succeeded by their talk in dissipating his fears, and thus caused his death; for the retiarius, having pushed his adversary up to the very edge of the arena, upset him at this spot; whilst he was trying to strike him, his weapon reached Aterius, and killed him.

The following story, related by Marmont, will match that of Valerius Maximus:

On the eve of a battle, one of the most brilliant officers of the Italian army, Stingel, saw in sleep a great green horseman, who came towards him and killed him. The next day he related his dream to his comrades, without, however, attaching to it any importance. The same day an engagement occurred between the French and the Austrians. In the heat of the battle, Stingel saw approaching him a tall dragoon, wearing a green uniform. He thought he recognized the horseman who had appeared to him in his dream, and advanced to meet him with the shout:

"I recognize you; I'm your man."

Some moments later, he was slain.

Sometimes the nervous organization of the seer is such that he can distinguish impressions relating ​to acts accomplished at a more or less distant epoch. Somnambules furnish daily examples of this kind. They relate to those about them what occurred in the morning or during the preceding days. We sometimes see them making revelations which the one to whom they are speaking thought no one in the world was acquainted with, and by which they are not complimented. Certain extra-lucid somnambules, or certain exceptional organizations, can seize upon facts relating to several years back. How can their sensitiveness act, however delicate we may suppose it? Can it let itself be impressed by vibrations long since subsided? No movement is exhausted in nature; it but transforms itself. It leaves, consequently, traces, and these suffice to arouse the attention of the seer.^[12] Every vibration, whatever may be its nature and its origin, may be compared to those which are emitted by luminous bodies in the medium which surrounds them. The undulatory movements of the ethereal fluid depict upon our retina the image of the star which projects them, though they may be crossed on their path by the undulations of myriads of other stars, and though the initial impulse traces back thousands of years.

​One of the most curious examples that can be quoted of the subtlety of a seer is supplied us by the celebrated Martin Gaillardon, who was much talked about in the first years of the Restoration. He went to Paris to see Louis XVIII., announcing that he had important revelations to make to the monarch. These boasts having reached the ear of the Minister of Police, M. d'Ecazes, the latter saw in him only an ordinary hallucinated person, and had him privately placed in an insane hospital. One of the intimate friends of the king, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, not hearing anything more said about Martin, guessed what had happened, and under pretext of visiting the insane hospital, went to this establishment, and carefully visited all the wards. In a room was a solitary man, whose attitude was that of an ecstatic. The duke understood that he had before him Martin; he questioned him discreetly, and becoming convinced that he was not deceived, he took him the next day to Louis XVIII. When the sovereign and the seer were alone, the latter spoke, and, becoming more and more animated, it ended in his drawing great tears from the king-philosopher, who dismissed him with sobs. The mistress of the monarch, Mdme. du Cayla, who, from a neighbouring room, watched all the details of this scene, imparts to us, in her "Mémoires," the revelation which so strongly moved her royal lover, and which it is useless to repeat here. Suffice it to say that it concerned a heinous ​act, with which Martin reproached the old king; that this act related to a time when the Queen Marie Antoinette was pregnant with the Dauphin; and that it had never been known by any one, its author having carefully buried it in the innermost recesses of his consciousness.