The mind of sleepers acts more cunningly;The glare of day conceals the fate of men.
The mind of sleepers acts more cunningly;The glare of day conceals the fate of men.
It seems, however, as if the intermediate state between the full activity of wakeful life and the complete repose of the senses in sound sleep, is most favorable to the development of such magic phenomena as occur indreams. The fact that the susceptibility of the mind is at that time peculiarly great is intimately connected with the statement recorded in Holy Writ, that God frequently revealed His will to men in dreams. If we admit the antiquity of the book of Job, we see there the earliest known announcement of this connection. "In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then He openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction" (xxxiii. 15). Next we are told that "God came to Abimelech in a dream by night" (Gen. xx. 3), and from that time we hear of similar revelations made by night in dreams throughout the whole history of the chosen people. Frequently, however, the dreams are called visions. Thus Balaam prophesied: "He hath said, which heard the words of God and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." Daniel had his secret "revealed in a night vision," but such favor was denied to Saul, for "the Lord answered him not, neither by dream nor by Urim, nor by prophets." To Solomon, on the contrary, "the Lord appeared in a dream by night" many times; Joel was promised that "old men should dream dreams and young men shall see visions," a pledge quoted by St. Peter as having been amply fulfilled in his day (Acts ii. 17). For dreams did not lose their importance at the coming of Christ. To his reputed father "the Angel of the Lord appeared in a dream," bidding himto take Mary to his wife; again he was warned in a dream "not to return to Herod," and the Lord spake "to Paul in the night by a vision" more than once, as he was by a dream also sent to Macedonia.
What in these and similar cases is accepted as divine inspiration, is in secular history generally looked upon as mysterious, magic revelation; but the phenomena remain the same in all instances, and those appearing in dreams are identical with the symptoms exhibited in revelations occurring during the day, when the favored recipient is wide awake. Clairvoyance by night differs in no way from clairvoyance during the day; a state of ecstasy, a trance, is necessary in either case. That prophetic dreams generally remain unknown—outside of Holy Writ—must be ascribed to the fact that they leave no recollection behind, unless they are continued into a state of half-sleep, from which a sudden awakening takes place; and soon then they are invariably clothed in some allegoric form, and become liable to be erroneously or, at least, imperfectly interpreted. Thus dreams, like trances, often prefigure death under the form of a journey, and represent the dying man as an uprooted tree, a withered flower, or a drowning swimmer. The early Christians, foreseeing martyrdom, very frequently received in dreams an intimation of their impending fate under such symbolic forms, and, what was quite peculiar to their visions was that they often extended to the pagan jailors and keepers, whose minds had been excited by witnessing the sufferings and theconstancy of their victims, and who, in many cases, became, in consequence of these dreams, converts to the new faith. The facility, however, with which such symbols can be misunderstood, has been as fatal to dreams in the estimation of most men, as the inaccurate manner in which the real revelation is often presented to the still half-sleeping mind. Hence the popular belief that dreams "go by contraries," as vulgar slang expresses it. This faith is based upon the well-established fact that a genuine dream, in the act of impressing itself upon memory, often suffers not only mutilation but actual reversion. Thus Rogers saw, in a dream, Hikey, a small, weak man, murder a powerful giant, Caulfield—in the actual encounter, which he had really foreseen, the latter killed his puny antagonist. It is, therefore, as dangerous to "believe in dreams," as to deny their value altogether and to ascribe all realizations of dreams, with, Macnish, to mere accident. ("Sleep," p. 81.) Men of cool judgment and clear mind have at all times been found on the side of believers, and even our great Franklin, with his eminently practical mind and well-known aversion to every kind of superstition, firmly trusted in views which he believed to have come to him in dreams.
Antiquity believed in dreams, not only as means by which the Gods revealed their will, but as special favors accorded to fortunate men. Thus we are told that once two men were traveling together from Arcadia to Megara; when they reached the city, one of the tworemained at an inn, while the other went to stay with a a friend. Both, wearied by the journey, retired to rest; but the traveler who was at a private house dreamt in the night that his friend urged him to come to his assistance, as the innkeeper was about to murder him. Terrified by the vivid dream, he jumped up; but, upon reflection, he concluded that the whole was but an idle fancy, and lay down again. Thereupon the dream was repeated; but this time his friend added, that it was too late to come to his aid now, as he had been murdered, and his body would in the morning be carried out of the city, concealed under a load of manure. This second dream made such an impression upon the Arcadian that he went at an early hour to the city gate, and to his amazement soon saw a wagon loaded with manure approaching the place where he stood. He stopped the driver and asked him what he had hidden in his wagon? The man fled, trembling; the body of the murdered friend was found, and the treacherous innkeeper paid with his life for his crime. (Cicero,De divin.)
One of the oldest of well-authenticated dreams in Christian times, revealed to St. Basil the death of Julian the Apostate. It seemed to him in his sleep that he saw the martyr Mercurius receive from God the order to kill the tyrant, and after a short time return and say: "O Lord, Julian is killed as Thou hast commanded!" The saint was so firmly convinced of having received a direct revelation from heaven,that he immediately made the news known to the people, and thus gained new honor when the official information at last arrived. (Vita S. Basil., etc., p. 692.) Here, also, the deep-seated hatred of the Christian priest against the Emperor, who dared to renew the worship of the ancient gods of the Pagans, no doubt suggested the vivid dream, while, on the other hand, the transmission of the actual revelation was so imperfect as to change the real occurrence—Julian's death by a Persian lance—according to the familiar way of thinking of St. Basil, into his execution at divine command by a holy martyr. There is no lack of renowned men of all ages who have had their remarkable dreams, and who have, fortunately for future investigation, recorded them carefully. Thus Melanchthon tells us that he was at a convent with a certain Dr. Jonas, when letters reached him requesting him to convey to his friend the sad news of his daughter's sudden death. The great reformer was at a loss how to discharge the painful duty, and driven by an instinctive impulse, asked Dr. Jonas whether he had ever had any remarkable dreams. The latter replied that he had dreamt, during the preceding night, of his return home, and of the joyful welcome he had met from all his family, except his oldest daughter, who had not appeared. Thereupon Melanchthon told him that his dream had been true, and that he would never see his daughter again, as she had been summoned to her eternal home. Petrarch had a dreamwhich was evidently also the reflex of his thoughts in the day-time, but accompanied by a direct revelation. He had been, for some days, very anxious about the health of his patron, a Colonna, who was Bishop of Lombez, and one night saw himself in a dream walking by his friend's side, but unable to keep pace with him; the bishop walked faster and faster, bidding him stay behind, and when the poet insisted upon following him, he suddenly assumed a death-like appearance, and said, "No, I will not have you go with me now!" During the same night in which Petrarch had this dream in Parma, the bishop died at his palace in Lombez. The well-known Thomas Wotton, also, dreamt a short time before his death, while residing in Kent, that he saw five persons commit a robbery at Oxford. On the following day he added a postscript to a letter which he had written to his son Henry, then a student at that university, in which he mentioned his dream, and asked if such a robbery had really taken place. The letter reached the young man on the morning after the crime had been committed, when town and university were alike in a state of intense excitement. He made the letter immediately known to the authorities, who found in the account of the dream so accurate a description of the robbers, that they were enabled at once to ascertain who were the guilty persons, and to have them arrested before they could escape. (Beaumont, p. 223.) The great German poet Gustav Schwab received the first intimation of theFrench Revolution in 1848 through a remarkable dream which his daughter had in the night preceding the 24th of February. She had been attacked by a malignant fever, and was very restless and nervously excited; during that night she saw, in her feverish dreams, the streets of Paris filled with excited crowds, and was forced to witness the most fearful scenes. When her father came to her bedside next morning, she gave him a minute description of the building of barricades, the bloody encounters between the troops and the citizens, and of a number of sad tragedies which she had seen enacted in the narrow and dark streets of the great city. The father, though deeply impressed by the vivid character of the dream, ascribed it to a reminiscence of the scenes enacted during the Revolution of 1789, and dismissed the subject, although his child insisted upon the thoroughly modern character of the buildings, and the costumes and manners of all she had seen. Great was, therefore, the amazement of the poet and of all who had heard of the dream, when, several days afterwards, the first news reached them of the expulsion of the Orleans family, and much greater still when the papers brought, one by one, descriptions of the scenes which the feverish dream had enabled the girl to see in minute detail, and yet with unerring accuracy. It is true that the poet, in whose biography the dream with all the attending circumstances is mentioned at full length, had for years anticipated such a revolution, and often, with a poet'sgraphic power, conjured up the scenes that were likely to happen whenever the day of the tempest should arrive. Thus his daughter's mind had, no doubt, long been filled with images of this kind, and was in a state peculiarly susceptible for impressions connected with the subject. There remains, however, the magic phenomenon that she saw, not a poet's fiction, but actual occurrences with all their details, and saw them in the very night during which they happened. In the papers of Sir Robert Peel was found a note concerning his journey from Antibes to Nice, in 1854. He was on board the steamer Erculano, which, on the 25th of April, so violently collided with another steamer, the Sicilia, that it sank immediately, and two-thirds of the passengers perished. Among those who were rescued were the great English statesman and the maid of two ladies, the wife and the daughter of a counselor of a French court of justice at Dijon. The young girl had had a presentiment of impending evil, but her wish to postpone the journey had been overruled. The father, also, though knowing nothing of the precise whereabouts of his beloved ones, had been much troubled in mind about their safety, and in the very night in which the accident happened, saw the whole occurrence in a harassing dream. He distinctly beheld the vessel disappear in the waves, and a number of victims, among whom were his wife and his child, struggling for life, till they finally perished. He awoke in a state of great anguish, summoned his servants to keep him company, and told them what he had dreamt. A few hours later the telegraph informed him of the accident, and of his own grievous affliction. (Journ. de l'âme, Févr. 1857, p. 253.)
While in these dreams events were made known which happened at the same time, in other dreams the future itself is revealed. Cicero, in his work on Divination (I. 27, and II. 66), and Valerius Maximus have preserved a number of such dream-visions, which were famous already in the days of antiquity; a dream concerning the tyrant Dionysius was especially well known.
It seems that a woman, called Himera, found herself in a dream among the gods on Olympus, and there saw chained to the throne of Jupiter a large man with red hair and spotted countenance. When she asked the divine messenger who had carried her to those regions, who that man was, he told her it was the scourge of Italy and Sicily, a man who, when unchained, would destroy many cities. She related her dream on the following morning to her friends, but found no explanation, till several years afterwards, when Dionysius ascended the throne. She happened to be in the crowd which had assembled to witness the triumph of the new monarch, and when she saw the tyrant, she uttered a loud cry, for she had recognized in him the man in chains under Jupiter's throne. The cry attracted attention; she was brought before Dionysius, forced to relate her dream, and sent to be executed. Equally well known was the remarkable dream whichSocrates had a short time before his death. His sentence had already been passed, but the day for its execution was not yet made known, when Crito, one of his friends, came to him and informed him that it would probably be ordered for the next morning. The great philosopher replied with his usual calmness: "If such is the will of the gods, be it so; but I do not think it will be to-morrow. I had, just before you entered, a sweet dream. A woman of transcending beauty, and dressed in a long white robe, appeared to me, called me by name, and said, 'In three days you will return to your beloved Phthia' (Socrates' native place)." He did not die till the third day.
Alexander the Great came more than once, during his remarkable career, in peculiar contact with prophetic dreams. He was thus informed of the coming of Cassander long before he ever saw him, and even of the influence which the still unknown friend would have on his fate. When the latter at last appeared at court, Alexander looked at him long and anxiously, and recognized in him the man he had so often seen in his dreams. It so happened, however, that before his suspicions assumed a positive form, a Greek distich was mentioned to him, written to prove the utter worthlessness of all dreams, and the effect of these lines, combined with the discovery that Cassander was the son of his beloved Antipater, induced him to lay aside all apprehensions. Nevertheless, his friend subsequently poisoned him in cold blood. Not lessfamous was the dream which warned Caius Gracchus of his own sad fate. He saw in his sleep the shadow of his brother Tiberius, and heard him announce in a clear voice, that Caius also would share his tragic end, and be murdered like himself in the Capitol. The great Roman frequently related this dream, and the historian Cœlius records that he heard it repeated during Gracchus' life-time. It is well known that the latter afterwards became a tribune, and was killed while he held that office, in the same manner as his brother. Cicero also had his warning dream. He was escaping from his enemies, who had driven him out of Rome, and seeking safety in his Antium villa. Here he dreamt, one night, that, as he was wandering through a waste, deserted country, the Consul Marius met him, accompanied by the usual retinue, and adorned with all the insignia of his rank, and asked him why he was so melancholy, and why he had fled from Rome. When he had answered the question, Marius took him by his right hand, and summoning his chief officer to his side, ordered him to carry the great orator to the temple of Jupiter, built by Marius himself, while he assured Cicero he would there meet with new hopes. It was afterwards ascertained that at the very hour of the dream, the Senate had been discussing in the temple of Jupiter the speedy return of Cicero. It would have been well for the great Cæsar, also, if he had deigned to listen to the warning voice of dreams, for in the night before his murder, his wife,Calphurnia, saw him, in a dream, fall wounded and copiously bleeding into her arms, and there end his life. She told him of her dream, and on her knees besought him not to go out on that day; but Cæsar, fearing he might be suspected of giving undue weight to a woman's dreams, made light of her fears, went to the Senate, and met his tragic fate. Among later Romans the Emperor Theodosius was most strikingly favored by dreams, if we may rely upon the statement of Ammianus Marcellinus (I. 29). Two courtiers, anxious to ascertain who should succeed the Emperor Valens on the throne, employed a kind of magic instrument, resembling the modern psychograph, and succeeded in deciphering the letters Theod. Their discovery became known to the jealous emperor, who ordered not only Theodorus, his second secretary of state, to be executed, but with him a large number of eminent personages whose names began with the ominous five letters. For some unknown reasons, Theodosius, then in Spain, escaped his suspicions, and yet it was he, who, when Valens fell in the war against the Goths, was summoned home by the next emperor, Gratianus, to save the empire and assume the supreme command of the army. When the successful general returned to Byzantium to make his report to the emperor, he had himself a dream in which he saw the great Patriarch of Antioch, Meletius, invest him with the purple, and place the imperial crown upon his head. Gratianus, struck by the brilliancy of the victory obtained at themoment of supreme danger, made Theodosius Emperor of the East, and returned to Rome. During the following year (380) a great council was held in Constantinople, and here, amid a crowd of assembled dignitaries of the church, Theodosius instantly recognized the Bishop of Antioch, whom he had never seen except in his dream.
It is not generally known that the prediction of future greatness which Shakespeare causes the three witches to convey to Macbeth, rests on an historic basis. The announcement came to him, however, probably not at an actual meeting, but by means of a prophetic dream, which presented to the ambitious chieftain the appearance of an encounter with unearthly agents. This presumption is strengthened by the first notice of the mysterious event, which occurs, it is believed, in "Wyntownis Cronykil," where Macbeth is reported to have had a vivid dream of three weird women, who foretold him his fate. Boethius derived his information from this source, and for unknown reasons added not only Banquo as a witness of the scene, but described it, also, first of all chroniclers, as an actual meeting in a forest.
The report that the discovery of the famous Venus of Milo was due to a dream, is not improbable, but is as yet without sufficient authentication. The French Consul, Brest, who was a resident of Milo, dreamed, it is stated, two nights in succession, that he had caused diggings to be made at a certain place in the island andthat his efforts had been rewarded by the discovery of a beautiful statue. He paid no attention to the dream; but it was repeated a third time, and now so distinctly that he not only saw clearly all the surroundings, but, also, the traces of a recent fire on the spot that had been pointed out to him before. When he went on the following day to the place, he instantly recognized the traces of fire, began his researches, and discovered not only the Venus, now the glory of the Louvre, but, also, several other most valuable statues. The well-known dream concerning Major André is open to the same objections, although it is quoted in good faith by Mrs. Crowe (i., p. 59). We are told that the Rev. Mr. Cunningham, the poet, saw in a dream a man who was captured by armed soldiers and hanged on a tree. To his utter consternation, he recognized on the following day, in Major André, who was then for the first time presented to him, the person he had seen in his dream. The latter was then just on the point of embarking for America, where he met with his sad fate.
A large number of dreams which are looked upon as prophetic, are nothing more than the result of impressions made on the mind during sleep by some bodily sensation. A swelling or an inflammation, for instance, is frequently announced beforehand by pain in the affected part of the body; the mind receives through the nerves an impression of this pain and clothes it, during sleep and in a dream, into some familiar garb, the biting of a serpent, the sting of an insect, or, even,the stab of a dagger. An occasional coincidence serves to lend prestige to such simple and perfectly natural dreams. Thus Stilling ("Jenseits," p. 284) records the well-known story of a young man in Padua, who dreamed one night that he was bitten by one of the marble lions which stand before the church of St. Justina. Passing by the place, on the following day, with some companions, he recalled the dream, and putting his hand into the mouth of one of the lions, he said, defiantly: "Look at the fierce lion that bit me last night." But at the same moment he uttered a piercing cry and drew back his hand in great terror: a scorpion, hid in the lion's mouth, had stung him, and the poor youth died of the venom. The German poet Conrad Gessner dreamed, in a similar manner, that a snake bit him in his left breast; the matter was completely forgotten, when five days later a slight rising appeared on the spot, which speedily developed itself into a fatal ulcer, and caused his death in a short time.
Far more interesting, and occasionally productive of good results, are dreams which might be called retrospective, inasmuch as they reveal events of the past, which stand in some connection with present or impending necessities. Many of these, no doubt, arise simply from the recovery of forgotten facts in our memory; others, however, cannot be thus explained. Justinus tells us of Dido's dream, in which she saw her departed husband, Sichæus, who pointed out to her his concealed treasures and advised her to seek safety inflight. St. Augustine also has an account of a father who after death appeared to his son and showed him a receipted account, the loss of which had caused his heir much anxiety. (De cura pro mortuis, ch. xi.) After Dante's death the thirteenth canto of his Paradise could nowhere be found, and the apparent loss filled all Italy with grief and sorrow. His son, Pietro Alighieri, however, saw a long time afterwards, in a dream, his father, who came to his bedside and told him that the missing papers were concealed under a certain plank near the window at which he had been in the habit of writing. It was only when all other researches had proved vain, that, attention was paid to the dream; but when the plank was examined the canto was found in the precise place which the dream had indicated.
A similar dream of quite recent occurrence was accidentally more thoroughly authenticated than is generally the case with such events. The beautiful wife of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild of Paris had lost a valuable ring while hunting in the woods near her castle of Ferrières. It so happened that early associations made the jewel specially dear to her, and she felt the loss grievously; a reward of fifteen hundred francs was, therefore, offered at once for its recovery. The night after the hunt, the daughter of one of the keepers saw in a dream an unknown man of imposing appearance, who told her to go at daybreak to a certain crossroad in the forest, where she would find the ring at the foot of a beech-tree, close to the highway. Sheawakes, dresses herself at once, and goes to the place of which she has dreamed; after half an hour's walk she reaches the crossroads and almost at the same moment sees something glittering and shining like a firefly, picks it up, and behold! it is the ring. The girl had not even seen the hunt, nor did she know anything of the loss of the jewel; the whole occurrence, and the place where it was lost, all were pointed out to her in her dream. (Le Monde Illustré, Dec. 15, 1860).
It has already been mentioned that the question has often been mooted whether the mind was really quite at rest during sleep, or still operative in dreams. Some authors deny its activity altogether; others admit a partial activity. The philosopher Kant went so far as to maintain that perceptions had during sleep were clearer and fuller than those of the day, because of the perfect rest of the other senses. Recollection, alone, he added, was missing, because the mind acted in sleep without the coöperation of the body.
There are, however, certain facts which seem to prove that the mind does, at least, not altogether cease its activity while the body is asleep. How else could we explain the power many persons undoubtedly possess to awake at a fixed hour, and the success with which, more than once, great mental efforts have been made during profound sleep? Of the latter, Tartini's famous sonata is a striking instance. He had endeavored in vain to finish this great work; inspiration would not come, and he had abandoned the task indespair. During the night he had a dream in which he once more tried his best, but in vain; at the moment of despair, however, the Devil appeared to him and promised to finish the work in return for his soul. The composer, nothing loath, surrenders his soul and hears his magnificent work gloriously completed on the violin. He wakes up in perfect delight, goes to his desk, and at once writes down his "Devil's Sonata." Even children are known occasionally to be able to give intelligent answers while fast asleep; the questions, however, must be in accordance with the current of their thoughts, otherwise they are apt to be aroused. A case is quoted by Reil of two soldiers who used, at times, to keep up an uninterrupted conversation during a whole night, while they were to all appearances fast asleep. A lady, also, was unable to refuse answers to questions put to her at night, and had at last to lock herself in carefully whenever she went to sleep.
Hence it is that some of the most profound thinkers who have discussed the subject of dreams, like Descartes and Leibnitz, Jouffroy and Dugald Stewart, Richard and Carus, with a number of others, assert the uninterrupted wakefulness of the mind. Some authors believe that the spiritual part of man needs no sleep, but delights in the comfort of feeling that the body is in perfect repose, and of forgetting, by these means, for a time the troubles of daily life, and the responsibilities of our earthly existence. They base this view upon the fact, that, as far as we can judge, the mind is,during sleep, independent of the body and the outer world. Thinking is quite possible during sleep without dreaming, and certain bodily sensations, even, are correctly perceived, as when we turn over in our sleep, because lying on one side produces pain or uneasiness. We not only talk while we are asleep, but laugh or weep, sigh or groan. A slight noise, a whispered word, affect the course of our thoughts, and produce new images in our dreams, as certain affections and even the pressure upon certain organs are sure to produce invariably the same dreams. Space and time disappear, however, and naturally, because we can measure them only by the aid of our senses, and these are, for the time, inactive. Hence Dugald Stewart ascribes the manner in which a moment's dream often comprises a year, or a whole lifetime, to the fact that, when we are asleep, the images created by our imagination appear to be realities, while those which we form when we are awake are known to us to be mere fictions, and hence not subject to the laws of time.
It will not surprise us, therefore, to find that this activity of the mind, deprived of the usual means of making itself known to others by gesture, sound, or action, seeks frequently a symbolical utterance, and this is the grain of truth here also hid under the vast amount of rubbish, known as the interpretation of dreams. Troubles and difficulties may thus appear as storms; sorrow and grief as tears; troubled waters may represent pain, and smooth ice impending danger;a dry river-bed an approaching famine, and pretty flowers great joy to come, provided, always, we are disposed to admit a higher class of prophetic dreams. Such a view is supported by high authority, for since the days of Aristotle, great writers, divines as well as philosophers, have endeavored to classify dreams according to their nature and importance. The great reformer, Melanchthon, in his work on the soul, divided them into common dreams, void of importance; prophetic dreams, arising from the individual gifts of the sleeper; divine dreams, inspired by God either directly or through the agency of angels, and finally, demoniac dreams, such as the witches' sabbath. One great difficulty attending all such classification arises, however, from the well-known fact, already alluded to, that external sensations are by far the most frequent causes of dreams. Even these have been systematically arranged by some writers, most successfully, perhaps, in the work of Maine de Biran, but he overlooks again the numerous cases in which external noises and similar accidents produce a whole train of thoughts. Thus Pope dreamed of a Spaniard who impudently entered his library, ransacked the books on the shelves, and turned a deaf ear to all his remonstrances. The impression was so forcible that he questioned all his servants, and investigated the matter thoroughly, till he was finally forced to acknowledge that the whole transaction was a dream caused by the fall of a book in his library, which he heard in his sleep. A stillmore remarkable case occurred once in a hotel in Dantzic, where not one person only, but all the guests, without exception, dreamed of the sudden arrival of a number of travelers, who disturbed the whole house, and took possession of their rooms with unusual clatter and noise. Not one had arrived, but during the night a violent storm had arisen, causing doors to slam and window-shutters to flap against the house, noises which had aroused in more than fifty people precisely the same impressions.
IV.
Concipiendis visionibus quas phantasias vocant.
Quintilian.
Visions, that is, the perception of apparently tangible objects in the outer world, which only exist in our imagination, have been known from time immemorial among all nations on earth. They are, in themselves, perfectly natural, and can frequently be traced back without difficulty to bodily affections or a disordered state of the mind, so that many eminent physicians dispose of them curtly as mere incidental symptoms of congestion or neuralgia. They may present real men and things, known beforehand, and now reproduced in such a manner as to appear objectively; or they may be ideal forms, the product of the moment, and incompatible with the laws of actual life. Persons who have visions and know nothing of their true nature, are apt to become intensely excited, as if they had been transferred into another world. The images they behold seem to them of supernatural origin, and may inspire them with lofty thoughts and noble impulses, but only too frequently they disturb their peace of mind and lead them to crime or despair.
When visions extend to other senses besides sight, and the peculiar state of mind by which they are caused affects different parts of the body at once, they are called hallucinations; most frequent among insane people, of whom, according to Esquirol, eighty in a hundred are thus affected, they are generally quite insignificant; while visions through the eye, are often accompanied by very remarkable magic phenomena. Thus the visions which great men like Cromwell and Descartes, Byron or Goethe, record of their own experience, were evidently signs of the great energy of their mental life, while in others they are as clearly symptoms of disease. Ascribed by the ancients to divine influence, Christianity has invariably denounced them—when not indubitably inspired by God, as in the case of the martyr Stephen and the apostle St. John—as works of the Devil. At all times they have been communicated to others, either by contagion or, in rare cases, by the imposition of hands, as they have been artificially produced. Thus extreme bodily fatigue and utter prostration after long illness are apt to cause hallucinations. Albert Smith, for instance, while ascending Mont Blanc, and feeling utterly exhausted, saw all his surroundings clearly with his eyes, and yet, at the same time, beheld marvelous things with the so-called inner sense. A Swiss who, in 1848, during a severe cold, crossed from Wallis to Kandersteg by the famous Gemmi Pass, eight thousand feet high, saw on his way a number of men shoveling the snow from hispath, fellow-travelers climbing up on all sides, and rolling masses of snow which changed into dogs; he heard the blows of axes and the laughing and singing of distant shepherds, while his road was utterly deserted, and not a human soul within many miles. His hands and feet were found frozen when he arrived at last at his quarters for the night, and ten days later he died from the effects of his exposure. During the retreat of the French from Russia the poor sufferers, frozen and famished, were continually tormented by similar hallucinations, which increased their sufferings at times to such a degree as to lead them to commit suicide. Another frequent cause of visions is long-continued fasting combined with more or less ascetic devotion. This is said to explain why the prophets of the Old Testament were so vigorously forbidden to indulge in wine or rich fare. Thus Aaron was told: "Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle" (Levit. x. 9); Moses remained forty days, and "neither did eat bread nor drink wine," when he was on Mount Sinai (Deuter. ix. 9); the Nazarites were ordered not to "drink any liquor of grapes, nor to eat moist grapes or dried," and even to abstain from vinegar (Numbers vi. 3), and Daniel and his companions had nothing but "pulse to eat and water to drink" (Dan. i. 12), in order to prepare them for receiving "wisdom and knowledge and the understanding of dreams and visions."
Narcotics also, and, in our day, most of the anæsthetics can produce visions and hallucinations, but the result is in all such cases much less interesting than when they are produced spontaneously. Tobacco and opium, betel, hasheesh, and coca are the principal means employed; but Siberia has besides its narcotic mushrooms, Polynesia its ava, New Granada and the Himalaya the thorn-apple, Florida its emetic apalachine, and the northern regions of America and Europe have their ledum. The most effective among these narcotics seems to be the Indian hemp, since the visions it produces surpass even the marvelous effects of opium, as has been recently again most graphically described by Bayard Taylor. Laughing-gas, also, has frequently similar effects, and affords, besides, the precious privilege of freedom from the painful, often excruciating consequences of other narcotics. When perfumes are employed for the express purpose of producing visions, it is difficult to ascertain how much is due to their influence, and how much to the over-excited mind of the seer. Benvenuto Cellini describes—though probably not in the most trustworthy manner—the amazing effect produced upon himself and a boy by his side, by the perfumes which a priest burnt in the Coliseum. The whole vast building seemed to him filled with demons, and the boy saw thousands of threatening men, four huge giants, and fire bursting out in countless places. The great artist was told, at the same time, that a great danger was threatening him, and that he would surely lose his beloved Angelicawithin the month; both events occurred as predicted, and thus proved that in this case at least magic phenomena had accompanied the visions. (Goethe, B. Cellini, l. iv. ch. 2.)
Among other external causes which are apt to produce visions, must be mentioned violent motions, especially when they are revolving, as is the case with the Shamans of the Laplanders and the dancing Dervishes of the East; self-inflicted wounds, such as the priests of Baal caused in order to excite their power of divination, and long-continued imprisonment, as illustrated in the well-known cases of Benvenuto Cellini and Silvio Pellico. The latter was constantly tormented by sighs or suppressed laughter which he heard in his dungeon; then by invisible hands pulling at his dress, knocking down his books or trying to put out his light, till he began seriously to suspect that he might be the victim of invisible malignant powers. Fortunately all these phenomena disappeared at break of day, and thus his vigorous mind, supported by true piety, was enabled to keep his judgment uninjured.
Diseases of every kind are a fruitful source of visions and some are rarely without them; but the character of visions differs according to the nature of the affections. Persons who suffer with the liver have melancholy, consumptive patients have cheerful visions. Epileptics often see fearful spectres during their paroxysms, and persons bitten by mad dogs see the animal that has caused their sufferings. The case of the bookseller Nicolai in Berlin is well known; the disease of which he suffered, is not only very common in some parts of Russia, but productive of precisely the same symptoms. The patients experience first a sensation of great despondency, followed by a period of profound melancholy, during which they see themselves surrounded by a number of persons, with whom they converse and quarrel, half conscious of their own delusion and yet not able to master it wholly. They are generally bled, whereupon the images become transparent and shrink into smaller and smaller space, till they finally disappear entirely. Affections of the heart and the subsequent unequal distribution of the blood through the system are apt to produce peculiar sounds, which at times fashion themselves into loud and harmonious pieces. The excitement usually attendant upon specially fatal plagues and contagious diseases increases the tendency which the latter naturally have to cause hallucinations. During a plague in the reign of Justinian, men were seen walking through the crowd and touching here and there a person; the latter were at once attacked by the disease and invariably succumbed. Upon another such occasion marks and spots appeared on the clothing of those who had caught the contagion, as if made by invisible hands, the sufferers began next to see a number of spectres and died in a short time. The same symptoms have accompanied the cholera in modern times, and more than once strange, utterly unknown persons were not only seenbut heard, as they were conversing with others; what they said was written down in many cases, and proved to be predictions of approaching visits of the dread disease to neighboring houses. A magic power of foresight seems in these cases to be developed by the extreme excitement or deep anxiety, but the unconscious clairvoyance assumes the form of persons outside of their own mental sphere, within which they alone existed.
By far the most frequent causes of visions are, however, those of psychical nature, like fixed ideas, intense passions, or deep-rooted prejudices, and concealed misdeeds. When they are produced by such causes they have often the appearance of having led to the commission of great crimes. Thus Julian the Apostate, who had caused the image of his guardian angel to be put upon all his coins and banners, naturally had this form deeply impressed upon his mind. In the night before a decisive battle, he saw, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, this protecting genius in the act of turning away from him, and this vision made so deep an impression upon his mind that he interpreted it as an omen of his impending death. On the following day he fell in battle. The fearful penalty inflicted upon Charles IX. by his own conscience is well known; after the massacre of St. Bartholomew he saw, by day and by night, the forms of his victims around him, till death made an end to his sufferings. On our own continent, one of the early conquerors gave a strikinginstance of the manner in which such visions are produced. He was one of the adventurers who had reached Darien, and was on the point of plundering a temple; but, a few days before, an Indian woman had told him that the treasures it held were guarded by evil spirits, and if he entered it the earth would open and swallow up the temple and the conquerors alike. Nothing daunted, he led his men to the attack; but, as they came in sight, he suddenly saw, in the evening light, how the colossal building rocked to and fro as in a tempest, and thoroughly intimidated he rode away with his followers, leaving the temple and its treasures unharmed. That visions are apt to precede atrocious crimes is quite natural, since they are in such cases nothing but the product of the intense excitement under which murders are often committed; but, it would be absurd to look upon them as motive causes. Ravaillac had constant visions of angels, saints, and demons, while preparing his mind for the assassination of Henry IV., and the young student who attempted the murder of Napoleon at Schönbrunn repeatedly saw the genius of Germany, which appeared to him and encouraged him to free his country from the usurper. Persons who attempt to summon ghosts are very apt to see them, because their mind is highly wrought up by their proceedings and they confidently expect to have visions. But some men possess a similar power without making any special effort or peculiar preparations, their firm volition sufficing for the purpose. Thus Talmacould at all times force himself to see, in the place of the actual audience before whom he was acting, an assembly of skeletons, and he is said never to have acted better than when he gave himself up to this hallucination. Painters, also, frequently have the power to summon before their mind's eye the features of those whose portrait they are painting; Blake, for instance, was able actually to finish likenesses from images he saw sitting in the chair where the real persons had been seated.
While visions are quite common, delusions of the other senses are less frequent. The insane alone hear strange conversations. Hallucinations of the taste cause patients to enjoy delightful dishes, or to partake of spoiled meat and other unpalatable viands, which have no existence. Sweet smells and incense are often perceived, bad odors much less frequently. The touch is of all senses the least likely to be deceived; still deranged people occasionally feel a slight touch as a severe blow, and persons suffering from certain diseases are convinced that ants, spiders, or other insects are running over their bodies.
The favorite season of visions is night—mainly the hour about midnight—and in the whole year, the time of Advent, but also the nights from Christmas to New Year. This is, of course, not a feature of supernatural life, but the simple effect of the greater quiet and the more thoughtful, inward life, which these seasons are apt to bring to busy men. The reality of our surroundingsdisappears with the setting sun, and in deep night we are rendered almost wholly independent of the influence exercised in the day by friends, family, and even furniture. All standards of measurement, moreover, disappear, and we lose the correct estimate of both space and time. Turning our thoughts at such times with greater energy and perseverance inward, our imagination has free scope, and countless images appear before our mind's eye which are not subject to the laws of real life. Darkness, stillness, and solitude, the three great features of midnight seasons, all favor the full activity of our fancy, and set criticism at defiance by denying us all means of comparison with real sounds or sights. At the same time, it is asserted, that under such circumstances men are also better qualified to perceive manifestations which, during theturbaof daily life, are carelessly ignored or really imperceptible to the common senses. So long as the intercourse with the world and its exigencies occupy all our thoughts, and self-interest makes us look fixedly only at some one great purpose of life, we are deaf and blind to all that does not clearly belong to this world. But when these demands are no longer made upon us, and especially when, as in the time of Advent, our thoughts are somewhat drawn from earthly natures, and our eyes are lifted heavenward, then we are enabled to give free scope to our instincts, or, if we prefer the real name, to the additional sense by which we perceive intangible things. A comparison has often been drawn between the ability tosee visions and our power to distinguish the stars. In the day, the brilliancy of the sun so far outshines the latter, that we see not a single one; at night they step forth, as it were, from the dark, and the deeper the blackness of the sky, the greater their own brightness. Are they, on that account, nothing more than creatures of our imagination, set free by night and darkness?
As for the favorite places where visions most frequently are seen, it seems that solitudes have already in ancient times always been looked upon as special resorts for evil spirits. The deserts of Asia, with their deep gullies and numerous caves, suggested a population of shy and weird beings, whom few saw and no one knew fully. Hence the fearful description of Babylon in her overthrow, when "Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there and satyrs shall dance there." (Isaiah xiii. 21). The New Testament speaks in like manner of the deserts of Palestine as the abode of evil spirits, and in later days the Faroe Islands were constantly referred to as peopled with weird and unearthly beings. The deserts of Africa are full of Djinns, and the vast plains of the East are peopled with weird apparitions. The solitudes of Norwegian mountain districts abound with gnomes and sprites, and waste places everywhere are no sooner abandoned by men than they are occupied by evil spirits and become the scenes of wild and gruesome visions.
Well-authenticated cases of visions are recorded in unbroken succession from the times of antiquity toour own day, and leave no doubt on the mind that they are not only of common occurrence among men, but generally, also, accompanied by magic phenomena of great importance. The ancients saw, of course, most frequently their gods; the pagans, who had been converted to Christianity, their former idols threatening them with dire punishment; and Christians, their saints and martyrs, their angels and demons. Thus all parties are supported by authorities in no way peculiar to one faith or another, but common to all humanity; and the battle is fought, for a time at least, between faith and faith, and between vision and vision. A famous rhetor, Aristides, who is mentioned in history as one of the mightiest champions polytheism ever has been able to raise against triumphant Christianity, saw, in his hours of exaltation, the great Æsculapius, who gave him directions how to carry on his warfare. At such times his public addresses became so attractive that thousands of enthusiastic hearers assembled to hang upon his lips. The story of the genius of Socrates is well known; Aulus Gellius tells us how the great sage was seen standing motionless for twenty-four hours in the same place, before joining the expedition to Potidea, so absorbed in deep thought that it seemed as if his soul had left the body. Dion, Plato's most intimate friend, saw a huge Fury enter his house and sweep it with a broom; a conspiracy broke out, and he was murdered, after having lost his only son a few days before. (Plutarch's "Life of Dion," 55.) The same Simonides,who according to Valerius Maximus (De Somniis, l. i. ch. 5), had escaped from shipwreck by the timely warning of a spirit, was once dining at the magnificent house of Skopas at Cranon, in Thessaly, when a servant entered to inform him that two gigantic youths were standing at the door and wished to see him immediately. He went out and found no one there; but, at the same moment, the roof and the walls of the dining-room fell down, burying all the guests under the ruins (Phædrus' Fab., iv. 24). The ancients looked upon the vision, in both cases, as merely effects of the prophetic power of the poet, which saved him from immediate death; once in the form of a spirit and the second time in the form of the Dioscuri. For, as Simonides had shortly before written a beautiful poem in honor of Castor and Pollux, his escape and the friendly warning were naturally attributed to the heroic youths, who constantly appear in history as protective genii. In Greece they were known to have fought, dressed in their purple cloaks and seated on snow-white horses, on the side of the Locri, and to have announced their victory on the same day in Olympia, and Sparta, in Corinth, and in Athens (Justin, ix. 3). In Rome they were credited with the victory on the banks of Lake Regillus, and reported to have, as in Greece, dashed into the city, far ahead of all messengers, to proclaim the joyful news. During the Macedonian war they met Publius Vatinius on his way to Rome and informed him that, on the preceding day, Æmilius Paulus had captured Perseus. Delightedwith the news, the prefect hastens to the Senate; but is discredited and actually sent to jail on the charge of indulging in idle gossip, unworthy of his high office. It was only when at last messengers came from the distant army and confirmed the report of Perseus' captivity, that the unlucky prefect was set free again and honored with high rewards.
In other cases the warning genius was seen in visions of different nature. Thus Hannibal was reported to have traced in his sleep the whole course and the success of all his plans, by the aid of his genius, who appeared to him in the shape of a child of marvelous beauty, sent by the great Jupiter himself to direct his movements, and to make him master of Italy. The child asked him to follow without turning to look back, but Hannibal, yielding to the innate tendency to covet forbidden fruit, looked behind him and saw an immense serpent overthrowing all impediments in his way. Then came a violent thunderstorm with fierce lightnings, which rent the strongest walls. Hannibal asked the meaning of these portents, and was told that the storm signified the total subjection of Italy, but that he must be silent and leave the rest to fate. That the vision was not fully realized, was naturally ascribed to his indiscretion. The genius of the two Consuls, P. Decius and Manlius Torquatus, assumed, on the contrary, the shape of a huge phantom which appeared at night in their camp at the foot of Vesuvius, and announced the decision that one leader must fall in orderto make the army victorious. Upon the strength of this vision the two generals decided that he whose troops should first show signs of yielding, should seek death by advancing alone against the Latin army. The legions of Decius, therefore, no sooner began to fall back, than he threw himself, sword in hand, upon the enemy, and not only died a glorious death for his country, but secured a brilliant victory to his brethren.
At a later period a genius saved the life of Octavian, when he and Antony were encamped at Philippi, on the eve of the great battle against Brutus and Cassius. The vision appeared not to himself, however, but to another person, his own physician, Artorus, who, in a dream, was ordered to advise his master to appear on the battle-field in spite of his serious indisposition. Octavian followed the advice and went out, though he had to be carried by his men in a litter; during his absence the soldiers of Brutus entered the camp and actually searched his tent, in which he would have perished inevitably without the timely warning. Of a very different nature was the vision of Cassius, the lieutenant of Antony, who, during his flight to Athens, saw at night a huge black phantom, which informed him that he was his evil spirit. In his terror he called his servants and inquired what they had seen, but they had noticed nothing. Thus tranquilized, he fell asleep again, but the phantom returned once more, and disturbed his mind so painfully that he remained awake the rest of the night, surrounded by his guardsand slaves. The vision was afterwards interpreted as an omen of his impending violent death.
The Emperor Trajan was saved from death during a fearful earthquake by a man of colossal proportions, who came to lead him out of his palace at Antioch; and Attila, who, to the surprise of the world, spared Rome and Italy at the request of Pope Leo the Great, mentioned as the true motive of his action the appearance of a majestic old man in priestly garments, who had threatened him, drawing his sword, with instant death if he did not grant all that the Roman high-priest should demand.
In other cases, which are as numerous as they are striking, the genius assumes the shape of a woman. Thus Dio Cassius ("Hist. Rome," l. lv.), as well as Suetonius ("Claudius," l. i), relate that when Drusus had ravaged Germany, and was on the point of crossing the Elbe, the formidable shape of a gigantic woman appeared to him, who waded up to the middle of the stream and then called out: "Whither, O Drusus? Canst thou put no limit to thy thirst of conquest? Back! the end of thy deeds and of thy life is at hand!" History records that Drusus fell back without apparent reason, and that he died before he reached the banks of the Rhine. Tacitus tells us, in like manner, a vision which encouraged Curtius Rufus at the time when he, a gladiator's son, and holding a most humble position, was accompanying a quæstor on his way to Africa. As he walked up and down a passage in deep meditation, a woman of unusual size appeared to him and said: "Thou, O Rufus, shalt be proconsul of this province!" The young man, perhaps encouraged and supported by a vision which was the result of his own ambitious dreams, rose rapidly by his eminent ability, and after he had reached the consulate, really obtained the province of Africa (Ann., xi. 21). The younger Pliny, who tells the same story in his admirable letter to Sura on the subject of magic, adds that the genius appeared a second time to the great proconsul, but remained silent. The latter saw in this silence a warning of approaching death, and prepared for his end, which did not fail soon to close his career.
It is very striking to see how in these visions also the inner life of man was invariably clearly and distinctly reflected. The ambitious youth saw his good fortune personified in the shape of a beautiful woman, which his excited imagination called Africa, and which he hoped some time or other to call his own. Brutus, on the contrary, full of anticipations of evil, and suffering, and perhaps unconsciously, bitter remorse on account of Cæsar's murder, saw his sad fate as a hideous demon. The army, also, sharing, no doubt, their leader's dark apprehensions, looked upon the black Æthiopian who entered the camp as an evil omen. The appointed meeting at Philippi was merely an evidence of the superior ability of Brutus, who foresaw the probable course of the war and knew the great strategic importance of the famous town.
In the same manner a tradition was long cherished in Augsburg of a fanatic heroine on horseback, who appeared to Attila when he attempted to cross the river Lech on his way from Italy to Pannonia. She called out to him: "Back!" and made a deep impression upon his mind. The picture of the giant woman was long preserved in a Minorite convent in the city, and was evidently German in features and in costume. It is by no means impossible that the lofty but superstitious mind of the ruthless conqueror, after having long busied itself with his approaching attack upon a mighty, unknown nation, personified to himself in a momentary trance the genius of that race in the shape of a majestic woman.
This was all the more probable as Holy Writ also presents to us a whole series of mighty women who exercised at times a lasting influence on the fate of the chosen people, and the world's history abounds with similar instances. There was Deborah, "a prophetess who judged Israel at that time," and went to aid in the defeat of Sisera, and there was Huldah, the prophetess, who warned Josiah, king of Judah. We have the same grand images in Greek and in Roman history, and German annals mention more than one Jettha and Velleda. The series of warnings given by the more tender-hearted sex runs through the annals of modern races from the oldest times to our own day. One of the latest instances happened to a king well known for his sneering skepticism and his utter disbelief of allhigher powers. This was Bernadotte, who forsook his benefactor in order to mount the throne of Sweden, and turned his own sword against his former master. Long years after the fall of Napoleon, he was on the point of sending his son Oscar with an army against Norway, and met with much opposition in the Council of State. Full of impatience and indignation, he mounted his horse and rode out to cool his heated mind; as he approached a dark forest near Stockholm, he saw an old woman sitting by the wayside, whose quaint costume and wild, disheveled hair attracted his attention. He asked her roughly what she was doing there? Her reply was: "If Oscar goes into the war which you propose, he will not strike but receive the first blow." The king was impressed by the warning and returned, full of thoughts, to his palace; after a sleepless night he informed the Council of State that he had changed his views, and would not send the prince to Norway (La Presse, May 4, 1844). Even if we accept the interview with the woman as a mere vision, the effect of the king's long and anxious preoccupation with an important plan upon the success of which the security of his throne and the continuation of his dynasty might depend, the question still remains, why a man of his tastes and haughty skepticism should have clothed his doubts in words uttered by an old woman, dressed in fancy costume?
The number of practical, sensible men who have, even in recent times, believed themselves under thespecial care and protection of a genius or guardian angel, is much larger than is commonly known. The ancients looked upon a genius as a part of their mythology; and modern Christians, who cherish this belief, refer to the fact that the Saviour said of little children: "In heaven theirangelsdo always behold the face of my Father" (Matt. xviii. 10). These visions—for so they must be called—vary greatly in different persons. To some men they appear only when great dangers are threatening or sublime efforts have to be made; while in others, they assume, by their frequency, a more or less permanent form, and may even be inherited, becoming tutelary deities of certain houses, familiar spirits, or specially appointed guardian angels of the members of a family or single individuals. Hence, the well-known accounts of the genius of Socrates and the familiar spirits of the Bible, in ancient times. Hence, also, the almost uninterrupted line of similar accounts through the Middle Ages down to our own day. Thus, Campanella stated that whenever he was threatened with misfortune, he fell into a state half way between waking and sleeping, in which he heard a voice say: "Campanella! Campanella!" and several other words, without ever seeing a person. Calignan, Chancelor of Navarre, heard in Béarn, his name called three times, and then received a warning from the same voice to leave the town promptly, as the plague was to rage there fearfully. He obeyed the order, and escaped the ravages of the terrible disease (Beaumont, "Tractat.," etc., p. 208).The Jesuit Giovanni Carrera had a protecting genius, whom he frequently consulted in cases of special difficulty. He became so familiar with him, that he had himself waked every night for his prayers, but when at times he hesitated to rise at once, the spirit abandoned him for a time, and Carrera could only induce him to come back by long-continued praying and fasting ("Hist. S. J.," iii. p. 177).
The Bernadottes had a tradition that one of their ancestors had married a fairy, who remained the good genius of the family, and long since had predicted that one of that blood would mount a throne. The Bernadotte who became a king never forgot the prophecy, and was largely influenced by it, when the Swedish nobles offered him the throne. It is well known that Napoleon himself either believed, or affected to believe, in a good genius, who guided his steps and protected him from danger. He appeared, according to his own statements, sometimes in the shape of a ball of fire, which he called his "star," or as a man dressed in red, who paid him occasional visits. General Rapp relates that, in the year 1806, he once found the Emperor in his room, apparently absorbed in such deep meditation that he did not notice his entrance, but that, when fairly aroused, he seized Rapp by the arm and asked him if saw that star? When the latter replied that he saw nothing, Napoleon continued: "It is my star; it is standing just above you. It has never forsaken me; I see it on all important occasions; it orders me to go on, and has alwaysbeen a token of success." The story, coming from General Rapp himself, is quoted here as endorsed by the great historian, Amédée Thierry.
Des Mousseaux reports the following facts upon the evidence of trustworthy personal friends. (La Magie, etc., p. 366.) A Mme. N., the daughter of a general, was constantly visited by her mother, who had died long ago, and received from her frequent information of secret things, which procured for herself the reputation of being a prophetess. At one time her mother's spirit warned her to try and prevent her husband, who would die by suicide, from carrying out his purpose. Every precaution was taken, and even the knives and forks were removed after meals; but it so happened that a soldier of the National Guard came into the house and left his loaded gun in an anteroom. The lady's husband unfortunately chanced to see it, took it and blew his brains out on the spot.
A peculiarly interesting class of visions are those to which great artists have, at times, owed their greatest triumphs. Here, also, the line between mere delusion and real magic phenomena is often so faint as to escape attention. For artists must needs cultivate their imagination at the expense of other faculties, and naturally live more in an ideal world than in a real world. Preoccupied as they are, by the nature of their pursuits, with images of more than earthly beauty, they come easily to form ideals in their minds, which they endeavor to fix first upon their memory, and then uponcanvas or in marble, on paper or in rapturous words. Raphael Sanzio had long in vain tried to portray the Holy Virgin according to a vague ideal in his mind; at last he awoke one night and saw in the place where his sketch was hanging a bright light, and in the radiance the Mother of Christ in matchless beauty, and with supernatural holiness in her features. The vision remained deeply impressed upon his mind, and was ever after the original of which even his best Madonnas could only be imperfect copies. Benvenuto Cellini, when sick unto death, repeatedly saw an old man trying to pull him down into his boat, but as soon as his faithful servant came and touched him, the hideous vision disappeared. The artist had evidently a picture of Charon and his Acherontic boat in his mind, which was thus reproduced in his feverish dreams. On another occasion, when he had long been in prison, and in despair contemplated suicide, an "unknown being" suddenly seized him and hurled him back to a distance of four yards, where he remained lying for hours half dead. In the following night a "fair youth" appeared to him and made him bitter reproaches on account of his sinful purpose. The same youthful genius appeared to him repeatedly when a great crisis approached in his marvelously adventurous life, and more than once revealed to him the mysteries of the future. (Goethe's "Benv. Cell." i. p. 375.) Poor Tasso had fearful hallucinations during the time when his mind was disordered, but above them all hovered, as it were, thevision of a glorious Virgin surrounded by a bright light, which always comforted and probably alone saved him from self-destruction. Like Raphael, Dannecker also had long tried in vain to find perfect expression for his ideal of a Christ on the Cross; one night, however, he also saw the Saviour in a dream, and at once proceeded to form his model, from which was afterwards copied the well-known statue of transcendent beauty and power.
Paganini used to tell with an amusing air of assumed awe and reverence, that his mother had seen, a few days before his birth, an angel with two wings and of such dazzling splendor that she could not bear to look at the apparition. The heavenly messenger invited her to express a wish, and promised that it should be fulfilled. Thereupon she begged him on her knees to make her Nicolo a great violinist, and was told that it should be so. The vision—perhaps nothing more than a vivid form of earnest desire and fervent prayer—had, no doubt, a serious influence on the great artist, who was himself strangely susceptible to such impressions. (Moniteur, Sept. 30, 1860.)
Nothing can here be said, according to the purpose of these sketches, of the long series of visions vouchsafed to martyrs and saints; their history belongs to theology. But holy men have, independent of their religious convictions, often been as famous for their visions as for the piety of their hearts, and their achievements in the world. Loyola, for instance, withhis faculties perpetually strained to the utmost, and with his thoughts bent forever upon a grand and holy aim, could not well fail to rise to a state of psychic excitement which naturally produced impressive visions. Hence he continually saw strange sights and heard mysterious voices, the effect now of extreme despondency and now of restored confidence in God and in himself as the agent of the Most High. And yet these visions never interfered with the clearness of his judgment nor with his promptness and energy in acting. Luther, also, one of the most practical men ever called upon to act and to lead in a great crisis, had visions; he saw the Devil and held loud discussions with him; he suffered by his persecutions, and made great efforts to rid himself of his unwelcome guest, while engaged in his great work, the translation of the Bible. For he was, after all—and for very great and good purposes—only a man of his age, imbued with the universal belief in the personal existence and constant presence of Satan, and felt, at the same time, that he was engaged in a warfare upon the results of which depended not only the earthly welfare, but the eternal salvation of millions.
It is difficult to say whether Mohammed, who had undoubtedly visions innumerable, received any aid from his hallucinations in devising his new faith. Men of science tell us that he suffered ofHysteria muscularis, a disease not uncommon in men as well as in women, which produces periodical paroxysms and is characterized byan alternate contraction and expansion of the muscles. When the attack came the prophet's lips and tongue would begin to vibrate, his eyes turned up, and the head moved automatically. If the paroxysms were very violent he fell to the ground, his face turned purple, and he breathed with difficulty. As he frequently retained his consciousness he pretended that these symptoms were caused by angels' visits, and each attack was followed by a new revelation. The disease was the result of his early lawless life and of the freedom which he claimed, even in later years—pleading a special dispensation from on high as a divinely inspired prophet. It is not to be wondered at that the new religion, springing from such a source, and proclaimed amid the mountains and steppes of Arabia, which, according to popular belief, are all alive with djinns and demons, should be largely based upon visions and hallucinations.
The important part which visions hold in the history of the various religions of the earth lies beyond our present purpose; we know, however, that the records of ancient temples, of prophets, saints, and martyrs, and of later convents and churches, abound with instances of such so-called revelations from on high. They have more than once served at critical times to excite individuals and whole nations to make sublime efforts. One of the best known cases of the former class is that of Constantine the Great, who told Eusebius of Cæsarea, affirming his statement with a solemn oath, that he saw in 312, shortly before the decisive battle at Romeagainst his formidable adversary Magentius, a bright cross in the heavens, surrounded by the words:In hoc signo vinces. But this vision stood by no means alone. He himself beheld, besides, in a dream during the following night, the Saviour, who ordered him to use in battle henceforth a banner like that which he had seen in his vision. Nazarius, a pagan, also speaks of a number of marvelous signs in the heavens seen in Gaul immediately before the emperor's great victory. Nor can it be doubted that this vision not only inspired Constantine with new hopes and new courage, enabling him to secure his triumph, but also induced him, after his success, to avow himself openly a convert to the faith of Christ.
The visions of that eminent man Swedenborg are too well known to require here more than a mere allusion. Beginning his intercourse with the supernatural world at the ripe age of forty-five, he soon gave himself up to it systematically, and felt compelled to make his daily conversations, as well as the revelations he received from time to time, duly known to the public. Thus he wrote with an evident air of firm conviction: "I had recently a conference with the Apostle Paul;" and at another time he assured a Würtemberg prelate, "I have conferred with St. Paul for a whole year, especially about the words in Romans iii. 28. Three times I have conversed with St. John, once with Moses, and a hundred times with Luther, when the latter confessed that he had taughtfidem solamcontrary to thewarning of an angel, and that he had stood alone when renouncing the pope. With angels, finally, I have held constant intercourse for the last twenty years, and still hold daily conversations."
Classic as well as Christian art, is indebted to visions for more than one signal success. On the other hand, they have as frequently been made to serve vile purposes, mainly by feeding superstition and supporting religious tyranny. We need only recall the terrible calamity caused by a wretched shepherd boy in France, who, in 1213, saw, or pretended to see, heavenly visions, ordering him to enlist his comrades, and with their aid, to rescue the Holy Land from the possession of infidels. Thousands of little children were seized by the contagious excitement, and leaving their home and their kindred, followed their youthful leader, unchecked by the authorities, because of the interpretation applied to the words of Jesus: "Suffer little children to come unto Me!" Not one of them ever reached Palestine, as all perished long before they had reached even Southern France.
It is not exactly a magic phenomenon, but certainly a most startling feature in visions, that the minds of many men should be able, by their own volition, to create images and forms so perfectly like those existing in the world around us, that the same minds are incapable of distinguishing where hallucination and reality touch each other. This faculty varies, of course, as much as other endowments: sometimes it produces nothing butvague, shapeless lights or sounds; in other persons it is capable of calling up well-defined forms, and of causing even words to be heard and pain to be inflicted. During severe suffering in body or soul, it may become a comforter, and in the moment of passing through the valley of the shadow of death, it is apt to soothe the anguish, by visions of heavenly bliss, but to an evil conscience it may also appear as an avenger, by prefiguring impending judgment and condemnation. It is this influence on the lives of men, and their great moral importance, which lends to visions—and in a certain degree even to hallucinations—additional interest, and makes it our duty not to set them aside as mere idle phantoms, but to try to ascertain their true nature and final purpose. This is all the more necessary, as in our day visions are considered purely the offspring of the seer's own mental activity, a truth abundantly proven by the simple fact that blind or deaf people are quite as capable of having visions and hallucinations, as those who have the use of all their senses.