estaticas of every age and every description among the Brahmins, the Israelites, the Pagans, and the Christians, whose revelations overwhelm the masses either as startling prophecies and divinations of every kind, or as warnings, exhortations, threats, and promises conveyed in poetic allegories. A certain difference is, however, produced by their national and historic positions as well as by the various forms of religion. Görres in his " Mystic" furnishes many and impressive examples, particularly of Christian estaticas. Šuch, for instance, are the visions and extasies of St. Catharine, St. Hildegard, St. Theresa, and others. One instance is given by Kieser, extracted from Orlandini, of St. Xaverius, a Jesuit. In the 17th century, Xaverius had urgently recommended a crusade against the pirates of Malacca. During the preparations, and even at the very time of the battle itself, Xaverius fell into an extatic state in which, at a distance of two hundred Portugese miles, he was, as it were, a witness of the combat. He foretold that the victory would be on the side of the Christians; saw that one vessel which sank, before the departure of the fleet, was replaced by another; described every minute particular of the battle, stated the exact hour, imagined himself in the midst of the struggle, and announced the arrival of the messenger on a certain day. Every particular of which was fulfilled in the most perfect manner. This is a specimen of clairvoyance in a Catholic priest. Another instance of hidden circumstances being seen, is given by Schubert (Berichte eines Visionärs, &c., 1837, p. 30), which took place in a simple, but very religiously inclined, gardener's daughter. He says, "I know the history of a gardener's daughter who had the power of seeing visions; she was betrothed, but many obstacles stood in the way of the union. The continued anxieties, the long interval of uncertainty, made her very excited and delicate. When she was occupied with her work in the garden, it seemed to her as if she saw a pillar of smoke, in which stood a human form. This figure also appeared to her at night, when she was at rest and felt no dizziness in the head. It may, perhaps, be said that this dizziness, which arose from the blood, produced these phantoms. But the figure was not solitary, others came who spoke to the girl, and led her to a meadow, and to the hidden and even long past world, as no human being could have done. It may again be said, leeches would have been a remedy, and would have banished all such phantoms. But the girl was made a confidant by her invisible associates of many long-forgotten events and family circumstances, which were substantiated by reference to deeds and papers, of which many lay in Vienna; documents of which no one then living, and certainly least of all the gardener's daughter of the suburb, could have known anything. Perhaps people may call this imposture, or chance. For my part, they may say what they will; the communications which the girl made were such as a man might be supposed to make to one who approaches him in his last moments, for the benefit of his distant family. The gardener's daughter saw such things as were seen by Concorde in the Castle of Belfont." Lastly, one step higher than extasy is clairvoyance and true inspiration. In both of the last named states, man shows that by his erect position, which raises him partly into a region above the earth, he is enabled to see and comprehend more than the most acute senses of the mere animal; we perceive in him a velocity of the mind to which the tornado, or lightning, is not to be compared. But the true completeness, and the most perfect freedom of the human mind, is only shown in clairvoyance and real inspiration. The working and activity of religious inspiration, in particular, is the higher self-consciousness without the recurring changes and retrograding interruptions which are still seen in the lower stages. As the end is nobler than everything earthly, so does a weak body often exhibit, in such inspirations, a superhuman power, in which things of this earth are as mere playthings. The stammering tongue, by the holy enthusiasm, becomes a fiery organ of speech, and outward works of love and virtue follow the inner humility and self-sacrifice! Fisher divides the phenomena of the inner senses into somnambulism, visions, and the higher clairvoyance. Dreams form the lowest state, then the half state of consciousness in the somnambulist, who either talks or walks, or does various actions in his sleep as when awake. Clairvoyance is itself the highest stage of somnambulism. These visions, which do not alone refer to the sight, but T which also appeal to the organs of hearing, smell, taste, and feeling, will be treated with under the various sections to which they belong. We have already spoken of the poetic power (Phantisticon) according to its causes. Ghost-seeing is particularly distinguished by a very sensitive organization, a sensitive heart, and a delicate constitution, as well as a mind which accommodates itself rapidly to all circumstances. Secondly, a diseased state of the circulation and the nervous system, and often also of the stomach; inflammations and irritations of the brain and the organs of the senses: these are the principal sources of visions. Among these may be recounted delirium and monomania, where the intellect is entirely subject to the imagination. Thirdly, religious education and an inclination for deep reflection, an ascetic life and fasting: these are all favourable to visions. In many saints of the early Christian ages, and of many nations, these circumstances are evidently to be regarded as assisting causes. Fourthly, outward irritations and artificial means have continually been used. Among the former may be named the narcotics, wine, opium among the Orientals, the Soma of the Brahmins, the vapours arising from the Delphian chasm, which, according to Davy's investigations, was oxydized nitrogen gas; fumigation with incense in temples, sandalwood, aloe, mastic, saffron, sulphur, &c., and anointing the body with narcotic salves (witch-salve). Fifthly, we may also include the peculiar ceremonies, and inclination to fear and expectation, aroused by preparatory words, songs, and prayers. According to these causes, visions may be placed in various classes. Those originating in an inner disposition of the mind towards veneration, belong to religion and the histories of the Saints already mentioned, and arise involuntarily without any outward application; but in magic visions, Demons are invoked by means of assisting substances. The sorcerer raises and lays spirits, while to the religious enthusiast they appear voluntarily; in the latter it is rather a pleasant communion with a divine being, with which the Brahmin associates as with a friend; in the former, a species of hellish compulsion. I feel that all my heart to thee is given; my life! To the timid, every mist rolls into a terrific giant shadow. To-day Venus appears to the lover as the majestic daughter of Jupiter, full of radiant beauty— tr Quisquis amat ranam ranam putat esse Dianam;" To-morrow the Son of Erebus stands before him with the servants of darkness, with pain and sorrow, with enmity and contention. When the outward senses are lulled to sleep by ceremonies and incense to give space to the inward extasy, their activity gradually flows to the latter. Petrus de Albano (Elementa magica) describes the spirits appearing after an incantation, as shadows of the twilight and half-sleep, and as ideal forms of the sight and hearing under the shapes of men and animals—" quibus rite peractis apparebunt infinito visiones et phantasmata, pulsantia organa et omnis generis instrumenta musica. Post hæc videbis infinitos sagittarios cum infinita multitudine bestiarum horribilium." Opium produces visions of paradise and its pleasures, and it as well as other narcotics also occasion a sensation of flying, and being raised through the air. Such narcotics were mixed with the salves after anointing with which the witches rode to the Blocksberg on broom-handles and goats. Nitrogen gas produces delusions of all kinds of animals, frogs and fiery shapes; as, in intoxication, phantom worms and insects are seen. The northern seers produce extasy by noisy music and drums; the African savages by dances which produce dizziness, and in that state the former foretell the arrival of foreign ships, and the fortunes of their friends and relatives, and the latter behold all the houris and angelic hosts of the Mohammedan paradise. A certain difference of form arises according as the visions are produced by subjective impressions of the inner senses, or by outward objects. Such are the visions of common dreams, of sleep-walking, of fever, of nervous affections, unstable and intangible; more regular are those of magnetic clairvoyance and the higher inspiration. All visions which present themselves to the vision-seer may be classed as subjective expressions of the inner senses; for when the visions have a common and objective cause, many persons, though not all, may behold the same ideal pictures, which will mutually resemble each other: this does not occur by infection, just as many people may be attacked by the same disease at the same place and in the same atmosphere, without it being caused by infection, as in cholera and the yellow fever. It is, however, certain, that visions may be transferred to others; and this is one of the most remarkable psychological phenomena. It either takes place directly, as among contemplative enthusiasts (the Philadelphian Society of Pordage), and occasionally in magnetic clairvoyants; instances are even known of dreams being transmitted to others; or it takes place directly, as by the laying on of hands, or by the touch in secondsight. To this class belong the remarkable narratives of spiritual appearances when at first one person, then several, saw the same visions, which is even said to have been extended to animals. Whether it is possible or not to consider it as an objective reality, is difficult to say; but such cases are told of every age and of all nations. This remarkable outward appearance of visions of a higher or lower class, does not, however, take place by means of the outward organic senses acting inwardly; for the manifestation in every case acts directly upon the organs of the soul, by means of which the visions are transferred to the organs of the senses. Every mental perception of the ideal, of the divine, and of the higher language of the soul, is certainly always a direct inner spiritual picture; and the divine therefore manifests itself according to the nature of the organ on which it falls,—to the rich poetic imagination as the ruling power of his fancy, to the philosophical understanding as the scheme of a harmonious system,it sinks deeply into the religious mind, and raises the strong, active, working productive will into a sacred power: it is thus that the divine is venerated by every one in a different manner. Visions are very various in their nature, as for instance those of the half-waking, even the waking state; the visions which certain persons can call up at will, as in the case of Cardanus; the visions of Nicolai and Bazko, who considered them to be phantasmagorias; the power of self-seeing as well as a double or manifold personality; the second sight of the Scottish isles, and many others. Classed according to their |
