How this presentiment or feeling becomes conscious, how the virgin Pythia of Delphi felt, for instance, that the Persians would one day plunder and burn the Temple of Didyma, and accurately prophesied the event some time before it happened, it is impossible to say; as well might we try to explain the accurate weather prognostications of snails, of swallows, or of the monkeys on the rocks of Gibraltar. This, however, is certain, that a kind of second sight is frequently given to women, particularly to young virgins (probably owing to their condition of acute apprehensive-and sensitive-ness); but whether it will ever be explained as a sort of feeling intelligence of the periphery of their bodies, or of their sight, or of their ears, or definitely located in a peculiar function of their psyche, it is at present impossible to say.[241]
In conclusion, however, I must, for the sake of the reader unacquainted with the history of this aspect of the human mind, call attention to the fact that men, too, have been known to possess these very powers. It is in no spirit of hostility to women that I here add this reminder of a well-known fact, but simply with a view to saving myself from misinterpretation.
The feminist reader, who will imagine that the bulk of this book, instead of having been dictated by a feeling of deep friendliness to women, is really the work of prejudice, will halt here, and feel perhaps a certain disappointment. Here was I, at last, generously according a unique psychical power to woman, and lo! I now proceed to add that even this peculiar gift is not peculiar, and that she shares it with man.
Alas, yes! The truth must be admitted. The most we can say is, that women perhaps possess it more frequently, more normally than men; but that men have possessed it, and will continue to possess it, cannot, I fear, be denied.
The ancients, whose wisdom in these matters is our first hint of the existence of such occult powers in humanity, were perfectly well aware of this fact. The oracles at the Hill of Ptoon, at Claros, at Olympia, and in the Oasis of Lybia (Zeus Ammon), and many others, were all conducted by men, while that of Zeus at Dodona, was conducted by men at first, and only in later times by women.
The records of the Jewish race and of the Middle Ages are full of instances of men whose “clairvoyance” was well known, while in the East, the employment of men in functions where powers of divination and clairvoyance are essential, is almost universal.
Whether these facts justify the ultimate conclusion that, while man includes woman, woman does not include man—that while all that is woman is man, all that is man is not woman, it is perhaps a little difficult to say. At all events, it is my belief that the truth resides very near, if not actually in, this statement of the relation of the sexes; and although I claim no originality for it as it stands, I think it helpful in explaining briefly much that will probably be eternally true about this relation.
The Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races have little of the seer in their constitution. They are better at meeting and enduring disaster than at foreseeing and forestalling it. They are suspicious of prophets and prophecy, because they have none of the gifts that would enable them to indulge in vaticinations themselves. Not being possessed of any capacity for divining the ultimate bourne of current tendencies, they doubt very much whether it is possible for any man to foretell that bourne, or to describe it in anticipation. They are completely wedded to the doctrine of experience. “What you have not experienced you cannot possibly know,”—this is the ultimate epistemological doctrine of these two races. The consequence of this is that they are constantly in the precarious position of him who, knowing nothing of poisons, and being quite unable to predict their possible effect, has to wait for the consequence of having partaken of strange drugs before he can know whether they are good for him or not.
Such an attitude would be excusable at the dawn of history, at the beginning of human life, or in the Garden of Eden. It seems quite inexcusable in the present Age. And yet, although the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races have the whole of the accumulated history of civilized mankind, and the whole of the tradition of humanity, at their command, they still persist in demanding individual experience of everything, before they will pronounce upon it.