As I do not wish to startle my readers, nor draw too suddenly on their faith, I have commenced with this class of phenomena, which it must be admitted are sufficiently strange, and, if true, must also be admitted to be well worthy of attention. No doubt these cases, and still more those to which I shall next proceed, give a painful shock to the received notions of polished and educated society in general—especially in this country, where the analytical or scientifical psychology of the eighteenth century has almost superseded the study of synthetic or philosophical psychology. It has become a custom to look at all the phenomena regarding man in a purely physiological point of view; for although it is admitted that he has a mind, and although there is such a science as metaphysics, the existence of what we call mind is never considered but as connected with the body. We know that body can exist without mind; for, not to speak of certain living conditions, the body subsists without mind when the spirit has fled; albeit, without the living principle it can subsist but for a short period, except under particular circumstances; but we seem to have forgotten that mind, though dependent upon body as long as the connection between them continues, can yet subsist without it. There have indeed been philosophers, purely materialistic, who have denied this, but they are not many; and not only the whole Christian world, but all who believe in a future state, must perforce admit it; for even those who hold that most unsatisfactory doctrine that there will be neither memory nor consciousness till a second incorporation takes place, will not deny that the mind, however in a state of abeyance and unable to manifest itself, must still subsist as an inherent property of man’s immortal part. Even if, as some philosophers believe, the spirit, when freed from the body by death, returns to the Deity and is reabsorbed in the being of God, not to become again a separate entity until reincorporated, still what we call mind can not be disunited from it. And when once we have begun to conceive of mind, and consequently of perception, as separated from and independent of bodily organs, it will not be very difficult to apprehend that those bodily organs must circumscribe and limit the view of the spiritual in-dweller, which must otherwise be necessarily perceptive of spirit like itself, though perhaps unperceptive of material objects and obstructions.
“It is perfectly evident to me,” said Socrates, in his last moments, “that, to see clearly, we must detach ourselves from the body, and perceive by the soul alone. Not while we live, but when we die, will that wisdom which we desire and love be first revealed to us; it must be then, or never, that we shall attain to true understanding and knowledge, since by means of the body we never can. But if, during life, we would make the nearest approaches possible to its possession, it must be by divorcing ourselves as much as in us lies from the flesh and its nature.” In their spiritual views and apprehension of the nature of man, how these old heathens shame us!
The Scriptures teach us that God chose to reveal himself to his people chiefly in dreams, and we are entitled to conclude that the reason of this was, that the spirit was then more free to the reception of spiritual influences and impressions; and the class of dreams to which I next proceed seem to be best explained by this hypothesis. It is also to be remarked that the awe or fear which pervades a mortal at the mere conception of being brought into relation with a spirit, has no place in sleep, whether natural or magnetic. There is no fear then, no surprise; we seem to meet on an equality—is it not that we meet spirit to spirit? Is it not that our spirit being then released from the trammels—the dark chamber of the flesh—it does enjoy a temporary equality? Is not that true, that some German psychologist has said—“The magnetic man is a spirit!”
There are numerous instances to be met with of persons receiving information in their sleep, which either is, or seems to be, communicated by their departed friends. The approach of danger, the period of the sleeper’s death, or of that of some persons beloved, has been frequently made known in this form of dream.
Dr. Binns quotes, from Cardanus, the case of Johannes Maria Maurosenus, a Venetian senator, who, while governor of Dalmatia, saw in a dream one of his brothers, to whom he was much attached: the brother embraced him and bade him farewell, because he was going into the other world. Maurosenus having followed him a long way weeping, awoke in tears, and expressed much anxiety respecting this brother. Shortly afterward he received tidings from Venice that this Domatus, of whom he had dreamed, had died on the night and at the hour of the dream, of a pestilential fever, which had carried him off in three days.
On the night of the 21st of June, in the year 1813, a lady, residing in the north of England, dreamed that her brother, who was then with his regiment in Spain, appeared to her, saying, “Mary, I die this day at Vittoria!”
Vittoria was a town which, previous to the famous battle, was not generally known even by name in this country, and this dreamer, among others, had never heard of it; but, on rising, she eagerly resorted to a gazetteer for the purpose of ascertaining if such a place existed. On finding that it was so, she immediately ordered her horses, and drove to the house of a sister, some eight or nine miles off, and her first words on entering the room were, “Have you heard anything of John?”—“No,” replied the second sister, “but I know he is dead! He appeared to me last night, in a dream, and told me that he was killed at Vittoria. I have been looking into the gazetteer and the atlas, and I find there is such a place, and I am sure that he is dead!” And so it proved: the young man died that day at Vittoria, and, I believe, on the field of battle. If so, it is worthy of observation that the communication was not made till the sisters slept.
A similar case to this is that of Miss D——, of G——, who one night dreamed that she was walking about the washing-greens, when a figure approached, which she recognised as that of a beloved brother who was at that time with the British army in America. It gradually faded away into a kind of anatomy, holding up its hands, through which the light could be perceived, and asking for clothes to dress a body for the grave. The dream recurred more than once in the same night, and, apprehending some misfortune, Miss D—— noted down the date of the occurrence. In due course of post, the news arrived that this brother had been killed at the battle of Bunker’s hill. Miss D——, who died only within the last few years, though unwilling to speak of the circumstance, never refused to testify to it as a fact.
Here, supposing this to be a real apparition, we see an instance of that desire for decent obsequies so constantly attributed by the ancients to the souls of the dead.
When the German poet Collin died at Vienna, a person named Hartmann, who was his friend, found himself very much distressed by the loss of a hundred and twenty florins, which he had paid for the poet, under a promise of reimbursement. As this sum formed a large portion of his whole possessions, the circumstance was occasioning him considerable anxiety, when he dreamed one night that his deceased friend appeared to him, and bade him immediately set two florins on No. 11, on the first calling of the little lottery, or loto, then about to be drawn. He was bade to confine his venture to two florins, neither less nor more; and to communicate this information to nobody. Hartmann availed himself of the hint, and obtained a prize of a hundred and thirty florins.