With respect to this subject of double-dreaming, Dr. Ennemoser thinks that it is not so difficult to explain as might appear on a first view, since he considers that there exists an indisputable sympathy between certain organisms, especially where connected by relationship or by affection, which may be sufficient to account for the supervention of simultaneous thoughts, dreams, or presentiments; and I have met with some cases where the magnetiser and his patient have been the subjects of this phenomenon. With respect to the power asserted to have been frequently exercised by causing or suggesting dreams by an operator at a distance from the sleeper, Dr. E. considers the two parties to stand in a positive and negative relation to each other; the antagonistic power of the sleeper being = 0, he becomes a perfectly passive recipient of the influence exerted by his positive half, if I may use the expression; for, where such a polarity is established, the two beings seem to be almost blended into one; while Dr. Passavent observes, that we can not pronounce what may be the limits of the nervous force, which certainly is not bounded by the termination of its material conductors.
I have yet, myself, met with no instance of dream compelling by a person at a distance; but Dr. Ennemoser says that Agrippa von Nettesheim asserts that this can assuredly be done, and also that the abbot Trithemius and others possessed the power. In modern times, Wesermann, in Dusseldorf, pretended to the same faculty, and affirms that he had frequently exercised it.
All such phenomena, Dr. Passavent attributes to the interaction of imponderables—or of one universal imponderable under different manifestations—which acts not only within the organism, but beyond it, independently of all material obstacles; just as a sympathy appears between one organ and another, unobstructed by the intervening ones; and he instances the sympathy which exists between the mother and the fœtus, as an example of this sort of double life, and standing as midway between the sympathy between two organs in the same body and that between two separate bodies, each having its own life, and its life also in and for another, as parts of one whole. The sympathy between a bird and the eggs it sits upon, is of the same kind; many instances having been observed, wherein eggs, taken from one bird and placed under another, have produced a brood feathered like the foster instead of the real parent.
Thus, this vital force may extend dynamically the circle of its influence, till, under favorable circumstances, it may act on other organisms, making their organs its own.
I need scarcely remind my readers of the extraordinary sympathies manifested by the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. I never saw them myself; and, for the benefit of others in the same situation, I quote the following particulars from Dr. Passavent: “They were united by a membrane which extended from the breast-bone to the navel; but, in other respects, were not different from their countrymen in general. They were exceedingly alike, only that Eng was rather the more robust of the two. Their pulsations were not always coincident. They were active and agile, and fond of bodily exercises; their intellects were well developed, and their tones of voice and accent were precisely the same. As they never conversed together, they had nearly forgotten their native tongue. If one was addressed, they both answered. They played some games of skill, but never with each other; as that, they said, would have been like the right hand playing with the left. They read the same book at the same time, and sang together in unison. In America they had a fever, which ran precisely a similar course with each. Their hunger, thirst, sleeping, and waking, were alway coincident, and their tastes and inclinations were identical. Their movements were so simultaneous, that it was impossible to distinguish with which the impulse had originated; they appeared to have but one will. The idea of being separated by an operation was abhorrent to them; and they consider themselves much happier in their duality than are the individuals who look upon them with pity.”
This admirable sympathy, although necessarily in an inferior degree, is generally manifested, more or less, between all persons twin-born. Dr. Passavent and other authorities mention several instances of this kind, in which, although at some distance from each other, the same malady appeared simultaneously in both, and ran precisely a similar course. A very affecting instance of this sort of sympathy was exhibited, not very long ago, by a young lady, twin-born, who was suddenly seized with an unaccountable horror, followed by a strange convulsion, which the doctor, who was hastily called in, said exactly resembled the struggles and sufferings of a person drowning. In process of time, the news arrived that her twin-brother, then abroad, had been drowned precisely at that period.
It is probably a link of the same kind that is established between the magnetiser and his patient, of which, besides those recorded in various works on the subject, some curious instances have come to my knowledge, such as uncontrollable impulses to go to sleep, or to perform certain actions, in subservience to the will of the distant operator. Mr. W—— W——, a gentleman well known in the north of England, related to me that he had been cured, by magnetism, of a very distressing malady. During part of the process of curé, after the rapport had been well established, the operations were carried on while he was at Malvern, and his magnetiser at Cheltenham, under which circumstances the existence of this extraordinary dependence was frequently exhibited in a manner that left no possibility of doubt. On one occasion, I remember that Mr. W—— W—— being in the magnetic sleep, he suddenly started from his seat, clasping his hands as if startled, and presently afterward burst into a violent fit of laughter. As, on waking, he could give no account of these impulses, his family wrote to the magnetiser to inquire if he had sought to excite any particular manifestations in his patient, as the sleep had been somewhat disturbed. The answer was, that no such intention had been entertained, but that the disturbance might possibly have arisen from one to which he had himself been subjected. “While my mind was concentrated on you,” said he, “I was suddenly so much startled by a violent knock at the door, that I actually jumped off my seat, clasping my hands with affright. I had a hearty laugh at my own folly, but am sorry if you were made uncomfortable by it.”
I have met with some accounts of a sympathy of this kind existing between young children and their parents, so that the former have exhibited great distress and terror at the moment that death or danger have supervened to the latter; but it would require a great number of instances to establish this particular fact, and separate it from cases of accidental coincidence. Dr. Passavent, however, admits the phenomena.
I shall return to these mysterious influences by-and-by; but to revert, in the meanwhile, to the subject of double dreams, I will relate one that occurred to two ladies, a mother and daughter, the latter of whom related it to me. They were sleeping in the same bed at Cheltenham, when the mother, Mrs. C——, dreamed that her brother-in-law, then in Ireland, had sent for her; that she entered his room, and saw him in bed, apparently dying. He requested her to kiss him, but, owing to his livid appearance, she shrank from doing so, and awoke with the horror of the scene upon her. The daughter awoke at the same moment, saying, “Oh, I have had such a frightful dream!” “Oh, so have I!” returned the mother; “I have been dreaming of my brother-in-law!”—“My dream was about him, too,” added Miss C——. “I thought I was sitting in the drawing-room, and that he came in wearing a shroud, trimmed with black ribands, and, approaching me, he said: ‘My dear niece, your mother has refused to kiss me, but I am sure you will not be so unkind!’ ”
As these ladies were not in habits of regular correspondence with their relative, they knew that the earliest intelligence likely to reach them, if he were actually dead, would be by means of the Irish papers; and they waited anxiously for the following Wednesday, which was the day these journals were received in Cheltenham. When that morning arrived, Miss C—— hastened at an early hour to the reading-room, and there she learned what the dreams had led them to expect: their friend was dead; and they afterward ascertained that his decease had taken place on that night. They moreover observed, that neither one nor the other of them had been speaking or thinking of this gentleman for some time previous to the occurrence of the dreams; nor had they any reason whatever for uneasiness with regard to him. It is a remarkable peculiarity in this case, that the dream of the daughter appears to be a continuation of that of the mother. In the one, he is seen alive; in the other, the shroud and black ribands seem to indicate that he is dead, and he complains of the refusal to give him a farewell kiss.