We have examined this man carefully, and are convinced that the whole mystery of his revelations and character may be contained in a nut-shell. He is to the sphere of intellectual and spiritual sympathy, and in a lower sense, precisely an analogous case with that of Mozart in the sphere of the musical and spiritual. When the great soul of humanity has been long—say one generation—in travail with a great thought in art, science, music, or mechanics, there is sure to be somebody born in the succeeding generation who is physically, mentally, and spiritually, the impersonation and embodiment of this thought, of which the age is in labor, and who must of necessity become, solely and singly, the expression and embodiment thereof. Thus Mozart, the infant prodigy in music, who at five years old was the pet of monarchs and the miracle of his age, continued, with no signs of precociousness, a steady and consistent development, which showed him to be indeed the embodiment of the musical inspirations of his age. His revelations in music were just as prodigious as even the rabid worshippers of the Davis revelations would imagine those to be; yet there are some most essential differences between the results of the two.
Davis, born amidst the travail of this new Mesmeric agitation, became the most sensitive organ of the sympathetic fluid in intellect, as the other had been in music; but as, in the case of Mozart, the exciting cause came from Nature, and constituted her purest and most sacred inspirations, so the inspiration of Davis came from man, with all his imperfections and subjective tendencies. The sequel has been, the inspirations of Mozart are considered now by mankind as only second to the Divine, while those of Davis are justly regarded as morbid, fragmentary, incomplete, and worthless.
The organisation of Mozart was equally sympathetic with that of Davis; but it was of that healthy tone which could only respond to nature and the natural; while the organisation of Davis belongs to that much inferior type, which, from its morbid and unbalanced conditions, can respond only to the human as the representative of nature. Such persons receive nothing direct from nature, but only through its representative, man.
It would seem as if the world were absolutely divided into two classes—the radiating and the absorbing; the first receiving from nature, and the second from man. In the first, are the holy brotherhood of prophets and the poets, and in the second, the poor slaves of sympathy—the knaves and fools—the impostors who play upon its well-known laws, and, deceiving themselves as well as others, may well be said to “know not what they do.”
We are convinced that no man, who has kept himself informed of the psychological history and progress of his race, can by any means fail to recognise at once, in the pretended “Revelations” of Davis, the mere disjecta membra of the systems so extensively promulgated by Fourier and Swedenborg. When you come to compare this fact with the additional one, that Davis, during the whole period of his “utterings,” was surrounded by groups, consisting of the disciples of Fourier and Swedenborg; as, for instance, the leading Fourierite of America was, for a time, a constant attendant upon those mysterious meetings, at which the myths of innocent Davis were formally announced from the condition of Clairvoyance, and transcribed by his keeper for the press, while the chief exponent and minister of Swedenborgianism in New York was often seated side by side with him.
Can it be possible that these men failed to comprehend, as thought after thought, principle after principle, was enunciated in their presence, which they had previously supposed to belong exclusively to their own schools, that the “revelation” was merely a sympathetic reflex of their own derived systems? It was no accident; for, as often as Fourierism predominated in “the evening lecture,” it was sure that the prime representative of Fourier was present; and when the peculiar views of Swedenborg prevailed, it was equally certain that he was forcibly represented in the conclave. Sometimes both schools were present; and on that identical occasion we have a composite metaphysics promulgated, which exhibited, most consistently, doctrines of Swedenborg and Fourier, jumbled in liberal and extraordinary confusion. This is, in epitome, about the whole history of such agitations. The weak Clairvoyant falls naturally into the hands of knaves who are superior to him in physical vitality. He becomes, first, the medium of their vague and feeble intellection; and then, as attention is attracted by the notoriety they know well how to produce, the “medium” becomes gradually surrounded by the enthusiasts of every school; and as he is brought into their various Odic spheres, he pronounces the creed of each in his morbidly illuminated language, and it sounds to the mob like inspiration.
There is no greater nonsense; men are inspired through natural laws. But this comparatively innocuous character, which we have thus far stepped aside to indicate, is nothing compared to the first specimen of this Clairvoyant type which we have classified. This, it will be remembered, is the animal born with feeble spirituality, but vigorous physique, which is, at the same time, intensely sympathetic. These, as we have said, are the infernal natures; for, possessing no life outside the lower animal passions, self is to them the close centre of all being, and their Odic sensitiveness a vampire-absorption, the horrible craving of which, not content with the mere exhaustion of the animal life of the victim, by wanton provocations, drinks up soul and mind to fill the beastly void of their own. These worse than ghouls, that live upon the dying rather than the dead, possess some fearfully dangerous and extraordinary powers.
Vampirism, as a superstition, prevailed, not many years ago, like a general pestilence, throughout the countries of Servia and Wallachia. Whole districts, infected by this horrible disease, were desolated; people grew wild with terror, and, in their savage ignorance, committed monstrous sacrilege upon the sanctities of burial. Bodies that had rested quietly in their graves for ten, twenty, and even eighty days, were dragged forth, to have stakes driven through their chests; and if any blood was found, they were burned to ashes.
The belief was, that the deceased, when living, had been bitten by a human vampire, which, coming forth from its grave by night, had sunk its white teeth in his throat, and drunk his blood, thereby causing a lingering death; in which he was also doomed to the hideous fate of becoming a vampire, after his burial.