It is only fair to point out that the volume now discussed is written by an eminent man of science who has been trained all his life in methods of precision, in the judicial examination of reported facts and in the close scrutiny of evidence. Further it may be said that the terms “incredible” and “impossible” would have been applied a few years ago to any account of the telephone or of wireless telegraphy, while the same expressions would assuredly be employed by a medical man when told, not so long since, that there was a ray capable of making a human body so transparent as to render visible not only the bones but the details of their internal construction.
In common with others who have been for many years on the staff of a large hospital, I have seen much of death and have heard even more from those who have been in attendance on the dying. In this experience of a lifetime I have never met with a single circumstance which would confirm or support the propositions advanced by M. Flammarion. This is obviously no argument. It is merely a record of negative experience. The only two events, within my personal knowledge, which bear even remotely upon the present subject are the following.
I was, as a youth, on a walking tour in the south of England with a cousin. We put up one night at a certain inn. In the morning my companion came down to breakfast much excited and perturbed. He declared that his father was dead, that in a vivid dream he had seen him stretched out dead upon the couch in his familiar bedroom at home. He had awakened suddenly and noted that the hour was 2 A.M. That his father had expired at that moment he was assured, so assured that he proposed to return home at once, since his mother was alone. Inasmuch as the journey would have occupied a whole day, I suggested that, before starting, he should telegraph and seek news of his father. With great reluctance he consented to this course and the telegram was dispatched. A reply was received in due course. It was from the father himself expressing surprise at the inquiry and stating that he was never better in his life. Nothing, it transpired, had disturbed the father’s rest at 2 A.M. on this particular night. Nothing untoward happened. My uncle lived for many years, and finally died one afternoon, and not, therefore, at 2 A.M.
The other incident is associated with an actual death and with a strange announcement, but the announcement is not to be explained by any of the theories propounded by M. Flammarion. The facts are these. I was on a steamship which was making a passage along that coast known in old days as the Spanish Main. We put in at Colon, and remained there for about a day and a half. I took advantage of this break in the voyage to cross the Isthmus by train to Panama. The names of those who were travelling by the train had been telegraphed to that city, which will explain how it came about that on reaching the station I was accosted by one of the medical officers of the famous American hospital of the place. He begged me to see with him a patient under his care. The sick man was an Englishman who was travelling for pleasure, who was quite alone and who had been taken ill shortly after his arrival on the Pacific. He was the only Englishman, he said, on that side of the Isthmus.
I found the gentleman in a private ward. He was a stranger to me, was very gravely ill, but still perfectly conscious. I had nothing fresh to suggest in the way of treatment. The case was obviously hopeless, and we agreed that his life could not be extended beyond a few days and certainly not for a week. It was a satisfaction to feel that the patient was as well cared for as if he had been in his own home in England. I returned to Colon. Travelling with me was a retired general of the Indian Army. He had remained at Colon during my absence. I told him my experience. He did not know the patient even by name, but was much distressed at the thought of a fellow-countryman dying alone in this somewhat remote part of the world. This idea, I noticed, impressed him greatly.
Two days after my return from Panama we were on the high seas, having touched at no port since leaving Colon. On the third day after my visit to the hospital the general made a curious communication to me. The hour for lunch on the steamer was 12.15. My friend, as he sat down to the table, said abruptly, “Your patient at Panama is dead. He has just died. He died at 12 o’clock.” I naturally asked how he had acquired this knowledge, since we had called nowhere, there was no wireless installation on the ship, and we had received no message from any passing vessel. Apart from all this was the question of time, for the death, he maintained, had only just occurred. He replied, “I cannot say. I was not even thinking of the poor man. I only know that as the ship’s bell was striking twelve I was suddenly aware that he had, at that moment, died.” The general, I may say, was a man of sturdy common sense who had no belief in the supernatural, nor in emanations from the dying, nor in warnings, nor in what he called generally “all that nonsense.” Telepathy—in which also he did not believe—was out of the question, since he and the dead man were entirely unknown to one another. My friend was merely aware that the news had reached him. It was useless for me to say that I did not think the patient could have died so soon, for the general remained unmoved. He only knew that the man was dead whether I expected the event or whether I did not.
When we reached Trinidad I proposed to go ashore to ascertain if any news had arrived of the death at Panama. The general said it was waste of time. The man was dead, and had died at noon. Nevertheless, I landed and found that a telegram had appeared in which the death of this lonely gentleman was noted as having taken place on the day I have named. The hour of his death was not mentioned, but on my return to England I was shown by his relatives the actual cablegram which had conveyed to them the news. It stated that he had died at Panama on that particular day at twelve o’clock noon. No coincidence could have been more precise.
The general, to whom the event was as mysterious as it was unique in his experience, ventured one comment. He said that during his long residence in India he had heard rumours of the transmission of news from natives in one part of India to natives in another, which reports—if true—could not be explained by the feats of runners nor by any system of signalling, since the distances traversed were often hundreds of miles. We were both aware of the rumour, current at the time, that the news of the defeat at Colenso was known in a certain Indian bazaar a few hours after the guns had ceased firing. This, we agreed, was assuredly an example of loose babble—started by a native who hoped to hear of the failure of the British—and that this gossip had become, by repetition, converted into a prophecy after the occurrence.
For my own part I must regard the Panama incident as nothing but a remarkable coincidence of thought and event. My friend was inclined to regard it as an example of the sudden transmission of news of the kind suggested by his Indian experience. Why he of all people should have been the recipient of the message was beyond his speculation, since he had no more concern with the happenings at Panama than had the captain of the ship, to whom I had also spoken of the occurrence.
A further subject of some interest, suggested by M. Flammarion’s work, may be touched upon. In the contemplation of the mystery of death it may be reasonable to conjecture that at the moment of dying, or in the first moment after death, the great secret would be, in whole or in part, revealed. There are those who believe that after death there is merely the void of nonexistence, the impenetrable and eternal night of nothingness. Others conceive the spirit of the dead as wandering, somewhere and somehow, beyond the limits of the world. It is this belief which has induced many a mother, after the death of her child, to leave the cottage door open and to put a light in the window with some hope that the wandering feet might find a way home. Others, again, hold to the conviction that those who die pass at once into a new state of existence, the conditions of which vary according to the faith of the believer.