“After this followed a scene in which Madame X., the doctor’s wife, was said, and seemed to be, possessed by the spirit of Beethoven. The doctor addressed her as “Monsieur Beethoven.” She took no notice until he called the name aloud in her ear. She then responded with polite bows, etc. (You may remember that Beethoven was extremely deaf.) After some conversation he begged her to play, and she seated herself at the piano and performed magnificently both some of his known music and some improvisations which were generally recognized by the company as in his style. I was told afterwards, by a lady friend of Madame X., that in her normal state she was a very ordinary amateur performer. After about half an hour spent in music and in dialogue in the character of Beethoven, to whom her face in expression, and her tumbled hair, seemed to acquire a strange resemblance, the doctor placed in her hands a sheet of paper and a crayon, and asked her to sketch the face of the person she saw before her. She produced very rapidly a profile sketch of a head and face resembling Beethoven’s busts, though as a younger man; and she dashed off a rapid name under it, as though a signature, ‘Beethoven.’ I have preserved the sketch, though how the handwriting may correspond with Beethoven’s signature I cannot say.
“The hour was now late, and the company broke up; nor had I any time to interrogate Dr. X. upon what we had thus witnessed. But I called on him with Mr. Gledstanes a few evenings afterwards. I found that he admitted the action of spirits, and was a Spiritualist, but also a great deal more, having studied long and deeply into the occult mysteries of the Orient. So I understood him to convey, while he seemed to prefer to refer me to his book, which he would probably publish in the course of the present year. I observed a number of loose sheets on a table all covered with Oriental characters unknown to me—the work of Madame Y. in trance, as he said, in answer to an inquiry. He told us that in the scene I had witnessed, she became (i. e., as I presumed, was possessed by) a priestess of one of the ancient Egyptian temples, and that the origin of it was this: A scientific friend of his had acquired in Egypt possession of the mummy of a priestess, and had given him some of the linen swathings with which the body was enveloped, and from the contact with this cloth of 2,000 or 3,000 years old, the devotion of her whole existence to this occult relation, and twenty years seclusion from the world, his medium, as sensitive Madame Y., had become what I had seen. The language I had heard her speak was the sacred language of the temples in which she had been instructed, not so much by inspiration but very much as we now study languages, by dictation, written exercises, etc., being even chided and punished when she was dull or slow. He said that Jacolliot had heard her in a similar scene, and recognized sounds and words of the very oldest sacred language as preserved in the temples of India, anterior, if I remember right, to the epoch of the Sanscrit.
“Respecting the snakes he had employed in the hasty operation of restoring her to life, or rather perhaps arresting the last consummation of the process of death, he said there was a strange mystery in their relation to the phenomena of life and death. I understood that they were indispensable. Silence and inaction on our part were also insisted upon throughout, and any attempt at questioning him at the time was peremptorily, almost angrily, suppressed. We might come and talk afterward, or wait for the appearance of his book, but he alone seemed entitled to exercise the faculty of speech throughout all these performances—which he certainly did with great volubility, the while, with all the eloquence and precision of diction of a Frenchman, combining scientific culture with vividness of imagination.
“I intended to return on some subsequent evening, but learned from Mr. Gledstanes that he had given them up for the present, disgusted with his ill-success in getting his professional colleagues and men of science to come and witness what it was his object to show them.
“This is about as much as I can recall of this strange, weird evening, excepting some uninteresting details. I have given you the name and address of Dr. X. confidentially, because he would seem to have gone more or less far on the same path as you pursue in the studies of your Theosophical Society. Beyond that I feel bound to keep it private, not having his authority to use it in any way which might lead to publicity.
“Very respectfully,
“Your friend and obedient servant,
“J. L. O’Sullivan.”
In this interesting case simple Spiritualism has transcended its routine and encroached upon the limits of magic. The features of mediumship are there, in the double life led by the sensitive Madame Y., in which she passes an existence totally distinct from the normal one, and by reason of the subordination of her individuality to a foreign will, becomes the permutation of a priestess of Egypt; and in the personation of the spirit of Beethoven, and in the unconscious and cataleptic state into which she falls. On the other hand, the will-power exercised by Dr. X. upon his sensitive, the tracing of the mystic circle, the evocations, the materialization of the desired flower, the seclusion and education of Madame Y., the employment of the wand and its form, the creation and use of the serpents, the evident control of the astral forces—all these pertain to magic. Such experiments are of interest and value to science, but liable to abuse in the hands of a less conscientious practitioner than the eminent gentleman designated as Dr. X. A true Oriental kabalist would not recommend their duplication.
Spheres unknown below our feet; spheres still more unknown and still more unexplored above us; between the two a handful of moles, blind to God’s great light, and deaf to the whispers of the invisible world, boasting that they lead mankind. Where? Onward, they claim; but we have a right to doubt it. The greatest of our physiologists, when placed side by side with a Hindu fakir, who knows neither how to read nor write, will very soon find himself feeling as foolish as a school-boy who has neglected to learn his lesson. It is not by vivisecting living animals that a physiologist will assure himself of the existence of man’s soul, nor on the blade of the knife can he extract it from a human body. “What sane man,” inquires Sergeant Cox, the President of the London Psychological Society, “what sane man who knows nothing of magnetism or physiology, who had never witnessed an experiment nor learned its principles, would proclaim himself a fool by denying its facts and denouncing its theory?” The truthful answer to this would be, “two-thirds of our modern-day scientists.” The impertinence, if truth can ever be impertinent, must be laid at the door of him who uttered it—a scientist of the number of those few who are brave and honest enough to utter wholesome truths, however disagreeable. And there is no mistaking the real meaning of the imputation, for immediately after the irreverent inquiry, the learned lecturer remarks as pointedly: “The chemist takes his electricity from the electrician, the physiologist looks to the geologist for his geology—each would deem it an impertinence in the other if he were to pronounce judgment in the branch of knowledge not his own. Strange it is, but true as strange, that this rational rule is wholly set at naught in the treatment of psychology. Physical scientists deem themselves competent to pronounce a dogmatic judgment upon psychology and all that appertains to it, without having witnessed any of its phenomena, and in entire ignorance of its principles and practice.”[907]