Her innocence, simplicity, and courage incense one sadly against her judges; but it is likely there were at that time many good and sensible persons who approved of her sentence, and never suspected its cruelty and injustice. Making allowance for the ignorance and barbarity of the age, her treatment was, perhaps, not worse than that of Abd-el-Kader now. Her visions—they were palpably the productions of her own fancy, the figures of saints and angels, which she had seen in missals, projected before her mental sight; and their cause the instinctive workings, unknown to herself, of her young high-couraged and enthusiastic heart, shaping its suggestions into holy prophesyings—the leading facts of which her resolute will realized, while their actual discrepancies with subsequent events she pardonably forgot.[1]
I will present yet another and less pleasing picture, where the subject of sensorial illusions was of infirm mind, and they struck upon the insane chord, and reason jangled harshly out of tune. It would be a curious question whether such a sensorial illusion as overthrew the young seer’s judgment in the following case, could have occurred to a mind previously sane; whether, for instance, it could have occurred to Schwedenborg, and, in that event, how he would have dealt with it.
Arnold (a German writer) relates, in his history of the church and of heresy, how there was a young man in Königsberg, well educated, the natural son of a priest, who had the impression that he was met near a crucifix on the wayside by seven angels, who revealed to him that he was to represent God the Father on earth, to drive all evil out of the world, &c. The poor fellow, after pondering upon this illusion a long time, issued a circular, beginning thus:
“We John, Albrecht, Adelgreif, Syrdos, Amata, Kanemata, Kilkis, Mataldis, Schmalkilimundis, Sabrandis, Elioris, Hyperarch-High-priest and Emperor, Prince of Peace of the whole world, Hyperarch-King of the holy kingdom of Heaven, Judge of the living and of the dead, God and Father, in whose divinity Christ will come on the last day to judge the world, Lord of all lords, King of all kings,” &c.
He was thereupon thrown into prison at Königsberg, where every means were used by the clergy to reclaim him from these blasphemous and heretical notions. To all their entreaties, however, he listened only with a smile of pity—“that they should think of reclaiming God the Father.” He was then put to the torture, and as what he endured made no alteration in his convictions, he was condemned to have his tongue torn out with red-hot tongs, to be cut in four quarters, and then burned under the gallows. He wept bitterly, not at his own fate, but that they should pronounce such a sentence on the Deity. The executioner was touched with pity, and implored him to make a final recantation. But he persisted that he was God the Father, whether they pulled his tongue out by the roots or not; and so he was executed!
From the preceding forcible illustrations of the working of sensorial illusions on individual minds, it is to descend a little in interest to trace their ministry in giving rise to the rickety forms of popular superstition. However, the material may be the same, whether it be cast for the commemoration of a striking event or coined for vulgar currency. And here is a piece of the latter description, with the recommendation of being at least fresh from the mint, and spic-and-span new—an instance of superstition surviving in England in the middle of the nineteenth century.
A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me that he was one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home, he had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him, the rider and horse being close facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even to the copy of a new fangled bit which he sported that day for the first time. He had, in fact, seen his “double” or “Fetch,” and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably. His friends advised him to consult the college-tutor, who failed not to give him some good advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown away. My informant, who thought the whole matter very serious, and was inclined to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added that it had made the ghost-seer, for the time at least, a wiser and better man.
Such a visionary duplicate of one’s-self—one’s fetch—is a not unfrequent form of sensorial illusion. In more ignorant days the appearance of a fetch excited much apprehension. It was supposed to menace death or serious calamity to its original. Properly viewed, unless it proceed from hard work and overstrained thought, (from which you can desist,) it indicates something wrong in your physical health, and its warning goes no further than to consult a doctor, to learn, “what rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug will drive the spectre hence.” The efficiency of such means was shown in the case of Nicolai. Yet in this case, I may remark, the originating cause of the attack had been anxiety about the very son whose apparition was the first of the throng to visit him. Had the illusion continued limited to the figure of the son, it would have been more questionable what art could do towards dismissing it. At all events, in such a case, the first thing is to remove the perilous stuff that weighs upon the mind. So the personage whose words I have been using was doubtless right, in his own case, to “throw physic to the dogs.”
In the tragedy of Macbeth, sensorial illusions are made to play their part with curious physiological correctness. The mind of Macbeth is worn by the conflict between ambition and duty. At last his better resolves give way; and his excited fancy projects before him the fetch of his own dagger, which marshals him the way that he shall go. The spectator is thus artistically prepared for the further working of the same infirmity in the apparition of Banquo, which, unseen by his guests, is visible only to the conscience-stricken murderer. With a scientific precision no less admirable, the partner of his guilt—a woman—is made to have attacks of trance, (to which women are more liable than men,) caused by her disturbed mind; and in her trance the exact physiological character of one form of that disorder is portrayed—she enacts a dream, which is the essence of somnambulism.
One almost doubts whether Shakspeare was aware of the philosophic truth displayed in these master-strokes of his own art. The apparitions conjured up in the witch scenes of the same play, and the ghost in Hamlet, are moulded on the pattern of vulgar superstition. He employs indifferently the baser metal and the truthful inspirations of his own genius—realizing Shelley’s strange figure of