Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein / With an Account of Mesmerism

by Herbert Mayo

I. It is evident that the performances of catalepsy reduce the oracles of antiquity to natural phenomena. Let us examine the tradition of that of Delphi.

Diodorus relates, that goats feeding near an opening in the ground were observed to jump about in a singular manner, and that a goatherd approaching to examine the spot was taken with a fit and prophesied. Then the priests took possession of the spot and built a temple. Plutarch tells us that the priestess was an uneducated peasant-girl, of good character and conduct. Placed upon the tripod, and affected by the exhalation, she struggled and became convulsed, and foamed at the mouth; and in that state she delivered the oracular answer. The convulsions were sometimes so violent that the Pythia died. Plutarch adds, that the answers were never in error, and that their established truth filled the temple with offerings from the whole of Greece, and from barbarian nations. Without supposing it to have been infallible, we must, I think, infer that the oracle was too often right to have been wholly a trick. The state of the Pythia was probably trance with convulsions, the same with that in which cataleptic patients have foreseen future events. The priestess was of blameless life, which suits the production of trance, the fine susceptibility of which is spoilt by irregular living. Finally, from what we know of the effects of the few gases and vapours of which the inhalation has been tried, it is any thing but improbable that one or other gaseous compound should directly induce trance in predisposed subjects.

II. The performances of Zschokke are poor by the side of those of a cataleptic. But then he was not entranced. Nevertheless, an approach to that state manifested itself in his losing himself when inspecting his visiter’s brains. So again, those who had the gift of second-sight are represented to have been subject to fits of abstraction, in which they stood rapt. The præternatural gifts of Socrates were probably those of a Highland seer; in which character he is reported to have foretold the death of an officer, if he pursued a route he contemplated. The officer would not change his plans, and was met by the enemy, and slain accordingly. In all these cases, the mind seems to have gone out to seek its knowledge. Two of Mr. Williamson’s lucid patients, of whom more afterwards, told him that their minds went out at the backs of their heads, in starting on these occasions. They pointed to the lower and back part of the head, opposite to the medulla oblongata. In prophetic, and in true retrospective dreams, one may imagine the phenomena taking the same course; most likely the dreamers have slipt in their sleep into a brief lucid somnambulism. In the cases of ghosts and of dreams, coincident with the period of the death of an absent person, it seems simpler to suppose the visit to have come from the other side. So the Vampyr-ghost was probably a visit made by the free part of the mind of the patient who lay buried in death-trance. The visit was fatal to the party visited, because trance is contagious.

III. The wonderful performances attributed to instinct in animals appear less incomprehensible when viewed in juxtaposition with some of the feats of lucid cataleptics. The term instinct is a very vague one. It is commonly used to denote the intelligence of animals as opposed to human reason. Instinct is, therefore, a compound phenomenon; and I must begin by resolving it into its elements. They are three in number:—

1. Observation and reasoning of the same kind with that of man, but limited in their scope. They are exercised only in immediate self-preservation, and in the direct supply of the creature’s bodily wants or simple impulses. A dog will whine to get admission into the house, will open the latch of a gate; one rook will sit sentry for the rest; a plover will fly low, and short distances, as if hurt, to wile away a dog from her nest. But in this vein of intelligence, animals make no further advance. Reflection, with the higher faculties and sentiments which minister to it, and with it constitute reason, is denied them. So they originate no objects of pursuit in the way that man does, and have no source of self-improvement. But, in lack of human reflection, some animals receive the help of—

2. Special conceptions, which are developed in their minds at fitting seasons. Of this nature, to give an instance, is the notion of nest-building in birds. It may be observed of these conceptions that they appear to us arbitrary, though perfectly suited to the being of each species: thus, in the example referred to, we may suppose that the material and shape of the nest might be varied without its object being the less perfectly attained,—at least, as far as we can see. The conception spontaneously developed in the mind of the bird is then carried out intelligently, through the same quick and just observation, in a little way, which habitually ministers to its appetites, as I explained in a preceding paragraph.

The special conception is sometimes characterized by the utmost perfectness of mechanical design. Here, however, is nothing to surprise us. The supreme wisdom which preordained the development of an idea in an insect’s mind, might as easily as not have given it absolute perfectness. But—

3. Some animals have the power of modifying the special conception, when circumstances arise which prevent its being carried out in the usual way; and of realizing it in a great many different ways, on as many different occasions. And their work, on each of these occasions, is as perfect as in their carrying out the ordinary form of the conception. I beg leave to call the principle, by which they see thus how to shape their course so perfectly under new circumstances—intuition. To instance it, there is a beetle called the rhynchites betulæ. Its habit is, towards the end of May, to cut the leaves of the betula alba, or betula pubescens, into slips, which it rolls up into funnel-shaped chambers, which form singularly convenient cradles for its eggs. This is done after one pattern; and one may suppose it the mechanical realization of an inborn idea, as long as the leaf is perfect in shape. But if the leaf is imperfect, intuition steps upon the scene to aid the insect to cut its coat after its cloth. The sections made are then seen to vary with the varying shape of the leaf. Many different sections made by the insect were accurately drawn by a German naturalist, Dr. Debey. He submitted them for examination to Professor Heis of Aix-la-Chapelle. Upon carefully studying them, Dr. Heis found these cuttings of the leaves, in suitableness to the end proposed, even to the minutest technical detail, to be in accordance with calculations compassable only through the higher mathematics, which, till modern times, were unknown to human intelligence. Such is the marvellous power of “intuition,” displayed by certain insects. I know not how to define it but as a power of immediate reference to absolute truth, evinced by the insect in carrying out its little plans. It is evident that the insect uses the same power in realizing its ordinary special conception, when the result displays equal perfectness. And the question even crosses one’s mind, Are the seemingly arbitrary plans really arbitrary?—may they not equally represent a highest type of design? But, be that as it may, the intuition of insects, as we now apprehend it, no longer stands an isolated phenomenon. The lucid cataleptic cannot less directly communicate with the source of truth, as she proves by foreseeing future events.

IV. The speculations of Berkeley and Boscovich on the non-existence of matter; and of Kant and others on the arbitrariness of all our notions, are interested in, for they appear to be refuted by, the intuitions of cataleptics. The cataleptic apprehends or perceives directly the objects around her; but they are the same as when realized through her senses. She notices no difference; size, form, colour, distance, are elements as real to her now as before. In respect again to the future, she sees it, but not in the sense of the annihilation of time; she foresees it; it is the future present to her; time she measures, present and future, with strange precision,—strange, yet an approximation, instead of this certainty, would have been still more puzzling.

So that it appears that our notions of matter, force, and the like, and of the conditions of space and time, apart from which we can conceive nothing, are not figments to suit our human and temporary being, but elements of eternal truth.