"The author heard this prophecy in 1801, long before Napoleon's elevation to the throne, from the late Countess of Bath and the late Countess of Ancrum, who were educated in the same convent with Josephine, and had repeatedly heard her mention the circumstance in early youth."[80]
The most grave of the errors affecting the details of those occurrences which have been supposed to foreshadow events, or to have some inexplicable and supernatural connection with certain circumstances occurring coincidently with them, has been fully set forth by Lord Bacon, in the 46th Aphorism of the "Novum Organum," and to this dictum nothing needs to be added.
"The human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords) forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation, and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe, or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. It was well answered by him who was shown in a temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had escaped the peril of shipwreck, and was pressed as to whether he would then recognise the power of the gods, by an inquiry, "But where are the portraits of those who have perished in spite of their vows?" All superstition is much the same, whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or the like; in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common.... Besides, even in the absence of that eagerness and want of thought (which we have mentioned), it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than negatives, whereas it ought duly and regularly to be impartial; nay, in establishing any true axiom, the negative instance is the most powerful."
We have now briefly examined the principal of those phenomena which it has been, and in many instances is, customary to ascribe to supernatural interposition; and we have endeavoured to ascertain how far they receive explanation from the known laws of action of the senses and reasoning faculties; and we have seen reason for the conclusion that they mainly come within the category of those laws.
Of the exceptions to this conclusion, it is unfortunate that the authority upon which they depend is generally unsatisfactory, and the details imperfect in many of the most important particulars; and they, to use the words of Mrs. Crowe, (whose evidence in this respect is of considerable importance), "as they now stand, can have no scientific value; they cannot, in short, enter into the region of science at all, still less into that of philosophy. Whatever conclusions we may be led to form, cannot be founded on pure induction. We must confine ourselves wholly within the region of opinion; if we venture beyond this, we shall assuredly founder."[81]
We are not aware that this imperfection of details necessarily appertains to facts of this nature, and we simply require the same care against error which is expected and is exercised in other departments of inquiry; and until the instances presented bear evidence of this, we must entertain doubts, and decline to receive them as facts establishing such theories as have been endeavoured to be founded upon them.
The great progress of physiology and psychology is almost daily enabling us to grapple with sensuous phenomena which have hitherto been obscure; and it is never to be lost sight of in researches into the domains of the so-called supernatural, that the knowledge we possess of our own powers is as yet very imperfect and limited.