Nothing can here be said, according to the purpose of these sketches, of the long series of visions vouchsafed to martyrs and saints; their history belongs to theology. But holy men have, independent of their religious convictions, often been as famous for their visions as for the piety of their hearts, and their achievements in the world. Loyola, for instance, with his faculties perpetually strained to the utmost, and with his thoughts bent forever upon a grand and holy aim, could not well fail to rise to a state of psychic excitement which naturally produced impressive visions. Hence he continually saw strange sights and heard mysterious voices, the effect now of extreme despondency and now of restored confidence in God and in himself as the agent of the Most High. And yet these visions never interfered with the clearness of his judgment nor with his promptness and energy in acting. Luther, also, one of the most practical men ever called upon to act and to lead in a great crisis, had visions; he saw the Devil and held loud discussions with him; he suffered by his persecutions, and made great efforts to rid himself of his unwelcome guest, while engaged in his great work, the translation of the Bible. For he was, after all—and for very great and good purposes—only a man of his age, imbued with the universal belief in the personal existence and constant presence of Satan, and felt, at the same time, that he was engaged in a warfare upon the results of which depended not only the earthly welfare, but the eternal salvation of millions.
It is difficult to say whether Mohammed, who had undoubtedly visions innumerable, received any aid from his hallucinations in devising his new faith. Men of science tell us that he suffered of Hysteria muscularis, a disease not uncommon in men as well as in women, which produces periodical paroxysms and is characterized by an alternate contraction and expansion of the muscles. When the attack came the prophet's lips and tongue would begin to vibrate, his eyes turned up, and the head moved automatically. If the paroxysms were very violent he fell to the ground, his face turned purple, and he breathed with difficulty. As he frequently retained his consciousness he pretended that these symptoms were caused by angels' visits, and each attack was followed by a new revelation. The disease was the result of his early lawless life and of the freedom which he claimed, even in later years—pleading a special dispensation from on high as a divinely inspired prophet. It is not to be wondered at that the new religion, springing from such a source, and proclaimed amid the mountains and steppes of Arabia, which, according to popular belief, are all alive with djinns and demons, should be largely based upon visions and hallucinations.
The important part which visions hold in the history of the various religions of the earth lies beyond our present purpose; we know, however, that the records of ancient temples, of prophets, saints, and martyrs, and of later convents and churches, abound with instances of such so-called revelations from on high. They have more than once served at critical times to excite individuals and whole nations to make sublime efforts. One of the best known cases of the former class is that of Constantine the Great, who told Eusebius of Cæsarea, affirming his statement with a solemn oath, that he saw in 312, shortly before the decisive battle at Rome against his formidable adversary Magentius, a bright cross in the heavens, surrounded by the words: In hoc signo vinces. But this vision stood by no means alone. He himself beheld, besides, in a dream during the following night, the Saviour, who ordered him to use in battle henceforth a banner like that which he had seen in his vision. Nazarius, a pagan, also speaks of a number of marvelous signs in the heavens seen in Gaul immediately before the emperor's great victory. Nor can it be doubted that this vision not only inspired Constantine with new hopes and new courage, enabling him to secure his triumph, but also induced him, after his success, to avow himself openly a convert to the faith of Christ.
The visions of that eminent man Swedenborg are too well known to require here more than a mere allusion. Beginning his intercourse with the supernatural world at the ripe age of forty-five, he soon gave himself up to it systematically, and felt compelled to make his daily conversations, as well as the revelations he received from time to time, duly known to the public. Thus he wrote with an evident air of firm conviction: "I had recently a conference with the Apostle Paul;" and at another time he assured a Würtemberg prelate, "I have conferred with St. Paul for a whole year, especially about the words in Romans iii. 28. Three times I have conversed with St. John, once with Moses, and a hundred times with Luther, when the latter confessed that he had taught fidem solam contrary to the warning of an angel, and that he had stood alone when renouncing the pope. With angels, finally, I have held constant intercourse for the last twenty years, and still hold daily conversations."
Classic as well as Christian art, is indebted to visions for more than one signal success. On the other hand, they have as frequently been made to serve vile purposes, mainly by feeding superstition and supporting religious tyranny. We need only recall the terrible calamity caused by a wretched shepherd boy in France, who, in 1213, saw, or pretended to see, heavenly visions, ordering him to enlist his comrades, and with their aid, to rescue the Holy Land from the possession of infidels. Thousands of little children were seized by the contagious excitement, and leaving their home and their kindred, followed their youthful leader, unchecked by the authorities, because of the interpretation applied to the words of Jesus: "Suffer little children to come unto Me!" Not one of them ever reached Palestine, as all perished long before they had reached even Southern France.
It is not exactly a magic phenomenon, but certainly a most startling feature in visions, that the minds of many men should be able, by their own volition, to create images and forms so perfectly like those existing in the world around us, that the same minds are incapable of distinguishing where hallucination and reality touch each other. This faculty varies, of course, as much as other endowments: sometimes it produces nothing but vague, shapeless lights or sounds; in other persons it is capable of calling up well-defined forms, and of causing even words to be heard and pain to be inflicted. During severe suffering in body or soul, it may become a comforter, and in the moment of passing through the valley of the shadow of death, it is apt to soothe the anguish, by visions of heavenly bliss, but to an evil conscience it may also appear as an avenger, by prefiguring impending judgment and condemnation. It is this influence on the lives of men, and their great moral importance, which lends to visions—and in a certain degree even to hallucinations—additional interest, and makes it our duty not to set them aside as mere idle phantoms, but to try to ascertain their true nature and final purpose. This is all the more necessary, as in our day visions are considered purely the offspring of the seer's own mental activity, a truth abundantly proven by the simple fact that blind or deaf people are quite as capable of having visions and hallucinations, as those who have the use of all their senses.
Thus these magic phenomena have, in an unbroken chain, accompanied almost all the great men who are known to history, from the earliest time to our own day. In modern times they have often been successfully traced to bodily and mental disorders; but this fact diminishes in no way the interest which they have for the student of magic. The great Pascal, who was once threatened with instant death by the upsetting of his carriage, henceforth saw perpetually an abyss by his side, from which fiery flames issued forth; he could conceal it by simply placing a chair or a table between it and his eyes. In the case of the English painter Blake, who had visions of historic personages which appeared to him in idealized outlines, his periodical aberrations of mind were accepted as sufficient explanation. The bookseller Nicolai, of Berlin, on the contrary, who, like Beaumont, saw hundreds of men, women, and children accompanying him in his walks or visiting him in his chamber, found his ghostly company dependent on the state of his health. When he was bled or when leeches were applied, the images grew pale, and disappeared in part or dissolved entirely. A peculiarity of his case was, that he never saw visions in the dark, but all his phantasms appeared in broad daylight, or at night when candles had been brought in or a large fire was burning in the fireplace. Captain Henry Bell had been repeatedly urged by a German friend of his, Caspar von Sparr, to translate the Table-talk of Martin Luther, which, having been suppressed by an edict of the Emperor Rudolphus, had become very rare, and of which Sparr had sent him a copy, discovered by himself in a cellar where it had lain buried for fifty-two years. Captain Bell commenced the work; but abandoned it after a little while. A few weeks later a white-haired old man appeared to him at night, pulling his ear and saying: "What! will you not take time to translate the book? I will give you soon a place for it and the necessary leisure." Bell was much startled; but nevertheless neglected the work. A fortnight after the vision he was arrested and lodged in the gate-house of Westminster, where he remained for ten years, of which he spent five in the translation of the work. (Beaumont, "Tractat.," p. 72.) Even religious visions have by no means ceased in modern times, and more than one remarkable conversion is ascribed to such agency. We do not speak of so-called miracles like that of the children of Salette in the department of the Isère, in 1849, or the recent revelations at Lourdes, and in Southern Alsace, which were publicly endorsed by leading men of the church, and have furnished rich material even for political demonstrations. The vision of Major Gardiner, also, who, just before committing a sinful action, beheld the Saviour and became a changed man, has been so often published and so thoroughly discussed that it need not be repeated here. The conversion of young Ratisbone, in 1843, created at the time an immense sensation. He was born of Jewish parents, but, like only too many of his race, grew up to become a freethinker and a scoffer, rejecting all faiths as idle superstitions. One day he strolled into the church Delle Fratte in Rome, and while sunk in deep meditation, suddenly beheld a vision of the Virgin Mary, which made so deep an impression upon him that it changed the whole tenor of his life. He gave up the great wealth to which he had fallen heir, he renounced a lovely betrothed, and resolutely turning his back upon the world, he entered, as a novice, into a Jesuit convent; thus literally forsaking all in order to follow Christ.
The magic phenomena accompanying visions, have, among nations of the Sclavic race, not unfrequently a specially formidable and repellent character, corresponding, no doubt, with the temperament and turn of imagination peculiar to that race. The Sclaves are apt to be ridden by invisible men, till they drop down in a swoon; they are driven by wild beasts to the graves of criminals, where they behold fearful sights, or they are forced to mingle with troops of evil spirits roving over the wide, waste steppes, and they invariably suffer from the sad effects of such visions, till a premature death relieves them after a few months. In Wallachia a special vision of the so-called Pickolitch is quite common, and has, in one case at least, been officially recorded by military authorities. A poor private soldier, who had already more than once suffered from visions, was ordered to stand guard in a lonely mountain pass, and forced by the rules of the service to take his place there, although he begged hard to be allowed to exchange with a brother soldier, as he knew he would come to grief. The officer in command, struck by the earnestness of his prayer, promised to lend him all possible assistance, and placed a second sentinel for his support close behind him. At half past ten o'clock the officer and a high civil functionary saw a dark figure rush by the house in which they were; they hastened at once to the post, where two shots had fallen in rapid succession, and found the inner sentinel, the still smoking rifle in hand, staring fixedly at the place where his comrade had stood, and utterly unconscious of the approach of his superior. When they reached the outer post they found the rifle on the ground, shattered to pieces, and the heavy barrel bent in the shape of a scythe, while the man himself lay at a considerable distance, groaning with pain, for his whole body was so severely burnt that he died on the following day. The survivor stated that a black figure had fallen, as if from heaven, upon his comrade and torn him to pieces in spite of the two shots he had fired at it from a short distance, then it had vanished again in an instant. The matter was duly reported to headquarters, and when an investigation was ordered, the fact was discovered that a number of precisely similar occurrences had already been officially recorded. The vision is, of course, nothing more than a product of the excited imagination of the mountaineers, who lend the favorite shape of a "Pickolitch" to the frequent, bizarre-looking masses of fog and mist which rise in their dark valleys, hover over gullies and abysses, and driven by a sudden current of wind, fly upward with amazing rapidity, and thus seem to disappear in an instant. The apprehension of the poor sentinel, on the other hand, was a kind of clairvoyance produced by the combined influence of local tradition, the nightly hour and the dark pass, upon a previously-excited mind, while the vision of the two officers was a similar magic phenomena, the result of the impressions made upon them by the instant prayer of the victim, and a hot discussion about the reality of the "Prikolitch." The sentinel probably saw a weird shape and fired; the gun burst and killed him outright, setting fire to his clothes, a supposition strengthened by the statement that the poor fellow, anticipating a meeting with the spectre, had put a double charge into his rifle. The accident teaches once more that a mere denial of facts and a haughty smile at the idea of visions profit us nothing, while a calm and careful examination of all the circumstances may throw much light upon their nature, and help, in the course of time, to extirpate fatal superstitions, like those of the "Prikolitch."
It is interesting to see how harmless and even pleasant are, in comparison, the visions of men with well-trained minds and kindly dispositions. The bookseller Nicolai entertained his phantom-guests, and was much amused, at times, by their conversation. Macnish ("Sleep," p. 194) tells us the same of Dr. Bostock, who had frequent visions, and of an elderly lady whom Dr. Alderson treated for gout, and who received friendly visits from kinsmen and acquaintances with whom she conversed, but who disappeared instantly when she rang for her maid. Another patient of Dr. Alderson's, who saw himself in the same manner surrounded by numbers of persons, even felt the blows which a phantom-carter gave him with his whip. Although in all these cases the visions disappeared after energetic bleeding and purging, the phenomena were nevertheless real as far as they affected the patient, and have in every instance been fully authenticated and scientifically investigated. The well-known author, Macnish, himself was frequently a victim of this kind of self-delusion; he saw during an attack of fever fearful hellish shapes, forming and dissolving at pleasure, and during one night he beheld a whole theatre filled with people, among whom he recognized many friends and acquaintances, while on the stage he saw the famous Ducrow with his horses. As soon as he opened his eyes the scene disappeared, but the music continued, for the orchestra played a magnificent march from Aladdin, and did not cease its magic performance for five hours. The vision of the eye seems thus to have been under the influence of his will, but his hearing was beyond his control.
A very interesting class of visions accompanied by undoubted magic phenomena, and as frequent in our day as at any previous period, is formed by those which are the result of climatic and topographic peculiarities. We have already stated that the peculiar impression made upon predisposed minds by vast deserts and boundless wastes is frequently ascribed, by the superstitious dwellers near such localities, to the influence of evil spirits. Such a vision is the Ragl of Northern Africa, which occurs either after fatiguing journeys through the dry, hot desert, in consequence of great nervous excitement, or as one of the symptoms of typhoid fever in native patients. Seeing and hearing are alike affected, the other senses only in rare cases. Ordinarily the eye sees everything immensely magnified or oddly changed; pebbles become huge blocks of stone, faint tracks in the hot sand change into broad causeways or ample meadows, and distant shadows appear as animals, wells, or mountain-dells. If the moon rises the vision increases in size and distinctness; the scene becomes animated, men pass by, camels follow each other in long lines, and troops are marching past in battalions. Then the ear also begins to succumb to the charm; the rustling of dry leaves becomes the sweet song of numerous birds; the wind changes into cries of despair, and the noise of falling sand into distant thunder. The brain remains apparently unaffected, for travelers suffering of the Ragl are able to make notes and record the symptoms, although the note-book looks to them like a huge album with costly engravings. There can be little doubt that the great afflux of blood to the eyes and the ears is the first cause of these phenomena, but the peculiar nature of the visions remains still a mystery. One striking peculiarity is their unvarying identity in men of the same race and culture; Europeans have their own hallucinations which are not shared by Africans; the former see churches, houses, and carriages, the latter mosques, tents, and camels, thus proving here also the fact that these delusions of the senses are produced in the mind and not in the outer world. Travelers who suffer from hunger or from the dread effects of the simoon are naturally more subject to the Ragl than others; the visions generally appear towards midnight and continue till six or seven o'clock in the morning, while during the day they are only seen in cases of aggravated suffering. Another peculiarity is the fact that these visions connect themselves only with small objects and moderate sounds; the gentle friction of a vibrating tassel on his camel's neck appeared to the great explorer Richardson like the clacking of a mill-wheel, but the words shouted by his companion sounded quite natural. Thus he saw in every little lichen a green garden spot, but the stars he discerned distinctly enough to direct his way by them even when suffering most intensely from the Ragl.