Independently of magnetism, it is difficult not to believe that two persons, mutually dear to each other, although separated by certain circumstances, may remain united by their thoughts, with a tenacity which nothing can disturb, especially if the circumstances are grave. The thoughts of the one react upon the mind of the other, as if the beatings of one heart could transmit themselves to another heart. There is a certain psychical tie between the two; and at the time when one especially concentrates his voluntary force upon the other, it is not unusual for the latter to feel the reaction, and be plunged into a revery even more intense. The transmission of thought—or, to speak more exactly, suggestion,—is, under these conditions, a matter for observation, which might frequently be applied.
I shall not here consider the phenomena of telepathy or ghosts. Readers of The Arena have been favored with Mr. Wallace’s excellent articles on this point, and it would be superfluous to reconsider it. No doubt our readers are also acquainted with the examples reported in my work called Urania, and have long been aware that I believe in the possibility of communications between invisible beings and ourselves. In the point of view at which I have placed myself in this technical and essentially scientific outline, I have taken care to carefully distinguish the things seen by myself from those which I have not seen.
I do not belong to the same class with those who say: “We have not seen it, and therefore it cannot be.” There are honest people everywhere. There are, perhaps, few exact observers, capable of reporting facts, without changing anything in their recitals; but there are witnesses we cannot well gainsay.
Here, for example, is a letter among many recently addressed to me, relative to certain extraordinary facts.
Your work, Urania, has prompted me to bring to your knowledge an event which I heard related by the very person to whom it happened,-a Danish physician, named Vogler, residing at Gudum, near Alborg, in Jutland.
Vogler is a man of robust health, both in mind and body. He has an upright and positive disposition, without the least tendency (but quite the contrary) to nervous excitability.
He related to me the following story, which I have often heard confirmed by others as the unadorned and exact truth.
When a young man, studying medicine, he travelled in Germany with Count Schimmuelmann, a noted name among the nobility of Holstein, who was about his own age. They hired a small house in a German university town where they proposed to stay for sometime. The Count lived in the apartments on the ground floor, while Vogler occupied the next story; and the street door, as well as the stairway, were used by themselves alone. One night, when Mr. Vogler was reading in bed, he suddenly heard the door at the foot of the stairs open and shut; but he did not pay any attention to it, believing the Count had just come in. A few moments later he heard slow and tired footsteps ascend the stairs, and stop at his chamber door. He saw the door open, but nobody appeared. The footsteps did not cease, however, for he heard them on the floor, advancing from the door to the bed. He could see absolutely nothing, although the light was continuously burning; and he could not understand the affair, not recognizing the footsteps. When the steps had drawn very near the bed, he heard a great sigh, which he at once recognized as that of his grandmother, whom he had left in good health at their home in Denmark. At the same instant he also recognized the step, which was, indeed, the halting and aged step of his grandmother. Looking at his watch, which he had placed under his pillow, Vogler noted the exact hour, and made a memorandum of it, for he at once surmised that his grandmother might be dying at the very instant. At a later day he received a letter from the paternal home, announcing the sudden death of his grandmother, who particularly cherished him above the other grandchildren. This established the fact that her death occurred at the very hour indicated. In this manner did the venerable woman take leave of her grandson, who did not even know of her illness.
Edward Hambro
Counselor-at-law, and Secretary of Public Works
in the City of Christiana.
Here, as may be seen, is a fact, observed as precisely as a scientific experiment; and it might be added to those I have published in Urania.