As capable of holding automatic thought, processes, or their embryons, such a spirit might lend itself as a vehicle of direct intellectual influence between soul and soul, as also, of course, between souls and spirits of another sort. But it must be remembered that, if this might in some measure account for the intercommunication of thought, it in no way tends to explain the genesis of information of which all concerned are ignorant. That some such brute intelligence acts as intermediary would seem to be borne out by the frequent spaces of hopeless incoherency, like nothing so much as the shaking up of loose type, which prelude and interrupt spiritual communications when the intelligent will that would fain direct matters has not yet seized the reins, or has dropped them from its grasp.
Whatever may be thought of the theory, the following passage from the first edition of Glanvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing is worth quoting. The story in it was suppressed in subsequent editions, as too romantic for the taste of the day:[58] "That one man should be able to bind the thoughts of another, and determine them to their particular objects, will be reckoned in the first rank of impossibles; yet, by the power of advanced imagination, it may very probably be effected; and history abounds with instances. I'll trouble the reader but with one, and the hands from which I had it makes me secure of the truth on't.
"There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who, being of very pregnant and ready parts, and yet wanting the encouragement of preferment, was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there, and to cast himself upon the wide world for a livelihood. Now, his necessities growing daily on him, and wanting the help of friends to relieve him, he was at last forced to join himself to a company of vagabond gypsies, whom occasionally he met with, and to follow their trade for a maintenance. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtility of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they discovered to him their mystery; in the practice of which, by the pregnancy of his wit and parts, he soon grew so good a proficient as to be able to outdo his instructors. After he had been a pretty while exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars who had formerly been of his acquaintance. The scholars had quickly spied out their old friend among the gypsies, and their amazement to see him among such society had well-nigh discovered him; but by a sign he prevented their owning him before that crew, and, taking one of them aside privately, desired him with his friend to go to an inn not far distant thence, promising there to come to them. They accordingly went thither, and he follows; after their first salutations, his friends inquire how he came to lead so odd a life as that was, and to join himself with such a cheating, beggarly company. The scholar-gypsy, having given them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, and that himself had learnt much of their art, and improved it further than themselves could; and, to evince the truth of what he told them, he said he would remove into another room, leaving them to discourse together, and, upon his return, tell them the sum of what they had talked of; which accordingly he performed, giving them a full account of what had passed between them during his absence. The scholars, being amazed at so unexpected a discovery, earnestly desired him to unriddle the mystery. In which he gave them satisfaction by telling them that what he did was by power of the imagination, his fancy binding theirs; and that himself had dictated to them the discourse they held together while he was from them; that there were warrantable ways of heightening the imagination to that pitch as to bind another's; and that, when he had compassed the whole secret, of some parts of which he said he was yet ignorant, he intended to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.
"Now, that this strange power of the imagination is no impossibility, the wonderful signatures of the fœtus, caused by the imagination of the mother, is no contemptible item. The sympathies of laughing and gaping together are resolved into this principle; and I see not why the fancy of one man may not determine the cogitation of another, rightly qualified, as easily as his bodily motion. This influence seems to me to be no more unreasonable than that of one string of a lute upon another, when a stroke on it causeth a proportionable motion in the sympathizing consort, which is distant from it and not sensibly touched. Now, if this notion be strictly verifiable, it will yield us a good account of how angels inject thoughts into our minds, and know our cogitations; and here we may see the source of some kinds of fascination. If we are prejudiced against the speculation, because we cannot conceive the manner of so strange an operation, we shall indeed receive no help from the common philosophy; but yet the hypothesis of a mundane soul, lately revived by that incomparable Platonist and Cartesian, Dr. H. More, will handsomely relieve us; or, if any would rather have a mechanical account, I think it may probably be made out some such way as follows: Imagination is inward sense; to sense is required a motion of certain filaments of the brain, and consequently in imagination there is the like; they only differing in this, that the motion of the one proceeds immediately from external objects, but that of the other hath its immediate rise within us. Now, then, when any part of the brain is strongly agitated, that which is next, and most capable to receive the motive impress, must in like manner be moved. Now, we cannot conceive anything more capable of motion than the fluid matter that is interspersed among all bodies and is contiguous to them. So, then, the agitated parts of the brain begetting a motion in the proxime ether, it is propagated through the liquid medium, as we see the motion is which is caused by a stone thrown into the water. Now, when the thus moved matter meets with anything like that from which it received its primary impress, it will proportionably move it, as it is in musical strings tuned unisons; and thus the motion being conveyed from the brain of one man to the fancy of another, it is there received from the instrument of conveyance, the subtile matter, and the same kind of strings being moved, and much what after the same manner as in the first imaginant, the soul is awakened to the same apprehensions as were they that caused them. I pretend not to any exactness or infallibility in this account, foreseeing many scruples that must be removed to make it perfect. It is only an hint of the possibility of mechanically solving the phenomenon, though very likely it may require many other circumstances completely to make it out."
There are abundant records of the marvels wrought by the imagination, when, under the influence of desire or fear, or even simple expectation, the attention is concentrated upon a particular spot or a particular set of circumstances; but of the conditions and nature of the operation almost nothing is known. It would seem as if there were a tendency in every act of the imagination to create that which it conceives, although it is only in rare cases that any palpable result ensues. Various cases of recovery from the gravest illness, some of which involved the arresting active, organic mischief, are recorded as brought about by the vehement impression made upon the imagination by a remedy supposed, but never really applied. The action of imaginative sympathy is even more startling. Dr. Tuke relates the following of a lady well known to him: "One day, she was walking past a public institution, and observed a child, in whom she was particularly interested, coming out through an iron gate. She saw that he let go the gate after opening it, and that it seemed likely to close upon him, and concluded that it would do so with such force as to crush his ankle; however, this did not happen. 'It was impossible,' she says, 'by word or act, to be quick enough to meet the supposed emergency; and, in fact, I found I could not move, for such intense pain came on my ankle, corresponding to the one I thought the boy would have injured, that I could only put my hand on it to lessen its extreme painfulness. I am sure I did not move so as to strain or sprain it. The walk home—a distance of about a quarter of a mile—was very laborious, and, in taking off my stocking, I found a circle round the ankle, as if it had been painted with red-currant juice, with a large spot of the same on the outer part. By morning, the whole foot was inflamed, and I was a prisoner to my bed for many weeks."[59] In another case referred to by Dr. Tuke, "a lady of an exceedingly sensitive and impressible nature, on one occasion when a gentleman visited her house, experienced a very uncomfortable sensation so long as he was present, and she observed a spot or sore on his cheek. Two days after, a similar spot or sore appeared on her cheek, in precisely the same situation, and with the same characters."[60]
I have no fault to find with Dr. Tuke for extending this same principle of sympathetic attention to the case of stigmatization, when he says of S. Francis, absorbed in ardent realization of the Passion of Christ, "So clearly defined an idea, so ardent a faith intensifying its operation, were sufficient to reflect it in his body."[61]
I cannot help thinking that the Fathers recognized the creative power of the imagination when they denounced so fiercely the masquerading in beast-skins on the calends of January. "Is not all this false and mad when God-formed men transform themselves into cattle, or wild beasts, or monsters?"[62] The numerous accounts of the were-wolf transformation, both in classical and mediæval times, all point in the same direction; and Mr. Baring-Gould brings good authority for thinking that the etymology of the "Barsark" rage of the Norsemen designates it as an outcome of their bear-skins.
The direct action of the imagination upon external objects, attributed to Avicenna (Muratori della Fantasia, p. 268), is, of course, something further. The Arabian philosopher is reported to have said that, "by a strong action of the fancy, one might kill a camel." At the same time, the signature on the fœtus, not merely of the emotion of the mother's fear or desire, but of the object or occasion of it, would seem to imply some action ab extra, as well as such cases as that of the sympathetic bruise referred to above.
That the ordinary acts of the imagination, for all their airy and impalpable play, do leave behind them most momentous results, forming, as it were, the very mould and measure of our whole life, is a matter of constant experience. Hence it is that castles in the air are often so costly, to say nothing of the danger that, though we have built them ourselves, we may find them haunted.
I am quite prepared to admit what the Germans have called a night-side of nature—that is, various rudimental powers of doing many things of a seemingly miraculous character, which powers do very probably often co-operate in the production of spiritualistic phenomena, and under peculiar organic conditions, without any spiritual influence, may be brought into considerably developed action. Moreover, as it is, of course, in the investigation of these natural bases of magic that science will succeed so far as it succeeds at all, it is only right that it should expatiate in them. My complaint is that the modern attempt to reduce spiritualism to psychic force involves an inadequate analysis of the facts presented; and spiritualists have surely some ground to complain of the prima facie disingenuousness of a manœuvre which, in regard to the same phenomena, began with, "This is not natural, therefore it is certainly not true," and ends with, "This is true, therefore it is certainly natural."