——“Communities of senses
To chop and change intelligences,
As Rosicrucian virtuosis
Can see with ears and hear with noses.”
For so strange are the synonymes of the senses, that the blind will express their notion of colour by sound; the tint of scarlet is like the sound of a trumpet. From this hint, probably, St. Amand, in the “Pilgrims of the Rhine,” speaks of a visible music.
Ida. Do we not perceive, also, something of this acuteness in the sense of touch under certain other conditions? In the story of Caspar Hauser, whether it be romance or reality, we read the following illustration of the effect of mineral traction:
“Once, when the physician, Dr. Osterhausen, and the royal crown fiscal, Brunner, from Munich, happened to be present, Daumer led Caspar, in order to try him, to a table covered with an oil cloth, upon which lay a sheet of paper, and desired him to say whether any metal was under it. He moved his finger over it, and then said, ‘There it draws.’ ‘But this time,’ replied Daumer, ‘you are nevertheless mistaken, for,’ withdrawing the paper, ‘nothing lies under it.’ Caspar seemed at first to be somewhat embarrassed, but he put his finger again to the place where he thought he had felt the drawing, and assured them repeatedly that he there felt a drawing. The oil cloth was then removed, a stricter search was made, and a needle was actually found there.”
Caspar Hauser might have felt this, or a cunning youth might have palmed on us his idea for a truth. Yet I confess Parkinson also relates the case of a woman who fainted on the touch of a stethoscope, exclaiming that it was “drawing her too strongly.”
Cast. And of clairvoyance. Have you no incidents, Astrophel?
Astr. Many. Listen to the following fragments. One from Andral’s Lectures: