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CHAPTEE I.FACTS ESTABLISHING THE EXISTENCE OF THE POSTHUMOUSPEKSONALITY IN MAN. ITS VAEIOUS MODESOF MANIFESTATION.Let us open this chapter with the posthumoushistory of the Abbe Peytou, one of the most curiousthat could be cited, as well from the long durationof the manifestations as the variety of their forms;of which nearly the whole population of the localitywere witnesses. It will suffice for me to record thefollowing facts, for which I am indebted to thekindness of M. Auge, late schoolmaster at Sentenac(Aridge), the parish of the Abbe Peytou. Beingunable to visit the spot in person, I begged M. Augeto interrogate the elders of the village as to whatthey had seen or heard of the matter.Here is his letter :Sentenac de S6rou, 8th May, 1879.SlE,You have asked me to relate, for subsequent scientific

discussion, the facts connected 'with ghostly visitors which aregenerally admitted by the most intelligent persons of Sentenac, andthe circumstances of which ineontestably prove their genuineness.12 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.I shall narrate them exactly as they happened within the knowledgeof perfectly credible witnesses.I. When, some forty-five years ago, M. Peyton, cure ofSeutenac, died, there was heard every evening, just after nightfall,the noise of somebody moving the chairs in the Presbytery, walkingabout, opening and shutting a snuff box and then making the soundof one taking a large pinch of snuff. All this, which lasted a longtime, was of course immediately credited by the simpler and more

timid among the villagers ; others, who pretended to be shrewdcommon-sense fellows (esprits forts), were not in a hurry tobelieve ; they simply laughed at all who seemed or, rather, actuallydid believe that M. Peytou, the deceased cur^, had returned.Two persons^M. Antoine Eycheinne, the mayor of the Commune,but who died about five years ago, and Baptiste Graly, who isstill alive, the only two educated men in the neighbourhood andat the same time the most scepticalwished to have personal proofwhether aU the alleged nocturnal disturbances in the Presbyteryhad any actual foundation in fact, or were but the effect of a weakfancy in persons easily frightened. One evening, each armed witha gun and a hatchet, resolved to pass the night in the house,determining to know, in case they should hear any noise, whether

it was made by the living or dead. They ensconced themselves inthe kitchen, before a good fire, and began talking together aboutthe simplicity of the villagers, and saying that, for their part, theycould hear nothing, and would sleep comfortably upon the mattressthey had taken the precaution to bring along. But suddenly, inthe room just above them, they did hear a noise, then the chairsmoved, then some one walked about, descended the stairs, and cametowards the kitchen. They arose, M. Eycheinne moved towards thekitchen door, holding his hatchet ready to strike whoever mightenter, and M. Galy raised his gun to his shoulder.



The apparent walker, having come close to the kitchen door,took a pinch of snuffat least, the men on watch heard the identicalsounds of a person who snuffsand then, instead of opening thekitchen door, the ghost passed into the drawing-room, where heseemed to be walking about. MM. Eycheinne and Galy, retainingtheir weapons, went out of the kitchen into the drawing-room andsawabsolutely nothing. They went upstairs and searched therooms of the house from top to bottom, looking into every corner,but found neither chairs nor any other things out of place. M., Eycheinne, who until now had been the most sceptical of all, thenPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 3said to his companion: "My friend, no living person is makingthis disturbance, it is the dead ; it is M. Peytou it is his step andhis vray of taking snufE that we have heard. We can now sleep inpeace."II. Marie Calvet was the domestic of Monsieur Ferr^, successorto M. Peytou, and a, brave woman upon occasionone whoallowed nothing to disturb her, who believed nothing of the thingsthey were gossiping about, and one who, to use the commonphrase descriptive of a fearless person, would even sleep in achurch. One evening, just at nightfall, the woman was occupiedin the barn-passage cleaning her kitchen utensils. M. Ferr^, hermaster, who had gone to visit the neighbouring curiS, M. Desplas,had not yet returned. While the aforesaid Calvet was hard at

work on her pots and pans, a cur^ passed before her withoutspeaking a word. " Oh, you will not frighten me, master," shesaid, "I am not so stupid as to believe that Monsieur Peytou hascome back ! " Seeing that the priest who passed, and whom she tookfor her master, said nothing, Marie Calvet raised her head, turnedit in his direction, andsaw nothing. Then she began to getScared, and quickly ran to tell the neighbours what had happened,and to beg Graly's wife to come and sleep with her.III. Anne Maurette, wife of Raymond Perrau, still living, wentat daybreak to the mountain, with her donkey, for a load ofwood. In passing the Presbytery garden, she saw a cur6 walkingalongthe path, with a breviary in his hand. Just when she wasabout saying, " Good morning, M. le Cur6, you are up early,'' thepriest

turned away and kept on reading his prayers. The woman,.,not wishing to interrupt him in his devotions, passed on without.the least thought of a ghost having entered her head. Upon returningfrom the mountain with her wqod, she met the curfi ofSentenac before the church. " You rose early, sir," she said. "Ithought you must be starting upon some journey when I saw you.reading your prayer-book as I passed your garden." " No, my good,woman, " answered he ; "I have been up but a short time ; I have,but just finished mass." " Then," replied she in a fright, " who was:that priest who was reciting his breviary in your garden at daybreak,and who turned away just as I was about speaking to him ? I wassure it was yourself, sir. I should have died of fright, if I had

thought it was the cur4 who is no more. Heavens ! I shall nomore have the courage to pass there."Here, sir, are three facts, which are not the products of a weak124 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and terrified imagination. I doubt if science can explain themnaturally. Are these ghosts ? I cannot so affirm ; but certainlythere is something here which is not natural.Yours faithfully,J. Atjbb.



We regret that M. Auge did not feel constrainedto push his investigations somewhat further. Wewould especially have liked to know, beyond doubt,what truth or untruth there was in certain manifestationsof the Abbe Peyton's desire to say mass.The peasants, simple-minded and ignorant, inferredthat he must be suffering because he had receivedpay for a certain number of masses which he hadnot had time to repeat before he was surprised bydeath. M. Auge admitted to me that he had notplaced any weight upon what he had heard respectingthis matter, believing the thing absolutelyimpossible according to all he had ever read inworks on theology. He did not perceive that thereading of the breviary was not less extraordinarythan the desire to say mass ; furthermore, he wasignorant of the fact that the posthumous man, aswe shall have frequent opportunity to notice, lovesto return to the things which were familiar to him.The following history is not less characteristic, andmade no less noise than that of the Abbe Peyton.About twenty years ago, M. X., aged some sixtyyears, living in a parish of the Canton of Oust(Ari^ge), died after a brief illness. As he had been

a man of some mark in his country, this eventcaused a certain sensation. Immediately after hisPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 5decease, his house became the scene of a crowd ofnootamal disturbances which I shall not relatehere, as I shall have frequent occasion in thecourse of this chapter to revert to similar facts.This went on for several years. I shall cite onlythree facts, which I give as authentic, having themfrom the eye-witnesses themselves. The firstwitness was a gardener, whose story is asfollows:

"On Easter-eve I was detained in a garden tofinish some work I had not been able to do in theday. My task completed, as I was about to leave,I heard distinctly two or three times the sharpnoise of scissors trimming a grape vine. At thisnoise I turned about and saw myself face to facewith the deceased M. X."" How was he dressed? " I asked."As in life, his hat on his head, his muflBerround his neck, and with a pleasant smile on hisface."" Why did you not address him ?"

" I was going to do so, then hesitated, and thengetting to the garden gate, I left."" Were you long in his presence ?"" Long enough to repeat an Ave Maria."" Were you frightened ?"" No ; I go about night and day, and have neverseen anything. Yet upon reaching home I becamescared by degrees."



The second fact occurred the same evening, in6 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.presence of the gravedigger of the village whereM. X. lived and died. His story is the following :" On Easter-eve, having to dig a grave, anddeceived by the bells of a neighbouring villagewhich rang the riveillon at midnight, but whichI mistook for the angelus, I went to the cemeteryto do my work. Upon opening the gate I wassurprised to see, standing near the great cross andnot far from the tomb of M. X., a man. ' Hallo !'I said to myself, 'here is somebody who is upmighty early to attend to his religious duties ; ' andwhile I was trying to make out who it could be,I noticed that the individual advanced towards me,and I recognized him as M. X. I slammed thegrating to at once, so as to put the thickness of thedoor between the personage and myself, and hurriedhome in a fright."" How was he dressed ?"" As when alive, with his muffler and hat."

" Why did you not wait and speak to him ?"" I took good care not to do that !"As his friends joked him about his tale, hereplied invariably that they might believe or notfor aught he cared ; he told what he had seen, andhad nothing more to say.The third example happened under the eyes ofa retired customs-officer. I quote literally hiswords. It should be noted that this thing happenedon the same evening as the two others." On Easter-eve I was on guard, with another

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 7officer, near a property that had belonged to M. X.I saw a person, who passed and repassed near me,opening and shutting an entrance-gate. I said tomyself that M. X.'s steward is very early to-day.Then looking closer, I saw it was M. X. himself.My first impulse was to arouse my comrade, so thathe might also see this extraordinary apparition.However, I refrained.""How was M. X. dressed ?"" As usual, with the hat and muffler he alwayswore when alive."

" When you recognized him, were you frightened ?"" I am an old customs-guard, and was not at allafraid ; in proof of which I did not waken mycomrade. At the same time, it must be confessedthat for the rest of the night I was not quite aseasy as usual."Apparitions in human form, such as I havedescribed, are rare. {^) The most familiar manifestationsof the posthumous personality seem to



be noises occurring in a variety of ways, and sometimesdegenerating into a racket very disturbingto the occupants of the house which it infests.Usually it is at nig-ht that these tumults occur.One hears, but sees nothing, not even the projectilesflung against the walls or upon the floor.Sometimes, however, these nocturnal uproars are(°) Not so rare, perhaps, as our author supposes ; but since hemakes out his case upon such as he cites, it is useless to weary thereader with an embarras de riohesses.8 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.attended with particular circumstances whichenable us to identify their author.Of such a nature is the story I am about to tell,and which I borrow from the learned translatorof the works of Grorres, M. Charles Sainte-Foix :" The following incident occurred in my father'shouse, about the year 1812. One evening, at aboutten o'clock, my mother was awakened by an unusualnoise in the kitchen, separated by the dining-roomfrom the chamber where she slept with my father.She awoke him with an account of her uneasiness, andbegged him to go and see if the door which opened

into the court had been well closed ; for she thoughtit was the dog that had entered and made all thenoise. My father, who was confident that he hadfastened the door that evening, attributed the impressionsof my mother to a dream or some illusion,and begged her to go to sleep again, as he proceededto do himself. But after a few minutes my motherheard fresh noises, and again waked my father.Still she could not convince him, and, not beingwilling to believe except he himself heard, he sat upso as not to fall asleep again, and waited for the noiseto recommence. He did not have to wait long, andended by believing that his memory had played him

a trick, and that he had really forgotten to close theouter door of the kitchen, that the watch-dog hadentered there, and was knocking together the pots,saucepans, and all the other kitchen utensils ; forthat was the sort of noise they heard. He then rose.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 9took a light, visited the kitchen, found everythingin order and the door closed, so that after all hebegan to think that he had been deceived by hissenses, and had been half asleep when he thoughthe had heard the noise. He went back to bed,leaving, however, his candle alight to see if thenoise would be repeated. Scarcely had he lain down

before a greater uproar than ever arose. Certainthat this could not be in the kitchen, he visited allthe other rooms in the house, from the cellar to theloft. The hubbub continued without intermission,but nothing was seen. He wakened the servants,who slept in an out-building, again with themsearched the whole house, always hearing, but seeingnothing. The noise had changed in place andcharacter; it had passed into the dining-room,where it seemed as if stones of twenty or thirty



pounds weight were falling from a height of eightor ten feet upon a piece of furniture which stoodagainst the wall. After eight or ten blows of thissort, a final crash, still more loud than the others,indicated a pause ; then immediately afterwards itseemed as though some powerful hand was workingan iron bar among paving-stones. Several neighbours,wakened by the noise, came to the house toknow what it all meant, and help my father tomake another search ; for he thought so little of ghoststhat not even the idea of them had come into his mind,and all his fear was that there were robbers. On theother hand, he said to himself that robbers had every10 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.interest in concealing themselves, and that it showedgreat stupidity on their part to manifest theirpresence in such a tumultuous manner. Then hethought that perhaps it might be rats. But howcould rats make such a disturbance and such avariety of noises ? All that threw him into greatperplexity, and he did not know what to think.About three o'clock in the morning he sent awaythe neighbours and the servants, telling them to goback to bed, since he was sure that it was not robbers,

which was the important point for him. Thenoise had lasted about four hours, and had beenheard by seven or eight persons. It stopped atabout four o'clock in the morning." At about seven o'clock a messenger came to announceto my father that one of his relatives, namedr., had died during the night, between ten andeleven o'clock, and before dying had expressed astrong desire that my father would take the guardianshipof the children whom he had left behindhim. He had, in fact, often expressed this desire tomy father during his sickness, without being able toovercome his opposition. In vain my father had

urged the multiplicity of his engagements and theanxieties that they caused him. Iri vain he hadnamed other persons better circumstanced than himselfto undertake the trust that he wished to confideto him. He had been unable, despite all theseexcuses, to turn him aside from this idea, which hehad carried away with him into the other life..POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 11" The coincidence of this death with the noise thathad been heard during the night impressed mymother, and made her think that perhaps it wasnot the mere effect of chance. She insisted thenthat my father should promise to accept the

guardianship of the children of the dead man. Myfather, not sharing her fears, stubbornly maintainedhis opposition. However, to quiet her, and believingthat he was really binding himself to nothing, hepromised her that if the noise recommenced hewould accept the responsibility which they wantedto put upon him. Thinking, meanwhile, that thenoise was made by some men who had a grudgeagainst him or intended to play him some tricks, heresolved to take all precautions for discovering



their artifices. So he caused two strong men, reputedvery brave, to sleep in his room, and hequietly waited in his bed. At midnight the uproarwas renewed, but much stronger and moreterrible than on the previous evening. My fatherrose, and told the two men who slept in his room torise up also and help him search every corner ofthe house ; but they were seized with such a terrorthat nothing could persuade them to get out ofbed, and a cold sweat covered the whole of theirbodies. My father then himself went, with all theservants, throughout the house without discoveringanything. The noise did not last so long, but wasmuch more violent than the first time. Myfather, upon returning to his room, yielded to12 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY,the importunity of my mother, more to pacify herthan because he believed that these noises resultedfrom any extra-natural causes ; and nothingmore of the kind was heard in the house. Threeor four witnesses of this incident are still living,and can attest its truth. I have often heard thestory told by my father, who never, however,believed that there was anything supernatural

about it. Yet one thing had struck him, andgave him some uneasiness. The first night, atthe moment when the noise was the loudest, he hadcalled his dog, shouting out, " Here ! here ! " Thisdog was enormous, very strong, very savage, andthis call of my father was usually enough to makehim leap and bark. But this time, in place ofbounding as usual, he crawled to my father's feetas though terrified. This circumstance made uponmy father a very strong impression, and disconcertedhim, without, however, changing his conviction."Sometimes the posthumous personality is recognisedby its footstep, when it is heard walking in a

room. Examples of this sort are quite common.As, for instance: In the month of January, 1855,the proprietor of the old hot springs of Aulus died.Immediately, unusual noises were heard in thisestablishment. The watchman who slept thereheard every night, as soon as the candle was extinguished,the noise that a man makes in handlingpapers or registers, although there was nothing ofthe kind in the room. Sometimes it was the stepsPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 13of a person walking beside him, or mounting ordescending tiie staircase. Another day he felt someone trying to raise his bed. On certain nights a

frightful disturbance occurred on the ground floor.One would have said that blows from a hammerwere being given simultaneously on all the metalbaths. The watchman arose, went and visited thebathing closets in turn, but saw nothing. Thenoise stopped as soon as he opened the doors, butbegan again as soon as he left. Equally strangethings happened sometimes by day. At a certaintime, at about one o'clock, a despairing cry soundedfrom one end of the building, the watchmen ran



thither, carefully examined the place whence thecry had come without meeting anything, andwhilst he was making his search a similar cry washeard from the other end of the building. Thisoccurred on several days in succession. Anothertime, some customs-officers returning from themountain, and passing on a hill which was near thehot baths, heard a frightful noise, as though thebuildings were going to fall.The different watchmen who were successivelyemployed at this establishment were witnesses ofthe same nocturnal manifestations. I knew themall, and can affirm that they were not men subjectto timidity. One of them, who had served in aregiment of Zouaves, had received from his comrades,on account of his daring, the nickname of"the jackal." Another is now a tiger-hunter on14 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.the pampas of Soutli America. Nevertheless,, itoften happened that they made friends come andsleep with them, so that they might not be alonein the building. It is superfluous to add thatthese also heard the same noises. Sometimes therewere very curious variations in the phenomena. A

woman who had come to sleep in a room adjacentto that of the watchman felt an invisible handpull off her bedclothes. She rushed out of herroom and would not return. At other times itwas noises which were heard in the partitions. Onenight the long passage on the first floor re-echoedat about one o'clock in the morning with a strangeand rushing noise, like that made by a locomotiverunning at full speed. This noise being repeatedevery night, the watchman, who then was thetiger-hunter of whom I have spoken, took his gun,waited for the invisible train, and fired at themoment when he thought he could feel it in front

of him. He broke a branch off one of the acaciasoutside in the garden, but did not hit the invisibleenemy, who began again more lively than ever.All who had heard the nocturnal footsteps, whichwere sometimes in the rooms, and sometimes onthe passages or staircases, recognized the walk ofthe former proprietor of the establishment. Onenoticeable circumstance is that nothing of this kindwas heard in another little bathing establishment,situated not more than three or four yards awayfrom this one, but which belonged to another proPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 15prietor. These noises gradually diminished, but

did not entirely cease until 1872, when the establishmentwas demolished to give place to thepresent baths. However, a certain Madame Eumeau,of St. Girons, who came every year to Aulus duringthe bathing season to take charge of the. linen ofthe establishment, and lodged in the new buildings,has told me that, in 1877, she had several timesheard at night, in the refreshment room, a greatclashing of glasses and bottles. It seemed as thoughthey were smashing in pieces, by clashing together



or falling on the ground. She went to inspectthe room, but found glasses and bottles all in order.This strange circumstance is often noticed in posthumousmanifestations; I shall frequently haveoccasion to recur to it.In certain cases, along with the footsteps of aperson can be heard the rustling of a dress. Themanifestations that then occur are attributed to afemale.About 1830, Madame X., a lady of somewhatadvanced years, died in her country house, in thevicinity of Bastide-de-Serou (Ariege).Some nocturnal manifestations, and even someby day, then occurred, either in her bedchamberor in the other rooms of the house. When thefamily received a guest, and he was given theroom of Madame X. to sleep in, as soon as hewas in bed and had put out his light, he heardsome one walking in the room which he occupied.16 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.or moving the furniture. Sometimes the mysteriouspersonage approached the bed and tried to pulloff the clothes. The sleeper would have to holdthe sheets with all his strength, not to be entirely

uncovered. The rustling of a silk dress accompaniedeach of the movements of the nightly visitor;so, therefore, the cause of these strange events wassoon ascribed by every one in the house to MadameX. At other times the glasses and plates inthe dining-room were disturbed, knocked together,fell on the floor, and apparently smashed with loudnoise. They would run to see what was the causeof this disturbance, and to gather up the fragments.The noise would instantly stop, glasses and chinawere all found in their usual places, and there wereno fragments on the floor. These scenes occurredsometimes by day as well as by night, and even

in the absence of the occupants of the house. Notfar from the dwelling was a farm. One fair-day,the farmer, wishing to drive his cattle to the town,rose very early to feed them, and then took themto the drinking-trough, which was just alongsidethe residence of Madame X. The family havingleft the previous evening, and no one being in thehouse, it might be expected that nothing unusualwould have happened during this night. Nevertheless,at the moment when the cattle weredrinking, so terrifying a disturbance went on insidethe house that the poor animals, mad with fear,were scattered, and the farmer lost all the morning

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 17catching them and bringing them back. Thefamily of Madame X., thinking that the soul ofthe defunct was in pain, neglected neither massesnor prayers to bring her out of purgatory. Allto no purpose; the posthumous manifestations ofMadame X. continued for several years.Not knowing what to do to meet the difficulty,they hit upon the following expedient. One night,before bed-time, they placed paper, pen, and ink



on a table in the room where the nocturnal noiseswere heard most frequently, and at the top of thepaper they wrote some linesi begging the ghostto indicate its wishes, so that they might be satisfied.The next morning they perceived that thepaper, ink, and pen had been placed, intact, underthe table on the floor. But on this same tablewas a dictionary, which had been opened duringthe night, and on one of the pages they remarkedthree little red spots of the size of a grain of cornthat had been crushed, and that resembled dropsof blood. The noises ceased soon after this singularadventure, and, what is remarkable, they were resumedsome years later; but this time they weremuch weaker, and did not last long. I have allthese details, which I have greatly condensed, fromthe family of Madame X.Sometimes the individuality of the posthumousbeing discloses itself by tastes and customs whichwere familiar to the person when alive. Aboutthirty-five years ago there lived at St. Grirons a218 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.young man of robust complexion and military tastes.

He was fond of fencing, and often indulged in thisexercise ; in his room was a collection of foils, gloves*masks, &c. Having become insane, they shut himup in the insane hospital of St. Lizier, where hesoon after died. This hospital is about iive miles fromSt. Girons. The room that the young man occupiedbefore his sickness was situated upon the first floor.Immediately under him lived a tailor and his family.The day of the young man's death, at about eleveno'clock in the evening, the family were already in bedwhen they heard the street door open, and some onequickly run upstairs. " Hullo! " said the tenant," one would swear that those are the footsteps of the

lunatic ; can it possibly be he ? " At the same timethe unknown entered the room on the first floor, andimmediately after they heard the measured stamp of.a man fencing. These blows were more hasty thanthose usually made, and this noise was immediatelyfollowed by a clash of foils and masks, which seemedto detach themselves from the wall, knock together,and fall on the ground. The tailor got up, lit his-candle, and ascended to the chamber overhead. Thenoise stopped as soon as he opened the door ; nothinghad fallen on the floor, but everything was in itsplace. Our good man went back to bed, and then.oise began again ; silence returned only at about

one o'clock in the morning. The following days,the same things were repeated at the same hour andunder identical circumstances. Tired of makingPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 19useless visits to the room where the disturbancesoccurred, the tailor at last accustomed himself to itand did not trouble himself any more. These noiseswere still going on when he left the house. He wassatisfied, as well as his wife and children, that thenocturnal visitor was none other than the young deceased,



for all were unanimous in declaring that theyrecognized his hasty steps every time that hemounted or descended the stairs; so much so thatthey were accustomed to say when they heard himarrive in the evening at his usual hour, " T&, tS,etchoou que toumash!^here comes the madmanagain." It was the tailor himself who gave me thesedetails.In the following example, the posthumous personalityis not so clearly revealed as in the precedingones, but it is easy to follow its traces back to itsorigin." Near a village of Landes, a woman lost hermother. She lived, like most of the country-people,in a ground-floor apartment (rez-de-chaussSe) whichcommunicated with a cellar. After the death of hermother, she heard at night some one walking andrummaging in the cellar. Being alone in the house,with the outer door locked, she at first supposed thatit was rats which caused the noise. Convinced, afternumerous fruitless searches, that rats could not makesuch a noise, she went to tell her story to the cure,an experienced man, who was familiar with thehabits of the poor people of the country ; instead of

20 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.making her pay for masses, as is the usual custom inCatholic countries, he advised her to search carefullyevery nook and cranny in the cellar, and take outanything she might find hidden there. The woman,having followed this advice, found a small sum ofmoney cunningly hidden in one of the most out-oftheway places. She took possession of this sum andheard no more of the noises. It was the hidingplacewhere the old woman used to deposit her littlesavings, and hence the personality of the nocturnalvisitant can but be identified with her posthumousindividuality."

In many cases, the post-sepulchral manifestationspresent no feature that very exactly indicatestheir author. Nevertheless, one can hardly bedeceived in this study, for these events are alwayspreceded by the death of some person in the house.This class generally consists of nocturnal disturbancesof various descriptions. About fifteen years ago, apeasant, living in a hamlet in the Canton d'Oust(Aridge), hung himself in a state of melancholy.His house immediately became the theatre of nightlyscenes of the most tumultuous and inexplicablecharacter." The chairs were heard to move, the crockery to

fall and smash with a loud^ noise, blows of ahammer or club to strike the partitions, and thefurniture on every side, &c., &c. In the wood-shedit seemed as though the faggots were in insurrection: they knocked together, or flung themselvesPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 21against tlie walls with extraordinary force, andmade a terrible racket. If any one entered thewood-shed or the dining-room, where the glassesseemed to be clashing and the crockery breaking,



he was confronted with another phenomenon notless marvellous : the most absolute silence instantlysucceeded, after the most fearful noise ; everythingwas in its usual place ; nothing had been injured.We have seen the same phenomenon occurringinvariably under analogous circumstances, and itmay be assumed in principle that it is one of thelaws of posthumous manifestations. When theoccupants of the house were in bed, an invisiblehand pulled at their coverings, and each time theywere obliged to hold on to them very strongly notto be forced to remain entirely uncovered. Allthese prodigies ceased as soon as a candle wasbrought. The posthumous personality seems todread light ; to borrow an expression from medicine,it is a ' photophobe.' Later on, I will give anexplanation of this fact." One evening, at dusk, a woman in the househeld in her hand a pair of scissors attached to achain. The candle not being yet lighted, she feltsome one pulling at this chain, notwithstanding thatshe was alone in the room. She called for help ; alight was brought, and immediately the scissorsfell. When the light was removed the disturbance

began again, but again stopped when the candlewas brought back. The experiment was repeated22 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.several times, and invariably with the same result.These scenes lasted for several years, and werewitnessed by all the people of the neighbourhood.The rumour having reached St. Girons, some of thenotabilities of this town, among them magistratesand physicians, resolved to visit the spot, tosatisfy themselves as to the authenticity of thesefacts. The project was not carried out, but therecollection of what I have related still lingersin the memory of all the inhabitants of the

canton."The tendency to pull the clothing off the bedand uncover the sleeper is a feature as common asthe nocturnal disturbances, and one in which theaction of the posthumous personality is indicatedmost unequivocally. Usually, these two kinds ofmanifestations go together, as we have seen in theprevious examples. Nevertheless, there are caseswhere the mysterious visitor omits the hubbub, andis satisfied with pulling at the blankets or liftingthe bed. This mode of procedure is still lessagreeable to sleepers than the banging of partitions,and it often happens that they are obliged to desert

the house if they would get any rest. I might citeseveral examples of this kind. Here is one told meby the very person who was the object of theadventure." It was a woman of sober character and faireducation. She had brought up the son of a richlanded-proprietor who lived in a chateau in theJ'OSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 23vicinity of Foix. The child, having lost his motherat an early age, conceived a son's affection for his



governess. Having attained his majority, he leftthe paternal home and went to settle in Africa. In1873, this woman, being in bed one night, thoughtshe heard something unusual in her room. Itseemed like a sort of stifled moaning, repeated atintervals. The next day a telegram announced thedeath of the young man. From that time forth,posthumous manifestations of a strongly markedcharacter occurred in the same room. Nightly, atthe same hour, the governess heard some one openthe door of her room, although she had herselflocked it, walk round the apartment, stop beforethe bed, draw the curtains, and tug at the bedclothing.There would then be a struggle betweenher and the invisible one. The poor woman wasobliged, in order not to be entirely uncovered, toroll herself in the bed-clothing. A sort of plaintivemoaning was heard. At the end of an hour or twothe chamber door would again open, and therewould be total silence. The governess unhesitatinglyattributed the cause of all these prodigiesto the posthumous personality of the young manwhom she had reared ; for, beside the coincidence ofhis death and the manifestations which immediately

occurred, she recognized his manner ofwalking in the footsteps which she heard everynight in her room. Wearied at last with theseunfortunate scenes, she fell sick, and was obliged24 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY,to leave the chateau, after having endured thething for six months."I have said that if the posthumous man frequentlymanifests himself by a variety of noises, his appearancesin human form are rare ; Q) still one sometimessees them immediately after the decease ofcertain persons. I have collected several examplesof this kind ; among them the following, the authenticity

of which I can guarantee. I have it fromMadame D., of St. Gaudens. Here is her story:"I was still a young girl, and slept with myelder sister. One evening we had just retired tobed, and blown out the light. The smoulderingfire on the hearth still feebly lighted the room.Upon turning my eyes towards the fireplace I(') Here the author betrays his want of personal experience inthe stance-room. Animated forms of the deceased are now seenoften under perfect cest-conditions, and some 'will '' materialise"

themselves before one's very eyes. While there have been numberlesscases of fraudulent imitations of this astounding phenomenon sometimes even by real mediumsstill there have been genuinematerialisations by the score. In the year 1874, I devoted aboutthree months to the investigation of this subject, at the Eddy homestead,in the village of Chittenden, Vt., and published my observationsin a work entitled " People from the Other World." I sawas many as seventeen of these materialisations in a single evening,and nearly five hundred during the whole visit. I was enabled totouch, talk with, and even weigh and measure them. After the



lapse of twelve years I see no reason to change my opinion as to thegenuineness of the phenomena of William Eddy, though my viewsas to the psychical character of the forms have been altered by astudy of Asiatic psychological science. The curious reader willfind great abundance of proofs of materialisation in the works ofOwen, Sargent, Crookes, Wallace, Stainton Moses, and othertrustworthy writers.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 25perceived, to my amazement, a priest seated beforethe fire and warming himself. He had the corpulence,the features, and the general appearanceof one of our uncles who lived in the neighbourhoodwhere he was an archbishop. I at oncecalled my sister's attention. She looked in thatdirection, and saw the same apparition. She alsorecognized our uncle. An indescribable terrorseized us both, and we cried ' Help !' with allour might. My father, who slept in an adjoiningroom, awakened by these desperate cries, jumpedout of bed, and ran in with a candle in his hand.The phantom had disappeared ; we saw no one inthe room. The next morning a letter was receivedinforming us that our uncle had died the previous

evening."The posthumous apparitions can show themselvesimmediately after death, whatever may be thedistance that separates the defunct from the placewhere he manifests himself. In other,, words,these phantoms move with marvellous rapidity,comparable almost to that of electricity orlight. (*) I shall presently explain this phenomenon.(*) Rather, let us say, thought. Time and space exist only forus living ; and, while it is a, little premature to discuss thequestion of estraêorporeal mental dynamics, it may be said, asfrom the Asiatic standing-point, that the telepathic action in caseslike those in point is instantaneous. However geographically far

apart in the body, mind talks with mind, as two persons speakwith each other across a table or even from " mouth to ear.''26 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.I have stated above that a young man appearedin the neighhourhood of Foix the very evening ofhis death, although he .died in Africa. Others,who lived in America, have shown themselves inEurope at the moment when they expired, andhad consequently crossed the Atlantic in a fewseconds. Of numerous examples that I might cite,I will give only the following, taken from thework of M. de Mirville, Des Esprits et de leursManifestations diverses. I quote verbatim :

" M. Bonnetty, responsible editor of theAnnates de Philosophie Religieuse, tells us thatone evening, before sleeping, he saw the image ofone of his friends, then in America, open his bedcurtains and inform him that he had that instantdied. The sad news is subsequently confirmed, andindicates that very moment as having been the last.But this image wore a waistcoat whose very extraordinarypattern had much struck M. Bonnetty ; hemade subsequent inquiries, and begged that they



would send him a drawing of this waistcoat pattern.They did so, and it was identically that of theapparition."Sometimes apparitions come during sleep. If it isobjected that these are ordinary dreams, I shallanswer that, whilst according the utmost possibleagency to dreams and hallucinations, it is difficultnot to believe in the reality of an apparition whenyou see before you a person whom you recognize atonce by his height, features, and dress, who tellsPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 27you that he has just expired, and when on thenext day, or at some later date, a letter confirmsthe vision.I went to Spain, towards the end of 1868, a littleafter the Pronunciamento which put an end to thereign of Isabella. I knew the country was in a stateof ebullition, and I wished to study upon the spotthe consequences of the revolution which had justbeen completed. I was not long in perceiving that theSpanish nation, kneaded for fourteen centuries in themould of the most rigid and absolute Catholicism thatever was seen, and moreover fundamentally monarchical,was not yet ripe for liberty, that it would fatalistically

return to its old idols ; and I did not shrinkfrom imparting my forecast to the readers of theRevue Gontemporaine, in an essay which appearedin the month of June of the following year.On the twelfth of January of the same year I wasat Barcelona, and one night in my sleep I distinctlysaw before me the face of' a young person who wassincerely attached to me, and whom, before leaving forSpain, I had left in Paris, dying from a chest complaint.My first movement, as soon as I perceivedher, was to approach and bid her welcome. As I camecloser, I saw her recede, and I recognized in her facethe characteristic lividity of a corpse. I awoke with

a start, and, while I had constantly been in thehabit of regarding as dreams all apparitions of thiskind of which I had heard, nevertheless I did nothesitate to say to the hotel-servant, when he entered28 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.the room the next morning : " To-morrpw eveningyou will receive for me a letter from Paris in amourning envelope." The letter arrived on the dayand at the hour indicated. It announced that whichI already knewthat I had lost my poor friend onthe night of the twelfth of January.The following fact is no less significant. It wasrelated to me by my friend Victor Pilhes. These

are the circumstances of its occurrence :" Victor Pilhes had just been nominated Eepresentativefor Ari^ge in the legislature of 1849,when the manifestation of the thirteenth of Junetook place. Intelligence was brought that the Frencharmy was marching on Eome to overthrow theEoman Eepublic. The constitution being thusopenly violated, some energetic men resolved to defendit. But France, emasculated by the governmentswhich had succeeded since the eighteenth



Brumaire, hastened mere in servitutemto plungeinto serfdom, as Tacitus hath it. Instead of followingthose who defended her rights and interests, shehanded them over to the mercies of the soldiery andpolice. Having come together without arms, theywere easily dispersed or arrested. However, a smallgroup of eight representatives of the people, amongstthem the President of the Mountain, Deville andVictor Pilhes, was in the court of the Conservatoire,under the guard of troopers. At this moment theysaw a company of chasseurs a pied coming in searchof them. They had still a chance of escape,POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 29owing to the indescribable tumult in the inclosure,when Deville cried out:" I was a captain at Waterloo, and I did not fly;to-day I defend the Eight and the Law, and I willnot desert my post, come what may."Electrified by these noble and patriotic words, theother representatives followed his example, anddesirous of standing to their posts to the very endpermitted themselves to be conducted to the Conciergerie.

Betrayed after five months impeachment,they were brought before the High Court atVersailles and condemned to death. A decree of theProvisional Government having abolished this punishmentfor political ofifences, the sentence had to becommuted to one of perpetual detention in a stateprison. About 1854 they were in the fortress ofBelle Isle, where Deville had a stroke of paralysis.After sundry delays, he obtained his liberty and returnedto Tarbes, to his family. Some months afterhis departure, "Victor Pilhes, who, in the meanwhile,had been transferred to St. Pelagie, saw during hissleep Deville appear to him, saying

:" You are one of the men whom I have best lovedduring my life. I have come to bid you a last farewell; I am dying."Our prisoner immediately awoke ; but, althoughthis vision was to him but an ordinary dream, hecould sleep no more. When he left his cell, herelated his dream to his comrades, who attached noimportance to it. Their attention was not attracted30 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.until the next morning, when they received a letterfrom Tarbes announcing the death of Deville.The first time that Victor Pilhes told me this story,

I, like himself, saw nothing more in it than an ordinarydream, followed by a curious coincidence. Suchis no longer the case; since, some hundreds ofanalogous facts have come to my notice.I close here the list of posthumous manifestationsattributed to the human personality, reserving tomyself, however, the right to return to the subjectin one of the following chapters, to complete it incertain respects. I could easily double or eventreble it, with merely the documents which have



been furnished to me ; but I fancy that enough hasbeen said to attract the attention of thoughtfulpersons. Still, I shall refer any who yet entertaindoubts to the many works written upon this topic,of some of which the authors are learned physiciansor eminent legal functionaries.CHAPTER II.FACTS ESTABLISHING THE EXISTENCE OF A SECONDPERSONALITY IN THE LIVING MAN. ITS VARIOUSMODES OF MANIFESTATION.The existence of the posthumous personality beingdemonstrated by some thousands of facts, observedin all ages and among all peoples, it remains toseek out its nature and origin. Evidently it proceedsPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 3Lfrom the living personality, whose continuation itshows itself, with its form, habits, prejudices, &c.Let us, then, inquire if there is not found in man aprinciple which, detaching itself from the bodywhile the vital forces abandon the latter, continuesfor some time the action of the human individuality.Numerous facts show that this principleexists, and that it sometimes manifests itself duringlife, exhibiting, at the same time, the characteristics

of the living personality and those of theposthumous personality. I shall now relate somedrawn from the best sources, and which seemconclusive. The first was communicated to meon my passage to Eio Janeiro.It was in 1858 ; they were still talking, in theFrench colony of that capital, of a singular apparitionwhich had taken place some years earlier.An Alsatian family, comprising a husband, wife,and little girl of a very tender age, were on avoyage for Eio Janeiro, where they were intendingto join some compatriots established in that city.The voyage was long; the wife fell sick, and, no

doubt for want of care and proper nourishment,succumbed before reaching port. The day of herdeath she fell into a syncope, remained a longtime in this state, and when she recovered consciousnesssaid to her husband, who was watchingby her side:" I die happy, for now I am relieved of anxietyas to the fate of our child. I have been to Eio32 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.Janeiro, and found the street and the house ofour friend Fritz the carpenter. He was standingin the doorway. I showed him the little one ; I

am sure that on your arrival he will recognize herand take care of her."Some moments later she expired. The husbandwas surprised at this message, yet, however, attachedbut little importance to it. The same day, andat the same hour, Fritz the carpenter, the Alsatianof whom I have spoken, was in the doorway of thehouse that he occupied in Eio Janeiro, when hethought he saw passing in the street one of hiscompatriots, holding in her arms a little girl. She



looked at him supplicatingly, and seemed to holdout to him the child which she carried. Her face,which seemed extremely emaciated, nevertheless remindedhim of that of Lotta, the wife of his friendand compatriot Schmidt. The expression of her face,the singularity of her gait, which seemed morethat of a vision than of something real, made alively impression upon Fritz. Wishing to satisfyhimself that he was not the dupe of an illusion,he called one of his workmen from the shop, alsoan Alsatian, and from the same locality." Look ! " said he. " Do you not see a womanpassing there, in the street, holding a child inher arms ; and would not one say that it is Lotta,the wife of our countryman Schmidt ?"" I cannot say ; I don't see it distinctly," answeredthe workman.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. .33Fritz said nothing more ; but the different circumstancesof this real or imaginary apparitiondeeply impressed themselves on his mind, especiallythe hour and day. Some time after thathe saw his compatriot Schmidt arrive, carrying

a little girl in his arms. The visit of Lotta wasthen immediately recalled to his mind, and beforeSchmidt could open his mouth he said to him:"My poor friend, I know all! Your wife diedon the voyage, and before dying she came to showme her little girl, so that I might take care ofit. See here, I have marked the date and hour !"It was exactly the day and the moment notedby Schmidt on board the ship.It was from reflecting upon the different circumstancesof this story that I first deduced the

problem of the doubling of the human personality.(^)(') The projection of the Double, of which many examples arerecorded in -works Trhich treat of psychical phenomena, occurs intwo waysthe involuntary and the intentional. Our author givesillustrations of both. An intense concentration of desire by amoribund or somnambulic person often carries the Double with arush to the vicinity of the individual thought of, without theoperator being at all acquainted with the process of projection. Insome, the Double is so loosely attached to the physical organismthat it can easily, and even without the conscious intent of theperson, go out and make itself visible. Cases are cited under. Butin Asiatic psychical science this psychic projection is a recognizedsiddhi, or acquired power, capable of development, but known to be

dangerous, especially for neophytes, as the liberated and travellingDouble, in a measure like a new-born infant, is liable to the gravestinjury, and equally needs close watching and care. Hence thephenomenon is strictly forbidden unless under the guardian teacher's334 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.But I could not, from a single example, establisha theory which was at every point the antithesisof that which I had been taught as to the natureof man. I had to wait until an accumulation of



facts should corroborate the first. My studies uponthe posthumous being tended towards this result,I compared the post-sepulchral phantom with theliving phantom, and I had not much trouble inconvincing myself that it was the same personage.I could not, however, establish such a conclusionsave upon the basis of a great number of proofs.I then consulted the works of those writers who,after a more or less direct method, had treateda's) supervision. So, also, it is a feature of the Eastern psychicaltraining to be taught how the Double, upon reaching theintended foeug of concentration, may be compacted into visibilityto the ordinary observer. By " telepathic impact " upon the mindof a selected individual, or upon those of two or more, that personor those persons may be made to either see or not see the apparitionthe living phantom, as D'Assier prefers calling it. Where theprojection has been sporadic, and the operator is ignorant ofpsychical science, those only will see the Doubleunless, of course,a dense solidification, like the mediumistie " materialisations,"occurswho are natural clairvoyants. In India, two classes ofphantom-seers are known, viz. , the devagani, or those who can seethe higher races of the elemental kingdoms, and the rakshamsganior pisdcJiagani, those who can only see the lower orders of phantoms,including earth-bound human souls. The natural affinities of

these two classes of visionaries are clearly defined in Bhagvatgita(cap. ix.), where Sri Krishna says each will, after quitting the body,go to the sphere and companionship to which his attractions tend.(For something about projection of Double, and special power ofcertain persons to see wraiths, &c., see The Monastery (Scott),caps. iv. and xx., the latter a very interesting illustration of throwngofglamour.)POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 35this question. I found in the reports of the theologians,magistrates, physicians, magnetizers, &c.,a harvest of facts much more abundant than Ihad dared to hope for. The doubling of the humanpersonality, and, as a consequence, the existence of

the posthumous phantom, became for me a matterof certainty. I shall now transcribe some of theexamples which have seemed to me the most conclusiveand most worthy of credence. The firstis taken from the book published, in 1864, byM. Grougenot des Mousseaux, under the title,Les hauta phSnomenes de la Magie, pric^dSs duSpiritiame Antique.An officer of the English army, having takenfurlough with the intention of returning from Indiain the year 1830, had been at sea a fortnight, whenmeeting the captain, he said to him:

"So you have on board a mysterious passenger,whom you are hiding ?"" You're joking."" No ; I have seen him, distinctly seen him f,:but he will not re-appear."" What do you mean ? Explain yourself."" Very well. I was just about to retire, when Isawa stranger enter the saloon, go all round itfrom cabin to cabin, opening the doors, and each*



time, on leaving, shake his head. Having drawnaside the curtain of mine, he looked in, saw me,and as I was not the one whom he sought, hequietly retired and disappeared."3236 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY." Boh ! But how was he dressed, and what wasthe age and appearance of your unknown ?"The officer described him with minuteness andaccuracy."Ah! God forbid!" cried the captain. "Ifwhat you say were not absurd, that would be myfather. . It could be no one else !"The voyage finally terminated. Then thecaptain returned to England, where he learned thathis father had ceased to live, and that the dateof his death was posterior to the date of theapparition ; but that, on that very day, and at thehour of the apparition, being ill, he becamedelirious. The members of the family, who hadwatched by him, added, in speaking of this crisis,that in his delirium he had cried out

:" Whence, think you, I have come ? Well, Ihave crossed the sea. I have visited the vessel ofmy son. I have made the round of the cabins. Iopened them all, and I did not see him in any ofthem."Des Mousseaux tells us that he had this storyfrom an old captain of Sepoys of the British armyin India, and that the latter had learned it from thefamily of the captain of the ship.That which first strikes one in this story is theinstantaneousness of the passage of the fluidic man.The living phantom moves with a rapidity not less

marvellous than the posthumous phantom. Thefather of the ship's captain goes to find the vesselPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 37of his son on the Indian route, examines attentivelythe cabins in turn, and comes back almost in thesame instant. All that lasts only the time of onecrisis. We have seen the same fact repeated in theaerial journey of the Alsatian woman to EioJaneiro. This is a characteristic peculiar to everyfluidic form, whether living or posthumous. I havegiven, in the preceding chapter, the reason of thisphenomenon, which seems inexplicable at firstsight. Another fact to notice is that, according to

the story of the persons of the family who witnessedhis sickness, the father of the ship's captain,, themoribund, had fallen into delirium some momentsbefore he went to search after his son, and thedelirium continued until his return. Perhaps theexpression, delirium, is badly chosen, and it is aquestion of syncope that we are dealing with.The state of syncope would seem to be the mostfavourable for the flight of the living phantom ; ('")we have seen it occur in the case of the Alsatian



woman. I shall have occasion to cite otherexamples. With certain persons, sleep is quiteenough to permit of the projection of the Double.('") Exactly ; for, imder the disturbance of the normal equilibriumof the corporeal and psychical energies, the potentiality of the latteris changed to actuality, and vice versa. As the potential energyin a bent spring becomes vis viva when the compression is removed,so the latent potentiality of trans-corporeal psychical projectionand function develops into actual work when the body becomesabnormally deprived of its usual power to restrain and compressthe soul. This crisis may be brought on by disease, or consciouslyand with set purpose, as by Indian ascetics.38 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.Here is an instance which I borrow from the sameauthor:Mr. Eobert Bruce, a connection of the eminentScotch family of that name, was first mate of avessel. One day he was sailing near the banks ofNewfoundland, and making the usual calculationsfor longitude and latitude, when he thought he sawthe captain seated at his desk ; but he looked closerand saw that it was a stranger, whose fixed gazefilled him with astonishment. Hurrying on deck

to the captain, who perceived his agitation, heasked him:" Who is that at your desk ?"" Nobody," answered the captain." Yes, there is some one. Is it a stranger ; andhow could that be ?"" You dream, or you're joking.""Not at all. Kindly come down to the cabinand see."They went down, and found no one seated at the

desk. The ship was searched throughout, but nostranger was found."Nevertheless, the man I saw writing at yourslate must have left, his writing there," said themate to the captain.They examined the slate; it bore these words:"Steer to the Nor'-West."" But this writing is yours, or some one's onboard ?""No."POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 39Each member of the ship's company was made to

write the same sentence, but not one of thewritings resembled that on the slate," Well, let us obey this order. Put the ship tothe Nor'-West ; the wind is fair, and we may easilymake the experiment."Three hours later, the look-out reported aniceberg, and a vessel from Quebec, bound forLiverpool, frozen to it. She was dismantled, andcrowded with people. The passengers, were alltaken off by the boats of Bruce's ship.



At the moment when one of these men passedthe gangway of the rescuing vessel, Bruceshuddered, and started back much moved. It wasthe stranger whom he had seen writing the wordson the slate. He communicated the fact to thecaptain."Kindly write 'Steer to the Nor'-West' on thisslate," said the captain to the new-comer, holdingout to him the side on which was no writing. Thestranger wrote the sentence." Well, you acknowledge that to be your usualhand ? " said the captain, who was struck with theidentity of the writings." But you saw me write it. How can you doubtit?''The captain's only reply was to turn up the otherside of the slate, and the stranger was confoundedon seeing on both sides his own handwriting." Do you think you dreamed tlât you wrote on40 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.this slate ? " asked the captain of the wreckedvessel of him who had just written." No ; at least, I have no recollection of it."" But what was this passenger doing at noon ? " '

asked the rescuing captain of his colleague." Being much fatigued, he fell into a profoundsleep, and, as near as I can remember, it must havebeen shortly before noon. An hour or more after heawoke and said to me, ' Captain, we shall be savedto-day. I have dreamed that I was on board avessel, and that it would come to our rescue.' Hedescribed the barque and her rig ; and great wasour surprise, when you bore down towards us, torecognize the accuracy of his description. Finally^the passenger said, in his turn : ' What seems to mestrange is that everything here seems familiar tome, and yet I have never been here before !

' " (")I will make one remark upon this strangeadventure.In the apparitions which occurred at Eio Janeiro,and on board the returning Indiaman, the Alsatianwoman, as well as the father of the ship's captain,recollected perfectly, on coming out of their lethargy,the journey which they had made, and related itsdifferent particulars to the persons about them.Here we see the passenger announcing to the captainof the wreck that another vessel is coming to their(") Por the original narrative from -which the above was condensed,see fiobert Dale Owen's Footfalls on the Boundary of another

World, pp. 334341. 0.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 41rescue, but lie has not the least remembrance ofthat which he had written upon the slate of the shipwhich was to save them. When he came aboard herit seemed as though he could remember her, andyet he declared that he had never been there before.He had only fragmentary, confused reminiscences ofwhat had occmrred to him while out in the Double.One would say that we have here solutions of continuity



in his dream. That is not surprising. Thephenomena of " doubling" present, as\we shall seein the course of this book, all the shades] of difference,from the complete and living apparition of thehuman form to the simplest dreams. These differentmanifestations evidently depend upon the degreeof moral energy in the individual, the tension of hismind toward a determined result, his physical constitution,his age, and probably other causes aswell, of which we are ignorant. ('^) The sameapplies to the memory of what passes during the'* doubling." Certain persons recollect most accuratelyall that they have done, seen, or heard.Others only catch vague and broken reminiscencesalternated with perfect blanks ; others have no remembranceof the part which they have playedduring their lethargic sleep. Such is the case ofsome somnambules, about whom I shall soon haveoccasion to remark.Now let us open the book of a man whose name(") See note ante.42 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.carries weight in everything pertaining to therational use of magnetism, Du Potet. Q^)

"We read the following on page 549 of his book:" The following fact is well attested, and may begrouped with the phenomena of the order ofspiritism which are the most difficult to explain. Itwas published in a manual, The Pocket Book ofthe Friends of Religion, for 1811, by Jung Stilling,to whom it was related as a personal experience byBaron de Salza, chamberlain of the king of Sweden.The baron says that, having been to pay a visit toa neighbour, he returned to his house about midnight,an hour at which, in summer, there is lightenough in Sweden for one to read the finest print.

" As I arrived," said he, " in my domain, myfather came to meet me before the park gate. Hewas dressed as usual, and held in his hand a canethat my brother had carved. I saluted him, andwe had a long conversation together. We arrivedthus at the house, and at the door of his room.Upon entering, I saw my father undressed, lyingin his bed in a deep sleep; at the same instantthe apparition vanished. Presently my fatherawoke, and looked at me with an inquiring expression."' My dear Edward,' said he, ' God be praisedthat I see you again safe and sound, for I have

been extremely worried on your account in my(") Cours de Magnetisme Animal.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 43dream. It seemed to me that you had fallen intothe water, and were in danger of being drowned.'" Now that very day," added the baron, " I hadgone with one of my friends to the river to fish forcrabs, and I just escaped being carried away bythe current. I related to my father that I had seenhis apparition at the park gate, and that we had a



long talk together. He replied that such thingsoften happened to him."One of the most striking and at the same timeimprobable facts is here presented. The humanphantom speaks and sustains a conversation of somelength. In the preceding examples the apparitionsare mute. Nothing is more natural. There isneeded a special organ for producing speech, and aninterior force which puts this apparatus in motion.Admitting that the phantom duplicates the interior,as well as the exterior, of the human mechanism,whence does it draw the breath which puts in play thephonetic machine ? If the passenger on the wreckedship above mentioned could have spoken, it isprobable that, instead of writing on the slate theinstructions which were to save him and his companions,he would have transmitted them directly inan audible voice to the mate, Mr. Bruce, who stoodbefore him in the captain's room. Should we, then^regard as absurd and completely impossible the adventureattributed to the father of the chamberlainof the king of Sweden ? By no means, for it isconfirmed by a crowd of analogous histories, of which44 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

I shall. cite some. Let us simply say, to explain thecontradiction which exists between the two apparitionsof which I have spoken, that the humanphantom never loses its relation with the body whichit has quitted, by a sort of fluidic communicationwhich unites the one with the other. It is in thelatter that the living force is acting which is necessaryfor its different evolutions. Useless to add thatthis force has its maximum at the emerging point,that it weakens with distance, and attains nullitywhen this distance exceeds certain limits. Thephantom of the chamberlain's father, not havinggone beyond the inclosure of the park, was consequently

at but a short distance from the chateauwhere lay the body from which he drew his activepower, and could therefore manifest itself by speech,whilst the case was quite different with the phantomof the passenger, which had had to travel a distanceof some leagues to reach the room of the captain. ('*)(") Quite another explanation would te given by Asiatic psychologists.No audible sound need have been uttered to make the soubelieve his father was speaking : it was only necessary for them tobe in perfect psychic sympathy, and for the father to think intentlythat he was talking. The illusion of audible speech would then beimparted to the son's sensorium by the vibratory effect of the psychicthought-current upon the same sensitive conductor that is the final link

between the sensorium and the mechanical apparatus of the ear andauditory passage. Instead of air-vibrai ions telephonically workingthe auditory mechanism, the agent would now be the subtler motionsof a thought-current. This postulates the assumption that thoughtcauses vibrations in a medium through which it can telepathicallyact, and such is the claim made. I have tested it experimentally!and seen it often done by otherp.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 45Let us quote another fact of a speaking-apparitionfrom the same author.



Stilling gives some interesting details about a manwho lived in 1740, who passed a retired life, hadstrange habits, and resided in the neighbourhood ofPhiladelphia, U.S.A. This man had the reputationof possessing extraordinary secrets, and of beingable to discover the most hidden things. Amongstthe most remarkable proofs that he gave of his power,the following was regarded by Stilling as wellauthenticated:A ship's captain had gone for a long voyage toEurope and Africa ; his wife, who had received nonews of him for a long time, was advised to apply tothis expert ; he begged her to excuse him while hewent in search of the particulars which she desired.He passed into the adjoining room, and she took aseat to wait. As his absence was prolonged, shegrew impatient, and thought that he had forgottenher ; she softly approached the door, looked througha blind, and was astonished to see him lying on asofa motionless as if he were dead. She did notthink it right to disturb him, but awaited his return.He told her that her husband had been preventedfrom writing by such and such reasons, that he was

at that moment in a cafe in London, and that hewould soon return home. The return of the husbandoccurred, agreeably with what had been thus announced; and the wife, having asked of him themotives of his long silence, he alleged the very46 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.reasons which the adept had given her. The wifehad a great desire to verify the remainder of theseparticulars. She was fully satisfied in this respect,for her husband had no sooner set his eyes on themagician than he remembered having seen him ona certain day in a London coffee-house, where thisman had told him that his wife was very uneasy

about him ; to which the captain had replied by explainingwhy he had been prevented from writing,and had added that he was on the eve of embarkingfor America. The captain had afterwards lost sightof this stranger, and had heard nothing more ofhim.Here, again, is a speaking phantom, and thistime at several hundreds of leagues away from thestarting point; for he had to cross the Atlanticto go from the suburbs of Philadelphia to thecoffee-house in London. The explanation that wehave given of this phenomenon on the precedingpage does not apply here. It is, in fact, difficult

to believe that the Double of the adept exertedthe force that was necessary for these phoneticmanifestations in the physical body. The distancewhich separates the phantom from its centre ofaction seems too great. A new explanation becomesnecessary. We find it in an experimentalfact well known to all those who are occupied inany way with the study of man considered fromthe point of view of these fluidic manifestations.It is, that every phantom exerts its force, not only



POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 47in the body whence it proceeds, but also in thatof persons whose physical or moral constitutionresembles its own, or which by their nature presenta marked tendency towards what is commonlycalled the phenomena of spiritism. The Seeressof Prevorst, about whom I shall have frequentoccasion to speak, possessed this faculty in thehighest degree. She felt that she was nourishedby the emanations of those who came to see her.The members of her family were those who gaveher the most strength, by reason of the conformityof their constitution to this sort of vampirism, andthey felt themselves weakened after they had spentsome minutes near her. It was, then, in the bodyof the ship's captain, or in that of one of thepersons in the same room with him, that thephantom of the expert fed himself with .vital force,and thus supplied the deficiency of the currentwhich reached him from Philadelphia. ('')('*) Ingenious, but, I think, not correct. The operator, in thisinstance, -was a trained expert, who was able, it seems, to performthis phenomenon of projection at will. We are not told whetherthe phantom saw the captain alone or in company ; or, if the latter,

whether his companions also saw it and heard the conversation.Even if others were present, it was quite within the power of askilful expert of the sort to '' materialize " his phantom into visibilityand create a voice. Beaders of theosophical literature willrecollect the story of my personally having had such an experienceat New York before my leaving for India, my occult visitor's bodybeing then actually more than double the distance away from wherewe were talking than this alleged Philadelphia expert was fromhis body. My visitor gave me a turban cloth, in connection withwhich phenomenon see Scott's The Monastery, chap, xvii., where48 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.It is not, however, tlie dialogue of the phantom

that must be considered the most curious trait ofthis narrative. What strikes one, in my opinion,the most is the facility with which the expert fallsinto lethargy to undertake his voyage of exploration.Until now, we have seen apparitions producethemselves in a more or less unconscious manner,following after a sleep more or less lethargic, yetnatural. In the case we are now considering, thepatient knows that he is about to project theDouble, and, to accomplish his object, he shutshimself in his room, lies upon a sofa, and sleeps,or rather falls into syncope, for it is not a questionhere of an ordinary sleep. Certain privileged beings,

that is to say, who present, in certain physiologicalaspects, an organization of extreme delicacy, producesurprising effects, which seem so many inexplicablephenomena, but which are in realitybut the exaggerated development of a principleinherent in our nature and common to all men.These personalities are rare; one sees them ariseonly at certain epochs.('^) In antiquity it was Moses,Halbert G-lendinning receives from the elemental guardian of thehouse of Avenel a certain solid objectlike my present, "materialized



" at the instant.('^) This leaves qûifce out of the account the vrhole great body ofAsiatic adepts, yogis, fakirs, and other religious ascetics. Por oneexample of psychic projectionsince it is useless to multiply instancessee aa article on " Maroti Bd-vri's Wonders," in theTheosophist magazine, vol. ii. p. 6, and confirmation of the narrativeon page 202 of the same volume. The holy man was still livingat latest accounts.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 49Appolonius of Tyana, Simon Magus ; then it wasMerlin the Enchanter and the thaumaturgists ofthe first centuries of the (Ihristian era. In ourtimes we have had Swedenborg, Cagliostro, andthe Seeress of Prevorst. The adept of Philadelphiabelongs to this galaxy.If it is surprising to see a vocal organ in thehuman phantom, it is still more so to learn thatthe latter also possesses a digestive apparatus. Aglass of water, for example, can be swallowed bythe fluidic image of a person and instantaneouslypass into that person's body. I might quote severalexamples of this kind, taken from different authors;but intending to devote a special chapter to the

ogreish, propensities of the posthumous man, I willnot enter here into any of the details of. the subject.I will but add that this apparatus can onlybe the gaziform replica of that which exists in thebody, and that it is united to the latter by a plexusof invisible capillaries. (") This supposition is, nodoubt, contrary to all the laws of physics. One(") Many cases of eating and drinking by " materialized spirits"are reported in the literature of Modern Spiritualism. It is paid thatthe food and drink pass into the medium's stomach, though apparentlyconsumed by the apparition at some yards' distance. There is notactual deglutition, but a disintegration of the food, and its transfer

as highly attenuated and invisible matter to the medium's bodyif it goes there ; otherwise it is dispersed in space. One of theeasiest yet most interesting of mesmeric experiments is to transfersensations of sound, taste, feeling, &c., from the operator to thesubject. The transfer of disintegrated matter is only a stepfarther.450 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.cannot explain how an aeriform recipient canreceive, without disintegrating itself, a liquid soheavy as water; and a thing still more extraordinary,how this liquid passes into another receptacle

placed at a distance, and having with the first noapparent communication. It must be distinctlyaffirmed, and I shall have several occasions to repeatit, that the fluidic world obeys, in certain ofits manifestations, laws as yet unfathomed, andwhich seem to connect themselves, at least in part,to the very obscure problem of the rarification ofmatter. It would not be impossible, however, tofind analogies in the physical world. ('^) Let us(") Authok's Note :^Nature displays to us various phenomena



-wliich are not without analogy to that I have just described. Suchare waterspouts. Navigators who have had the opportunity ofobservation see the lower surface of a cloud elongating itself intothe form of a conical tube, which stretches itself downwards towardsthe sea. At the moment when its extremity is about to touch thesurface of the water, the latter, twisting itself into a column, penetratesinto the centre of the tube and rises up to the cloud, whichswells and blackens more and more. Often they see, through thetransparent sides of the tube, the water rise with the spiral motionof a screw. When the cloud is saturated with water, or ratherwhen the opposing electricities which have produced this attraction"between the sea and the meteor are neutralized, the aspiring tubebreaks and the cloud discharges itself in rain. If one reflects that"the walls of the tube are of extreme fluidity, and yet that theylesist the full force of the gyratory pressure of the ascendingcolumn, one can easily convince himself that this phenomenon isnot less extraordinary than the passage of a glass of water into thedigestive organs of a phantom of a fluidiform nature, or than thepresence of blood in its circulatory apparatusa circumstancewhich is about to present itself for notice in the followingexamples.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 51only bear in mind this principle of natural philosophy,so familiar to all who devote themselves to

the study of science : there is no solution of continuityin nature. The child who comes out ofthe body of its mother is attached to her by avascular system which brought it strength and life.It is the same in this doubling ; the human phantomis constantly in immediate relation with thebody whence it has wandered for some moments.Invisible bonds, and of a vascular nature, so intimatelyconnect the two extremities of the chain,that any accident happening to one of the twopoles reacts (se refercute) instantaneously upon theother. My meaning will be better understood fromthe examples I am about to relate. The first was

extracted by Des Mousseaux from the judicialarchives of England:" A young son of Henry Jones, the little Eichard,was one day touched by a woman named JaneBrooks. Passing her fingers downward along one ofthe child's sides, Jane, after having in a friendlyway pressed his hand, made him a present of anapple. C) He lost no time in cooking and eating it.(") AVhich, of course, she had impregnated beforehand with hermalignant aura. A' glass of water mesmerized with kindly intentwill act as a specific against disease ; mesmerized with a vicious intent,is capable of killing a sensitive, like a deadly poison. Does the

Western reader now get an idea of the real secret of the HinduBrahman's unwillingness to wear, sit upon, eat, drink, or touchthings that have been iu contact with non-Brahmans, that is to say,of persons who have not become psychically purifi^d, as the trueBrahman has, by strict training of soul, mind, and body ? The4252 P.OSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.A moment later he fell sick, and the illness becameserious. Now, one Sunday, when the child, tormentedwith the curious sickness which had seized



upon his body, was watched by his father and awitness named Grilson, he suddenly cried out, atabout noon:" 'Look, there is Jane Brooks !'"' Where, where ?'" ' There, on the wall. There, don't you see her,at the end of my finger ?'"For this sorceress, as well as the one who willappear in the next anecdote, seemed to enter theroom, as she also left it, by passing throughthe wall ! Q°) Nobody, it should be remarked, distinguishedher except little Eichard. Was he thenfeverish ? did he dream ? Gilson, however, springingto the place pointed out by the child, slashed at itwith a knife." ' Oh, father ! Grilson has made a cut on Jane'shand ; she is all over blood.'" What was to be believed or done ? As quick asmere touch of a vile man or woman defiles by the evil aura it

communicates. Hindus are not such fools as to shake hands, as wedo, with the most casual acquaintance. Above all, women andchildren should be careful whose hand they touch.(^') At will, a psychic expert can in a moment condense hisDouble so that it would no more pass through a wall, or even alattice, than one's physical body could ; and in the next momentprovided, always, that he keeps perfect command over his memoryand willcan volatize or aerify it into invisibility, when it can passthrough granite. And the same can be done by the " posthumousphantom.''POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 53thought, Eichard's father and Gilson ran to the

house of the constable. The constable was one ofthose quite rare indiridualSj of a blass that ouracademies would find the greatest jprofit to drawtheir recruits from, who know ho* to listen topeople of sound judgment, however strange andsingular their speech may seem to be. He gavethem then quite a magisterial attention, that is tosay that he put no obstacles in their way, but atonce accompanied them to the house of the accused.They entered unceremoniously. Jane, seated uponher stool, held one of her hands with the other."' How do you get on, mother ? ' said the

constable." ' Not so very well,, sir.'" ' But why are you covering up one of your handswith the other ?'"' Oh, that is only my way.'" ' Is that hand paining you, then, perhaps ?'" ' No, not at all,'



" ' But you must have, something the matter withit ; let me look.'" And as the old woman refused, the constable,quickly grasping her, uncovered her hand allover blood. It was exactly as the child describedit." ' It was a large pin that terribly tore me,' criedout the old woman."But it was averred furthermore that a host ofsimilar wicked acts committed by this wretch had54 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.come to the knowledge of many witnesses. Jane,arraigned. at the assizes, was condemned on the 16thof March, 1658, and that also marked the timewhen the sufferings of the boy Eichard ceased."Messrs. Robert Hunt and John Carey, justicesofthe peace, before whom Jane was tried, affirmedthat they had seen with their own eyes a part ofthe phenomena on which the accusation was based.And every one knows the high position which thesemagistrates hold in England. Needless to say thatall the witnesses deposed upon oath, which isimportant."One cannot misunderstand the cause of the

wound which the sorceress tried to conceal. Thiswound had been perceived upon the phantom's handby the boy Richard at the moment when theslashing stroke of the knife was made, and it wasfound almost immediately afterwards by the constableon the hand of Jane, in the latter's dwelling.The child had seen not only the wound, but also theblood which spurted from it. The direct communicationbetween the body and its phantom is hereestablished in an official and undeniable manner.It implies in the phantom the existence of anarterial and venous systemâ system which is inreality but the fluidic replica of that which is in the

body. It may be asked if the blood which the boyRichard saw coming from the wound of the phantomwas really arterial blood, or only its appearance.The following story affords the answer. I take itPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 55from the same author, who has exhumed it, likethe preceding one, from English judicial records:" Another woman, named Juliana Cox, had attainedher seventieth year ; and as she knocked one day,while begging, at the door of a house, a servant-maidwho opened it gave her a rough welcome. ' Verywell, my child; very well! Before this evening

you shall repent of this !' and that very night themaid was writhing in the most frightful convulsions." As soon as she felt better, she cried loudly forhelp, earnestly begging the people of the house tocome. ' See, see, this miserable beggar-woman ispursuing me ;' and, pointing with her finger, thepoor girl pretended to show the infamous oldwoman, whom no other eye than hers could discover



! ' She must be hallucinated, maniacal,hysterical ; what could be clearer ? Let her leave usin peace.' These were the expressions uttered abouther in the kitchen by the philosophers in petticoatswho surrounded her, and the molestations took theircourse. But one fine morning the servant-girl, perfectlycertain that she should see her tormentorcoming again, conceived the happy thought ofarming herself with a cutlass. The phantom ofJuliana Cox did in fact soon renew her visit ; when,seizing her cutlass, the girl dealt a blow at her invisibleenemy, and before all the witnesses who sawthe flash of the blade her bed became instantlysprinkled with blood. It was the leg of the phantom,she said, that had received the blow. ' Let us go56 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and see,' she cried ; and immediately she went, wellaccompanied, to the house of Juliana, Their purposewas to verify the wound. On. arriving, they knockedat the door, but they might have knocked a long timeif they had not burst it open ; then they rushed intoJuliana's room. Quick, quick, what says the leg ?The leg, newly wounded, had been dressed not morethan a few minutes before. And the lips of a

wound have sometimes an indiscreet and terriblelanguage. They then compared it with the servant'scutlass. What then ? The blade exactly fitted thewound. The blow aimed at the spectre of the beggarwoman,in a house where there were so many good eyeswhich ought to have been able to see her, but didnot, thus took effect on this same woman in a placeother than that of the apparition. However, it sohappened that the wound, which seems to have reboundedfrom the phantom to the person, was visibleand palpable to everybody. Nevertheless, the obsessionsof which the poor servant was the victimdid not cease until the day Juliana Fox was arrested.

She was judged and condemned."Here we not only see the wound made by thecutlass on the phantom's leg, but the bed on whichthe scene took place is sprinkled with blood at thesame instant. Several persons were witnesses of thismarvel. There may have been some exaggerationin the description, and the blood sprinkled on thebed may be reducible to a few drops; but thequantity of liquid spilled matters little ; it was seenPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 57to flow at the instant the blow was struck. This factsuffices. Doubt is no longer possible ; the phantompossesses a circulatory apparatus as well as the body

of which it is the double. Invisible capillaries unitethe one to the other, and the whole forms a systemso homogeneous, so closely connected, that theslightest prick received by the phantom at oncereacts {se repercute) on all the vascular apparatus upto the extremity of the chain, and blood flows immediately.This explains the instinctive aversion shownby phantoms to fire-arms, swords, and cutting instrumentsof all kinds. It is the most certain wayof putting them to flight, unless, however, feeling



themselves the stronger, they try to disarm theiradversaries. I shall return to this subject furtheron, and cite some examples. This fact was known inantiquity, and all the authors who have treated ofspiritism or demonologya designation which, accordingto us, is only applicable to phantoms of theliving or the deadare imanimous in testifyingto it. (2')(") In oeremonial magic, one of the necessary articles is a consecrated,i.e., well mesmerised, sword, which the magician mayuse as a defence against certain low classes of spectres. Ulysseswith his sword drives off the phantoms which swarm to absorbthe aura of his blood-sacrifice for the evocation of Tiresias, andeven the latter cannot approach him while he holds the wand inhis grasp. Mneaa, too, when about to descend to the realm ofthe shades, is warned by the Sybil, his guide, to draw his sword andclear a passage for himself through the crowd of phantoms. Seealso PseUus {Be Deemm.) and other classical authorities. An interestingand learned discussion of the subject is in Im Unveiled,vol. i., d&Zetseq.58 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.We have seen tiiat the human phantom is able tospeak, when not too far distant from its startingpoint. At other times its lips are seen to move without

any sounds being heard. (^^) Such is the casein the following instance reported by Graerres :" Mary, wife of Joseph Grofife, of Eochester, wasattacked by a wasting disease and taken to WestMailing, nine miles from her home, to the house ofher father, where she died on June 4, 1691. Onthe eve of her death, she feels a great desire to seeher two children, whom she has left at home in thecare of a nurse. . She begs her husband to hire ahorse, that she may go to Rochester and die nearher children. She is told that she is not in a fitstate to leave her bed and ride on horseback. Shepersists, and says that, at any rate, she wants to try.

" ' If I cannot sit up,' she said, ' I will lie at fulllength on the horse, for I want to see my dear littleones.'"A clergyman came to see her at about twoo'clock in the afternoon. She appeared quiteresigned to die, and full of confidence in divinemercy." ' All my trouble,' she said, ' is that I cannotsee my children again.'"Between one and two o'clock in the morning(22) Of the phantom forms that I saw at the Eddy homestead,some could only move their lips, some spoke in whispers, and otherswere able to thunder out their words in a way to be heard in any

public hall.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 69she fell into a sort of ecstasy. According to thereport of the widow Turner, who watched by herthrough the night, her eyes were fixed and hermouth shut. Her nurse placed her hand over hermouth and nostrils, and did not feel any breath;so she thought that the patient had fainted, andcould not tell whether she was dead or. alive.



When she came to herself, she told her mother thatshe had been to Eochester and seen her children."' It is impossible,' said the mother ; ' you havenot left your bed.'"'Well,' said the other, 'anyhow, I went to. seemy children to-night while I was asleep.'" The widow Alexander, the children's nurse,affirmed, on her side, .that the same morning, alittle before, two o'clock, she had seen Mary Goffecome out of the room next her own, where one ofthe children was sleeping alone, the door beingopen, and come into her room ; that she had stoppedabout a quarter of an hour by the. bed where shewas lying with the younger child. Her eyes moved,and her lips seemed to speak, but she said nothingaudibly. The nurse willingly agreed to confirm byoath, before the authorities, all that she had said,and afterwards to receive the sacraments. She addedthat she was perfectly awake, and the day wasbreaking, for it was one of the longest in the year.She was sitting up in bed, had regarded theapparition with close attention, and had heard theclock on the bridge strike two. But after a few .

60 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.instants she had said, ' In the name of the Father,the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who are you ? ' Withthese words the phantom had vanished." The nurse quickly put on some clothes to followthe phantom, but could not discover what hadbecome of it. She then began to feel somewhatalarmed. She went out of the house, which wassituated on the Quay, and walked about for somehours, going to look at the children . occasionally.About five o'clock in the morning she knocked atthe door of the adjoining house; but it was notopened until an hour later, and then she related

what had happened. They told her she had beendreaming, but she answered, 'I saw her to-nightas plain as ever I saw her in my life.' Mary de J.Liveet, one of the persons who heard her talk thus,heard in the morning that Mrs. Groffe was in thelast extremity, and wanted to speak to her. She,therefore, went to Mailing the same day, andfound her dying. The mother of the sick womantold her, among other things, that her daughterhad greatly desired to see her children, and, indeed,said she had seen them." Mary remembered the words of the nurse, fortill then she had said nothing about them,

believing there had been some illusion. Tilson,the vicar of Aylesworth-Maidstone, who has publishedthis fact, heard all the details on the day of theburial, from J. Carpenter, father of Mrs. Goffe.On the 2nd of July, he made a very exact inquiryPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 61of the nurse and the two neighbours she had visitedin the morning. The next day the account wasconfirmed by the mother of Mrs. Grofife, by theclergyman who had come to see her in the evening,



and by the person who had watched by her throughthe night. All, were unanimous in their testimony;all were calm, intelligent persons, incapable ofdeception, and who, besides, had no interest ingiving false evidence. This fact, therefore, unitesall the conditions which make it incontestible."According to the testimony of the nurse whosaw the phantom of Mary Groffe, her lips moved aswell as her eyes, and seemed to speak, but utteredno sound. It is permissible to conjecture that thismutism was due to a certain physical weakness;but to what cause shall we ascribe it ? Thedistance which separated the invalid from theplace of the apparition being but a few miles, thetheory of distance can hardly be urged. On one'side, the movements of the eyes and lips impliedon the mother's part an evident desire to bid a lastfarewell to the dear ones whom she was about toleave for ever. Moreover, the phantom had exertedall the vital force which still animated the dyingwoman. The sick-nurse, who was on watch, atteststhis very precisely when she tells us that, at themoment of the vision, Mary Goffe was as though in

ecstasis, her eyes fixed, mouth closed, and withoutany trace of breathing, so much so that she askedherself if she had not before her a lifeless corpse.62 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.It is presumable that the phonetic powerlessness ofthe image reflected the exhaustion of the dyingwoman.C^')The facts which I have just cited and analyzedare, I think, sufficiently numerous and conclusive toprove the existence of the human phantom, andedify us with respect to its intimate constitution. Icould multiply citations, but it seems useless.However, I will again borrow from Des Mousseaux

the following narrative, which, in certain respects,finishes and sums up what I have said upon thissubject:" Mr. Eobert Pale Owen was ambassador from theAmerican Republic at the Court of Naples. In 1845,this diplomatist tells us, there existed in Livonia theboarding-school of Neuwelke, about twelve leaguesfrom Eiga and half a league from Wolmar. Thesuhool contained forty-two boarders, mostly of noblefamilies, and among the assistant-mistresses was oneEmilie Sagee, of French origin, aged about thirtytwo,in good health, but nervous and of unexceptionable

deportment. A few weeks after herarrival it was noticed that when one boarder saidC) Not necessarily. On the contrary, the phantom, draTringits strength from the body, must grow stronger in proportion asthat weakens. There are many cases on record of phantoms whichhave seemed to speak, although, presumably, their bodies were inthe last extremity of weakness. If the Goffe phantom's lips moved,it was to utter the words that it was mentally framing, and,perhaps, if the children's nurse had been more sensitive she wouldhave heard them.



POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 63that she had seen her in a certain place, oftenanother one affirmed that she was in a differentplace. Upon a certain day, the young ladies, sawsuddenly two Emilie Sagees, exactly alike, andmaking the same gestures. The one, however, heldin her hand a chalk pencil, and the other nothing.Soon afterwards Antoinette de Wrangel was dressing,while Emilie was hooking her dress behind ; theyoung girl saw in a mirror, upon turning around,two Emilies hooking her dress, and fainted fromfright. Sometimes at meals the double form appearedstanding behind the chair of the assistantmistress,and imitating the movements that shemade in eating ; but the hands held neither knifenor fork. However, the doubled form seemed onlyby accident to be imitating the real person, andsometimes when Emilie rose from her chair, theDouble seemed to be sitting there. Once, Emiliebeing sick -in bed, Mdlle. de Wrangel was reading toher. Suddenly the assistant-mistress became, stiff,pale, and seemed ready to faint. The young pupilasked if she felt herself worse ; she replied in thenegative, but in a feeble voice. {^) Some seconds

(*") When the Double is projected by a trained expert, even,the body seems torpid, and the mind in a " brown study " or dazedstate ; the eyes are lifeless in expression, the heart and lung actionsfeeble, and |. often the temperature much lowered. It is verydangerous to make any sudden noise, or burst into the room, undersuch circumstances ; for the Double being by instantaneous reactiondrawn back into the body, the heart convulsively palpitates, anddeath even may be caused. The Burmese will hardly on any64 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.later, Mdlle. de Wrangel saw distinctly Emilie'sDouble walking up and down in the room."Here is the most remarkable example of bi-corporealitythat was observed in this marvellous assistantmistress

:"One day, the forty-two boarders were embroideringin the same apartment on the ground floor, andfour glazed doors of this room opened upon thegarden. They saw in this garden Emilie gatheringflowers, while at the same moment she seemed installedin the arm-chair which had been vacated. Theboarders immediately looked in the garden, wherethey still saw Emilie ; but they observed the feeblenessof her locomotion and her air of suffering ; shewas as though dull and exhausted. Two of theboldest approached the Double and tried to touch it.They felt a slight resistance, which they compared to

that of some texture in muslin or crepe. One ofthem passed through a portion of the figure ; and,after the boarder had passed, the appearanceremained the same for some moments and thengradually disappeared. This phenomenon was repeatedin different ways as long as Emilie remainedin her situation, i.e., in 1845-46, during a year anda half ; but there were intermissions of from one toseveral weeks. It was further remarked that themore distinct the Double, and more material in apaccount



consent to awaken any one from even ordinary slumber:they say the projected Double, or "butterfly-spirit,'' may be faraway and unable to get back into the body if swiftly recalled.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 65pearanee, the really material person was proportionatelywearied, suffering, and languid ; when, onthe contrary, the appearance of the Double weakened,the patient was seen to recover her strength.Emilie, finally, had no consciousness of this doubling,but learned it only by hearsay. She never saw theDouble, nor ever suspected the state into which shewas plunged. This phenomenon having alarmedthe relatives, they took away their children, and theinstitution failed."I shall now analyze, as I have in the previousexamples, the different peculiarities of this story.The facts speak for themselves ; all commentarywould be superfluous. However, I will note two orthree points which especially deserve our attention,and which enlighten us upon the nature of the fluidicbeing which seems to constitute in us a secondpersonality.In nearly all the narratives ofphantasmal doublingthat we have seen unfold themselves up to this point,

the person who was the subject of it has been inbed, motionless, and plunged either in sleep- orlethargy. The same rule holds with the greaterpart of analogous facts, which I either pass withoutremark or which I shall have occasion to cite inthe following chapters. Hence follows this naturalconclusion, that a lethargic sleep is the first necessarycondition for producing the phenomenon of theDouble. With the assistant-mistress of iiiga, wesee this doubling occur at all hours of the day,566 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.without apparent cause and under the most diverse

circumstances. This remarkable fact must be attributedto the lady's nature, who, we are told, wasof an extremely nervous organization. However,this exception is not solitary ; we shall meet othersin the course of the book.The resistance which the image of the assistantmistressofifered to the boarders, who tried to touchit, is another important fact to notice. This resistancewas compared to that which one feels inpressing a gauzy fabric. Such an indicationconfirms that which has been revealed to us bythe analysis of the human phantom from the aspectof its physical constitution. It is not purely an

optical image of our exterior form ; it is a completereplica of all the constituent parts of our organism,and this copy, far from being an ideal thing, iscomposed of material molecules. I have designatedthe phantom thus produced by the word fluid,to imply that the atoms which constitute it areborrowed from the most tenuous molecules of thehuman body. But how reconcile the resistanceoffered by these material molecules with theextreme tenuity that must be attributed to the



phantom to allow it to penetrate walls and closeddoors, for we have seen it enter the most securelyclosed rooms ?The phenomenon explains itself. We know thathydrogen, the lightest of the gases, passes throughcertain metals. We also recall the celebratedPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 67experiment of the Academicians of Florence, who,having filled a golden globe with water, saw someliquid drops appear upon the surface after they hadsubmitted it to a certain pressure. Whatever thethickness of a wall, it can be easily traversed bygaseous atoms, by reason of the numerous poreswhich in all bodies separate the molecules of eventhe densest matter.Nevertheless, the manner in which the phantomof the assistant-mistress of Eiga appeared anddisappeared gives us the solution of the problem;her image formed itself not suddenly, but byimperceptible degrees. Appearing very mist-likeat first, it was only after some moments that itshowed its full consistence. The same occurredwhen she fainted. It is thus that the phantom

proceeds who passes through a wall or partition.So to speak, he causes the molecules to pass singly,which becomes very easy, thanks to the elasticnature of thS*' gaseous elements which constituteit.e')Another fact to mark is the change which wasobserved in the attitude, gestures, and physiognomyof the assistant-mistress each time that her duplica-(^) In my book upon the Eddy phenomena, I describe (p. 2S3)an experiment I made to test the muscular power that could beexerted by a phantom hand, .detached from any visible arm. Thehand pulled 40 lbs. upon a spring-balance at the first trial, and50 lbs. at the second. The first ^vas a horizontal, the second a

vertical pullboth in fuU light, I reading the indicator scale,and alone handling the spring-balance for the phantom.5268 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.tion occurred. The boarders saw her lose colour,relax her movements, and lose her strength, inproportion as her image developed. When thelatter had attained its complete development, Emilieseemed exhausted and in a state of complete prostration.This torpor reminds us of the heavy andprofound sleep which almost always seems theenforced prelude of phantasmal duplication. Fornaturalists, nothing is simpler than the explanation

of this phenomenon. It is the application of agreat principle of animal and vegetable physiology,daily noticed in living nature, and known under thename of the law of organic compensation. Invariably,when an organ grows abnormally, it is at theexpense of those near it ; the latter diminish inratio as the other develops : the phantom of Emiliedeveloped at the expense of her body, by drawingto itself, by a sort of aspiration, its constituentelements. Thus is confirmed the existence of a



plexus of fluidiforrn capillaries connecting thephantom with the body from which it emanates.The extreme tenuity of this plexus makes itinvisible, as is the phantom itself at the momentwhen it is about to manifest itself; for we havejust read that it only becomes visible cumulativelyin proportion as its constituent molecules reach itthrough the conducting threads.Let us summarize this chapter. Innumerablefacts, observed from antiquity to our own day, demonstratein our being the existence of an inPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 69ternal realitythe internal man. Analysis of thesedifferent manifestations has permitted us to penetrateits nature. Externally it is the exact imageof the person of -whom it is the complement. Internally,it reproduces the mould of all the organswhich constitute the framework of the human body.We see it, in short, move, speak, take nourishment;perform, in a word, all the great functions ofanimal life. The extreme tenuity of these constituentmolecules, which represent the last term oforganic matter, allow it to pass through the walls

and partitions of apartments. Hence the name ofphantom, by which it is generally designated.Nevertheless, as it is united with the body fromwhich it emanates by an invisible vascular plexus, itcan, at will, draw to itself by a sort of aspiration thegreater part of the living forces which animate thelatter. One sees, then, by a singular inversion, lifewithdraw from the body, which then exhibits a cadaverousrigidity, and transfer itself entirely to thephantom, which acquires consistency, sometimeseven to the point of struggling with persons beforewhom it materializes. It is but exceptionally thatit shows itself in connexion with a living person.

But as soon as death has snapped the bonds whichattach it to our organism, it definitely separatesitself from the human body and constitutes theposthumous phantom.70 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.CHAPTER III.FACTS ESTABLISHING THE EXISTENCE OF THE PEESONALITYIX ANIMALS, AND CONCEKNING A POSTHUMOUSANIMALITY. FLUIDIC FORM OF VEGETABLES. FLUIDIC FORM OF GROSS BODIES.Is the existence in us of a living and phantasmalimage, copying our external form as well as ourinterior organization, the privilege of the human

species, or must it be considered as an attribute ofanimality ? For every man initiated in the studyof natural philosophy doubt is not permissible. Hewill unhesitatingly answer that the human animal isbut a bough of the zoological tree, all his essentialcharacteristics being found in different degrees inthe other branches. This theoretical consideration,deduced from the great law of analogies which formsone of the principal bases of natural history, is experimentallyconfirmed by a great number of facts.



Certain of these I will now cite :Towards the end of 1869, finding myself at Bordeaux,I met one evening a friend who was going toa magnetic siance, and asked me to accompany him.I accepted his invita.tion, desiring to see magnetismat close quarters, which as yet I knew only by name.This stance presented nothing remarkable ; it wasbut the repetition of what occurs at meetings ofthis kind. A young person who seemed quite lucidfilled the part ofsomnambule, and answered questionswhich were put to her. I was, however, struck withPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 71one unexpected circumstance. Towards the middleof the evening one of the persons present, havingnoticed a spider on the floor, crushed it with hisfoot."Ah!" cried the somnambule at the samemoment, " I see the spirit of the spider escaping."In the language of mediums, as we know, the wordspirit designates that which I have called the posthumousphantom." What is the form of this spirit ? " asked themagnetizer." It has the form of the spider," replied the

sleeper.At the moment I did not know what to think ofthis apparition. I certainly did not doubt the clairvoyanceof the somnambule, but not believing thenin the reality of any posthumous manifestation onthe part of man I could not admit it in animals.The history of the spider was only explained to mesome years later, when, having acquired the certitudeof the duplication of the human personality,I thought of searching for the same phenomenon inour most familiar animals. I mean those we calldomestic. After some investigations I comprehendedthat the Bordeaux somnambule had not been the

dupe of an hallucination, as sometimes happens withmagnetic subjects, but that her vision was a reality.The following facts are the more conclusive in thatthey have to do with persons wide awake, and notwith those in magnetic sleep. But, first of all, I72 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.must establish in animals the existence of the livingphantom, which will lead us to the posthumous.Several examples of phantasmal duplication inanimals are known. The following instance, vrhichI borrow from De Mirville, is significant. Asit is somewhat long, and contains details uselessfor our subject, I shall content myself with giving

a brief abstract.On April 18th, 1705, M. Milanges de la Eichardiere,son of an advocate to the Parliament of Paris,when riding on horseback in the village of Noisyle-Grand, suddenly saw his horse stop, without anyapparent obstacle that could explain this singularity.At the same time he perceived a shepherd, of asinister countenance, carrying a crook, and accompaniedby two black dogs with short ears, who saidto him



:" Monsieur, return home ; your horse will not goforward."The horseman, who at first had laughed at thewords of the shepherd, soon saw that the latter hadbut told the truth, for neither his encouragementsnor his spurs could make the beast advance, andhe was obliged to go back. Some days later, havingfallen ill, doctors were called, who, after numerousunavailing attempts to cure him, declared that thatwhich troubled the young Milanges was not of thenature of ordinary sickness, and began to talk ofsorcery. Young Milanges then recollected thescene of the horse and the shepherd, and relatedPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 73it to his parents. However, there was still someuncertainty about it, until the young man one dayentering his room saw this shepherd seated in hisarm-chair. He wore the same dress as on theday of the meeting, held his crook in his hand,and had the two black dogs by his side. Terrifiedat this sight, M. Milanges called his servants, but,as usually happens in such adventures, the latterperceived nothing. The apparition was visible only

to him to whom it had been sent. However, atabout ten o'clock that night, the phantom-shepherdhaving flung himself upon the young man, thelatter drew a knife from his pocket and made fiveor six cuts at the face of his adversary, who finallyrelinquished his hold. Some days later the shepherd,having come to ask pardon of M. Milanges,confessed that he was a sorcerer, and that it washe who had persecuted him.The young man, then, had not been duped byan hallucination when he saw the shepherd in hisroom, escorted by his two dogs. The sorcerer hadtransported himself there by projecting the Double,

and it was his phantom that M. Milanges sawseated in his arm-chair. The black dogs also werebut two phantoms; and this fact proves that thepractices of sorcery which permit the duplicationof the human being may be applied to animalswith equal success. (^){'^) Of course, everything in nature partakes of identical qualities,evolution tut bringing into activity wliat in lower organisms74 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.The existence of the living phantom being demonstratedin animals, one conceives that it may beequally so as regards the posthumous phantomwhich is its continuation. This is supported by

the following facts. The first was related to meby a farmer of the neighbourhood of Ste. Croix(Ari^ge), a serious man, and to some extent educated.Here is his story:" One of my comrades was returning from hiswatch at a late hour of the night. He was a youngman of my parish, who occupied an isolated farm.At some distance from his house he perceived anass browsing in an oat-field by the side of the road.



Moved by a feeling of neighbourly interest naturalamong farmers, he wished to take the unprofitableguest from the field, and advanced towards theanimal to seize him and lead him to his own home. until his owner should come to claim him. Theass allowing himself to be approached, my comraderemoved him from the field and led him withoutresistance. He arrived thus at the very door of thestable; but at the moment when he was about toopen it the beast suddenly disappeared from hishands like a shadow which vanishes. He lookedhad been more or less latent. The phantom-soreerer brought withhim (without, of course, their agency) the Doubles of his dogs,as he also did those of his staff, &e. Every leaf and blade of grass,nay, every grain of sand, has its phantasmal double, as man has his.Even the highest principle of allAtma, the immortal unchangeablespiritis latent in the sand, and, by ascending degrees, manifeststhrough the successive kingdoms of nature. So teaches theancient Doctrine.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 75around him, but perceived nothing. Seized \lrithfright, he hurried into the house and awoke hisbrother, to tell him the adventure. The nextmorning they went together to the oat-field, anxious

to learn whether so extraordinary a being had committedmuch havoc, but found the crop untouched.The mysterious animal had browsed upon imaginaryoats."" From whom did you get this story ?""From the young man himself, to whom it- happened,as well as from his family."" Did you think of asking him whether the nightwas dark? The quadruped might have escapedunder cover of the darkness.""That is the first question that we put to himeach time that he spoke to us about it. He invariably

answered that there was not a cloud inthe sky, and that the night was so clear that heperceived the trees and all the bushes several yardsoff; otherwise he would not have been able to makeout the ass, which was foraging at some distancefrom the road. He added that he had distinctlyseen the ass vanish before his eyes at the doorof the stable."The nature of this phantom is sharply indicatedby the different circumstances of the tale. Theanimal's spectre, originating on the same principleas the human spectre, should exhibit posthumousmanifestations analogous to those that are observed

with the latter.76 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.We have established, by analysis of the apparitionsmentioned in the iirst chapter, that the postsepulchralman preserves the habits that he hasobserved during life. He shows himself in hisgarden, his fields, his favourite walks. He is seenwith a crook in his hand, when it is a shepherd ; aprayer-book, when it is an ecclesiastic who appears;



an instrument of husbandry, when the case is thatof a cultivator. He seems to be attending to hisdaily' occupations. The ass of St. Croix offers noexception. He is met at night, because, like theposthumous phantom, he shuns daylight. He is inan oat-field, pasturing according to the instinctivehabit of his race, but in reality browses, as one wouldnaturally infer, but the phantom of grass or grain.He follows his leader whilst they are upon the road,but refuses to enter the stable, which is for him aprison, and vanishes in order to escape it. Here wehave the essential features of posthumous manifestations; and if the young man to whom we havespoken had inquired among his neighbours, hewould have learned, in all probability, that some timepreviously a beast of burden had died and beenburied on a neighbouring farm.The following fact is not less authentic. Talkingone day of nocturnal apparitions with an oldCustoms officer, I asked himîf, in his long nightrounds, he had personally seen something of thiskind." No," he answered ; " but I will tell you aPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 77

curious thing that happened to me while I was aCustoms' guard."" One evening, when I happened to be on guardwith one of my comrades, we perceived, not far fromthe village where I lived, a mule which grazed beforeus, and seemed as though laden. Supposing thathe was carrying contraband, and that his masterhad fled on seeing us, we ran after him. The muledashed into a meadow, and, after having made differentbolts to escape us, he entered the village, andhere we separated. Whilst my comrade continuedto follow him, I took a cross street, so as to headhim off. Seeing himself closely pressed, the animal

quickened his pace, and several of the inhabitantswere awakened by the noise of his hoofs clatteringon the pavement. I got in front of him to thecrossing, at the end of the street through which he wasfleeing, and at the moment when, seeing him closeto me, I put out my hand to seize his halter, hedisappeared like a shade, and I saw nothing but mycomrade, who was as amazed as myself."" Are you quite sure that he hadn't turned asideinto another road ?""Impossible; the place where we were had nooutlet, and the only way he could get away was by

passing over my body ; and, besides, the night wasclear enough for us to see all his movements. Nextmorning the inhabitants of the village were crossquestioningeach other about the racket they hadheard in the night."78 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.We may apply to this apparition that which Ihave said with respect to the preceding one. Likethe ass of St. Croix, and like all posthumousphantoms, our mule shows himself at night. He is



met in a pasture, all absorbed in his favourite occupation,that is to say, browsing imaginary grass. Assoon as he finds himself tracked by the Customsofficers he takes flight as though he were reallycarrying contraband in his panniers, and he vanisheswhen he sees himself about to be capturedallthings which characterize the post-sepulchral spectre.The most curious circumstance of the story is thephantom pack which he carries on his back. I shallgive in the following chapter the explanation of thisfact.The following story shows us a posthumous horse.In the neighbourhood of the place where De Mirvillelivedthe author of this talewas an old hauntedcastle. All who had stopped there were unanimousin complaining of nocturnal manifestations uponthe premises which prevented them from sleeping.In 1815 an English family, having come to stopthere, soon found themselves obliged to pack off.They particularly mentioned the spectre of a horseman,armed at all points. Upon this subject thefollowing minute account was given to De Mirvilleby one of his female relatives, who until then hadnot wished to pay any attention to the rumours

which were about." Eetuming to Paris," said she to us, " and havingPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 79ordered from the neigbouring town two good horsesto draw our carriage the first stage, we left M.very briskly, and soon were beyond the avenues of thecastle. All was going on well, when the carriage,going at a quick trot, suddenly stopped in the middleof an open plain, giving us a strong shock. Myhusband and I, flung to the bottom of the carriage,supposed at first that something had gone wrongwith the harness ; but we were soon completely undeceived,for blows began to rain upon the unfortunate

animals, which began to back, snorting withterror. We supposed that they had sent either veryskittish or very lazy horses, and we waited quietly,since there was no help for it ; however, the crisiscontinuing, we concluded to put our heads out ofthe window to ask the coachman what had happened."" Eh ! madam, what has happened ? Don'tyou see this horseman, who threatens my poorbeasts with his lance and prevents theni from passing? " and the whipping is doubled, and the beastsback continually. Then, at the same instant, hecried:

"Ah! God be praised, he has disappeared."Then, of their own accord, the poor beasts brokeinto a fast trot, but all covered with sweat, and tryingto escape as quickly as possible, like animals ina panic.Here there is no possible doubt as to the natureof the horse perceived by the coachman, and his80 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.team, since he was bestridden by a posthumouscavalier,



I might multiply examples, but I find myselfstopped by an obstacle. In certain cases, not yetwell defined, our internal personality may, byreason of its fluidic nature, take on animal forms, asI shall have occasion to show in one of the laterchapters. Hence, when one is in the presence of thespectre of an animal, there is some reason to apprehendthat this may be a lycanthropic manifestationof the human phantom, unless certain particularitiesdo not identify, as in the preceding examples,its true origin. But I have said enough to establishthe existence of the fluidiform personality inanimals, and to demonstrate that the post-sepulchralhumanity is but one particular case of a moregeneral lawthat of posthumous animality.The vegetable and animal kingdoms are so linkedtogether, especially at their boundaries, by a hostof points of contact, that one may ask himselfwhether trees and plants have their phantasmalduplication analogous to that of animals ; the projectionof the Double not being operative withvegetables, by reason of their absence of locomotion,the direct demonstration fails us. But we have indirectproofs which are not without a certain value.

The first is afforded us by the experiments of theMarquis de Puysegur ; the second by the Seeress ofPrevorst. When M. de Puysegur had recognized theaction of magnetism on man and, more generally.POSTHUMOUS nUMANITY. 81on animals, he asked himself whether he could produceany effect on plants, and magnetized the treesin his park. I will not bring in here the practiceof this operation repeated by other magnetizers. Iwill content myself with saying that the mesmericfluid exercises a certain action on trees, that it iseasy to prove this by watching the change of aspectwhich is produced in the leaves, when the trunk

and branches are subjected to the action of magnetism.From such' effects we may presume theexistence, in the interior of vegetable forms, of avital fluid which the magnetizers call the soul of theplant, and which for us is the analogue of the fluidicDouble which we have observed in animals. TheSeeress of Prevorst distinguished clearly, whenevershe looked at a tree, its fluidic Double encased inthe vegetable form, and thus confirmed the physiologicaldeductions of the magnetizers.The passage from the vegetable to the mineral is stillmore easy than that from the animal to the plant. Keducedto its simplest form, the vegetable is no more

than a slow crystallization of its constituent elements,performed in the laboratory of nature, and recallingwhat passes when a crystal is formed in the vesselof the chemist. In both cases, it is the atoms ofsimple bodies uniting differently, according to theirnature and the circumstances in which they areplaced. It may thence be conjectured that certainproperties of vegetables have their analogues inminerals. Is the phantasmal doubling of the plant6



82 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.to be included in this category ? The direct proofis still wanting, and analogies do not reveal much ;for the existence of this duplication in vegetablesseems to be, as in animals, a physiological phenomenon,and we all know that physiology has nothingto do with the crystallization of inorganic bodies.Nevertheless, we do not hesitate to reply in theaffirmative ; for, in default of the direct demonstration,we have a mass of proofs derived fromanother order of facts that I will mention in thefollowing chapter. For the moment, I will be contentto say that the Seeress of Prevorst perceived thesoul of inorganic bodies as well as those of vegetables.It was their ethereal Double mixed, probably,with some molecules of their proper substance. (^^)One can realise this fact, if he considers that allbodies of any density contain innumerable poresconnecting the interior and exterior, and consequentlythey are in every sense penetrated by theuniversal fluid in which they are bathed. The atoms(") The reader, before adopting any definite theory, should havea seance with a genuine " flower-medium," like Mrs. Mary Thayer,of Boston, Mass., whose phenomena I tested. "While she was

enclosed in a large bag, sealed closely at her neck, and aU possibilityof trickery guarded against, I have seen a long table, quite coveredwith vines, plants, and flowers, dropped out of space. I marked acertain leaf of a rare plant in a garden without her knowledge, andthe same evening, in response to my mental request, it droppedupon the back of my hand, with which I was at that momentholding the medium's two hands. The above occurred in the dark;but once a tree-branch was brought me in fuU daylight, through hermediumship, in the house of a gentlemen whose guest I was.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 83of this fluid emitted from the stars in the form ofvibrations of light, heat, and electricity, impinge

upon the molecules of the objects they traverse andrebound until they come into equilibrium. Thiscollection of ethereal atoms naturally takes theexternal form of the body within which it takes upits position and whose phantom it becomes. (^*)Certain phenomena which the phantom presents inits manifestations, whether it be living or posthumous,which I shall analyze in the next chapter,find in this theory a rational explanation, and giveit in some sort experimental sanction.C) I cannot quite follow the learned author here. Surely, ifthere were no pores traversing the plant-structure, this ethereal,universal fluid, presumably finer, atomicaUy, than any of its gross

correlations, electricity, &c., ought to be able to permeate thevegetable. And who can aiSrm that the plant, in its every part, isnot a compound evolution from this very " universal fluid," fromwhich its inorganic, organic, and vital portions were alike derived ?The Eastern Doctrine affirms that the actual appearance upon anygiven planet of the mineral, the vegetable, and the succeeding kingdomsis preceded by the arrival, in an evolutionary wave, of theirrespective elemental privations, or models, or phantoms, which then,gradually and in their fixed order of succession, "materialise"themselves, as spiritualists would say. It is not a process of gross



forms evolving and then absorbing, by osmosis or otherwise, thetenuous fluid of the stars, but of the orderly evolution of all things,in aU their parts, principles, and components, from universal divinecosmic stuff, i.e, Mulaprakriti.6284 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.CHAPTEE IV.CHAEACTEK OF THE POSTHUMOUS BEING.ITS PHYSICALCONSTITUTION. ITS MODE OF LOCOMOTION.ITS AVERSIONTO LIGHT.ITS CLOTHING.ITS MANIFESTATIONS. ITS RESERVOIR OF LIVING FORCE.ITS BALLISTC. EVERY MAN HAS A PHANTASMAL DOUBLE.THESEERESS OF PREVORST.Let us return to the posthumous man. Being thecontinuation beyond the tomb of the inner personalitythat we have seen manifest itself in thephenomenon of duplication, it becomes easier toobserve it. The living phantom and the postsepulchralphantom have, in fact, as their commonorigin would indicate, numerous points of resemblance,so that the study of the one completes thatof the other. I shall pass in review the principaltraits which characterize them, so that we mayinform ourselves as to the nature of the posthumousbeing. At the same time, we must not forget

that we are entering the shadow-world, and thatmore than one point of interrogation wUl gounanswered.Let us first study its physical constitution. WhatI have already said of the living spectre in theexamples of duplication, cited in the second chapter,throws light upon the structure of the post-sepulchralspectre. It is the phantasmal replica of allthe organs of the human body. It has been seen, inPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 85fact, to move, speak, take nourishment, accomplish,in a word, the different functions of animal life.This applies to the posthumous phantom as well as

to its elder brother, as I shall have occasion to show,especially in the chapter on the post-mortemvampire. The molecules which constitute it areevidently borrowed from the organism which gaveit birth. It may then be defined as a gaseous tissueoffering a certain resistance, as we are taught in thedoubling of the assistant -mistress of Riga, cited inChapter II.The fluidic constitution of the phantom offers theexplanation of several peculiarities which it presents.In the first place, it clearly accounts for the easewith which it penetrates houses. Some spectresopen and close the doors of rooms, but others disdain

these precautions, and know how to pass throughwhen the entrances are all shut. They pass throughpartitions, or at least wooden ones. This phenomenoninvolves nothing contrary to the laws ofnature. It is a direct consequence of the structureof the phantom. We know that all bodies, howevergreat their density, are pierced with innumerablepores which give passage to fluid. Platinum, thedensest of metals, is penetrated by hydrogen, andwe have the record of the famous experiment of the



Florentine academicians, who, submitting to a heavypressure a hollow sphere of gold filled with water,saw tiny liquid drops ooze through the surface.One deduces from this, that the fissures of wood86POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.work of doors imperfectly joined may give access tothe gaseous and elastic tissue of the spectre. (^^)By analogous considerations may be explained therapidity with which the phantom, whether living orposthumous, may move. We have seen the Doubleof the Alsatian woman quit her ship, lost in themiddle of the ocean, to repair to Rio Janeiro, andreturn on board within the interval of a syncope;that is to say, in two or three hours, perhaps less.The same fact occurs with the father of the captainwho was returning from India, and for the adept ofPhiladelphia. The phantom of the latter crossedthe Atlantic, entered a coffee-house in London, andreturned to his starting-point with the answer for thelady who waited in his reception-room. We havenoticed facts not less extraordinary with the posthumousphantom. It is seen to show itself at almostthe moment of death, at hundreds, sometimes

thousands, of leagues distance. This is what happenswith apparitions between the old and the newworld. Certain persons who had relations far away,(^) If, when one is out of the hody, he is about to pass throughan obstruction, say, for instance, a wall of masonry, he suddenlythinks of himself as he would in the body, viz., as a being having aheavy "fleshly tabernacle," he will instantaneously consolidate hisDouble, so ithat he will be stopped by the impediment, as would hisphysical self. He may in this consolidated condition bruise himself,or wound himself by running upon any sharp point that wouldbe capable of wounding his body. The bruise or wound will thenropercuss upon the physical body, as explained above by the authorin speaking of witchcraft phenomena in their psycho-physiological

aspect.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 87having shown themselves to them at the momentwhen they were about to expire, it has been supposedthat the phantom had the gift of ubiquity.Nothing. of the sort. Its presence at the samehour at different points vast distances apart iseasily explained by the marvellous rapidity of itsflight, which makes it seem as though the apparitionswere appearing simultaneously when theywere but doing so successively. As to this extraordinaryrapidity, the cause must be sought in thefluidity of the spectre, which allows of its passage

almost without obstacle through the atmosphericair under the final impulse of the vital force. ('")One of the characteristics of the posthumousbeing is its aversion to light and promptitude inshunning it; all the manifestations by which itreveals its presence are nocturnal and rarely diurnal.In the latter case it sometimes produces noiseslike those which are heard at night; but thephantom only appears when favoured by obscurity,in twilight, for instance. It even seems as if light



annihilates its forces, for all noises stop as soon asa candle is brought into the room where they areoccurring. This fact is amply established by theexamples which I have cited. I will, however,add another thoroughly characteristic fact, andwhich confirms what I have said as to the physicalconstitution of the spectre. It is related by aneminent jurisconsult of the sixteenth century, Alex-(") And the dominant one of the concentrated will.88 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.ander of Alexandria. The following is a condensationof his narrative:" In a haunted house in Eome we saw nightly ahideous and entirely black spectre, of the mostthreatening appearance, who seemed to implore ourassistance. No one before my arrival had beenwilling to hire this habitation, because of thestrange things which happened in it. Several ofmy friends came one evening to pass the night withme, to be witnesses of what they had heard told inthis respect. They watched with us, and, althoughthe lights were burning, they soon saw the spectreappear, with his thousand and one pranks, his

clamours, his terrific manifestations, which madeour companions sometimes think, despite all theircourage, that they were destined to be its victims.The entire house resounded with the groans of thisphantom; but when we approached it, it seemedto fall back, especially to shun the light which wecarried in our hand. Finally, after an indescribableuproar of several hours, and when the night wasalmost ended, everything vanished. Of all theseprodigies a single one especially deserves mention,for, in my eyes, it was the greatest and most terrifying.Night having come, after I had fastened mydoor with a strong silken cord, I had retired to bed.

I was still awake, and had not yet extinguished thelight, when I heard the spectre make his usualclatter at the door, and presently, the door remainingclosed and tied, I saw him, incredible though itPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 89seem, introduce himself into the room hy thechinks and the keyholes. Hardly had he enteredwhen he slipped under my bed, and Marc, my pupil,as also the other who was lying with us, having perceivedall this manoeuvre, and being numbed withfright, began to utter cries of terror and to call forhelp. But, observing all this time the door to beclosed, I persisted in not believing what I had seen,

when I perceived the terrible phantom thrust frombeneath my bed an arm and a hand, with which heextinguished my light. This being put out, hethen began to upset, not only the books, but alsoeverything in the room, at the same time makingsounds which froze our senses. All this noisehaving awakened the house, we presently saw lightsin the antechamber, and at the same time noticedthe phantom open the door and escape."As the author relates it, the most curious circumstance



of this tale is the care taken by the spectreto extinguish the light before commencing hisuproar. We have seen the same thing occurringelsewhere. The uneasiness with which the phantomfeels the light is attributable to the disorganizingaction which all light has upon its tissue.We know that light is a vibratory motion impressedupon the ether by incandescent bodies.These vibrations of an almost infinite rapidity wouldsoon alter the fluidic tissues of the phantom by dispersingits molecules, if it did not retire by day intoits tomb or other most obscure retreat. It is the90 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.same with the posthumous animal. It is photophobicin the same degree as the post-sepulchralman, and, like the latter, exhibits itself only atnight. These precautions may prolong for a certaintime the shade's existence, but not avert its end.Whatever pains, in fact, it may take to shun thedaylight, it cannot entirely escape the multiple andincessant action of the luminous calorific and electricvibrations which pervade space and assail itfrom every side. The molecules of its tissue disintegratingfrom each other, there comes at last a day

when it has no further consciousness of itself. Itspersonality has then disappeared ; it has become buta vague form, which dissipates itself slowly andbecomes lost in the universal medium. This slowagonyof the posthumous being is verified, if I mayventure to say so, experimentally by the very coufseof its manifestations : tumultuous at the beginning,they decrease gradually in frequency and power, andend in complete cessation ; thus indicating the dailyshocks which the shade suffers from cosmic agentsuntil its definitive annihilation occurs. (''')(") Exit Homo anotoris nostri : beyond this vanishing point of theposthumous phantom M. d'Assier goes not in his theories. Our

roads diverge. While he has chased his spectre beyond the field ofphysical science and thinks, with Sir Walter, that" Even the last-lingering phantom of the brain,The churchyard ghost, is now at rest again,"the amateurs of Asiatic philosophy and science consider the researchbut begun in earnest. They now follow the higher principlesattached to the Ego out of the lower sphere in which both its phantasmicdouble and outer shell were successively sloughed off, to thePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 91Let us now pass on to another order of facts.What strikes us at once in a posthumous apparitionis that the person exhibits himself in the costumethat he had while living. It would seem that it

ought to show itself as it was on its death-bed, atthe moment when it was laid away in the tomb.But it is not always thus. We have seen that theAbbe Peytou and the Archbishop of Saint Gaudenswore their ecclesiastical costume ; when one hearsMdme. X,, of Bastide-de-Serou, walk in her room,one distinguishes the rustle of a silken dress. Thisis nothing extraordinary, for these garments would,perhaps, represent those in which they were clothedafter their death. But this would not apply to the



case of M. X., of the Canton d'Oust, who in threewell-attested apparitions exhibited himself in a hatand a comforter, such as he usually wore round hisneck. It is not at all likely that they would haveput him on a hat and muifler when they laid him inhis coffin. What is still more extraordinary, theshade frequently carries in his hand articles whichwere familiar to him. The Abbe de Peytou wasseen to be reading his breviary in the garden of thePresbytery ; and when they heard him moving in hischamber, they easily distinguished the noise that hemade in opening and closing his snuff-box andtaking from it a pinch of imaginary tobacco. Whenmore ethereal divisions of the evolutionary cycle, and so hack againinto earth, life, and new relations, over and over again, until thepoint of final purificatit n, i.e. of evolution, is attained, and the truthof Nirvana is knoTrn.92 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.we meet M. X., of Oust, in his vineyard, he carriesthe scissors with which he used to clip the shoots.The ass of Saint Croix and the mule of the Customsofficer carried, the one his halter, the other hispanniers. We have gathered analogous facts in theexamples of duplication mentioned in the second

chapter. The living phantom is clothed, like thepost-sepulchral phantom, with the costume that hehabitually wore; he carries also with him theobjects which are familiar to him. The father ofthe chamberlain of the king of Sweden carried in hishand a cane. The Alsatian woman of Eio Janeirohad her little daughter in her arms. The shepherdofNoisy-le-Grand showed himself with his crook andhis two dogs. All were clothed as usual, althoughthe first two were in their beds at the moment ofthe apparition.The draft that the posthumous being makes onhis own wardrobe or former portable objects has

long seemed to me a phenomenon as inexplicableas the apparition itself. It seems indispensable toadmit that garments and material objects in generalhave their Huidic duplicates as much as men andanimalsduplicates that the phantom can detachand make use of. But where to find the experimentalverification of this hypothesis so as to makea rational explanation ? After various researches, Idiscovered it in reading the biography of the Seeressof Prevorst. As I have said in the precedingchapter, we learn from Dr. Kerner that this extraPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 93ordinary woman detected in all subjects their

phantasmal image."We have seen that posthumous manifestationsare of two kinds. Sometimes the shade returnspeacefully to the places where it resided, or to itsfavourite occupations. Such is the case with theAbbe Peytou, who walked in his room or in thegarden of the Presbytery, carrying, sometimes hisbreviary, sometimes his snuff-box ; of M. X., of theCanton d'Oust, who went to prune his vines withhis scissors, smiling pleasantly, according to his



custom ; of the ass of Saint Croix and the mule ofthe Customs oflBcer, who came to browse on imaginarygrass. But this is, we think, an exception, atleast with man. More frequently, these manifestationsare boisterous, and disclose uneasiness andsuffering. It has been shown by sundry observationsthat the object of all these disturbances is to attractthe notice of relations to the memory of thedeceased, as though the latter wished them to busythemselves for him and relieve him from annoyance.Post-mortem existence seems, in fact, to be a burdenfor many of those who have the privilege of enteringit. ('^) The popular saying, " It is a soul insuffering," stripped of all theological interpretationC) " Through paths unknown In that sad place,Thy soul has flown, By Mary's grace,To seek the realms of woe, Brief may" thy dwelling be,"Where fiery pain Till prayers and almsShall purge the stain And holy psalmsOf actions done below. Shall set the captive free."Ivanhoe.94 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.seems perfectly accurate for characterizing posthumousmanifestations. The phantom, who confines

himself to pulling ofiF bed-clothes and uncoveringthe sleeper, acts, evidently, under the impulsion ofthe same force.Let us make a closer study of the noises whichaccompany the ghost; for we shall find in them,perhaps, the strangest peculiarities that phenomenaof the posthumous order present. I shall not dwellupon the noise that the spectre makes in dwellings,when it limits itself to striking blows upon the wallsor partitions, moving furniture, and changing theplaces of chairs. It only requires, to produce thedisturbance, a certain dynamic power, and I shallpresently tell whence it derives it. The real prodigy

begins when it resorts to its ballistics, for theprojectile seems to be its favourite arm. It oftenhappens that the objects flung about in a room byan invisible hand are far from producing in their fallthe effect that one would anticipate from the noisewhen they drop. They sometimes strike a glasswithout breaking it, although their volume and theforce of projection with which they seem imbuedought to make it fly in pieces. At other timesthey fall upon a person, but do him no harm.He who receives the blow compares it to the shockthat a ball of wool or cotton would produce. Thephenomenon becomes still more extraordinary when

it is a question of invisible projectiles. One hearsstones dashed with force against the partitions orPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 95furniture, and then rebound upon tlie floor, but oneperceives nothing. Occasionally there are bitsbroken out of glasses, or one can see fragments ofplaster detaching themselves from the ceiling andfalling to the ground, while the hail of projectilescomes from without and passes through the windows.In certain cases it is the crockery heaped upon a



table that is heard to fall and smash i|.self withviolence upon the floor. The occupants of the houserun there, but see with astonishment that the glassesand china are in their places, as though they hadbeen dupes of an imaginary noise. Must we thenconcede the existence of a posthumous dynamic,which would be in its most essential features theantithesis of ours ? Certainly not ; the shade obeys,like us, the laws of time and space. The anomalieswhich its projectile power presents will explain themselveson the day when we have completed theinventory and studied the nature of all the forceswhich govern the universe. (^^) Meanwhile, let us(^) Here speats the true scientist, who bravely takes up theonly position tenable for those who are confronted by the mysteriesof nature. In connection with M. d'Assier's speculations upon theproblem of psychic ballistics, it should not be overlooked that caseshave occurred where, in a house whose doors and windows are allclosedjheavy stones and other ponderous objects have dropped in sightof the spectators, as though formed in the air of the chamber. Foran examplethe narrator of which I know to be -^ person of entireveracitysee Theosophist, vol. iii. p. 232. See, also, at p. 280 ofthe same volume, the certificate of Mr. Kalph, whom I also know,that in a room at the Eddy homestead, of which the doors and

windows were at the time closed and sealed, a stone weighing 64 lbs.suddenly dropped at his feet.96 POSTHUMOUS HUMAINITY.try to lift a part of this mysterious veil, if indeed itis permitted to apply rational deductions to a worldso different from our own.The most striking prodigy in these tumultuousmanifestations is the extraordinary disproportionwhich exists between the fluidic structure of theshade, and the enormous quantity of muscular powerwhich it exhibits in flinging its projectiles andmaking them rebound with a noise which sometimesstupifies persons and even animals. When the death

is recent, and the posthumous being confines himselfto striking blows on the partitions, or moving chairs,one may hazard an explanation sufficiently natural.All is not over at the moment when the heart ceasesto beat. Certain organic forces continue their actionas long as the tissues which were their seat are notdecomposed. (^) We know that upon exhuming acorpse it is remarked that the beard and nails havegrown. Therefore the shade might act, in a certainmeasure, under the impulsion of the forces of thebody which it has just forsaken. But when thedeath dates back some weeks or months, anddecomposition has begun its work, and the blows

struck or the projectiles flung imply a greatC) Eastern occultists say that the resuscitation of a corpse ispossible until the organs essential to the performance of the vitalfunctions are so injured that if life were suddenly re-infused intothe body it could not go on with the usual functions. Sri SankaraAcharya is reported to have brought back to life the body of acertain rajah which had been placed on the pyre for cremation;but the body was perfect in all its organs.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 97



muscular vigour on the part of the author of thisstartling tumult, one is compelled to admit that thelatter has found a new source of vital force in whichit recruits its energies. Certain indications seem toestablish the hypothesis that this reservoir is thebody of a living person, and by preference that of arelative of the deceased. ('^) I will mention, as anindication of this fluidic vampirism and as an indirectproof, an analogous fact observed with theSeeress of Prevorst. Dr. Kerner states that hispatient ate little, but she confessed that she wasnourished by the substance of her visitors, especiallyof those related to her by the ties of blood, theirconstitution being more sympathetic with her own.In point of fact, visitors who had passed someminutes near . her noticed that upon retiring theywere weakened.Now let us skirt another not less mysterious sideof this strange ballistic phenomenon, where all isobscurity and surprise. The invisible projectilesproduce mechanical effects as great as if they werestones of great bulk. One would say this is a negationof the laws of motion. All rational explanationbecomes impossible. But let us go on to the end,

and try to penetrate into the geometry of phantoms.We have seen that all bodies have their phantasmalDoubles, which the shade can detach andgrasp. The garments it carries, the objects it holdsin its hand, are phantasmal images borrowed from(M) In shoft, a " ijiedmm.''98 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.its former wardrobe or its former utensils. It ispresumable that the same holds as to invisibleprojectiles; in lieu of flinging stones, they flingtheir duplicates. ('") What mechanical result cancome from such a projection ?The science of dynamics teaches us that the

sum of motion that a moving body possesses isfound by multiplying the mass of the moving bodyby its velocity, and that its live force at themoment of fall is equal to half the bulk by thesquare of the velocity. According to this formula,can be obtained whatever mechanical effect may bedesired by giving to the projectile a sufiicientvelocity, provided the bulk of the projectile isgreater than zero. Now we have seen, in analyzingseveral examples of duplication of living persons,that their phantom offered a certain resistance.It is the same with the image of inorganic bodies,and, however feeble may be the density of such a

projectile, it might in falling produce any acousticeffect desired, if the impulsion were strong enough.The post-sepulchral man acts with stones as withgarments. He limits himself to detaching fromthem their phantasmal Double, which becomes inhis hands an invisible projectile. In the same way(36) Yet sometimes materialize the projectile completely. In Mr.Vijia Raghava Charla's narrative above cited (Tkeos., vol. iii.,p. 232), he says that he and others, to test the pisdchas, -wrote theirnames upon bits of brick, &e., flung them out into the enclosure



closed the house-door, and, presently, the same marked projectileswould drop as if from space.-POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 99might be explained the noise of crockery fallingwith a crash, but which is afterwards found onthe sideboard intact. These are .acoustic effectsproduced by the Doubles of the glasses andplates which the phantom dashes on the floor. (^^)In all cases, however, do not let us be deceived byappearances, and let us be on our guard that, inexploring the domain of the shades, we may nottake a shade of reasoning for reason itself.The phantasmal image of a body, making in itsfall a noise comparable to that which the bodyitself would produce, implies, as I have said, analmost infinite projectile force. Now the posthumousthing being unable to feed its energies exceptin the body of a living person, with which it is influidic communication, (^*) one asks himself if thisreservoir of living force is sufficient to render(''') Does the phantom of the plate smash in pieces upon thefloor ? And if notfor who could smash such a ahiidow ?then isnot the whole phenomenon one of illusion, or maya, a suggested idea,mesmerically or psychically imparted to the witness or witnesses

ty the posthumous phantom ? Cannot any mesmeric experimentalistmake such an illusion upon any sensitive subject ?{"') Not necessarily so. The phantom certainly does absorbstrength from living persons, but sometimes it must find anotherdynamic reservoir to draw from. For instance, the black phantomof Home, described by the jurisconsult Alexander : from whom didit get the power for the fearful racket it had been making in theempty house for such a long time ? The occult explanation is that,when a human phantom is the actor, it gets its power from nonhuman" elemental spirits," and, to a certain extent, from themesmeric aura of former inhabitants of the house or locality, whichstill lingers there. A place so saturated is like an undischargedLeyden jar.

72100 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.possible such effects. We toucli here upon aproblem still so obscure as to rarified matter, thatwe must wait until this new branch of physics,sighted by Crookes, has been studied under itsdifferent aspects before we can have the reading ofthe riddle. It would be easier to take account ofthe not less strange phenomenon which presentsitself when the projectiles, in place of beinginvisible, are real stones which strike without doingany hurt. We can admit that these projectiles aresaturated with mesmeric fluid, and we shall soon

see that one of the properties of this fluid is torender lighter the bodies which it impregnates withits currents.Is it the common right of all men to claim anexistence beyond the tomb ? It would be rash, wethink, to answer affirmatively this famous interrogative,although one may lay down the generalproposition that every individual carries in himselfthe phantasmal image which after death constitutesthe posthumous spectre. This principle, which



presents itself as the immediate consequence of ageneral law, the phantasmal Double of all bodies innature, as established in the preceding chapter,has been verified, to some degree experimentally,by the Seeress of Prevorst. Let us first say a fewwords about this extraordinary woman, so oftenquoted in the books of the spiritists andmagnetizers.Her name was Mdme. Hauffe, but she is morePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 101commonly known under the name of the Seeressof Prevorst, the name of a village of Wurtemburgwhere she was born in the beginning of thiscentury. It is to Dr. Kerner, one of the celebritiesof contemporary Grermany, who had medical chargeof her during the last years of her life, that weowe all the details . related about her. From herchildhood there was noticed in her a nervousorganization of exceptional delicacy, and thisexcessive impressionability went on increasing tothe close of her life. Other members of her familypossessed certain of these faculties, but in a farless degree. Finally, there had been remarked innumerous persons in the village of Prevorst a

certain predisposition to nervous diseases, notablySt. Vitus's dance. Electricity and magnetism actedupon her in a most extraordinary manner. Duringa shower, electric sparks could be drawn from her'body ; when she held certain metals in her hands,she felt magnetic currents running through herlimbs. Iron, especially, affected her in a very highdegree, and they had been obliged to remove allthe nails from the woodwork in her room.Animal magnetism acted on her in a way not lesssurprising than terrestrial. She was often seen tofall of herself into somnambulism. She thus presenteda striking example of the connection so often

observed between electro-magnetic phenomena andthe phenomena of spiritism, among which theduplication of the human personality occupies so102 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.large a field. The exquisite sensitiveness of hernervous system made her perceive sensations whichpassed unnoticed by all others. She sometimeshad presentiments of dangers which threatenedsome one of her friends ; she then warned the latter,and events always justified her prognostications.Prom that fact, the name of Seeress, by which shewas designated, as antiquity gave the surname ofThaumaturgist, or wonder-worker, to the celebrated

Apollonius of Tyana. Useless to add that thecommon people ascribe to supernatural faculties, orto communications with a world different to ourown, that which was but extraordinary aggrandisementof the sensitiveness of the nervous centres. C)Such an organization naturally predisposed to thevisions of spiritism. She was often tormented byapparitions of spectres, which could not be chargedto hallucination ; for the persons who were presentheard as distinctly as herself the blow struck on



the partitions, or saw certain objects which were inthe room changing their places. We are aware thatthis is the natural thing in manifestations of thehuman phantom, conspicuously of the posthumousphantom. She often saw her own Double, and perceivedthose of others by looking in their righteye. (*") This fact is the experimental demonstration(39) For two papers upon the Seeress, and the resemblance of hersomnambulic teachings to the Eastern philosophy, see the Tieosophistfor September and November, 1886.('") In Kirke's Secret Commonwealth, p. 3, we find it stated thatit was the belief among the Celtic tribes that the apparition of aPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 103of this axiomthat, besides its exterior and organicform, the human body possesses an interior andfluidic form moulded after the former. When aperson's Double is projected, the person and hisimage are seen simultaneously.Another revelation of the Seeress of Prevorst additionallyconfirms our axiom. Whilst I was absorbedin physiological studies, I was often arrestedby a singular fact. It sometimes happens that aperson who has lost an arm or leg experiences certainsensations at the extremities of the fingers or toes.

Physiologists explain this anomaly by postulating inthe patient an inversion of sensitiveness or of recollection,which makes him locate in the hand or thefoot the sensation with which the nerve of the stumpis alone affected. They try to justify their statementby pretended analogies which they find sometimesin the production of virtual images formed bythe action of luminous rays on mirrors, sometimesin the arrival of despatches upon the same electricwire, which have several centres of correspondenceas in its circuit, I confess that these explanationsseemed to me laboured, and have never satisfied me.When I studied the problem of the duplication of

man, the question of amputations recurred to myperson's Double to himself was a sure portent of his death. Theycalled it the Co-Walker. The Eev. Mr. Fraser, in his treatise onSecond Sight, supports this affirmation, upon the evidence of oneBarbara Macpherson, relict of a Mr. MacLeod, minister of St.Kilda,who said this species of premonitory clairvoyance was frequentamong the natives of the island.104 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.mind, and I asked myself if it was not more simpleand logical to attribute the anomaly of which I havespoken to the doubling of the human body, whichby its iluidic nature can escape amputation. I setmyself, with this view, to making some experiments,

which the loss of my sight has prevented my carryingout. I vras then not the least surprised when Iread in the book of Dr. Kerner that the Seeress ofPrevorst perceived on every amputated man thelost limb.Let us restate our interrogatory. Every manpossessing his Double should, it seems, enter afterdeath the region of shadows ; it is not at all certain,however, judging from the small number ofposthumous apparitions and the exceeding rarity of



projection of the Double with living persons. It isprobable that the phantasmal image, inert of itself,has need to be stimulated, and in some sort completed,by another agent of the organism, whichimparts to it the necessary energy to give it selfconsciousness.The study of this new factor ofhuman dynamics will be the object in the followingchapters.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 105CHAPTER V.THE UNIVERSAL FLUID.NERVOUS FLUID.ANALOGIESAND DISSIMILARITIES OF THE TWO FLUIDS.- ELECTRICANIMALS.ELECTRIC PERSONS.ELECTRIC PLANTS.ACTION OF THE NERVOUS FLUID UPON THE INNERPERSONALITY.The human phantom does not always reveal itself inas clear a manner as in the examples I have cited.It has also sometimes obscure manifestations of avery varied nature, which make of it a sort of elusiveProteus. Mesmerism exhibiting analogous manifestationsin the somnambule, the medium, theecstatic, &c., it is often difficult to say whether theprimary cause of these phenomena should beascribed to the inner personality or to the nervous

fluid, or, again, to the combined action of these twoagents. In a great number of cases, their unionseems so close that one is led to ask himself if it isnot from the second that the first derives its originand its energies. Let us explore this curious sideof human physiology ; but, to begin with, let us saya few words respecting the universal fluid, whichthe magnetizers often confound with the nervousfluid.The universal fluid, that is to say, the subtlefluid which fills space and penetrates all bodies,had been recognized by Greek philosophy severalcenturies before our era; it was the ether which

Descartes resuscitated at the moment when they106 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.were laying the foundation of modern physics. Butit is scarcely half a century since the existence ofthis fluid has been placed beyond doubt, and proved,so to say, oflSciallythanks to the learned analyses ofFresnel on Light, completed by the ingeniousexperiments of Arago. Subsequently, various menof science have attempted to explain by the samemethodI mean by the theory of the etherotherbranches of physics, and they have obtained thesame success. Finally, the astronomers, amongwhom we must give the first place to Boucheporn

and Father Secchi, have crowned the work ofFresnel by demonstrating that the laws of universalgravity are consequences of the properties of ether.It is, then, to-day a scientific fact that aneminently subtle fluid, in whose depths the celestialbodies float, fills the immensity of the universe,and that the phenomena of light, heat, electricity,gravitation, chemical affinity, &c., are due to thediverse modes of action of this fluid.When, towards the close of the last century,



Mesmer wished to satisfy himself as to the effectsof the magnetic bouquet, he was not slow in perceivingthat he had a fluid as agent or vehicle, and hebethought him of the universal fluid, which theCartesian school had just restored to honour. Hishypothesis was adopted by the majority of hissuccessors. The practice of magnetism soon demonstrated,it is true, the existence of a special fluid,the nervous fluid which disengages itself in thePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 107passes under the will of the operator and producesthe phenomena of Somnambulism. But the oldterminology continued to prevail, especially amongpersons unacquainted with physics, who only seein the nervous fluid a synonym for the universalfluid. That is a grave error, which it is importantto dispel. The nervous fluid, which I shall also callthe mesmeric ether, from the name of him who firstrecognized it, is common to all animals providedwith a nervous apparatus sufficiently developed, or,in a word, to a great number of living beings. In thenormal course of life, it flows away as it forms itself,or, rather, when it exceeds a certain tension, andloses itself in the ground or in the atmosphere, in

such a way that it passes without notice. Butamong animals, as well as in man, it reveals itselfby manifestations sui generis in certain cases ofvolition. Let us take, for example, the magnetizerat the moment when he entrances his somnambule.It is known that the business of the cerebro-spinalapparatus is to execute the movements which areimposed upon it by the will. The nervous fluid,belonging to this apparatus, is governed by thissame mechanism. At each magnetic pass it flowsthe length of the operator's arm, under his will,and escapes by the extremity of the fingers, likeelectricity, to act physiologically on the somnambule.

If the latter is antipathetic to magneticaction, the operator ends by feeling the symptomsof exhaustion, and sees himself obliged to stop108 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.when he has lost all his fluid. (^^) His passes haveno more effect. The magnetic power only reappearsthe next day, when a new quantity of mesmeric etherhas accumulated in the organism. Only a portionof the fluid emitted acts on the somnambule. Muchof the aura, probably the greater part, remains inhis clothing or is dispersed in the room. Whenthe sittings have been long or numerous, there issometimes so much aura in the apartment that

certain persons refuse to pass the night there, notbeing able to breathe such an atmosphere. {*^)(") The operator feels this exhaustion equally if he has beentreating sympathetic patients for the cure of disease. In thisdirection I have had large experience, having for over a yearforthe sake of teaching others to heal the sicktreated mesmericallyseveral thousand persons. I became, finally, so exhausted of vitalforce as to be in danger of paralysis, of -which the premonitorysymptoms showed themselves. But a large number of veryastonishing cures were effected. The nervous exhaustion experienced



in mesmerizing antipathetic subjects, of which M. d'Assier speaks,is, I think, due in great measure to the persistent efforts made bythe operator to overcome the auric resistance and the consequentgreat discharge of mesmeric aura. Any article worn by theoperator on such days becomes powerfully saturated with hisnerve-fluid, and can be used with great effect by third parties forhealing a patient whom the former operator never saw.('^) In like manner some sensitives cannot remain in a roomwhere mediumistic phenomena are or, to any extent, hare beenoccurring. In India, a house that has been occupied by a Brahmanis always preferred, even by non-Brahmans in search of a residence, onaccount of the good influence believed to be lingering there. Sucha house is believed to be less subject to the invasion of evilelementals and earth-bound human phantoms. The Hindus, asthe various papers in the Appendix to this volume show, have a,horror of mediumship in all its phases.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 109From this analysis result three orders of facts,which demonstrate at once the existence and natureof the mesmeric ether, the physiological actionwhich it exercises on the somnambule, such as wesee nervous temperaments experiencing in a roomsaturated with fluid, and, finally, the exhaustionwhich happens to the magnetizer after a certain

number of passes.Btlt it is not only at the extremity of the fingersthat the fluid flows away; being at the commandof the will, it follows all the routes that the latterprescribes. Is magnetized water wanted ? itsuffices that the mouth shall blow into a glassto cause the liquid to acquire new properties indicatingthe presence of mesmeric aura. Here thefluid has been transmitted by the breath, escapingfrom the chest. At other times it is darted by theeyes : it is known that certain magnetizers throwtheir subjects into sleep by fixing them with aglance. When, as a result of a special constitution,

a person disengages fluid of a bad nature, it maythrow into convulsions and even kill little animals,such as chickens, goslings, &c. It is the Evil Eye,which has been often denied, but which none theless is based upon authentic facts ; . and I haveknown personally a woman attacked with this infirmity.The serpent in particular shows us dailyundeniable examples of the Evil Eye. No one isignorant of the fact that when it fixes its glanceupon a bird perched on a tree, the latter soon110 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.loses confidence and flutters from branch to branchuntil he falls a prey to the fascinator. (^^) The

action of the fluid is here so much the moreenergetic, in being not only darted by the eyes,but also by the breath and the quivering tongueof the reptile.It is especially in animals called electric that thenature and origin of the mesmeric ether may beclosely studied. They are so designated becausethey possess the singular faculty of accumulatinga sort of vital electricity in a special organ whichserves them as condenser, and of emptying themselves



of it at will by successive discharges, comparableto those which we obtain with our electricapparatus. It is thus that they stun or stupefythe enemies who approach them. Three kinds offishes, the gymnotus, silurus, and torpedo, haveacquired a certain celebrity in this respect. Thefirst, which is met with in lakes and tanks of theNew World, especially in the basin of the Orinoko,is only known to naturalists. The same as to the(") Judging from a number of letters to the editor of Nature,this subject would seem to be still suh judice. But Des Mousseauxquotes from Pierrart (vol. iv. pp. 254257), the storyiof a Frenchpeasant, named Jacques Pellissier, of BrignoUes (Var), who gainedhis livelihood by hunting birds with no other weapon than his willpower.He could paralyze them from a distance of fifteen ortwenty paces, and he could then walk up to them and wring theirnecks. In the presence of Dr. d'Alger, a well-known physician, hethus bagged fourteen birds within the space of one hour. A curiousfact was that he could only affect mesmerieaUy sparrows, robins,goldfinches, and meadow-larks.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. Illsecond, whicli is confined to the Nile and otherrivers of Septentrional Africa. But the torpedo,common enough in the Mediterranean, affords daily

opportunity to verify this singular phenomenon.Its electric faculty, which is noticeable in differentdegrees in all the varieties of this species, is particularlyremarkable in the torpedo proper. Theinhabitants of the coast, who feed upon this fish,know that the condensing apparatus must be thrownaway as unhealthy. When the animal, seeing itselfpursued, gives its shocks, the latter go on diminishing, in intensity in ratio to their multiplication,and end in producing no effect whatever. Thesefish are then completely harmless. In huntingthem, this is the moment when it is possibleto seize them. It is with them as with the magnetizer,

who, after numerous passes upon an insensitivesubject, feels himself exhausted, and isobliged to stop. All their electricity has been lostin the discharges, and their benumbing power onlyreappears when the organism has accumulated anew quantity of fluid in the storage-battery. Itis easy here to observe in a direct manner the natureand origin of the mesmeric ether. When we cutthe nerve which puts the brain in communicationwith the condensing organ, the electric facultycompletely disappears ; the fluid, being unable toflow to the usual reservoir, runs off into the ambientmedium, as with other fishes. We see, at the same

time, that it comes from the cerebro-spinal axis,112 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.since it outflows from the encephalon into thereceptacle by the intermediary nerve which placesthese two organs in relation.Are the fishes of which we have spoken an exceptionin nature ? We do not think so. At presentwe know only in an imperfect manner the aquaticfauna. In an exploration of the Amazon river,Agassiz collected eighteen hundred new species of



fish. It is presumable that the list of electricanimals will lengthen in degree as we gain a betterknowledge of the inhabitants of our seas, lakes, andrivers. If it were permitted us to express all ourthought, we should say that the torpedo, gymnotus,silurus, and their congeners are appearing to us asthe last representatives of an ancient electric fauna.Do not let us forget that in the earlier geologicalages of the planet, the ocean, the soil, and theatmosphere were traversed by currents of electricityotherwise potential than those of to-day. Now, aswe shall have occasion hereafter to demonstrate, thereexists between the ordinary electricity and vitalelectricity, otherwise called the nervous fluid, sucha relation that every recrudescence of the first leadsto an abnormal development of the second. Perhaps,some day, palaeontology will exhume fossils bearingstill some traces of a condensing apparatus. Perhaps,also, research in comparative anatomy willresult in discovering in man or other vertebratesome vestige of atrophied organs which haveformerly possessed . electric functions. Moreover,POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 113the insect world offers us a number of species which

present, although upon a lesser scale, analogousphenomena. These animals cause, when they aretouched, a shock or numbness which reminds one ofelectric discharges. It is, therefore, permissible to laydown as a principle that, the day when the terrestrialfauna shall be sufficiently well known, mesmericether will appear as an essential consequence of thenervous mechanism.The considerations which we have just stated putus upon the path of the phenomena which arenoticed in certain persons called electric. It iscommonly young girls approaching puberty whopresent this singular state. Possibly it is due, at

least in part, to the physiological activity which istaking place in them at this epoch. The mode oflife exerts also a certain influence, for it is especiallyin the labouring class that these young girls arefound. Also, the name of electric servant-maid isoften met with in the works of magnetizers. Theproperties of mesmeric ether explain this phenomenon.It results from an abnormal disengagementof fluid, due to a physiological predispositionor some other cause. By a sort of organic fluctuationstill unknown in its essence, vital electricityseems to act on a woman inversely to the ordinaryelectricity. We know that, when lightning falls on

a group of persons of both sexes,' the women areseldom struck, whilst men are almost invariably.About 1846, just when spiritism was about to appear,8114 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.several young electric girls were known in France,England, and the United States. We shall speakonly of Angelique Cottin, a young peasant of Orne,whose name had some notoriety in Paris. Thefollowing details are borrowed from M. de Mirville



:" Thursday, January 15th, 1846, at about 8 p.m.,Angelique Cottin, aged 14 years, was weaving glovesof silk thread with three other girls, when theoaken table used for fixing the end of the woofmoved from its place, so that their united effortscould not keep it in position. They fled in frightat so strange an occurrence ; but the stories theytold were not believed by the neighbours whowere attracted by their cries : at first two, then athird, urged on by the bystanders, tremblinglyresumed their work without the fact mentionedrepeating itself; but as soon as Angelique, imitatingher companions, took up her woof, the tableagain moved, danced, was upset, and then violentlythrown back. At the same time, the young girl wasirresistibly drawn after it; but as soon as shetouched it, it flew farther back : terror was general;they thought that some one had cast the evil eye onher that morning. At night there was calm. Thenext morning the child was isolated from the fataltable, and, in order that she might resume her work,they fastened her glove to a bin weighing about 150

pounds ; but this obstacle, when opposed to theaction of the mysterious and terrible force, did notPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 115long resist. The bin was displaced and upset, althoughthe communication was only established by a threadof silk. They ran to the Presbytery to ask for exorcismisand prayers. The cure at first laughed, butsubsequently verified their story, and sent them tothe doctor's. The next day shovels, tongs, firebrands,brushes, books, were all scattered at theapproach of the child ; a pair of scissors, hangingfrom her belt, were flung into the air, without thecord being broken or their being able to know how

it had been untied. The cure guarantees theauthenticity of this detail, mentioned also in thereport of M. Heberfc de Grarnay. This fact, themore remarkable, says he, for its analogy withthe effects of lightning, at once prompted thethought that electricity must play an importantpart in the production of these astounding facts;but this line of inquiry was cut shortthe fact didnot occur more than twice. M. de Faremont, aneighbouring landed proprietor, a man of sobercharacter, much respected, a friend to progress,and versed in physical science, took her in hiscarriage to the Doctor of Mamers ; the doctors, at

first opposing, afterwards proved the truth of thestatement and yielded." Tuesday, the 3rd, there was an incessant crowd.On this and the following days more than a thousandpersons visited her; among the number,nearly all the doctors of the country, eminentphysicians, druggists, lawyers, professors, magis116POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.trates, ecclesiastics, and so forth, without countingthe great savants of the Academy of Science."



These reports are completed by an extract from aletter addressed by M. de Faremont to M. deMirville, dated November the 1st of the same year :" The phenomena have not stopped since lastspring. I have seen, I see, and I can always seewhen I choose, the most curious and unaccountablethings. For, look you, gentlemen, the stumblingblockis that your savants understand no more aboutit than I. They should have seen and studied. We,who have seen, believe because all the facts haveoccurred under our eyes, are palpable, and cannot berefated in any way. Those who thought themselveswise hang their heads and are silent. Thepopulace say that the child is bewitched, andnot a witch, for she is too simple for them to giveher this title. As for me, I have seen so many contradictoryeffects produced in her by electricity ; Ihave seen, under certain circumstances, good conductorsoperate, and, under others, inefficient tosuch an extent that, if one confined himself to thegeneral laws of electricity, there would constantlybe contradictions to reconcile ; thus I am convincedthere is in this child some other power thanelectricity."

The noise that was made about Angelique Cottinhaving reached Paris, several physicists went toOrne to study the phenomenon. Of the numberwere Arrago, Mathieu, and Logier, of the AcademyPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 117of Science. They were astonished, in their turn,with the facts which occurred under their eyes;upon their return to Paris, Arrago did not hesitateto bring before the Academy the question of theelectric girl. The weight of authority attaching tothe name of the illustrious Perpetual Secretarydecided his colleagues to form a commission to

verify the extraordinary facts which had beenreported; then was seen repeated that which hadseveral times occurred at the Academy of Medicineunder analogous circumstances. Like the majorityof men of science, the members of the Institute, whowere to undertake the investigation, having neverstudied the effects of magnetism, were persuaded inadvance that there was trickery or exaggeration inthe prodigies ascribed to Angelique Cottin. In sucha disposition of mind, their mission was foredoomedto failure. The phenomena which commonlyoccurred round the young peasant either did notnow repeat themselves or did so but feebly. As

Du Potet sensibly observes, investigations of magnetismhave almost invariably failed with hostilecommittees. It sufiBces, in fact, for an opposinginfluence to be involuntarily emitted by the cerebralfluid of the spectator to neutralize the action ofthat which the magnetizer throws upon the somnambule.It was the same with Angelique Cottin, forthe electricity which manifested itself in her wasnone other than vital electricity, which I have calledthe mesmeric fluid. The commission did not worry



118 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.themselves in the least about giving a flat contradictionto the testimony of several thousand persons,among whom were to be counted scientific men ofthe first rank, but declared, through their reporter,that all the stories circulated about AngeliqueCottin were without the slightest foundation. ('''')This conclusion, announced by the Institute, hadauthoritative influence on public opinion, and thereafterno one paid any attention to other electricdamsels, who were, at about the same time, noticedin the journals.Let us now pass to electric plants, if, indeed, wemay give this name to certain vegetable speciesendowed with extraordinary sensitiveness. Such aproperty implies the existence of a special organanalogous to the nervous tissue of animals. Nowsome eminent botanists have thought they detectedin the leaves of some of these plants a delicatetissue which seemed to represent a rudimentaryform of this nervous system. (^*) Different instances(") Yet we, students of practical psychology, are bidden tonnbonnet before the Gressler-eorps of official science !('^) Since the lamentable catastrophe of blindness befell our

author, and he has, of course, been to a large extent shut out fromthe observation of scientific progress, opinions have changed uponthis subject. It is now pretty generally admitted that thevegetable, whose structure is distinctly cellular,, lacks the preliminarycondition necessary for the initiation of a nervous system,viz., the existence of a living substance whose excitability is high,which possesses a high contractile power, and which is notdifferentiated into cells with fully developed ceU-walls. (SeeDarwin's Insectivorous Plants, and Bastian's The Brain as anOrgan of Mind, ed. 1885, c. i. p. 14.) But why could there notPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 119of vegetable sensitiveness, that are observed in anumber of plants, such as the Sensitive Plant, the

Dioncea, Venus' Fly-trap, would thus be accounted forin a rational manner. These species are quite commonin South America, where they often occupy greattracts, and sometimes it has happened, when I wascrossing the high plateau of the Brazilian chain ofthe Orgar mountains, that I saw the guide, whorode before me, strike with his whip the plants atthe edge of the path we were following, and immediatelya shiver would be communicated successivelyto all the plants in the meadow, as though all thesestalks were bending under the breath of a mysteriouswind. One cannot ignore in this phenomenon theaction of a sort of vital electricity. Without doubt,

a deeper study of botanical species would disclose tous the existence of plants presenting propertiesreally electric, and here is what we find already inthe Arnike Scientifique for 1878 : (^^)1)6 electrical attraction and repulsion without implied nervous fibre ?Do we not see this phenomenon in the mineral kingdom, notably inthe repulsion between similarly electrified bodies ? Supposing thewhole structure of a sensitive plant to be of a vegeto-eleetricalpolarity, either + or , and capable of suddenly discharging thesame at the approach of a body of the opposite aura of vegetal



polarity, or upon any violent change of its normal state, should wenot see the phenomena under discussion ? The occult doctrine isthat everything in the Cosmos is governed by the opposing forces ofattraction and repulsion. There is, just now, much talk of thesupposed new discovery of human polarity, as regards the two sidesand forces of the human body ; but the existence of an identical lawin vegetals was long since known and published, by VonEeichenbafih among others, and the mystics before him.{^) L'Annie Scientifique, by Louis Figuier.120 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY." They have made this curious discovery in America,that a plant, the Phytoloccea, possesses veritable electricproperties. When a branch of this bush is cut,the hand receives a shock like that which is given byan electric machine. An English physicist desiredto test the degree of intensity of the electricitythus emitted. A small compass needle wasaffected at seven or eight paces by the plant, andthis influence was proportionate to the distance;the nearer it was brought, the more jerky was themotion." When the compass was placed in the middle ofthe bush, its needle began to turn rapidly. Notrace was found of iron or other magnetic metal in

the soil. This property, then, belongs to the plantitself. Let us add that the intensity of the phenomenonvaries with the time of day. At night thisproperty is scarcely observable ; it reaches its maximumat two p.m. (^') The power increases duringa thunderstorm. It is affirmed that no bird norinsect will alight upon the electric plant."We shall repeat, in connection with plants, whatwe have said in speaking about electric animals. Itis presumable that the list of vegetables possessingthese properties will be enriched with new specieswith the progress of botanical science, and that, some(") For some very interesting and suggestive researches upon

the odylic polarity of plants, see Eeiehenbaeh's Sesearches onMagnetism, Electricity, Sfc, rf-c, ^c, in their relation to theVital Force (Treatise vii. sec. 248) et seq. ; and for the fluetua^tions by night and day of the currents of Odyle, ibid.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 121day, it will no longer be a question of a few plants,but of an immense electrical flora. Certain factsseem to justify this hypothesis. In the mountainsof Wurtemburg, says Dr. Kemer, the cows are oftenseen to suddenly fall into an indescribable uneasiness,even running into madness ; seized with a like vertigo,children ran at full speed towards their houses;

and a still more extraordinary fact, the furniture andutensils of all sorts indicated also the same mysteriousinfluence, shifting place, shaking, flying back whenone would take hold of them, evidencing thus, bythese movements and this repulsion, that it was aquestion of electrical action. Simultaneously, saysDr. Kemer, one noticed in the Seeress of Prevorstan exaltation of sensitiveness which doubled hersecond sight-These phenomena must be attributed, we must



infer, to the vegetal electricity of these mountains,the initial action of which might well be commonelectricity. "We know, in fact, that there exists soclose a bond between these two agents of planetarylife, that they seem sometimes to mutually engendereach other. A second fact, quite common in theUnited States, gives a new strength to this view ofthe case. There is sometimes developed in thatcountry such a quantity of electric fluid that, at night,the bushes seem to become incandescent. (^*) Thisphenomenon does not confine itself to the country,("J If it is, I never saw it, though I lived forty-seven years inAmerica,122 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.but is . sometimes seen in the cities. Strangers (")who visit New York or other cities of the Unionare sometimes surprised to feel a prickling in thefingers, or to see sparks fly at the moment whentheir fingers touch the brass door-handle. Whenone remembers that the United States is the classicland of mediums and spiritism, he is led to ask himselfif this overflow of mesmerism should not beascribed to a transformation of fluidic forces, humanelectricity being set in motion by vegetable electricity,

while the latter would receive the primaryimpulsion from the afflux of terrestrial electricity.From the preceding considerations, it follows thatthe mesmeric ether presents sometimes certainsimilitudes to cosmic ether. Let us sum up in afew words what is known of its nature, in oi;der topostulate what is known of the analogies and differencesbetween these two fluids.Let us say, to begin with, that it is a matter forextreme regret that the physiologists have not submittedmesmeric ether to a series of exact experimentsto verify the properties that are ascribed toit, but which we only know upon the affirmations of

the magnetizers. Like the universal fluid, it moveswith the rapidity of thought, acts at great distances,penetrates all bodies, and renders objects which itimpregnates with its vibrations susceptible to attractionand repulsion. But these phenomena suggestbut distantly the ether, properly so called ; it(") Electrical strangers ?POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 123differs from it especially by a lesser degree of intensityand energy. The nervous fluid possesses, inaddition, special properties which it derives from itsatomic constitution, and which throw light upon anumber of extraordinary facts observed in the

different forms of mesmerism, magnetism, ecstasis,sorcery, &c.The first of its characteristics is tbe lightnessthat it imparts to bodies. This explains the inoffensiveprojectiles of the spiritualistic and posthumousballistics : the most massive tables raised bya child ; sorceresses condemned to drowning, unableto sink in the water, except under the efforts ofseveral men ; mediums, ecsfcatics, obsessed persons,walking the air, or soaring to the top of a tree or



roof of a house like birds. Another feature is incombustibility.Fire does not actat least accordingto the testimony of magnetistsupon objectsimpregnated with mesmeric aura, . books, clothing,&c. Persons have also been seen under the influenceof the fluid to stand the test of boiling water, redhotiroh, &c. Nevertheless, we think it will beprudent to wait for new experiments before pronouncingfinally upon these strange facts, i^")(°'') No occasion to wait for proof that such a thing does happen.The late D. D. Home, a Mrs. Snydam, and other modern mediums,have, in the presence of quite unimpeachable witnesses, handledfire and red-hot things with absolute impunity, and even impartedthe condition to others. Home, for example, took blazing coalsfrom the grate, laid them upon the venerable Mr. Hewitt's head,and gathered his white hairs over them, without the slightest124 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.Still further let us note, as a striking feature ofnervous etKer, the property of lingering almostindefinitely in bodies which it has impregnated;magnetized water, in closed bottles, retained at theend of six months its mesmeric principle. Stuffsand other objects retain for a long time traces of thefluid which has saturated them. "We may thus

comprehend the prodigies which are sometimesworked at the tombs of persons who are veneratedin their different religions. (^*) The cures thusoperated are rarely lasting, (^^) but, none the less,they testify to the presence and action of the thaumaturgicfluid. This property seems to contradictwhat we have said respecting the ease with whichether runs through bodies to act at a distance. Butsingeing of skin or hair. Occultists might ascribe this to the friendlyagency of the fire-elementals (salamanders) and the aspirant for adeptshipmust meet, and subject to his will, these nature-spirits in theirown domain. The Abbe Chayla, prior of Lavore, who had much todo with the Catholic persecution of the unfortunate Cevennois, in

the earliest part of the eighteenth century, reported to the Popethat he was powerless to dislodge the devil in that quarter. He hadclosed their hands upon burning coals, and they were not evensinged ; he had wrapped their entire bodies in cotton soaked in oil,and then set on fire, but not a blister was raised on their skin, &c.{") And, as well, the efficacy of the " handkerchiefs or aprons"brought from the body of St. Paul to the sick, which cured theirdiseases and drove out their " evil spirits. " The '' special miracles 'described lin Acts xix. 12 were mesmeric miracles which any powerfulmodern mesmerist can repeat at will.(^') Many are radical, as my own experience amply shows, andmany more would be if mesmerists were but careful to test the

psychopathic sensitiveness of their patients before wasting auraupon them.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 125it is possible, we think, to explain this anomaly ifwe keep in view the nature of the flaidic moleculessecreted by the nervous apparatus.They result from a grouping of the chemicalatoms which compose the cerebro-spinal tissue,hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus,sulphur, &c., to speak only of the principal ones.



It is possible that the aggregates resulting fromsuch complex combinations may not always behomogeneous; the most subtle traverse wallsto transmit their action to a distance, whilstthe others, serving in some sort as a gross residuum(^') to the first, lingers in the garmentsof the somnambule, and in the atmosphere ofthe room where the magnetic experiments aremade.We shall close these considerations upon thenervous fluid by a rapid glance at the causes whichmake it develope, and the diverse modes of manifestationwhich betray its presence.The causes are very various, and some, involving(°') The author's word, gangue, means " vein-stone,'' in miningphraseology, and is hardly translatable. Let us here remark thatthe mesmeric aura wastes away from the body insensibly, like theother waste products of vital function, such as the carbonic acidand watery vapour of the breath, animal heat, and insensible per- .spiration ; of course, saturating the clothing, the furniture of thehouse, the house itself, and the ground about. But as the quiescentair, when moved by natural causes, becomes the gale or the cyclone,so this individual aura may, when directed upon some focal point,at whatsoever distance, by a strong will, bscome a resistless, even a

death-dealing levin-bolt.126 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.the intimate nature of the subject, baffle analysis.We may lay down the principle that all have astheir initiative a mechanical action, which is takingplace in the nervous apparatus. The most commonaction is that of thought. We know, according tothe recent works on physiology, that every act ofintelligence implies molecular disturbance of thecerebral tissue, and hence a disengagement of fluidproportionately abundant to the initial action, Imean as the transformation of atomic forces is moreenergetic. Ordinarily this disengagement is too

trifling to manifest its presence but if there be astrong mental tension acting protractedly upon thebrain, the quantity of ether set in motion will begreat enough to produce the effects of mesmerism.It is thus that in the magnetic passes a sustainedvolition compels the fluid to manifest itself. As tothe external causes, we shall only cite the influenceof atmospheric electricity, and the processes ofsorcery, to which we shall return in a specialchapter.The phenomena of mesmerism are not less variedthan the causes which produce them. A fixed idea,strong preoccupations, lead to somnambulism.

The practices of ascetic life engender thaumaturgists; the fluid of the magnetizers, acting on thesubject, has as a consequence somniloquence. Anorganic or moral predisposition gives rise tomediumship. Certain causes, still badly defined,bring about the strange facts of obsession andPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITr. 127catalepsy. (**) Narcotics easily prepared causesometimes the dreams, sometimes the realities, ofsorcery. Each time one sees this mysterious personality,



which we have called the inner man, formitself and grow in proportion as the fluid becomesmore abundant and more activean unanswerableproof of the intimate relationship which unites thesetwo psychological agents.The following chapters are devoted to the summaryexposition of these different prodigies.CHAPTER VI.THE MESMERIC ETHER, AND THE PERSONALITY WHICH ITENGENDERS.THE SOMNAMBULE.THE SLEEP-TALKER.THE SEER.Somnambulism, properly speaking, is the mostanciently known of the effects of mesmerism. Aword or two upon this curious phenomenon.What must we understand by the word somnambule? Etymology teaches us that it is a personwho walks while asleep. This definition seems correctenough at first sight ; but it is soon perceived thatit is not general enough, and must be completed.A somnambule does not always walk, and we oftenobserve in him facts not less singular than the(*') The -whole school of Charcot are now closely studying thelatter of the abovecatalepsy. To understand obsession, they mustfrequent spiritualistic stances and read the authorities on Oriental

psychology.128 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.nocturnal promenade. Let us attempt, by theanalysis of some examples, well selected andauthentic, to define the dififerent modes of actionwhich somnambulism presents. The study of thesedifferent manifestations will enable us to form anidea as to its nature and origin.Burdach pretends that somnambulism is morecommon with men than women, notwithstandingthat the nervous organization of the latter wouldmake us suppose the contrary. All that I can sayin this connection is, that the majority of the facts

related to men have related to women. The samephysiologist thinks that somnambulism is neverwitnessed in children and old men. This view ofthe case is comprehensible as connected with thosewho are approaching the end of their career andwhose sensitiveness is blunted by age, but we couldhardly admit it in the case of a child, and, in fact,numerous testimonies prove the contrary. (^') Iwill quote only one example, which is just nowoccurring at Bastide-de-Serou, at the moment when(^') Figuler tellg us {Hist, du Merveilleux dans les TempsModemes, vol. ii. p. 262) that in the epidemic of " obsession"

among the CeTennois, mentioned above, babes of twelve monthsand even less spoke fluently in pure Frenchnot the local patoisand prophesied. Sometimes the discourses would last for hours,and often so able as to fill the faculty with admiration. Amongthe greatest marvels of modern mediumship is the writing of amessage by a baby in its cradle under " spirit-control," as it iscalled. For full details see the very interesting work, TheMissing Link in Modem Spiritualism,, by A. Leah Underbill, ofthe Fox family.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 129



I am writing these lines (end of November, 1879).Briefly, here is the story : it is the father whospeaks:" You know the youngest of my sons, little Leon,hardly eleven years old ; you know he is an intelligentboy, studious, applying himself with ardour toall that interests him. For several months we hadnoticed in him unmistakable symptoms of somnambulism.He would rise in the middle of the night,in a state of extraordinary agitation, and jump outof bed, crying and gesticulating as if he werepursuing an intruder. Wishing to prevent allaccidents, I made him sleep with his elder brotherPierre, who would hold and calm him by gentlewords each time that an attack seized him.Kecently, in the middle of the night, Pierre heardhim talk of a waggon that he meant to build, thewood necessary to make it, and the tools that hemust use, <S:c. As he saw us every day working iniron and wood, his imagination is naturally full ofthese things. Thinking that he was awake, Pierreconversed with him about the subject that was uponhis mind. Suddenly, little Leon told him to go

and get some hatchets to fell the trees that were tosupply the wood for his waggon. Pierre then understoodthat his brother was in somnambulism, andtried to calm him by promising to give him a sou ifhe would remain quiet." ' Where is the sou ?'" ' I have put it on the table.'9130 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY." Instantly, and before Pierre had time to holdhim, little Leon jumped out of bed, went straightto the table to get the sou, and said that he did not

find it. His mother, who slept in the same room,having heard all, then got up to go and put onethere. The child seized it, and, his mind takinganother direction, he thought of his brother Jerome,who was making a tour through France."' Grive me,' said he, ' some paper and a pen. Iwant to write to Jerome.'" Meanwhile the candle had been lighted, and wewere all up to see this crisis. "We gave him paperand a pen, and, seizing the latter, he wrote, verydistinctly, Jerome, with his eyes closed, and hishead turned rather towards us than towards the

paper." ' You should also write to your sister Marie,'said Pierre to him. " It is not unimportant to remark that Marie wasamong us and at his very side." ' You are right,' answered Leon ;' I shall alsowrite to Marie.'" And he proceeded to trace the name."



' But you are mistaken,' observed Pierre ;' youhave written Maire.'" ' It's true, I have made a mistake ;' and here-wrote the name of his sister." This time he spelt the word correctly, all thewhile keeping his eyes closed and his head turnedtowards us.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 131"As his ziovements were jerky and almost convulsive,I did not wish that this scene should beprolonged, and I took him into my bed, pettinghim with gentle words. He fell asleep after a fewmoments, and, upon awaking, had no recollection ofwhat had happened."I shall not analyze the circumstances of thisnarrative. While somnambulism is here undoubtedlyexhibited, I prefer to cite other examples in whichthe characteristics peculiar to it display themselvesin a broader manner. I will only add that I havelearned fresh particulars relative to little Leon.Somnambulism developed in him after an accidentwhich gave him a great fright, and it has been

noticed that when he sleeps with his mother or hissister he is less agitated that when he shares thebed of his brother. This circumstance implies theaction of the vital fluid of one person on another.It indicates at the same time that this fluid actswith less energy when it emanates from a female,especially if advanced in age ; for little Leon findshimself calmer near his mother than near his sister.The following fact occurred in the early part ofthis century at Saint Jean-de-Verges, a little villagein the neighbourhood of Foix. It is related to meby a daughter of Mdme, L,, the heroine of thestory

:" Mdme, L. was still a young girl, and was oneday busy at home about her household affairs. Onthe morrow a local festival was to be celebrated,92132 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and all the day was given to tlie preparations.But, despite her industry, she found no time toclean her kitchen utensils. She went to bed,intending to rise early in the morning to finish thistask. In the middle of the night she leaves herbed, descends to the kitchen, puts her saucepans inthe basket, and carries them to some distance away

from the house, to the bank of the Arifege, to thespot where she was accustomed to wash her potsand pans. Her saucepans cleaned, she returned tothe house, put everything back in its place, andreturned to bed. In the morning she rose, as shehad intended, very early, to complete her taskFinding the work all done, and not being able toexplain this wonder, she went to tell it to herparents. They replied that they had heard her inthe night descend from her room, enter the kitchen,



unhook the saucepans from the wall, and placethem in the basket ; then she had opened the doorof the house, and gone towards the river. Theyhad let her do it, thinking that she was awake, andthat it must be near daylight. At the end of aboutan hour, they had heard her re-enter the kitchen,hang up her saucepans, and go back to her room."From this narrative, the prodigy gives its ownexplanation. She had cleaned her utensils in acrisis of somnambulism.Two leading facts separate themselves from thisstory. "We see Madame L. preoccupied about a certainthing, the cleaning of her saucepans. Being unPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 133able to finish the task in the day-time, she isobliged to put it off till the morning ; she retiredwith the purpose well formed to rise very early, tofinish this operation before the festival should begin.A fixed idea dominated her, and directed all theforces of her mind towards a determined result.And this is the first characteristic noticeable insomnambulism. In the second place, if we follow Madame L. stepby step, we see her accomplishing the intended task

in the same manner as if she had done it in full daylight.Were her eyes open or closed ? I do notknow, but it is not important : both cases areequally common in somnambulism. But when asomnambule has the eyes open, they are fixed,motionless, insensible to light, consequently incapableof seeing. Madame L., walking wi th unfalteringstep in the darkness, handling her utensils with theusual dexterity, finishing her work without interruption,was guided by an interior vision whichreplaced sight and directed her actions in a manneras sure as if she had been awake.We can draw one other conclusion from this story.

Madame L. was not naturally a somnambule; forthey had never noticed in her any fact of this kind.She became so by accident on a single occasion,under the impulse of a fixed idea. Let a strongpreoccupation control a person several days successively,and the state of somnambulism may bedeveloped. Of this nature is the following example :134 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.it occurred at Pamiers, about forty years ago, and wastold me by a midwife, Madame F., who was an eyewitness.This young lady had gone to Pamiers to pursueher medical studies. She went to lodge with awoman who had three other boarders, young ladies like

herself. Winter was approachingthe time whengeese are fattened, and the mistress of the houseused to rise early every morning to gorge hers. One day she came in, in very depressed mood, to tellher boarders that the geese seemed ill, that she hadnot been able to make them eat their food, althoughthe dish was full of corn which she had given themthe evening before. She took some comfort, thatevening, in seeing that corn had, at any rate, beendigested during the day. But, the same facts



occurring on the next and following days, ourhostess worried more and more. A boarder, havingthought she heard some noise in the night, conceivedsome suspicion of somnambulism, and toldher companions. All four adopted the means toverify the fact, and the following night the samenoise recurring, they rose, went to see the geese,and found the m.istress of the house in the act ofstuffing them. They awakened her, and great washer astonishment when she found herself caught inthe very act of somnambulism. At about the sametime, another woman of Pamiers, who knittedwoollen waistcoats, sometimes found, upon rising,her work more forward than she had left it thePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 135previous evening. After numerous fruitless researches,her neighbours discovered that she was asomnambule, and rose at night to work at her waistcoatin pitch darkness."We may apply to these two cases of somnambulismthe reflections that I have made with respectto Madame L. The woman who rose at night to stuffher geese, and she who worked at her knitting, wereonly accidentally somnambulistic, and fell into this

state only under the power of a great preoccupation.The dexterity with which they accomplished theirtasks shows that their members obeyed an innerintelligent force which guided them as surely asthat which controlled them when awake.When the mental tension which provokes somnambulismacts in a studious man, we notice stillmore surprising facts than the preceding ones.Scholars have been seen to rise at night, to composetheir work for the next day ; mathematicians, to findthe solution of problems which they had vainlysought the evening before ; persons devoid of poetictalent, to compose verses in irreproachable composition

and style. The treatises upon physiology arefull of narrations of this kind. The most rigorouslogic seems to direct all the acts performed byaccidental somnambulists. It is not always sowith natural somnambulists. Burdach avows, in hisTraite de Physiologic, that the latter sometimesdo things quite contrary to reason. He cites inthis connection an example personal to himself.136 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.From his eighteenth to his thirtieth year he wassubject to attacks of somnambulism. One morninghe found himself without his shirt. No one havingentered his room, he could only attribute to himself

the strange fact ; but what had he done with thelost article? All his searches were useless, and itwas only some time afterwards that he found hisshirt, rolled up and put away in the wardrobe in anadjoining room. The night-walks of certain somnambulesare also entirely unaccountable: theyhave been seen walking on the edges of roofs ; othersleaping from beam to beam with a marvellous precision.If perchance they fall, the fall is for thembut a sort of leap, for they always find themfelves



on touching ground in the position that the besttrained acrobat would take. If obstacles are placedin their way, they avoid them as they would do inbroad daylighta manifest proof that they possessin themselves an intelligent force which guides andputs them in motion as the locomotive directs thetrain with which it is coupled.It is to be remarked that somnambules preserveno recollection of their nocturnal exploits ; but thestrange thing is, that they will relate what theyhave done, if interrogated during the next followingsleep. One would say that there exists in them asecond personality, which only reveals itself duringsomnambulism, and has no relation with theordinary personality. Burdach tells a very curiousstory about this. "One of my friends," says he,POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 137" learnt one morning that his wife had been seen onthe roof of the church. At noou, although she wasfast asleep, he asked her, speaking to her over theepigastric region, to give him some details abouther nocturnal wandering. She gave him a detailedaccount, and said, among other things, that she hadbeen wounded in her left foot by a nail projecting

from the surface of the roof. After awaking,she answered affirmatively, but with surprise, thequestion that was put to her as to whether she feltany pain in this foot ; but when she discovered awound there, she could not account for it."From the facts that I have just presented, thefollowing conclusions may be drawn.I. Somnambulism, spontaneous in some people,is in the latent state in all others. In the latter,one detects it but slightly ; yet it may attain its fulldevelopment under the influence of a strong mentaltension, a moral commotion, or other physiologicalcauses. These manifestations, frequent though incomplete

in childhood, show themselves morestrongly in youth, then decrease with age, andseem to disappear in the old.ir. The extraordinary things that the somnambuleaccomplishes, notably in the intellectualdomain, testify the existence in him of an activeand intelligent force, i.e., of an inner personality.This personality seems quite different from theordinary one, and seems to have its seat in thenervous ganglia of the epigastric region, as we138 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.have seen in the somnambule mentioned by Burdach,and as we shall recognize in a degree

iQore marked and precise in other manifestationsof mesmerism. It is thus proven why the somnambuledoes not recognize the voices of personswith whom he is most intimate, and preserves norecollection of what has passed during his sleep.In like manner we notice the fact that there hasnever been detected in him any immoral act, asif his mysterious guide was freed from the bondsof animality,III. The personality which appears in somnambulism



displays an intelligence equal and sometimessuperior to that of the ordinary personality; but,like the latter, it has also its equation, its obscurity,its exhaustion. To content myself withone example, I will revert to that somnambulementioned by Burdach, who, after having put onhis boots, mounted astride a window-sill, and putthe spur to the wall to urge on an imaginarycourser.IV. Somnambulism is due to an abnormal disengagementof nervous fluid. Several causes maylead to this result: fright, great mental tension,exuberance of youth, &c. ; in a word, all whichtends to upset the equilibrium of the physiologicalfunctions whose seat is in the nervous system.When the fluid is not abundant, the effects ofsomnambulism are only displayed in an obscuremanner, and seem to be confounded with thosePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 139of dreaming. But as soon as there is disengageda suitable quantily, the inner personality is immediatelyseen to appear, and the somnambule thenpresents the characteristics of a waking man, forhe has a guide within him who possesses all the

faculties of intelligence and movement. What Ihave said of the thaumaturgic fluid, and the personalityit calls into action, will be confirmed bythe other effects of mesmerism.Let us now pass to the examination of the phenomenathat are observed in the magnetic sleep.When the nervous fluid which acts on an individualproceeds from another person there is produceda new order of facts. The patient submittedto the action of magnetic passes sleeps, then becomesclairvoyant, and answers the questions thatare put to him. In other words, he is a sleeptalker.He is given, by analogy, the name of

somnambulean improper expression which leadsto misunderstanding. But custom has prevailed,and by the side of natural somnambulism hasranged itself " magnetic " somnambulismanotherimproper designation, but also sanctioned bycustom.It was in 1784 that magnetic somnambulismwas observed for the first time by a disciple ofMesmerM. de Puysegur. This discovery was,like many others, the result of chance. A gardenerof M. de Puysegur, Victor Eass, having fallen sick,his master took steps to magnetize him. After140 POSTIIUMOtrS HUMANITY.

some passes M. de Puysegur, seeing that lie hadhis eyes closed, asked him if he slept. Great washis surprise when he heard him answer and begina conversation with him about his sickness. VictorEass indicated to him the organs which werediseased and the remedies which would cure him.M. de Puysegur perceived that the patient hadfallen into a new physiological state, which helikened to somnambulism. His discovery was soonnoised about, and somnambulism studied in all its



phases. I shall not enter into any detail as tothe manner in which it is produced, nor as to theeffects which are obtained in it.These are matters familiar to everybody to-day,and moreover foreign to my subject. I shall confinemyself to analyzing certain of its most essentialcharacteristics, such as have been revealed by thepractice of nearly a century.The first phenomenon that the magnetic sleepexhibits is the modification that most somnambulesexperience in their nervous system. Sensitivenessis entirely abolished. The patient hearsonly the voice of the magnetizer and that of theperson whom the latter places en rapport with him.His deafness is absolute for all noises that occur, ofwhatsoever intensity. In an experiment made atParis, a sceptic fired a pistol near the ear of a somnambule.The latter heard nobbing. The insensibilityis not less complete in other parts of the body.We may bury needles in the flesh without thePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 141patient feeling the least pain. He suffers onlywhen he awakes. The most painful surgical operationshave been performed on magnetized subjects,

and they had only learned what had happened afterthey had come out of their sleep. (^°) Before thediscovery of chloroform the faculty had only at theirdisposal this means for abolishing suffering duringoperations, and a number of doctors employ it up tothe present time. This insensibility resembles thatwhich we have seen showing itself at the momentwhen a person is about to project the Double. Itis the first point of resemblance which connects thephenomena of somnambulism with those of duplication.The second character of the magnetic sleep is thelucidity which is observed in somnambules. Notall magnetized persons can attain to this state.

Here, as everywhere else, the phenomena whichpresent themselves follow an ascending scale, whoseextreme terms are, if I may venture to so expressmyself, zero and the infinite. Certain subjects arefound to be completely antipathetic to magnetism,whilst others fall asleep after a few passes. Thosewho fall into the sleep do not always reach somnam-(*'') In the first experiment I ever tried to assure myself of thereality of mesmeric anastheesia, a young woman was piit to sleepand eight bad teeth were extracted from her ulcerated gums withouther having any consciousness of it. But her inner consciousnessbeing at the same time aroused, she was able to tell me the time bya clock in a house eight miles away, as 1 verified the next day by

comparison with my watch.142 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.bulism. This phenomenon shows itself but by imperceptibledegrees ; it commonly requires manysittings before the first symptoms appear. (^') Onthe other hand, individuals not sensitive to-day tomagnetic action may yield to it later on, and viceversa. Sickness, and, more broadly speaking, anycause which tends to weaken the bodily tone andexaggerate nervous sensitiveness, predisposes to



magnetic influence. It is for the latter reason thatsomnambulism more often shows itself in the femalethan in the male. Useless to add, all subjects arenot equally lucid. Some privileged natures attainto an extraordinary clairvoyance, but this clairvoyance,far from applying itself to everything indiscriminately,as was formerly believed, does nottranscend certain limits which I shall presentlydefine.The most immediate and curious application ofthe magnetic lucidity is in the diagnosis and treatmentof disease. If a somnambule is suQ'ering, he(*') One fact as yet incomprehensible to Western mesmerists isthat some operators can never make any subject clairvoyant, -whileothers do so in almost the majority of cases. The famous MajorBuckley was possessed of this power. The late Professor Gregory,of Edinburgh University, says in his work on Animal Magnetism,Letters to a Candid Inquirer, " It would certainly appear thatMajor B. has a rare and very remarkable power of producingconscious clairvoyance in his subjects.'' Natural seers can alwaysrecognize each other upon meeting for the first time, and secondsight sometimes affects two persons simultaneously, so that both seethe same vision, although neither has spoken. I have seen thishappen to two persons looking into the same crystal.

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 143sees witli a marvellous sagacity tlie organ which isthe seat of the disease, predicts long in advance thereturn of the crises, fixes their length, and announcesthe day, hour, and exact minute when they ought toshow themselves ; at the same time he names themost appropriate remedies, and makes known thetime when the cure will be accomplished. Allphysicians who have observed these facts attest thatthese prescriptions include nothing contrary to theprinciples of medical science. Sometimes very singularcoincidences are noticed. A patient havingconsulted a somnambule, the latter advised the use

of milk from a goat whose teats had been rubbedwith mercurial ointment. Some days previouslyDupuytren had ordered the same remedy. Thesomnambules exhibit an analogous discernment inthe cases of patients whom the magnetizer places enrapport with them. It is regrettable that physicians,instead of seeking in magnetism a powerfulauxiliary, only permit themselves to see in itquackery that they must leave to charlatans.We shall find, then, in the somniloquist thecharacteristics which I have described in connectionwith the somnambule properly so called. Underthe action of the nervous fluid, the ordinary personality

seems obliterated, and in its place we see arisethe mesmeric personality. When the phenomenaof the magnetic sleep are but feebly displayed, it isoften difiScult to recognize the physiognomy of thelatter, and we are not quite sure to whom we must144 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.ascribe the answers of the sleep-talker. But as soonas the effects of magnetism attain all their fulnessthere is no longer room for doubt ; it is then trulythe mesmeric personality which acts. It presents



itself with distinct characteristics clearly differentiatingit from the cerebral personality. The magneticsubject does not recognize the voice of thepersons with whom he is most familiar, unless themagnetizer places them en rapport with him. Uponhis awaking he has no longer consciousness ofwhat he has done. Like the natural somnambule,he has an extreme sensitiveness for everythingwhich touches upon morality or modesty, and doesnot shrink from recalling to decorum persons whowhisper dishonourable proposals. Questioned as towhat concerns himself, it sometimes happens thathe speaks of himself as an individual with whom hehas no connection. He expresses himself in thethird person, and exposes his own faults as thoughhe were doing it of a stranger. In other words, thepersonality which the mesmeric fluid has evoked isentirely distinct from the individual who has justbeen submitted to mesmeric passes. If one asksthis mysterious interlocutor what is his name, hedoes not know what to answer ; he babbles like achild of three years, whom one asks about his origin.It is a statue which a supernatural potency has justanimated for a moment with the breath of life.

Deleuze cites the example of a woman namedAdelaide, who, when she became somnambulic, noPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 145longer answered to this name ; she declared thatshe was called Petite, and spoke of Adelaide as ofan entire stranger. Others have been known tocall themselves a demon, a spirit, the soul of a deceasedperson. We shall find analogous facts inmediums and the obsessed. ('*)The individuality which appears in the magneticsleep presents a trait not less remarkable than thepreceding ones, and which completes its differentiationfrom the ordinary personality. Whilst the latter

has its seat in the encephalon, the former appearsto be localized in the bundle of nervous gangliacalled the solar plexus. In certain cases, in fact,the voice of the somniloquist seems to come out ofthe epigastrium, as if the mesmeric fluid animatedthis region, crowded as we know it to be with nervefilaments,and we observe a marked dualism betweenthe somnambule, properly so called, and the epi-(*") A curious case occurred in the United States a few years ago.A young girl, named Lurancy Vennum, was suddenly seized with theidea of 'a double personality. At intervals she would pass a crisisof apparent obsession, and during its continuance she would declareherself anothc r young woman whose existence had been unknown

until then to herself or any of her family. Her own relativeswould then seem total strangers to her; but the peraonalities, familysecrets, and interests of the other girl were as familiar to her asthough she had been born in that family. Subsequently her parentsverified, by careful inquiry, all the revelations of their daughter.This is a problem hard to solve upon any other theory than that ofactual obsession by another conscious individuality than that of thesomnambule or hysteriac. Such obsessions are quite common inIndia, and the obsessing entity is called a bhot, or earth-boundghost.



10146 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.gastric personage. I shall have occasion to revertto this frequent fact in the obsessed, and which isalso noticed in various cataleptics who only perceivesounds by the solar plexus. ('') Especially it is,we think, in the magnetic sleep that this phenomenonattains its full development, and that it iseasiest to study. At the commencement there issomething like a struggle between the cerebral andthe epigastric personalities.The somnambule, if asked to read some hnesupon a paper which is handed him, is not quitesure to whom he should apply. He carries thepaper alternately to the forehead and the epigastrium,and it is usually in contact or close to thislatter organ that the reading is done. When, asthe result of predisposition in the subject, or of aconsiderable charging with aura, the mesmeric individualityacquires all its energies, there occursanother phenomenon quite common in the annalsof magnetism. This is the projection of the Double.The epigastric personage, feeling himself strongenough to burst the bonds of his prison, escapes,

and the somnambule falls into ecstasy; he becomesdeaf to the voice of the magnetizer. It is nowbut an inert body, completely cut ofif from theworld which surrounds it. Life has abandoned it,C) One of the most important mysteries yet to be solved byWestern psychologists is this " epigastric personage.'' It is includedin the six chahrams, or centres of psychic evolution defined byAryan sages.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 147and it is in vain that the operator makes his passesto compel it to re-enter. This lethargy lasts sometimesfor several hours. (^°) When the somnambulerecovers consciousness, he tells of extraordinary

visions, of distant journeys, which recall the talesof the ecstatics or of the sorcerers returning fromtheir sabbath.A final characteristic of the individuality bornof the magnetic sleep is that its lucidity is notalways without alloy. It sometimes presents spots,black lines, obscurities, which mak§ it so that onecan never have a complete faith in the answersof a sleep-talker. Even in the diagnosis and treatmentof diseases, which seem its proper domain,magnetic clairvoyance is sometimes at fault. "Ihave seen," says Dupotet, " somnambules who havetold me, along with incontestible truths, unaccountable

falsehoods," Deleuze goes farther, and doesnot fear to lay it down as a principle that, of ahundred persons who go to consult somnambules,ninety-five go away dissatisfied. This tissue of(*) A very dangerous crisis, quite capable of resulting in death.The mesmeric neophyte, being always liable to such an accident asfinding a new subject one of these supersensitives, should proceedin his experiments with the greatest caution and vigilance, If hissubject should fall suddenly into this ecstatic condition, he shouldbeware of losing his coolness and strength of will for a single



instant ; for thfese are the elements of his control over the somnambule,who escapes him if he brealcs the mesmeric current. EeadCahagnet'6 vivid description of his agony when he had lost controlof the somnambule Adele (Celestial Telegraph, p. 70. Londonedition).10^2148 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.intuition mixed with errors, which will always bethe hidden reef of magnetism, and which hasbrought it into discredit, (^') is seen, as we have observed,although in perhaps a less marked manner,in the natural somnambule. We shall encounter itagain in the talking-tables and the mediums.To what causes may one ascribe the dark lineswhich so often come out athwart magnetic clairvoyanceeven in the most lucid subjects? Thefollowing are, I apprehend, the most important.To begin with the personal equation of the magnetizer:his influence upon the somnambule issuch that the latter's understanding unconsciouslyreflects the thought of the master who dominatesit. If, then, the magnetizer has a fixed idea uponany question put to the somniloquist, it will infalliblygive itself expression in the answer of the

latter. Among many examples supporting thisview, I shall cite the following.A rich Brazilian, of the province of Eio Janeiro,one Baron d'Uba, happening to be in Paris in theyears next after 1848, made the acquaintance of(°') Always, until mesmerism is studied and explored by men offirst-elass abilities, patient, unprejudiced men, who have not theconceit to suppose that knowledge is their twin sister, nor theshort-sightedness to abstain from studying their speciality in thetext-books of the masters of Aryan psychology. The somnambulesof the ancient temples were under the constant watch, ward, andrestraint of philosophical adepts who did not permit them to rangethe fields of imagination like wild colts on the Pampas, nor foster

their conceit by accepting their fanciful rhapsodies as oracularrevelations.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 149Baron du Potet, and became quite an expert inthe practice of magnetism. His son having fallenvery ill, and, seeing that the disease was rapidlybecoming more and more dangerous, notwithstandingthat he had called in one of the most eminentphysicians of the capital, he at length feared forhis life and sent for young Alexis, (^^) who had atthat time a great renown as a lucid somnambule.The Baron d'Uba had consulted him frequentlyabout different subjects, and had been invariably

satisfied with the correctness of his answers. Afterhaving put him to sleep, he asked him if his sonwould get well. " No," answered Alexis. Yet theboy did recover, and was full of life when the fatherrelated to me the story. The latter was not inthe least surprised to see that Alexis had failed,for he confessed that, when questioning him, hedid not believe in his son's recovery, and he expectednone other than such an answer. In otherwords, the fixed idea of the magnetizer is transferred



into the brain of the sleeper.Often, the personal equation of the somnambuleacts as well as that of the magnetizer, and then thereplies given are still wider from the truth. In1870, being at Bordeaux some days before thedisaster of Sedan, I met one of my friends, whom Iknew to be interested in magnetism, and asked him,without attaching any importance to my question,(^') Alexis Didier, one of the most celebrated somnambules inhistory.150 POSTHUMOUS HUJVLtNITY.if he had consulted some somnambule as to theissue of the war." Certainly," he replied ; " I have access toa very lucid subject, and have put him thatquestion."" What did he tell you ?"" He said the French would be in Berlin beforethe Prussians came before Paris."This answer seemed to me rather venturesome,for it was easy to see that our armies were nottravelling the road to Prussia, much less to Berhn.The successive defeats we met with had disclosed

the powerful organization of the Germantroops, their numerical superiority, the power oftheir artillery, and thoughtful persons could notdeceive themselves with any illusions as to theissue of the campaign. It was, then, easy for asomnambule of even moderate lucidity to seizeupon the bitter concatenation of facts which haddeveloped within the previous six weeks, and fromthem draw a horoscope more in harmony with thetruth. How had he of whom I speak, and who hada great reputation as a clairvoyant, fallen into sograve a mistake? Nothing is easier than toaccount for it. The master and subject were both

old soldiers, and it could not enter the heads ofsuch campaigners that the eagles of Francecould be humiliated by the Prussian eagles to thepoint of our seeing the latter even displayed beforeParis. The answer of the somnambule could onlyPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 151be the fixed idea which ruled equally in the mind ofboth magnetizer and subject.Let us suppose, now, that the master and thesubject are both exempt from the personal equation.What degree of lucidity should one accord to thelatter ?Before broaching this question, let us examine

what must be understood by magnetic clairvoyance.Generally, we may perhaps define itseeing at adistance. You hand a somnambule an object whichhas belonged to a person who lives in London, whileyou are in Paris or some other distant place, andyou request him to put himself in communicationwith it, so as to give you some news about him.It is a telegraphic wire that we establish betweentwo places, having as electric batteries, the one,the nervous system of the sleep-talker, the other,



that of the person with whom he is placed enrapport; and for vehicle, the fluid which theydisengage. This fluidic emanation forms roundeach of them an atmosphere whose undulationsextend very far, because of the subtlety of themesmeric atom. That of the magnetic subject,much more active than the other's, goes, as it were,in some sort in search of the latter, meets it, andthe communication is thus established between thetwo poles. We now see the conditions wliich thetelegraphic system prescribes so that it may giveexact results. The somnambule will show himselfproportionately lucid as his sensibility shall be more152 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.delicate (I mean more apt to perceive the contact ofthe etheric waves flowing from the opposite pole),as these waves shall be more distinctly marked, anda^ the distance between the two stations shall beshorter. Let us add that, for the despatch not tobe interrupted, and to be free from all obscuritieswhich alter its sense, it is necessary that theelectric thread shall not be crossed by any opposingcurrent from a mesmeric source. It is to guardagainst these disturbing currents that, at the commencement,

you hand the somnambule some articlebelonging to the person with whom you arebringing him into rapport. This article, impregnatedwith the emanations of its proprietor, acts, ifI may venture to say it, upon the magnetic subjectin the same way as the track of game upon thepointer. From the moment of their contact, he hasdetected the nature of the aura special to him whomthey are pointing out; he follows his trace, andidentifies his auric wave among numberless ethericvibrations which are crossing each other about him.The annals of magnetism teem with narrativesof sight at a distance, displaying, on the part of the

somnambule, a lucidity sometimes marvellous. Ishall limit myself to quoting the following, whichis of a personal character:"In the month of July, 1870, I was at Cauteretswhen the war-cloud burst. Two or three days later,one of my acquaintances, who was at Paris, andto whom I had just written, having had the opporPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 153tunity of attending a magnetic seance, handed rayletter to a somnambule, and asked her to give himsome news of me. She answered, after having, as itwere, searched after me for some moments, that she

saw me in a room on the second storey, which shedescribed, seated before a table, occupied in readinga newspaper. She added that my countenanceshowed anxiety. All these details, which theyreported to me, were quite correct. The anxietywhich she had noticed on my face was but too welljustiiied by the reading of the paper, quite filledwith the campaign which was about opening, andthe apprehensions which this war awakened in me.I knew the formidable organization of the Prussian



army, and I counted little upon a General Bonaparteto restore the equilibrium of the situations,whilst I apprehended the presence of a Frederick II.in the ranks of the Grerman armies."Distant sight is sometimes met with elsewherethan in somnambules. Certain organizations,naturally endowed with a sensitiveness similar tothat which the magnetic sleep develops, can, incertain cases, be impressed by etheric vibrationscoming from a distant point and emanating fromknown persons. Apollonius of Tyana was, in hisold age, in retirement at Ephesus, where he hadfounded a school of Pythagorean philosophy. Oneday, while discoursing in the midst of his disciples,he was noticed to suddenly stop, and to cry out in avoice full of emotion :154 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY." Courage, strike the tyrant !"He paused yet a few moments in the attitude ofa man who anxiously awaits the issue of a struggle,then again exclaimed:" Fear not, Ephesians, the tyrant is no more ; he

has just been assassinated."Some days later, it was learnt that, at the momentwhen the thaumaturge uttered this strange apostrophe,Domitian fell under the blows of the freedmanStephanus. The murder could not occur withoutcausing, as well on the part of the victim as onthat of the assassin, movements which must set invibration either the surrounding ether or thecerebral fluid disengaged by the two actors in thedrama. These vibrations, starting from Kome, hadinstantaneously reached Ephesus, where they wereperceived by the ultra-sensitive or subtle nerves ofthe celebrated seer. It is not unimportant to recall

that, some time before, the philosopher had beenthrown into fluidic rapport with the tyrant, aftercertain lively disentanglements which occurredbetween them, and that ApoUonius was forced toieave Eome to escape death. If, from antiquity, wepass to modern times, we find a great number ofanalogous facts reported by different authors.Certain races, or rather certain regions, seem tofavour second sight. Such are the high districts ofScotland. Seers there develop themselves quiteoften ; occasionally Englishmen, sceptical aboutwhat has been told them in this matter, have madePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 155

a tour in the highlands to convince themselves atfirst hand as to the truth of the allegations, andhave returned fully convinced. On the Continent,intuitive sight is a rare phenomenon ; however, weknow of a number of examples. The biography ofSwedenborg cites several. I will confine myself tothe following, of which Kant guarantees the authenticity:"On July 19th, 1759, the great theosophist,returning from England, stopped at Gothenburg,



distant from Stockholm about fifty leagues. As hewas lodging in a merchant's house of that city,where there were several friends, they saw him, atsix o'clock in the evening, enter the drawing-roompale and agitated. He announced that a great firehad just broken out at Stockholm, in the Sudermahn,and that it was approaching his house. Fortwo hours he was very restless, going out andcoming in as if he were seeking news. At a certainmoment he declared |that the fire had just consumedthe house of one of his friends whom henamed, and that his own was in danger. At last,about eight o'clock, after a new exit, he criedout:" Thank Heaven ! the fire has stopped at thethird door from my own."Two days later, the governor of Grothenburgreceived a despatch announcing to him the disaster.Every detail given by Swedenborg was fully confirmed.156 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.An ordinary person, but with an exceptionallydelicate sensitiveness, may become clairvoyant incertain circumstances, when a catastrophe has just

happened to a near relative. Two causes, the onephysical, organic similitude, the other moral, familyafifection, explain this fact.Mirville, in the second volume of his work, citesseveral very remarkable examples. His father relatesthat in his youth, when playing at base with severaloiEcers of his regiment, he saw one of them suddenlystop in the middle of his run, and cry out whileputting his hand over his two eyes:" Ah ! heavens ! My brother has just broken histhigh while leaping a rail fence in America."Three months afterwards, the news was minutely

verified. A lady, living in Loraine, awoke one nightwith a start, and in a frenzy of grief exclaimed thather son had just been stabbed and thrown into theriver. They wrote to Paris ; search was made, andthe authorities found the corpse at the place indicated,and bearing the fatal wound.One of my friends at Carcassonne has told methat in 1815, while still a child, he was awakenedone night by the report of firearms ; at the sametime he saw his uncle lying on the ground, struckby a bullet. The next day they learned that theunfortunate man, a veteran of the Empire, hadfallen at the same hour, a victim of the Eoyalist

rage of the times. Let us add that the place ofthe drama and the house of the child were at tooPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 157great a distance apart for the noise of firearmsto be heard there.From these dififerent instances it is easy to seethat the intuition has its source in the family tieswhich unite two persons, and put their mesmericsensitiveness in unison with each other. Amongcountless impressions which reach the seer from all



sides, he perceives only those which emanate fromhis relative. His nerves, so sensitive as regards himwho is bound to him by the ties of blood or affection,cannot act when they are solicited by vibrationscoming from strangers or from persons for whomthey feel indifference. {^^)I will make another remark about second sight.This faculty usually shows itself during sleep, as ifthe relaxation of the bodily organs made the nervoussensitiveness more apt to let itself be affected by themesmeric undulation.Now let us return to magnetic clairvoyance. Canthe somnambule predict the future ? As a generalproposition, the thing is not impossible, but is dailyverified with lucid subjects, provided always that thequestion is confined within certain limits.Each event can, in fact, be considered as theresultant of a certain number of forces, whether() Mr. F. Galton, F.R. S. , has very ably worked up this relationshipbetween twins, which in most cases he found to extend tomental action as well as physical resemblance. See his masterlywork, Inquiries into Human Fmyidty and its Development, p. 216158 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.physical or moral, which obey laws as inflexible as

those of rational mechanics. Chance is an expressionto which we have recourse to disguise ourignorance of first causes, but which ought not to finda place in the glossary of nature. All is united andlinked together in the universe, in such a way thatcontemporary events spring from anterior circumstances,just as the facts of the future are in germin those which are occurring in our own time. Itconcerns us then to disentangle the unknown froma problem sharply determined and circumscribed,whose elements are represented by etheric undulationsfrom cosmic or mesmeric sources, which placethe somnambule simultaneously en rapport with the

physical world and the world of idea. The lucidityof the magnetic subject consists in perceiving hisfluidie impressions, of which some are occasionallyof an infinite delicacy, and in tracing them out untilthey have given their resultant. It is, therefore,evident that his answer will become easier as hisimpressions shall be better marked, that is to say, asthey spring from causes more immediate and relateto a future more near. (^^)("*) But are we to take no account of the normal degree oflucidity in the individual ? If anything is certain, it is that somelucid somnambules are, from childhood, far higher in the scale ofclairvoyance than the average of seers. Their prevision seems,

then, rather an innate capacity to, so to speak, look ahSve" theclouds of sense " and trace present causes to their ultimate'^ffects,than to be dependent upon the comparative nearness or remotenessof the one from the other. For, as all ancient authorities insist,time is not an appreciable element in the action of spiritual faculty.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 159The prevision of the future is not alone observablein somnambulism ; it is equally accredited to theScotch seers. One of them, passing with somefriends through the district where, two years later,



the battle of Culloden was destined to be fought, tothe great astonishment of his companions, forwamedthem of the bloody combat which was to decide thefate of the Stuarts. (^^) Besides seers properly socalled, certain persons have occasionally prevision;but, as in the case of seeing at a distance, this facultyusually shows itself only in sleep. We find in thedream-book of Valerius Maximus a curious exampleof this sort. They were celebrating, at Syracuse,some gladiatorial sports. Aterius Euffus, a Eomannobleman, saw himself in a dream pierced by thehand of a retiarivis, and the next day, at the amphitheatre,he related his experience to several persons.A few minutes afterward, a retiarius entered the(^) If our author had in mind the prophecy of the Culloden fightmade hy Kenneth Mackenzie, or, as he is hetter known, CoinneachOdhar, the Brahan Seer, he has not done full justice to the case.This wonderful man and true prophet was torn at the beginning ofthe seventeenth century, and died before reaching old age ; but thebattle of Culloden was fought in April, 1746, about a century later.It is recorded of him that, passing over what was afterwardsto be the battle-field, he suddenly exclaimed, "Oh! Drummossie,thy bleak moor shall, ere many generations have passed away,

be stained with the best blood of the Highlands. Glad am I thatI will not see that day, for it will be a fearful period ; heads will belopped off by the score, and no mercy will be shown or quarter givenon either side." (See The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer, byAlexander Mackenzie, editor of the Celtic Magazinea most interestingwork.)160 posthu:mous humanity.arena with his weapon, quite near the place wherethe nobleman was seated. Scarcely had the lattercast his eye upon him, than he exclaimed:" The very retiarius by whom it seemed to methat I was killed."

At once he wished to go away. Those who wereabout him succeeded by their talk in dissipatinghis fears, and thus caused his death ; for theretiarius, having pushed his adversary up to thevery edge of the arena, upset him at this spot;whilst he was trying to strike him, his weaponreached Aterius, and killed him.The following story, related by Marmont, willmatch that of Valerius Maximus :On the eve of a battle, one of the most brilliantofiBcers of the Italian army, Stingel, saw in sleep agreat green horseman, who came towards him andkilled him. The next day he related his dream to

his comrades, without, however, attaching to it anyimportance. The same day an engagement occurredbetween the French and the Austrians. In theheat of the battle, Stingel saw approaching him atall dragoon, wearing a green uniform. He thoughthe recognized the horseman who had appeared tohim in his dream, and advanced to meet him withthe shout:" I recognize you ; I'm your man."



Some moments later, he was slain.Sometimes the nervous organization of the seeris such that he can distinguish impressions relatingPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 161.to acts accomplished at a more or less distant epoch.Somnambules furnish daily examples of this kind.They relate to those about them what occurred inthe morning or during the preceding days. Wesometimes see them making revelations which theone to whom they are speaking thought no one in -the world was acquainted with, and by which theyare not complimented. Certain extra-lucid somnambules,or certain exceptional organizations, canseize upon facts relating to several years back.How can their sensitiveness act, however delicatewe may suppose it ? Can it let itself be impressedby vibrations long since subsided ? No movementis exhausted in nature ; it but transforms itself.It leaves, consequently, traces, and these suflBce toarouse the attention of the seer. (^^) Every vibration,whatever may be its nature and its origin,may be compared to those which are emitted byluminous bodies in the medium which surrounds

them. The undulatory movements of the etherealfluid depict upon our retina the image of the starwhich projects them, though they may be crossedon their path by the undulations of myriads ofother stars, and though the initial impulse tracesback thousands of years.1^) So true, that psyehometers are able to view the most remoteevents of the past hy clairvoyant inspection of the Astral LightProf. Denton's Soul of Things (3 vols. ; Boston, Mass. . Colbyand Eich) contains a mass of records of such psychometricalresearches,11162 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

One of the most curious examples that can bequoted of the subtlety of a seer is supplied us bythe celebrated Martin Graillardon, who was muchtalked about in the first years of the Eestoration.He went to Paris to see Louis XVIIL, announcingthat he had important revelations to make to themonarch. These boasts having reached the ear ofthe Minister of Police, M. d'Ecazes, the latter sawin him only an ordinary hallucinated person, andhad him privately placed in an insane hospital.One of the intimate friends of the king, the Due dela Rochefoucauld, not hearing anything more saidabout Martin, guessed what had happened, and

under pretext of visiting the insane hospital, wentto this establishment, and carefully visited all thewards. In a room was a solitary man, whoseattitude was that of an ecstatic. The duke understoodthat he had before him Martin ; he questionedhim discreetly, and becoming convinced that he wasnot deceived, he took him the next day to LouisXVIII. When the sovereign and the seer werealone, the latter spoke, and, becoming more andmore animated, it ended in his drawing great tears



from the king-philosopher, who dismissed him withsob§. The mistress of the monarch, Mdme. duCayla, who, from a neighbouring room, watched allthe details of this scene, imparts to us, in her*' Memoires," the revelation which so strongly movedh«r royal lover, and which it is useless to repeathere. Suffice it to say that it concerned a heinousPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 163act, with which Martin reproached the old king;that this act related to a time when the QueenMarie Antoinette was pregnant with the Dauphin ;aiid that it had never been known by any one, itsauthor having carefully buried it in the innermostrecesses of his consciousness.CHAPTER VII.THE MESMERIC ETHER AND THE PERSONALITY WHICHIT ENGENDERS {continued).THE TURNING-TABLE. THE TALKING-TABLE.THE MEDIUM.It is now some thirty odd years since a moralepidemic, spiritism, overran the United States.Thence it passed into Europe, and graduallyspread over the entire Continent. The premonitorysymptoms of this curious disease were described byCount de Rezies in his learned work, Les Sciences

Occultes." We will reproduce the following excerpt,as an historical document:Kaps, the cause of ivhieh nobody eould guess, were heard for thefirst time in 1846 ("), in the house of one 'Weckman(°'), in thevillage of Hydesville, Arcadia township, Wayne county. State of'New York. No pains were spared to discover the author of thesemysterious noises, but to no avail. Once, in the middle of the night,the family were aroused by the screams of the youngest daughter,aged about eight years, who declared she had felt something like ahand, which passed all over the bed and at last rested on her head'and facea thing which seems to have occurred in several other

places where such knockings have been heard. Prom that timeforward nothing happened for about six months, at which time the(") 1848. O Weekman,112164 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.family left the house, -which Teas then occupied by a Methodist,Mr. John Fox and his family, comprising his -wife and twodaughters. ("") for three months more all was quiet, but then theTappings recommenced louder than ever. They were at first rathergentle, as if some one were tapping upon the floor of one of thesleeping-rooms, and with each rap a vibration was felt in the floor;they could be felt even by those who were lying down upon a bed,

and those who did so say that the sensation was very like thatcaused by a galvanic battery. The knocks were continually heard ;it was impossible to sleep ; every night these light vibratory tapswent on softly but ceaselessly. Wearied, worried, ever kept on thealert, the family at last decided to call in the neighbours to helpdiscover the riddle, and thenceforward the mysterious knocksaroused the attention of the whole country. Groups of six oreight persons were stationed in every room in the house, or everysoul would be made to go outside and listen ; but the invisible agentkept up his knocking. On the 31st March, 1847, ('") Mrs. Fox and



her daughters not having closed their eyes the previous night, andbeing excessively sleepy, retired very early, all in one room, hopingthus to escape the noises which were usually heard about midnight.Mr. Fox was away. But soon the rappings began again, and thetwo young girls, who could not sleep, set to imitating them bysnapping their lingers. To their perfect amazement the knocksresponded to every snap. Then the younger began to test thewonder ; she snapped her fingers and there came a knock, or two,three, &c., always the invisible being giving the exact number ofknocks. The elder sister jokingly said, " Now do as I do ; countone, two, three, four, five, six," &e., each time herself clapping herhands the number of times called for. The sounds followed withthe same exactness ; but this sign of intelligence frightening theyounger child, she soon stopped her experiment. Then Mrs. Foxsaid, " Count ten,'' and immediately ten blows resounded. Sheadded : " Will you tell me the age of my daughter Catherine ?"C') The details have been inaccurately copied by the CountEezies from the full and well-known narratives of Capron, Hardinge,Owen, and other American authors. It is not worth whilepointing out the errors, as they do not affect M. d'Assier's argument.('") 1848 : the Fox family did not move into the Weekman houseuntil the 11th of December, 1847.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 165

and the knocks indicated the exact number of years of the child'sage. Mrs. Fox then asked if a human being were making thenoises. No reply. Then she said, '-If you are a spirit, knocktwice." Two raps came. " If you are a spirit to whom somebodydid wrong, answer me as before." And the raps did so.Such was the first conversation, perhaps, that ever occurred, atleast in modern times, between the beings of the other world andthis. By this means Mrs. Fox came to know that the spiritanswering their questions was the soul of a man who had beenkilled in the house several years before, that his name was Charles^7° (")> that he was a pedlar, and aged thirty-one when theperson with whom he lodged overnight killed him for his money.Mrs. Fox then said to her unseen interlocutor, " If we call in the

neighbours, shall the knocks continue to answer ? " A rap washeard in affirmative reply. The neighbours were soon gathered,predisposed to make sport of the Fox family ; but the accuracy of amultitude of details thus given by the raps, in reply to questionswhich were put to the invisible agent by the several members ofthe family about the affairs of their neighbours, convinced the mostsceptical. The rumour of these strange matters spread far andwide, and quickly there gathered priests, judges, lawyers, anda host of simple laity. Shortly after, the Fox family, whomthe spirit-authors of these knoekings pursued from house to house,went to settle in Rochester, an important city of New York, wheremany thousands of persons came to visit them, and vainly triedto discover imposture in this whole business.

Such were the beginnings of spiritism; everybodysaw the spirit of a dead man in the mysteriousinterlocutor of the Fox girls. Did he not so givehimself out ; and what interest could he have hadto dissimulate as to his true civil condition ? Anothercircumstance made this explanation quite natural.In the houses where the least doubtful posthumousmanifestations occur, it has been often noticed thatif we strike one or several blows on the wall or(") Charles B. Eosma.



166 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.floor, the invisible being would repeat at once thesame number of knocks, as though wishing to indicatethat he was anxious to talk through an alphabetat his disposal. However, it is not difficult to seejwhen we scrutinize the facts very closely, that theFox girls were the dupes of one of those so commonmystifications in the history of spiritism. Theybelonged to that class of young electrical girls, as isproven by the part they have since played ; theknocks and vibratory scratchings heard in theirroom resulted from an unconscious action of theirmesmeric personality, for we notice the identicalphenomena occurring with other electrical persons.Thenceforth the answers of the pretended defunct tothe questions of the Fox girls were a simple effectof mesmerism, analogous to the talking-tables towhich we shall have to revert presently.Spiritual telegraphy, whose foundations we havejust been laying above, soon made the tour of theUnited States. Whenever a rapping spirit madehis presence heard in any house, he was crossquestionedby some member of the family, by thehelp of the ingenious system devised by the Fox

girls, and they never made persons wait long fortheir answers. Soon people began to interrogatetables and stands, that they had magnetically animated,and which replied by tapping with their feet.Then came the turn of the mediums: they gaviethemselves out as the intermediaries of the spirits,and wrote under their dictation the replies to thePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. ; 167questions propounded to the latter. These noveltiefe,so strange and so unexpected, caught the fancy ofall classes of American society, the sole talk of theentire country was about rapping spirits, talkingtables,and mediums.

However, two schools arose to explain the pi-6-digies which any one might verify as he chose. Whilstthe one tried to account for them in a rational way,that is to say, by modes of action of the mesmericfluid as yet unfamiliar, the otherand this wasthe largersaw in these mysteries the handof supernatural beings, who had opened communicationwith mortals, and to assist them withtheir best counsels. Did they not, in fact, reply toevery question putto them ? However ridiculousandhowever hard the problems, were they not solved ?As the answer was not invariably orthodox whenthey touched upon religious questions, the Bible

Societies rose in arms, as did the Catholics ; a formidableopposition was organized against the propagatorsof the new doctrine. The bishops ofdifferent sects launched their anathemas, andspiritism was declared a monstrous impiety. Labourlost ! The impetus given by the Fox girls had beenirresistible, and four years after their first appearancethe mediums were counted by thousandsin the United States.In 1851 the entire country was in the hands of



the new proselytes. The spirit-telegraph was.working in all the towns of the new continent.168 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY,The movement had its journals, books, correspondents,its organization and its clubs. This revolution,or, if one prefers, this moral epidemic, as ithas often been termed, possessed an inherent expansivepotency too great for it to stop with theTransatlantic peoples. In the course of 1852 itcrossed the ocean and attacked the British Isles;the next year it invaded the Continent. We canall recollect the frenzy which turned all Frenchheads. The only talk was about the turning-tablesand the conversations that everybody had had withhis stand. I shall not recur to these scenes, uniformlyso very amusing. These facts are known toall the world. 1 shall merely summarize succinctlythe chief peculiarities that one notices in the practiceof these prodigies, so as to analyze them andsatisfy ourselves as to the veritable nature ofspiritism.It is usually with the turning-table that onebegins. Several persons seat themselves around atable, laying their hands upon the edges, and

touching each other, either b}' the elbow or fingers,so as to make a chain, and trying thus to give thepiece of furniture they are encompassing a rotaryimpulse, if not physical, at' least mental. The tableeither turned or did not turn, according to thetact of the actors, or rather according to theirphysiological state and their moral propensities.Frequently the result was nil, the action of somebeing quite neutralized by the indifference, seepPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 169ticism, or ill-will of the others. Occasionally thetable would begin to move, amid the joyousexclamations of the initiated, and to the stupefaction

of the sceptics. The experiment would berepeated in a thousand different ways; and thosewho are fond of explaining things they see tried toaccount for these mysteries upon scientific grounds.Some saw in it suggestions of an electric currentcaused by personal contact between those whomade the chain ; others theorized about a mechanicalimpulse communicated of necessity to the table bythe pressure of the hands. These explanationswere accepted by the most sober men, and Babinetenjoyed his day of triumph at the Academy ofSciences in developing to his colleagues speculationsof this sort.

But the joy of the Academicians was of shortterm. While varying the experiments with theturning-tables, it was soon observed that they couldbe set in motion without the necessity of makingthe human chain. They then tried if a singleindividual might obtain the same result as had,until then, been considered only possible as from acollective force, and the table continued its movements.Then it was seen to rise, balance itself,leap, go forward, retreat, and move itself in all ways.



At length certain experimentalists, pushing rashnessto its last limits, endeavoured to make it movewithout touching it at all, by a simple act of mentalvolition, and succeeded. To cap the marvel, the170 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.table obeyed a child as well as an adult, as soon asit had become thus charged, and continued to moveor to raise itself, despite any weight they mightpile upon it. From that moment a new phase wasbegun. The table raising itself at the command ofthe experimenter, then striking a blow upon settlingagain upon its feet, they would order it to give asuccession of knocks and it obeyed, the desirednumber being made with a marvellous accuracy.If the number were a great one, the table wouldhurry through, as if anxious to get back to simpler, numbers. Thereafter, the big table was abandonedfor the little stand, as more convenient for thedrawing-room, and being able to tap and rap timemore gently and less riotously than the otherfurniture. The stand answered all questions, and,by means of a certain code of knocks previouslyagreed upon, would reveal the age of people in theroom, the amount of money in their pockets, &c.,

It was no longer a mere bit of furniture madeto move mechanically, but an intelligent agent whoconversed with extraordinary cleverness, and amazednearly everybody with the justness and appositenessof its answers.One day they bethought them to ask themysterious agent which animated the table toindicate its answers no longer by the tapping of itsfeet, but by means of characters traced on paper bya pencil, which they arranged in a support. Thenthe pencil, in its turn, became animated, moved,POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 171traced letters, and ahswtered questions which were

put to it. The advantages of having a movingpencil made them naturally forget the table. Butits triumph was short. The fluid which animatesinert bodies could much more readily act uponliving persons, and, in fact, under the influence ofthe atmosphere which they breathed in thesestrange stances, certain impressionable natures feltthemselves penetrated by the invisible breath whichmoved the pencil, took a pen and wrote, they, also,under the control of the spirits. These were themediums, that is to say, the intermediaries whosupplanted the pencil, as the latter had supplantedthe table. Spiritism was now definitively organized.

The mysterious agent which set in motion thespeaking-tables was evidently the same as that whichanimated the moving pencil and the medium, Imean the mesmeric personality of the sitters or ofthe medium himself. If it differed in its modes ofaction, that was a question solely of the nature ofthe intermediaries by which.it manifested itself. Itis not, in fact, difScult to see that the table is onlya passive instrument, a sort of acoustic syllabaryput in action by the fluid of him who interrogates.



In other words, it is the mesmeric personality of thelatter, which fills the office of breath-imparter in thetabular ;dialogue. Thus it is explained how, iuits replies, .the table Separates with marveil ouesagacity the unknown from the mistakes whiehinay.obatrnct; itin the bead of the questioner, like ..a172 POSTHUMOUS HUMAMTY.geometer wlio corrects the known quantities in aproblem badly stated. There is hardly any personwho has not heard people tell of the singulardialogues carried on by a table when it is thoroughlyimpregnated with mesmeric influence. One of themost common amusements is to make it tell the ageof persons present. Before each question, he towhom it relates confides to his neighbour, either bywriting or in a low voice, the number of years hehas lived, and the table is then required to revealthe figure. The answer is never long in coming.The foot that is to make the knocks begins to move,and the number counted is almost always that whichhas been fixed in advance. Sometimes, however,there is a slight disagreement of one or two units,and this is usually to the detriment of the party interested.At once this is a cause of laughter and

joking among the audience. Some one says that thetable has made a mistake, and they ask it then torepeat its calculations. But the latter is obstinateenough to repeat the same number of knocks, andthe age is verified by appealing to the recollectionsof the subject of discussion or of persons who cangive the necessary particulars, and the mirth isdoubled when they see that the table is right. Thesame process and the same result when they ask itto guess the money that some one present has in hispocket, but who deceives himself as to the amountin his purse. The calculations of the table arealways accurate. At the end of a certain stance.

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY, 173where they had made the table talk about varioussubjects, one present exclaimed :" A last question to finish the evening. Let it tellus how many ears there are in the room."They put the question, and the table immediatelyrapped out sixteen. The sitters count themselvesand reckon only fourteen ears." You're mistaken," said they. " Begin again andcount better."The foot raised itself again and repeated the samenumber of knocks. Again they count themselves,and it is but too evident that there are only seven

persons in the room." Again mistaken. Count once more."The number marked by the table continuing to besixteen, they all began asking what could be thereason of this disagreement. They are lost in conjecturesover this strange fact, and they commenceto doubt the intelligence of the mysterious inspirer,when one of them exclaimed :" The table has told the truth : we forgot to countthe cat sleeping by the fire."



All eyes then turned in that direction, and thereindeed is a tom-cat, whose two ears made up themissing figure.This circumstance, which is repeated daily undera thousand different forms in spiritual sSances, oncemore reminds us of the extraordinary accuracywhich the understanding sometimes acquires when ithas the mesmeric agent for interpreter. We have174 EOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.observed the same phenomenon in somnambulism,the elder brother of spiritism. The sleep-talker,also, corrects an uncertain answer and manageswith astounding accuracy involved computations.Therefore it is not at all impossible that the tableobtains equally surprising results when it isanimated by the same principle as the magneticsubjectthe thaumaturgic fluid (aura).The talking-tables were soon abandoned for themoving pencil, their action being restricted withinnarrow limits on account of the ultra-elementarynature of the means of correspondence. Such aspelling system made all dialogue, however briefit might be, interminably tedious. It was abandonedas soon as the spirit-telegraph was perfected

by the discovery of the moving pencil ; and sothe latter was soon given up for the medium.Let us now give attention to the latter.The medium has often been compared to a wakingsomnambule. This definition seems to us perfectlyjust. There are the extreme poles of themesmeric chain, two different modes of action ofa common cause, which passes from one to theother by insensible degrees. One would define itas a transformation of force analogous to that whichis observed in imponderable fluidsheat, light,electricity, magnetism which, as we know, arebut diflerent manifestations of the same agent

the ether. Women have been seen to fall intothe magnetic sleep while forming part of the chain.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 175around tKe table; the electrical phenomena ofattraction and repulsion show themselves in certainpersons who devote themselves to the practiceof spiritism ; some mediums become somnambules,and vice versa. Sometimes these two charactersshow themselves simultaneously, so that it is difficultto say if we are having to do with a wakingor sleeping subject. Nothing else, save the methodof proceeding, distinguishes the sleep-talker from

the medium. The one speaks, the other writes;but both declare that they are under the influenceof a mysterious control, who dictates their answers.If questioned as to its origin and personality, thisunseen control sometimes declares himself a spiritwithout nationality, sometimes as the soul of adefunct. In the latter case he willingly calls himselfthe friend or the relative of the medium, andthat he comes to assist him with his counsel. Here



occurs one of the most surprising facts of mesmerism.If the mysterious personage is asked totrace some lines by the help of the moving pencilor the hand of the medium, he reproduces thewriting, peculiarities of speech, and even mistakesin spelling which were peculiar to the friend orthe relative whose posthumous representative hecalls himself. Such an argument seems at firstglance unanswerable, and it was upon facts of thisnature that they relied to establish the theory ofspiritism.Some mediums went farther. Wishing to test176 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.the knowledge of their correspondents, they requiredof them literary compositions. They evokedDryden and Shakespeare, by turns, in England andthe United States, Goethe and Schiller in Germany,Eacine and Corneille in France, and begged themto give pieces of poetry. They would have calledHomer and Pindar, had there been in the spiritualcircles Hellenists capable of judging them. Theseshades came at the first call, and stood the testtriumphantly. Their productions were pronouncedirreproachable, and worthy in every respect of the

reputation which those authors had acquired duringtheir life."You see," said they to the sceptics, "an illiteratemedium, who has never written anything but prose,would be incapable of producing such poetry; itis only a Shakespeare, a Schiller, a Eacine, whocould write the verses that you have before you.It could only be the shades evoked who have dictatedthem."The advocates of this strange theory did notperceive the no less strange consequence whichmust follow. The perennial survival of shadeswould have long since rendered this planet uninhabitable

for us. The dead would occupy theplace of the living; for the accumulation of thespectres of the different tribes of the terrestrialfauna, heaped at the surface of the globe sincethe first geological epochs, would render the airirrespirable. We could not move save in a densePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 177atmospliere of ghosts. Now chemical analysis hasnever shown in the air the presence of either ofthe immediate principles which enter into theconstitution of a fluidic phantasmal form elaboratedin an animal economy. The mediums whopretend to converse with Dryden and Shakespeare

seem to us as innocent as those who should evokeHerodotus or Sahchoniaton. For our part, webitterly regret that these venerable shades havedisappeared. If they were able to reply to ourappeal, the archaeologists would not do ill to turnto them every time when they are in perplexity.Would it not be more simple, for example, in orderto reconstruct the history of ancient Egypt, totake a medium to the ruins of Thebes or Memphis,and there make him evoke the shades of the



Pharaohs, instead of trying to excavate their monumentsin order to collect the inscriptions whichthey conceal ? (J^)(") This is exactly what Mr. Peebles, an American spiritualist,gravely asserts that he did. In his Around the World (p. 290),we read his report of " A S&nee on the Pyramids." '' MichaelO'Brien, the controlling spirit, said :' Faith, Jammie, I saw thosebeastly fellows pulling away at the madeum' (Mr. Dunn, Mr. P.'stravelling-companion), ' and I thought I would just lind a hand. . .These are the pyramids, and I wanted to see 'em, that I might comparethem with those round towers of me native country, thatpuzzle 1/ou- and everybody else. But I must out of this, for here'sone of those old long-haired spirits who lived a while after thispyramid was built. The top of the morning to you, Jammie.'"Then the phantom chief of the KaprjKO/iouvTiq opens his oracularmouth and gives us two pages a la Sandford and Merton !12178 POSTHUMOUS HUMAIiTITy.Let us pass on to the second class of the inspirersof the mediumsthe spirits. They call themselves,as the case may be, angels or devils. But they

hardly show more knowledge than the shades whenone puts to them delicate questions. They feeltheir way, are embarrassed, shuffle, and, if one persists,end by getting angry. Moreover, it is notdifficult to detect in their answers, especially whenthey relate to religious or social questions, one ofthe characteristics of our species, the personalequation, that is to say, the mill-mark of the humanbrain. Let us enter a spiritual circle in Ireland;we see the stances placed under the patronage ofSt. Patrick, and each time that religious subjectsare broached, they are handled by the spirits in the

tone of the most orthodox Catholicism. It is thevery opposite in Protestant England, where themediumistic communications almost always bearthe impress of the Anglican opposition to popery:No popery ! the Pope is Antichrist ; Eome the greatmodern Babylon. It is the same in the UnitedStates and in the north of Grermany, and all countrieswhere the principles of the Eeformation prevail. InRussia spiritism resumes its orthodoxy, but in itsown way, that is, according to the Greek rite. Inother words, the spirits are Catholic at Eome,Anglican at London and New York, Freethinkers

at Paris, Lutherans at Berlin, Schismatics at Petersbourg.They should be Mahomedans at Constantinople; Brahmanical in India ; Buddhistical in mostPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 179of the Asiatic nations. (J^) There are the samediversities when their advice is asked upon socialreforms. Some show themselves Conservative, butthese are the minority. The major part are Communists,and proclaim the division of land. Theiranswers varying thus with the nationality of the



interrogator, and reflecting his dominant idea, hisprejudices, his tendencies, in a word, his personalequation, one is forced to conclude that the spiritual'communications elaborate themselves in the verybrain of the medium who stimulates them, or ofthe sitters with whom he is in fluidic rapport. Onesees thus why the spirits change language andattitude according to the persons of the circle.Allan Kardec informs us that they are serious andfull of courtesy in the presence of high-bred andthoroughly educated persons. Per contra, everytime that they have to do with those who arewithout education, or are of a frivolous character*they exhibit only flippancy and ignorance, attractattention by their trivial expressions, become»coarse, impertinent, even filthy.Evocation of phantoms by the medium is, then, a,mirage, even when they endue themselves with atvisible form, as has happened with certain favouredmediums ; these latter are none the less the sport ofan hallucination analogous to that of the somnambuleswho see appearing to them whatever phan-(") And so they are.

122180 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.toms it may please the magnetizer to show them. C*)I can give ample proofs of what I affirm. I takethem from the high priest of French spiritism,Allan Kardec, whom I have mentioned above. Followingis almost verbatim what he says in his Boohof Mediums :" One day the fancy took a medium to evoke' Tartufife.' He did not wait to be dragged in by theears, but speedily showed himself in all his classicalpeculiarities ! It was veritably the personage createdby Moliere, with his soft and hypocritical speech,

his wheedling ways, his air of sugar-coated piety.When, after close examination, the medium wasatisfied as to the phantom's identity, he was transportedwith pleasure, and said to it:"' By the way, how is it that you are here, seeingthat you never had any real existence ?'"' That is true,' answered the spectre, in the mostcontrite tone; 'I am the spirit of an actor whoused to play the part of Tartuffe.'

"Is this clear enough ? Tartuffe, being unable toshow himseli, for a very good reason, sends an actorin his place.^ The following fact is still more conclusive, for hereE (") Not always, as my Eddy book sufficiently sho-ws. I weighedthem on scales, tested their muscular force by spring-balances,measured their heights against the wall (standing close to them),laid my hands upon them, and in various other ways proved the! j.momentary solidity. Add that Mr. Crookes photographed them by



he electric light in his own laboratory, and a pretty dear case oftheir non-iUusive nature is made out.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 181no subterfuge is possible. We are still quotingAllan Kardec:" A gentleman had in his garden a nest of littlebirds. This nest having disappeared one day, hebecame uneasy as to the fate of his little pets. Ashe was a medium, he went into his library andinvoked the mother of the birds to get some newsof them. * Be quite easy,' she replied to him, ' myyoung ones are safe and sound. The house-catknocked down the nest in jumping upon the gardenwall ; you will find them in the grass at the foot ofthe wall.' The gentleman hurried to the gardenand found the little nestlings, full of life, at the spotindicated."It is quite likely that if the medium had evokedthe spirit of the rock, the rock would have answeredas easily as Tartuffe and the bird-mother. In faceof such follies is it not fair to say that spiritism isthe grand mystification of the century ? To completeall, if one would edify oneself as to the true

nature of mediumship, it suffices to ponder thefollowing lines, which I borrow from the spiritiststhemselves, and which form the basis of theirdoctrine :" The first necessary condition of mediumship isto possess a certain portion of vital electricity, forthis fluid may be considered as the necessary agentfor the production of spiritual phenomena."We observe, in the medium as well as in thesomnambule, that the same principle is at work182 POSTHUMOITS HUMANITY.the vital fluid. It attains its summum of energy

in the former, for it is from himI mean from theproductive centrethat the latter draws the livingforce which engenders mesmeric effects ; whilst thesecond, borrowing from a foreign source, receives itlimited and diminished in its action. Thus spiritismrepeats, with exaggeration, all the prodigies of themagnetic sleep. Like the somnambule, and, betterthan the somnambule, the medium, even if illiterate,becomes a polyglot, composes poetry, writes discoursesaccording to the minutest- rules of theoratorical art, reads the thoughts of those abouthim, possesses the faculty of sight at a distance,reads in the past, and sometimes succeeds in

divining the future. Useless to add that we arenow concerning ourselves only with really lucidsubjectsin other words, with the very smallminority. Even in the latter, human stupidityconstantly tends to exercise its rights, and but toooften succeeds in mixing itself up in the responses.One final word about spiritism. This branch ofmagic was known in antiquity. We see it oftenmentioned in the annals of the ancient peoples, andsometimes to such great proportions that kings



forbade its practice, under the severest penalties.The Fathers of the early centuries of the Churchfulminated against the talking-tables. In theexorcisms of the same epoch, it is the rappingspirits (spiritus percutientes) that they werebanning with their conjurational prayers. VariousPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 183missionaries, who have visited the Buddhist populationsof Asia, tell us that spiritism has beenpractised in those lands from time immemorial. ('')CHAPTEK VIII.THE MESMERIC ETHER AND THE PERSONALITY THATIT ENGENDERS (continued).MIRACLES OF THEECSTATICS.Of all the miracles taken from the lives of thesaints that I heard related in boyhood, there wasone which particularly impressed me. It is that ofSt. Francis Xavier, who appeared simultaneouslyupon two dififerent vessels during a tempest, andencouraged his companions all the time that theywere in danger. His biographers tell thei tale thus:" St. Francis Xavier went, in the month ofNovember, 1571, from Japan to China, when, seven

days after starting, the ship which carried him wasassailed by a violent tempest. Fearing lest thelong-boat might be swept away by the waves, thepilot ordered fifteen men of the crew to lash it tothe ship. Night having fallen while they werestill at this work, the sailors were surprised by aheavy swell, and washed away with the boat. Thesaint had been abstracted in prayer from the(") Why only among the Buddhist populations of Asia ? Thesame remark applies to the non-Buddhist nations : the practice is ascommon among Hindus of all the great sects, and among theMahommedang.184 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

beginning of the storm, which grew worse andworse. The remainder of the ship's company stillon board thought their comrades in the long-boatwere lost. When the danger was past, Xavierurged them to keep up their courage, and promisedthat within three days the boat would come back tothe ship. The next day he caused a look-out to besent aloft, but they saw nothing. The saint thenreturned to his cabin and resumed his prayers.After having thus passed nearly the entire day, hecame again on deck, and with full confidenceannounced that the boat would be saved. Nevertheless,as, the following day, there were no signs

of the missing, and the danger was still imminent,the crew refused to wait about any longer for theircompanions, whom they had given up as lost. ButXavier again roused their courage, beseeching them,by the death of Christ, to be patient a little whilelonger. Then once more retiring to his cabin, heprayed again with double fervour. At last, after threemore wearisome hours of waiting, they saw the longboat,and the fifteen sailors whom they had supposedlost were soon on board again. According to the evidence



of Mind^s Pintus, they then saw happen amost singular fact. When the men in the boathad come aboard, and the pilot was about to shoveher off to tow behind as usual, they cried out to firstlet Xavier come on board, as he was with them. Itwas useless to try to persuade them that he hadnever left the ship. They declared that he hadPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY, 185stopped with them all through the tempest,encouraging them not to give up, and that it washimself who had steered them towards the ship.In face of such a prodigy, all the sailors wereconvinced that it was to the prayers of Xavier thatthey owed their escape from the tempest. It ismore reasonable to attribute the safety of the shipto the skill and exertions of the officers and crew.Yet there is every appearance of probability thatthe long-boat would never have got back to theship but for the pilotage of the saint himself, orrather of his Double."This miracle of dupUcation, which I supposed tobe unique, is not rare in the lives of the saints.The Acta Sanctorum of the BoUandists teem withsuch stories. It is quite common in ecstasis. As

a general proposition it may be affirmed that themore a person of mystical tendencies gives himselfup to the contemplative life, the more he becomesthe centre of strange phenomena, which, apparentlytranscending the laws of time and space, appear asso many prodigies. I shall demonstrate, by theanalysis of some examples, that the miracles of thesaints belong to the natural order, I mean to themodes of action of the mesmeric ether, or of thefluidic personality which it begets, and that all arecaused by a lively faith united with the practice ofthe ascetic life.With some ecstatics a phenomenon not less

strange than that of duplication is to be observed.186 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.At the moment of their supreme rapture, theredevelops in them an inner force, a sort of electricimpulse, which, acting upwards, neutralizes the effectof weight. The patient is then seen to rise from theground, in the bodily position in which he chancesto be at the ecstatic moment, and hovers motionlesslike a body without weight, that the lightest breathcan make to change its place. Under the reign ofPhilip II., Dominique de Jesus-Marie, a monk of amonastery in Madrid, was the subject of suchecstasies. The report of this wonder havipg reached

the king's ear, he wished to satisfy himpelf personallyabout so extraordinary a thing. One day themonk becoming ecstatic in his presence andfloating in mid-air, the monarch drew near and blewhis breath at him several times. Each time thebody of the ecstatic yielded to the force of thebreath. Marie d'Agreda frequently presented thesame phenomenon in her religious ecstasies.The ecstasis that I have just described is sometimesknown as the flying ecstasis. It is when the saint,



in becoming enraptured before a crucifix or someother pious image, so yearns "to become united withthe object of his contemplation, that he is suddenlytransported towards it as though borne along by asort of electrical attractiop. An Italian monk, wholived in the first half of the seventeenth century,Joseph de Copertino, often exhibited this kind ofphenomenon. He also possessed the gift of projectingthe Double, and (xorres devotes to him many pagesPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 187of his Mystique. It will suffice if I quote thefollowing passage :" Joseph, in his earliest youth and while stillliving at Grotella, had entered, on the feast-day ofSt. Francis, a little chapel surrounded by olive treesand situated a gunshot distance from his convent.The Brothers heard a cry coming from there whichwas repeated five times. They ran there, and sawJoseph up in the half-ruined dome of the chapel,holding in his embrace a cross, and raised sometwenty palms high from the ground. Another time,in this same church, on Christmas night, havingheard the sound of the pipes of some shepherdswhom he had invited to come and honour the birth

of the child Jesus, he was filled with such joy thathe began to dance. Then he heaved a deep sigh,uttered a loud cry and flew like a bird from the centreof the church to the high altar, which was distantfrom him more than fifty feet ; and in his rapturehe clung embracing the tabernacle for a quarterof an hour, without upsetting one of the large numberof wax lights that were burning upon the altar, andwithout one of his robes taking fire. The amazementof the shepherds was great, we may wellimagine ; but no less was that of the Brothers of hisOrder and the inhabitants of Copertino, when oneday, at the feast of St. Francis, clothed in his

cope to take part in the procession about forming, hesuddenly flew up to the pulpit of the church, to aheight of fifteen palms, and remained for a long time188 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.kneeling with arms extended, plunged in an ecstasy,upon the very edge of the desk."Sometimes it is not the ecstatic who is levitatedtowards the image he is contemplating, but actuallythe latter which unhooks itself from the wall tocome and place itself in his arms or glue itself to hislips. The magnetic attraction of which it is theseat, then, has a sort of reflex action. In the secondvolume of his Mystique, Gorres quotes numerous

examples of crucifixes and holy images thus respondingto the appeal of the monks or nuns whoinvoked them. I refer the reader to this work. "Wefind in the same volume curious details aboutanother class of miracles not less remarkable. Iallude to locks and doors which open of themselvesbefore certain ecstatics when the latter go to pray ina church. I shall in good time show that thesevarious phenomena are the effects of the mesmericaura (fluide) thrown off in ecstasis, for we see them



repeated in the practice of magnetism.The mysterious force which bears up the ecstatictowards the sacred objects he is contemplating, beingcomparable with electrical attraction, we may askwhy the analogy is not complete ; in other words,why, along with movements of attraction, it doesnot also present actions of the contrary sortImean motions of repulsion ? Ecstasis does not leadto such effects. A monk, plunged into a deepcontemplation of pious images, can only feel anattractive impulse. But mysticism has two polesPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 189ecstasis and obsession. Let a believer of timid andcowardly disposition, commit some fault which hedares not avow to his confessor, and under the weightof the remorse which tortures him, of the shamewith which he covers himself, of the eternal damnationwhich awaits him, he is assailed by the blackestideas. The aura (fluide) issuing from such a brainis of necessity the antithesis of that which disengagesitself from an ecstatic. The love of holythings gives place then in the head and heart of

the believer to a profound aversion. Instead offeeling himself as before drawn towards the altars, heis dragged away with irresistible power. If peopletry to constrain him, even though strong men trytheir best to hold him, he breaks away with a displayof extraordinary vigour ; and sometimes he isseen in his flight to climb to the top of a steeple,or of the highest trees, with the agility of a birdor a squirrel. I shall devote some pages of mylast chapter to these marvels, the most surprising,perhaps, of mysticism. I shall add here a singlefact worthy of remark and easy to foresee. If, inan ill-balanced brain, remorse for a fault and the

fear of punishment come into conflict with a livelyfaith and the hope of pardon, the fluid which distilsout of this cerebral amalgam changes in its natureeach time that one of these contradictory tendenciesbecomes preponderant, and the patient showshimself by turns obsessed and ecstatic. A youngSpanish novice of the monastery of Morerola, who190 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.lived in the second half of the twelfth century,presents a singular instance of this. His biographertells us that he was simple-minded andextremely ignorant. Having run away from theconvent, he soon felt a strong repentance, and

returned to the brothers. But, the recollectionof his fault constantly pursuing him, it was nollong before he presented all the phenomena ofobsessiongrinding of teeth, foam on the lips,horrible blasphemies, dialogue of the obsessingspirit with the exorcist, &c. One day, as he waspassing out of one of his crises, he fell in ecstasy.He saw himself in a church among a crowd ofholy personages, among whom figured St. Bernard,patron of his Order. They soon began to celebrate



the holy office according to the Cistercian rite.The young novice responded to the choir, eachtime that it was his turn to chant, with a pertinencyand self-possession the more remarkable inthat he knew neither the chant nor the Cistercianrite. The brothers, who watched all his movements,could not believe their ears. All the intervalswere observed with mathematical precision.After the Mass, he assisted at Vespers in the samemanner. When he was at the Magnificat, he intonedan anthem that no monk in the conventhad ever heard. These ceremonies concluded,St. Bernard approached him, reproved him for hisprank, for the apples that he had stolen in thegarden, for the words exchanged without permissionPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 191with another brother, and condemned him to receivediscipline. They saw him then strip himselfto the girdle, then kneel and beat his breast whilesaying, twenty-five times in succession:" By my fault, I wish to correct myself."Each Mea cvJ/pa was followed by a pause, whichpermitted the patient ' to receive flagellation. As

soon as this vision had passed away, the symptomsof obsession returned ; then the ecstasy commencedover again. During four days it was an alternationof obsession and ecstasy. Each vision finished, likethe first, with the discipline. At the seventh hewas so feeble that he fell exhausted. The brothers,believing that he was about to breathe his lastsigh, repeated for him the prayers for the dying.He revived; and after a final Mass, in which heperformed the functions of under-deacon, he readaloud the Epistle, although he scarcely knew howto spell the letters : he slept, and upon awakeningfound himself completely cured. His faults having

been expiated, as well by his repentance and prayersas by the imaginary flagellations he had received,he was delivered from obsession, and lost at thesame time the faculty of eestasis.The different sorts of prodigies that I have beenreviewing were frequent with the thaumaturgistsof the early centuries of Christianity, and werecontinued throughout the whole of the middleages. They decreased in number and renown inproportion as the faith which gave them birth192 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.grew lukewarm, and seem to have completelydisappeared with the growth of the scientific spirit.

The greater number are in such formal oppositionwith the laws of nature, so removed from what wesee in the ordinary course of life, that they appearlike legends that one ascribes to ignorance andsuperstition. I am far from discrediting the greatpart which it is necessary to ascribe to hallucinationand the credulity of periods of simple faith. Theagency of these two factors of the human brain isthen so preponderant that the atmosphere of eachconvent becomes a sort of supernatural medium,



which it is only necessary to breathe for the monksand nuns to break through terrestrial bonds andsoar in the world of the marvellous. But onecannot deny certain miracles, for this would beto give a ridiculous and childish contradiction tothe historians of all countries, as well as to athousand persons who have been eye-witnesses.Such as declare them impossible take their standupon the fact that they are never produced intheir own experience. They forget that if theychanged continents their denials would no longerhave any reason, and that their scepticism wouldfall before the evidence of facts. Miracle, havingfor its primary essence faith, has disappeared fromthe countries which rationalism has penetratedwith its breath; that is to say, the countrieswhere the virile races of the West ruleraceswhich belong, as we know, to the most noblePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 193branches of the Aryan family. But it still showsitself with surprising vigour wherever religiousbeliefs have preserved the fervour of their earliestages. The Mussulman world, the Brahmanic andthe Buddhist worlds, to cite but three examples, have

also their Acta Sanctorum,. Ecstasis is a thing ofdaily observation, and it is to be remarked that itsometimes reaches proportions unknown to our mostcelebrated thaumaturgists. In the chapter uponthe Posthumous Vampires I shall relate one ofthe marvellous things done by certain Indian fakirs,and of which English officers have often been witnesses.The missionaries who overrun these countries,being unable to deny the miracles that theysee produced under their eyes, try to get out of thedifficulty by ascribing them to the devil, a childisheuphemism, revived by Zoroaster, and borrowed byhim from the revelators of the first ages of the

world. In reality there is no need of any occultintervention to explain these prodigies, for they arethe natural consequence of the phenomena thatthe mesmeric fluid gives birth to in persons whodevote themselves to the ascetic life. We haveseen, in fact, in these later times, somnambules andmediums in their ignorance producing a host ofmarvels that were thought peculiar to ecstatics. St.Madeleine de Pazzi displayed, in her rapturous transports,the phenomena of modern somnambulism.The nuns bandaged her eyes or closed the shuttersof her cell. She continued all the same, while in13

194 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.this state, the work that she had begunwork oftenof a very delicate kind, like the painting of holyimages, and she did them with stich accuracy thatthey have still preserved them in the convent. Itis known that it is of daily occurrence for personsplunged in the magnetic sleep to repeat experimentsof this sort. ('^) St. Frances, of Eome, became rigidwhenever she fell in ecstasis. As it usually happensher limbs were then as rigid as a marble statue;



nothing that they could do could straighten herarms, crossed on her breast, nor make her legs move.She heard none of the questions that were put toher. Her superiors themselves adjured her in vainin the name of her vow of obedience to speak tothem or to follow themshe remained mute andimpassible, despite the most formal injunctions ; butthe scene changed as soon as her confessor camenear her ; she heard all that he said, obeyed hisslightest wish, rose or sat as he ordered her, butremained passive and motionless with every one else.She thus repeated in every particular that whichtakes place between a magnetizer and his somnambule.We know that the latter is under the ex-('*) Not quite so common as that ; but there is a noted mediumat Glasgow, a Mr. Duguid, who has for years heen in the constantpractice of painting in pitch darkness, on marked cards and canvases,paintings in oil. Years ago I saw in New York such painting doneupon paper laid upon the floor under the table, aU persons presentsitting with joined hands ; and I have also seen them done in fulllight by Madame Blavatsky, by the conscious exercise of will-power,upon satin as weU as paper, and have the specimens in my possessionstill.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 195

elusive and absolute power of her ruler ; that sheobeys the slightest gesture, the least wish of thelatter ; that she hears all he says, that she answersevery one of his questions, but she is deaf anddumb for every other person with whom she hasnot been brought in rapport by the magnetizer. Inthe annals of mesmerism and sorcery, scienceswhich trench so nearly upon each other, there arenumerous examples of men or women rising fromthe ground under the action of the magnetic fluid,and occasionally darting to a certain height. Thisphenomenon recalls the aerial travel of ecstatics andof the obsessed ; it was known in antiquity. Damis,

the companion of ApoUonius of Tyana, relates thathe has seen the Brahmans rise, in their ceremonies,two cubits from the ground, and he was so impressedby this sight that he recurs to it several times inhis Memoirs. It is known that this prodigy wasfamiliar to Simon Magus, who one day had a fallat Eome in qne of his ascensions. Certain fakirs didthe thing before some English army officers inIndia. {J'') In our times it has been repeated byvarious mediums, among others by the celebratedHome, who was levitated, with his chair, to theceiling of the room where he held his spiritseances.C) St. Theresa, who occasionally dis-

(") The common mistake is made by Western writers of applyingthe title, foMr, to religious ascetics of all Eastern religions, whereasit is the name of a Mussulman ascetic only. Such a thaumaturgeamong the Hindus is called a yogi.('^) One Gordon was also thus levitated, and other modern132196 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.played this kind of phenomenon, has told us thatshe felt then, under the soles of her feet, a verticalpush which forced her to rise in the air. If at this



moment she happened to be in the presence ofsomebody, it was only with the greatest difficultythat she could resist such an impulse. This testimony,confirmed as well by other ecstatics as bymediums, puts us in the way to explain the prodigy.We have seen that one of the properties of the mesmericether is to render lighter bodies impregnatedwith its undulations. Hence it suffices for there tobe an abnormal disengagement of this fluid in aperson, for him or her to be able to rise from theground like a balloon sufficiently inflated.Let us pass on to another class of miracles. Thedoors and locks which they describe in the lives ofsaints as opening of themselves before certainmonks, once more recall an eflect of mesmerism,for these phenomena happen in the practice ofmagnetism. Du Potet confesses that he has severaltimes witnessed these prodigies. " I have seen,"says he, " doors open and close before me, withoutmy being able to explain the cause of this mysteriousaction." These facts occurring in the course of hismediums likewise. The demoralizing influence of professionalmediumship is seen in the fact, among others, that some of thesevery air-floaters have been caught red-handed in gross trickery.

The fault is, I think, not so much theirs as that of the blind andselfish public who demand phenomena, conditions or no conditions,with the alternative of leaving the wretched mediums to starve ifthey do not make them, or what looks like them, on call.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 197magnetic operations, it is fair to suppose that theinvisible being who filled the oflBce of door-keeperwas none other than the fluidic personality of DuPotet himself. This view of the case is confirmedby the following anecdote, which I borrow from LouisJacoUiot (") {Voyage au Pays des Perles). Thehero of the adventure was one of the most renownedfakirs of Mysore. In a meeting where the author of

the story was present, the Hindu executed variousprodigies, denoting in him an extraordinary magneticpower. A young boy fell into somnambulism withoutthe fakir seeming to notice it, and the spectators,feeling sleep taking possession of them, were obligedto look in another direction to escape the fascinatinginfluence of the charmer's eyes. With a simplegesture, or a single act of his will, he moved anddisplaced furniture at the extreme end of the hall.He opened a door in the same way, then reclosed it,then made it open again. There is no room fordoubt in this case, and the mysterious action ofwhich Du Potet speaks is really a mesmeric effect.

The miracles accomplished by the eestatics of differentreligions cover so vast a field that it is impossibleto travel over it as a whole. I am forced to(") Not a very credible witness, I fear. I have, since coming toIndia, made minute inquiries at Benares, in Mysore, and otherplaces about this particular yogi, Govinda Swamy, but withoutgetting any particulars about him. Among my personal acquaintanceare the Maharajah of Benares and the living representativeof the Peishwa, neither of whom had heard of him. Yet JacoUiot'sstory does not at all exaggarate what such holy men can and do do.



198 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.limit myself to the analysis of a few examples.Brief as it may be, it will suffice to show in whatorder of ideas one must search for the rationalexplanation of these phenomena. Though mesmerismmay not yet have emerged from its empirical stage,it has worked so many prodigies that one maypredict what it will reveal on the day when thephysicists, having decided to study it closer, willcompel it to enter into the scientific domain by submittingit to the investigation of the experimentalmethod. To the numerous facts I have already citedI will add the following, which will once moredemonstrate that the potentiality of this agent islimitless. One of its essential characteristics is toresist chemical action and even that of fire. ('")This latter property, long known to magnetizers,was verified during the moral epidemic whichravaged Savoy, especially Morzine, in the yearswhich preceded and followed the annexation of thisprovince to France. A young girl having fallen intoa crisis, they put a burning coal on her hand, andleft it there several minutes, without its causing the() A series of most interesting experiments, which support this

assertion, are recorded by Du Potet in his Introduction to theStvdy of Animal Magnetism [London, 1838], pp. 214, 215, 216.They show that the mesmeric aura thoroughly impregnates andsaturates organic and inorganic bodies through and through. Testswere made with glass, marble, wax, colophane, sulphur, tin, iron,and jjaper. The former retained the aura despite the action ofboiling water, ammonia, fuming nitric acid and sulphuric acid ; thepaper was actually burnt, yet the ashes were found to be stillmesmerized.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 199least scar or burning. The fluid disengaged by thepatient forming an atmosphere around her limbs,the action of the fire was arrested by the layer of

magnetic aura interposed between the hand and thecoal. This fact explains a phenomenon long incomprehensible; I allude to the incombustible man (*').It is known that certain individuals possess thesingular faculty of being able to plunge their armsrapidly into melted bronze, or to pass an incandescentiron over their limbs, without experiencingthe least hurt. Some years ago a learned physicist,M. Boutigny, ofi'ered an explanation of this prodigy,based upon the particular state of water, thespheroidal state. At the approach of incandescentmatter, the liquids contained in the human bodysuddenly vaporizing, form on the epidermis a layer

of aqueous vesicles, which, serving as a screen,arrest the action of the fire. This ingenioushypothesis, based upon the most certain observationsof science, has taken rank among the discoveries ofmodern physics. But is it quite certain that itsuffices to explain everything that is observed inthese incombustible subjects ? I have seen, for myown part, a Cape negress pass several times a red-hotiron over her arms, legs, tongue, &c., and after, theexhibition I came away with the conviction that any



other person, operating under identical circumstances,would have been horribly burned. More-(W) Shadracli, Meshak, and Abednego also?203 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.over, trickery was impossible : the bystanders themselvesheated the iron in a brazier, kindled before us,and presented it to the savage. It was much worsein the trials for magic, where they subjected theaccused to the ordeal by fire. Here doubt is impossible.Those who came off victorious from thisterrible test owed their immunity simply to the fluiddisengaged by the practices of sorcery, as I shallshow in the next chapter. "We must not forget thatSimon Magus, who knew all the prodigies of modemmesmerism, lycanthropy, evocation of phantoms, airwalking,displacement of furniture and statues, cureof paralytics, &c., passed through the flames of apyre without being touched.The property possessed by animal magnetism toresist chemical action and that of fire has forcorollary the almost indefinite persistence of itsefiluence in objects that have been impregnatedwith it. This is the key to various prodigies relatedin the lives of saints and the annals of sorcery.

A missionary relates that when the diviners of theIndian tribes of North America wished to evoke thespirits, they commenced by turning out theEuropeans from the locality where the ceremonywas to take place. Without knowing mesmerism,they were aware that the presence of a singleindividual of foreign faith was enough to preventthe spirits from appearing. ('^)('^) The late Mr. Cromwell Varley, electrician of the AtlanticCable Company, and, of course, a high authority, told ProfessorPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 201One day, when two or three of them had beenspending several hours in prayer without the

evoked spirit having shown himself, astonished atthis delay, they thought that some intruder hadhidden himself in their habitation, and thoroughlysearched it. Having found in a corner the garmentof a Spaniard, they threw it out of the window, andthe spirit quickly responded to their appeal. Theaura with which the garment of the European wasimpregnated had sufficed to neutralize that whichthe diviners set free in their chants and formulas ofevocation. Analogous facts often occur among usunder other forms : such are the effects observedin the possessed when taken to the tomb ofsome saint, or upon whom is laid an image or

other object that had formerly belonged to him.They become infuriated as soon as they feel theproximity of these relics, or even when theyapproach them unwittingly. A child who was asomnambule ceased to be so every time they put,without his suspecting it, a piece of blessed box-woodin his cap.The cures and other prodigies that took place atthe cemetery of St. Medard, on the tomb of theAbbe Paris, are included in the same order of



phenomena. It is known that the celebratedTyndall that " his presence at a seance resembled that of a greatmagnet among a number of small ones." He threw all into confusion.(Report on SpiritiMlism of the Committee of the DialecticalBociety, p. 265. Letter of Professor Tyndall.)202 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.Jansenist possessed the ardent faith of a thaumaturgistand the piety of an anchorite. He consecratedhis whole life, as well as his patrimony, togood works and to the defence of his ideas.Having struggled up to the last moment, he diedimpregnated with the fluid which he had neverceased to disseminate in his controversies and in thepractice of Christian virtues. Thus his tomb becamesoon the theatre of extraordinary occurrences. Iwill not recall the convulsionnaires of St. Medard:these are things known to the whole world. I willsimply make one remark, which is not withoutimportance. Some time after the pilgrimages to thetomb of the saint had commenced, it was noticedthat the entire cemetery was mesmerized. Itsufficed to gather a few grains of sand or earth,taken at random in this enclosure, to cause the

appearance with certain persons of the prodigieswhich only showed themselves at first on the tombof the deacon. Must we suppose that this enormousliberation of aura came from that with which thebody and clothing of the thaumaturgist were impregnated? "We do not think it. It is morerational to admit that this fluid was the overflow ofthat which escaped from the multitude of believers,plunged in prayer, ecstasis, cries, and contortions.This view of the case is confirmed by what passesdaily in the miraculous wells and springs. Thisdemands some explanation.In all epochs and all countries, there have existed

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 203springs whicli have the reputation of working cures.They are met with even among the savage peoplesof Polynesia. These springs become popular,then fall into discredit; and end by being abandonedfor others. Nevertheless, people continue to gatherthere on certain days of the year. But this is onlya remnant of traditiona festival gathering, whereamusements play a larger part than piety. I havemet with several of this kind, both in Catalonia andin the French Pyrenees. What has occurred at LaSalette and at Lourdes is the repetition of thatwhich one sees everywhere else. We know the

beginnings of these miraculous springs ; I speak ofthe historical . record, not the legendary. Thedebates which were held before the tribunal ofGrenoble, with respect to La Salette, give in thismatter the most circumstantial and least equivocaldetails. It would have been the same at Lourdes,if the law had pushed an inquiry. In face ofbeginnings having so little of the supernatural inthem, the bishops of Grenoble and Tarbes tried tooppose the infatuation of the crowd, whom they



knew were dupes of a mystification. But they hadcalculated without the believers and mesmerism.The impulse once given, there came a generalrush. (*') From the midst of a multitude trans-C) I am happy to be able to say (and to prove) that I onceprevented the carrying out of a priestly scheme of this sort. Acertain ordinary well had been selected, near a large Asiatic town,and the false report was started that there had been a supernatural204 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.ported by an ardent faith, falling on their knees,intoxicated by the atmosphere of incense, by music,by the lights which blaze in the pomp of worship,there is liberated a sort of aura inagnetica, which,as at St. Medard, impregnates everything with itseffluence. The sick man comes to obtain a cure,already half mesmerized by the preparations he hasundergone, fastings, confessions, communions, ferventprayers, &c., and ends by becoming entirely sounder the influence of the atmosphere into whichhe is plunged. He breathes a magnetized air,treads a magnetized soil, treats himself with amagnetized water (^''). If it is a question of maladyaffecting the nervous system, such as a paralysis ofthe limbs, of sight, or of hearing, the moral commotion

caused in the patient may be strong enoughto galvanize his entire being, provoke a salutarycrisis, and effect a cure. Such a healing is notalways persistent, the vital forces being too muchweakened to respond to the impulse which has beengiven them. But occasionally, also, it is lasting,appearance, a blessing of the well, and a cure of a cripple miraculouslyby application of the water. Knowing what was likely tobe the pernicious effect upon the sensitive Asiatic community if thishumbug was permitted to get the initial impulse, I first exposed thefalse cure, and then, by simple mesmeric transfer of my own aura,made a number of genuine cures. The well was never subsequentlyused for other than its legitimate purposes.

(*'') Author's Note.It is known that water can be magnetized-The practitioners obtain this result by blowing into a glass filledwith this liquid. This drink is employed successfully in thetreatment of certain diseases.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 205and miracle appears then in all its marvelloussplendour. This is what has happened at Lourdesand at La Salette, and the prelates, conquered byfacts, have been forced to raise their embargo andswim with the current.Do we need a more direct proof, one that mightalmost be called tangible, of the magnetic actionbeing due to a collective force ? Among certain

islanders of the South Seas the people assembleevery year to hold a great ceremony, to which arebidden the protecting genii of the different villages.In the centre of an immense hall is a boat, aroundwhich gathers the multitude. Each divinity is calledby his name in turn, and invited to show his powerby making the canoe move. Then all eyes areturned towards this latter, especially those of theinhabitants of the village competing. Anxiety ismanifested upon their faces, for they ardently desire



that their patron divinity shall obtain the honoursof the victory, and concentrate upon this object allthe vital forces of their will. After some momentsof waiting, the canoe is seen to advance or retreat.Then they pass on to the next. The one who hasachieved the greatest displacement is proclaimedvictor. The missionaries witnessing such prodigiesexplain them, according to their custom, as theaction of the devil. They forget that what passesunder their eyes is but the repetition, upon a largerscale, of what takes place daily in spiritualisticseances, where a massive table becomes animated206 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and moves at the request of some of thesitters.Let us recapitulate. In each of the examplesthat I have analyzed, we have recognized the directaction of the mesmeric ether, or of the mysteriouspersonality to which it can give birth. In ecstaticsthis personality sometimes becomes double. Theascetic life and an ardent faith, exalting inordinatelythe sensitiveness of the nervous centres, cause agreat liberation of aura, and become thus theveritable factors of the miracle. Let us add, as

another predisposing cause, celibacy. All the greatthaumaturgists, from Moses to Swedenborg, lived incontinence. There was in them a plethora of vitalelectricity. We know that magnetists lose theirfluidic power when they abandon themselves to thegratifications of sense, and that they recover it whenthey return to an austere life. This interpretationof miracle, confirmed by the efi'ects of somnambulismand mediumship, which are daily repeating theprodigies of the ecstatics, can, we think, be generalizedand be applied to all facts of the same kind.Permit me to cite a final example in support of thetheory. Among the surprising stories that one

meets with in reviewing the work of the BoUandists,there is one quite common in the early centuries ofthe Church which surpasses in some measure allothers by its strangeness. It is the written correspondencebetween posthumous and incarnate beings.Some persons would go and pass the night in prayerPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 207by the tomb of a holy personage, after havingplaced there a letter containing a question, and thenext morning the answer would be found writtenbelow the question. I should observe that theywould go at the recommendation of another holypersonage, a living one, who, guaranteeing the reply,

played the part of medium; for this phenomenonhas been repeated many times in spiritual seances.According to Allan Kardec, you have only to placein a corner of the room a paper containing the questionthat is propounded to the spirits, and to waitpatiently. The answer will come after ten minutes,a quarter of an hour or more, according to thepower of the evocator, whose fluidic personalityquietly performs the function of scribe. It is notuseless to add that this test succeeds with difficulty,



wonder-workers being quite as rare among mediumsas elsewhere.CHAPTEE IX.THE MESMERIC ETHER AND THE PERSONALITY WHICH ITENGENDERS {continued).PRODIGY OF MAGIC.Let us now pass to another order of phenomena,belonging, like the preceding ones, to the mesmericether, yet differing from them by the manner oftheir production. Here we deal with artificialprocesses which develop the fluidic personality.Of course I allude to the wonders of magic.208 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.This word has had the same fate as miracle.Credulous minds have so abused it that men ofscience have felt it a duty to flatly deny it. Butfacts that cannot be gainsaid prove that the magicianshave had their wonder-workers no less thanthe ecstatics and the mediums. Our duty is, then,to analyze these facts without prejudice, and whatwe know already about mesmerism, will permit ofour easily attaching them to the laws of time andspace. At the outset we find a singular contradiction.In the last century, magistrates, understandingthe odious and farcical aspects of ,the

processes of sorcery, banished them from ourjudicial codes, and the whole public applauded themeasure. But when we run through the legalhistory of the Middle Ages, we see constantly inthe various states of Europe prosecutions and condemnationsof sorcerers. How to account for suchan anomaly ? During several centuries magic hadacquired such a great development in certain countriesthat it was really a national affair. It wasnot alone ignorant and rude populations who offeredthis painful spectacle : the most polished nationswere equally under the fatal influence. The dramaof Shakespeare, in which the genius of old England

has reflected itself so powerfully, shows us whatplace the sorcerer still held at this epoch in allminds. How is it that this personage, who filledby his turbulent activity the annals of our fathers,has so suddenly vanished from the mundane stage ?POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. £09If he is not to be encountered among ourselves,or rather if he but shows himself at rare intervalsto feed the laughter of the public in the prisoners'dock of the police-courts, it must have been thesame heretofore, say sensible persons, and we feelcompassion for the judges who tried such offenceswith all the gravity with which our contemporaneous

judges preside at criminal trials.If, now, we lay aside these philosophical generalitiesand study the practical side of the question,we reach quite different conclusions. In judgingthe men of former times, our personal equationoften leads us to very unjust estimates. We fallespecially into this error when it is a questionof the Middle Ages. The absence of rationalscience, and the resultant superstition, the sterilityof metaphysical discussions to which thinkers devoted



themselves, the poverty of their argumentation,the intolerance which formed the basis ofall their doctrines, oblige us to accord to the menof that period but a cramped philosophical grasp.Then, suffering ourselves to be guided by ill-consideredanalogies, we admit as necessary consequencethat this moral infirmity must have shownitself in all the affairs of life. This is a gravemistake. The most obtuse mind usually exhibitsastonishing penetration when occupied in judgingthe things of every-day custom. We must placeourselves at this point of view if we would understandthe ancient trials for sorcery. The lawyers]4210 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.of the Middle Ages were as well informed, as circumspect,as well versed in the practice of rightas those of our days; and the procedure that wefollow comes to us in a straight line from thatwhich they had adopted, and which they had fromthe Eoman bar. When our old judicial archivesare rummaged, one is struck with the conformitybetween their proceedings and our own. There arethe same systems of investigation, the same desire

of arriving at the truth, the same minuteness inresearch, the same mode of briefing, and, barringidioms, one might say the same style. A condemnationwas never pronounced until after theaccused had confessed his crimes, or there werematerial proofs thoroughly establishing guilt. Thecourts which for so long a time tried the cases ofsorcery in France, Germany, England, Italy, &c.,were composed of the most learned men and themost respected of their nations. These women (thesorceresses) often confessed the misdeeds chargedagainst them, and gave details which, upon beingverified, were found to conform to the truth. Thousands

of warrants, preserved for us along with therecords of testimony, establish in the most formalway the practices of magic. Unfortunately theincline was sUppery in such matters, and superstitionon the one side, on the other the spiritof inquisition then prevalent, often led to thefailure of justice. Every act which seemed totranscend human possibilities aroused suspicionPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 211and caused you to be accused. Had you a neighbourof weak or testy character, and some sicknessor accident of any sort befell him, he would denounceyou as having cast upon him a spell. It

ended in everybody becoming either sorcerer orheretic. This moral epidemic spared nobody: itattacked the greatest as well as the most humblepersonages. It only needs to remember Joan of Arc,burnt alive because she had discovered how toarouse the courage of the French and awaken theirpatriotism ; Urbain Grrandier, condemned to thesame punishment for having bewitched a conventof nuns; Gottenberg, suspected of having connivancewith the devil in the transcription of his bibles,



which he produced so rapidly and so beautifully.Women were chiefly the victims of such accusations.It sufiSced that one of them should be at the lastextremity with age and poverty for her to bedeclared a sorceress. The heart bleeds when onethinks of Kepler, obliged to interrupt the worksthat were destined to immortalize his name, togo and snatch from the hangman's clutches hisold mother, threatened with the last punishmentin a denunciation for sorcery; and the judges,wearied at last with seeing such infamies dailyrepeated, and realizing that the odium must recoilupon themselves, ended by abolishing these trials,as they had already abolished torture, whichwrenched alike from innocent and guilty whateverconfessions were demanded.142212 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.It remains to explain how sorcery has so completelydisappeared from among us, that it is nomore talked about save as a memory. Two circumstancesaccount for this fact. The social stateof the Middle Ages was too often but confusion andchaos. The incessant wars which deluged with

blood the different countries of Europe decimatedtheir populations, at the same time ruiningthem and bringing almost invariably in their trainthose two inseparable scourges, famine and pestilence.The lower classes found themselves in theutmost misery. The work of destruction, begun bythe Germanic invasions, which destroyed the OldWorld, continued for twelve centuries. Need werecall what our ancient chroniclers relate of thislamentable epoch, and, in a time nearer our own,what Vauban said of the rural populations ofFrance ? Under such surroundings, demoralizationwas inevitable. The human heart easily perverts

itself under the prick of primary necessities. Thestruggle for existence became a sort of strangecannibalism, as though, by a transformation ofmoral force, the perverted instincts had absorbed, tonourish themselves, all that was good in our nature.Heaven turning a deaf ear to the voices of thosewho supplicated it, they had recourse to infernalevocations. The poor people only sought in theirmagical practices that which they could not findelsewhere. A sort of nightmare weighed upon allminds. This anti-social fever subsided in the samePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 213measure as the causes which had fed it receded.

When order and tranquillity had re-appeared inEurope, the working-classes found comfort andprosperity in labour, and magic lost all the groundconquered by the new state of things. On theother hand, it was in the very action of justice, Imean in the official existence given to sorcery bythe prosecutions launched against it, that thisinstitution recruited its adepts. Evil has often,particularly at critical epochs, an irresistibly contagiouspower. (*^) Each prosecution for magic led



to others, by divulging the practices of those whohad followed it, before audiences greedy for themarvellous. When the magistrates had renouncedprosecutions, the noise which had been made stoppedsimultaneously. People forgot by degrees themeans employed by the initiated, and to-day itwould be hard to meet with a magician reallyworthy of the name. The sorceress is still commonC) Says Maekay {Popular Delusions) : " Whole communitiessuddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in itspursuit ; millions of people become simultaneously impressed withone delusion." Says a writer in the Christian Times (of Jan. 25,1856) : " Crime propagates itself by infection, like fever and smallpox,and at times it seems as if the infection came abroad intothe atmosphere and exacted its tribute from every class and everydistrict of the eovmtry." Dr. C. Elam, one of the most interestingof contemporaneous writers, says {A Physician's Problems, p. 158):"As plague and pestilence attack and hurry off their thousands andtens of thousands at one time, so to an equal extent does a moreterrific blight than this pass over a country or a continent anvariable and uncertain periods in the history of man, changing theentire aspect of his moral nature."214 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

enougL. in country districts ; tardly any old womanof slovenly appearance, and belonging to the pauperclass, escapes this title. But, in the interviews Ihave often had with those who had been thusdesignated, I became quite satisfied that they hadnot the least real notion of magical practicesanignorance that many of them deplored, for theysaw in this art a means of making themselvescomfortable and of revenging themselves upon theirenemies. Some knew by hearsay that the firstcondition of becoming a sorceress, was to get oneselfa pot and an ointment. But their science went nofurther. The nature of this salve, its mode of

preparation, how it should be used, they wereperfectly ignorant of. All that I could verify wasthat the most disreputable of them had occasionallythe evil touch, if I may employ the commonexpression, that is, a sort of animal electricity of anevil quality, communicable by contact, and capableof causing some temporary troubles of slight importance,either to little children or to certain animals.We are warranted in seeing in this fluid a degenerationof the mesmeric ether, the production ofwhich seems connected with certain physiologicalpredispositions in the persons where it appears, withthe nature of their food, finally with the bad hygienic

conditions among which they live.Is it a fact that magic has disappeared withoutleaving any trace behind it ? It would be rash toso affirm. There is no more talk about sorcery, butPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 215the practices of this art are, it seems, preserved incertain families, and several times, in this century,there has been occasion to note facts which recallin every particular those ascribed to the oldmagicians. They were usually cases of people who



projected the Double by processes obd hoc, and whosephantom penetrated some neighbouring house, toharass and annoy somebody upon whom an injurywas to be revenged. Mirville relates, in all itsdetails, one anecdote of this kind, which happenedabout thirty years ago at the Presbytery of a parishin the Seine-Inferieure, and which, for severalmonths, kept the whole canton in excitement. Thephantom of the shepherd Touret, struck with asword-cut whilst it was making a great disturbancein the parlour of the Presbytery, demanded pardon,though remaining invisible, and promised to comethe next morning and make his excuses to the cure.The following day, the latter saw the shepherdcoming, and upon his face the wound that hisDouble had received the previous evening. Touretconfessed all.I have quoted in the second chapter two similarexamples taken from the judicial records of England,I shall add still a third, borrowed, from the samesource, and which throws a new light upon theactions of the human phantom. As this narrativeis too long to be transcribed in full, let me give itin brief.

In the month of March, 1661, a Mr. Mompesson,216 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.of Tedworth, in the county of Wiltshire, weariedwith the noise a beggar made with his drum, andthinking that the vagabond was carrying a falsepassport, had him summoned. After satisfying himselfthat his suspicions were correct, he kept thedrum, and gave up the beggar to justice. But thelatter succeeded in escaping. In the month ofApril, strange nocturnal noises began to be heard inthe house of Mr. Mompesson. They were particularlyfrequent in the room where he had put thedrum. These noises were of very dififerent kinds.

For a long time they heard the roll of a drum andmilitary footsteps. At other times, there were blowsor scratchings on the children's wooden bed. Thencame tricks of all sorts. The hubbub began usuallyas soon as the inmates retired to rest, and lastedsometimes two or three hours. This persisted forseveral years ; it would stop at certain times, butbegin stronger than ever after an interval of someweeks or months. They had one day the proof thatthe cause of all these prodigies must be traced tothe beggar in question. Having been arrested fortheft at Grloucester, he received in his prison thevisit of a Wiltshire man, and asked him if he had

heard anything said about the drumming which wasgoing on at Mr. Mompesson's house. The other saidthat he had. " Well," answered the beggar, " it isI that am tormenting him so, and I shall never leavehim quiet until he has given me back the drum,which was my means of livelihood." These vexationsPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 217were particularly directed to tlie children, and Mr.Mompesson was often obliged, after having madethem, to no purpose, change their beds and room, to



send them to sleep in another house. Most of theinhabitants of the place, as well as most of thepeople of the neighbourhood, were witnesses of theseprodigies. The rumours of it having extended evento London, the chaplain of Charles II., Grlanvil, cameto the spot to carry on an investigation, and embodiedthe facts in a memoir which was published someyears later. As to Mr. Mompesson, he would gothrough all the rooms where the noise was happening,with a pistol in his hand, in pursuit of the invisiblephantom which thus tormented his family, but metno one : the row would stop in the room that heentered, and begin in another. Once, however, seeingsome pieces of wood moving in the chimney-place,he fired his pistol, and immediately saw some dropsof blood on the hearth ; others were traced uponthe stairs. The phantom had been hit, and hadfled ; but it had received only a slight wound, for thenocturnal manifestations went on again two or threedays after. Like all spectres, he shunned swordsand firearms ; he even struggled sometimes with theperson he was tormenting, when he saw him aboutto seize a weapon. One night a servant of Mr.Mompesson, a strong and stout young fellow,

feeling himself molested in bed, wished to use asword that he had placed near him, to strike the invisiblebeing. A struggle ensued for the sword.21S POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and he had much trouble to get possession of it.Immediately the phantom fled from the room.Another time they were less fortunate. Some onehaving taken a bed-staff to drive away the spectre,which he felt at his side, the latter seized it simultaneously,snatched it from the hands of his adversary,and threw it on the ground. These molestationsdid not completely cease until the vagabond, condemnedas a sorcerer, was put out of the way for

good and all. Meanwhile, he had been arrestedseveral times for theft and other misdeeds, and hadthen spent days or weeks in prison. It was duringthese terms of imprisonment that quiet was restoredin the family of Mr. Mompesson, for, as we shallpresently see, the practices of sorcery are impossiblefor prisoners.An important fact stands out from this story. Ishall bring it into prominence.From the analysis which I have made of thehuman phantom, we have been able to decide thatthe tissue which composes it is of a fluidic nature.There would seem to be deduced from this fact an

immediate consequencethat the phantom cannotproduce any great muscular effort. The history ofthe drummer, corroborated by others that I mightquote, (*^) gives a denial to this conclusion. From the('^) Some delicate and very scientific tests were made by Mr.Crookes to determine the dynamic value of the current of " psychicforce " flowing from the medium, Home, while physical phenomenawere occurring in his presence. The result was perfectly convincing,and the translation of the current into foot-pounds was easily made.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 219



picture that is given of the beggar, he had greatphysical power, and his phantom naturally shared hisathletic constitution. But that would not explainthe vigour that he displayed in his fluidic manifestations.He struggled with those whom he saw seizinga weapon, and one day he succeeded in snatching abed-staff from the hands of his adversary. Anothertime, when he was raising the children's bed, a prankthat was a great favourite of his, it required six mento hold it. We cannot consider these strange factswithout admitting that, in the phenomena ofthe double the fluidic personality may borrow from thebody from which it separates itself, all the livingforces contained in the latter. Thus are explainedthe stubborn and often painful struggles undergoneby persons who have to submit to persecutionson the part of evil men addicted to the practice ofsorcery. The judicial annals of sorcery teach us,moreover, that women, accused and convicted of thiscrime, have acknowledged to having smotheredchildren in bed, to revenge some injury that theyhad received from the father or the mother.I have said that the drummer left in quiet theMompesson family whenever he was in prison, because

he could not then devote himself to magical(See his Eesearches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism.) A chair,ascertained to weigh 8| lbs., was lifted, one evening at the Eddyhouse, in my presence, by an unseen agent, to a height of 5 ft. 6 in.,and a calculation, made at the time, showed that a force of 24'36of a H.P. had been exerted. (People from the Other World,p. 264.)220 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.practice. Long ago the same thing was noticedin connection with sorcerers who filled the MiddleAges with the fame of their exploits. All theirmagic power ceased as soon as they were in thehands of justice. As, at that epoch of superstition,

they saw in the facts imputed to such peoplenothing but a manifestly diabolical action, they,with good reason, were astounded that the demonlost all his power as soon as one of his own peoplewas under lock and key; in other words, that itonly required the closing of a prison-door to totallydestroy infernal powers. The matter is very simple,nevertheless, and explains itself. All the art ofmagic consists in the forming of the double of the onewho addicts himself to it. But this phenomenon canonly be produced by the help of certain preparationsand of certain substances that are not procurablein gaol. I will give some details of these processes.

In the prosecutions for sorcery it oftenhappened that women, constrained by the evidence,confessed the facts imputed to them. The firstwas, going to the sabbatha vague term that theyapplied to all nocturnal voyages attributed to sorcerers.They declared that they went there, notin imagination, but bodily. Frequently magistrateswho were trying the cases, being anxious to verifyfor themselves and to give the lie to these poorfools, gave them liberty, so that they might renew



their nocturnal voyages ; for they were unanimousin declaring that they had no power whilst theyPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 221were in prison. At the same time they had themwatched, sometimes with and sometimes withouttheir consent and knowledge. As soon as the hourarrived, they undressed and rubbed their body witha salve which they had prepared. They fell immediatelyinto a lethargic sleep which continued forseveral hours. Their bodies exhibited the insensibilitythat we have pointed out in the magneticsleep. The persons set to watch them torturedthem in many ways, by sticking sharp-pointedthings into their flesh, sometimes even burningsensitive parts ; they could neither awaken themnor detect any movement. The limbs had a corpselikerigidity. "When the lethargy had ended andthey came to their senses, they declared that theyhad returned from the sabbath. To no purposewere they told that they had not been lost sightof for a moment; that their bodies had remainedin the same place. In vain were they shown thepunctures and burns that had been made on theirflesh; they persisted that they had been to the

sabbath, and alleged as proofs of their story themost circumstantial details about what they haddone, as well as the countries they had traversedand the people who had been there with them.They would end by begging their judges themselvesto make investigations. Upon making theveriflcation, it was most frequently recognized thatthey had only to do with poor hallucinated persons;but sometimes, also, the results of the inquiry were222 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.found to conform in every point with the declarationsof the sorcerers, which redoubled the perplexity

of the magistrates, thus hemmed in by acircle of contradictory facts."What was the nature of the salve which producedsuch physiological effects ? In 1545, Andre Laguna,physician to Pope Julius III., was in Lorraine, inattendance upon the Due de Gruise, when a manand woman were arrested upon the charge of sorcery.A search of their house had resulted in the discoveryof a pot containing a pomade, or unguent, of agreenish colour. Andre Laguna, having analyzedit, discovered that this preparation contained juicesof different narcotic plants, among which he distinguishedhemlock, hyoseyamus, nightshade, and

mandrake. The wife of the executioner complainingof neuralgia and insomnia, he saw the opportunityof testing the properties of this salve, and causedthem to rub the patient's body with it. The latterfell immediately into a lethargic sleep. She hadbeen thirty-sis hours in this state when the doctor,thinking that it might be dangerous to leave her anylonger thus, restored her to consciousness, but notwithout having to use violent means, among othersby cupping. Andre Laguna is not the only physician



who has analyzed the salve of the sorceress.The substances which entered into these preparationsdiifered in number and kind, but were alwaystaken from narcotic plants. Hyoseyamus was oftenthe base. Cardan has given us the receipt of one ofPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 223these salves, in which were mixed opium, aconite,pentaphyllum, and nightshade with honey. Theeffect produced by these preparations differed,necessarily, according to the nature of the ingredientsand the manner of their use. The experts inthe art would have a dry rub before anointingthemselves, so as to make the pores more accessibleto the action of the drug. Others limited themselvesto rubbing the palms of the hands and thesoles of the feet, or, perhaps, some other part ofthe body rich in nerves, such as the top of the headand the epigastrium. Some, having acquired bycustom or by a natural predisposition the power ofentering at will into the lethargic sleep, disdainedthese precautions, and would simply lie down andgo to sleep. It was in these latter that werecommonly noticed the most surprising effects ofsorcery. I shall presently return to this. It is

superfluous to add that the magic salves produceddifferent results, since they depended at once uponthe physical constitution of the patient, of thepreparation which he used, and of the way in whichhe employed it.Most commonly the sorcerers obtained no othereffects than simple hallucinations, like those causedby the hashish of the Orientals. They travelled indream through delicious countries, or, perhaps,entered the houses of persons whom they knew tobe rich, killed the finest sheep in the pen, and, afterhaving dressed it, went to work to feast upon it,224 POSTHUMOUS HUJ-'ANITy.

moistening their throats with the best wine in thecellar. However sumptuous might be this repast,they were not less starved upon their awakinganunmistakable proof that it was misery that mostfrequently led to the practice of sorcery. The poorpeople wanted to appease, in nocturnal imaginarybanquets, the hunger which they could but partlysatisfy by day. However, things did not always gooff so inoffensively: in persons whose nature lentitself to the phenomenon of duplication, the fluidicbeing left the body as soon as the latter was asleep,and then magic showed itself in its true aspect.The sorceress entered into the house of him against

whom she had a revenge to gratify, and vexed himin a thousand ways. If the latter were resolute, andhad a weapon available, it would often happen thathe would strike the phantom, and, upon recoveringfrom her trance, the sorceress would find upon herown body the wound she had received in thephantasmal struggle. I have related above severalexamples of this kind. It was these sorts of witchcraftthat the rulers of states had in view when theyprescribed the severest penalties against magicians.



It had been often proved, in judicial inquiries, bothby the avowals of the accused and the testimony ofthe victims, that the sorcerers could kill those whomthey pursued, without distinction of rank, so thateven kings, feeling themselves in danger, hadrecourse to the axe and the halter to abate thecommon scourge.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 225I have said that certain magicians could projectthe Double without having to employ the witchsalve.Among other instances, I may quote fromGorres the following:" Maiole, in his work, Jours caniculaires, relatesthat a peasant, not far from Eiga, while suppingat the house of his master's steward, tumbled fromhis seat after the meal and remained thus stretchedinsensible upon the ground. The steward believedthe man must be a wehr-wolf. (*') He thereforesent his people to bed, and had the man left lyingas he was ; the latter did not return to consciousnessuntil the next morning, whereupon he departed.The steward, having ascertained that a horse hadbeen killed during the night in the pasture, suspected

the peasant, had him arrested and brought,and questioned him about the matter. The peasantconfessed that, on the previous evening, he had seena large insect flying about; that he had taken itfor an evil spirit ; that he had pursued it ; that theinsect {cousin) had hid itself behind a horse in themeadow; that he had wanted to kill it with hissickle, but that it had escaped the blow aimed atit, and that he had killed the horse instead."The use of the salve was not the only processresorted to by the practitioners of sorcery. Certainbeverages produced as efifectually the lethargicsleep. The principle was the same in both prepa-

(") A sorcerer who could project his Double, and, making itassume the shape of some animal, do injury to man and beast.15226 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.rations. It was always the juices of narcotic plantsdissolved in some liquid, instead of mixing themwith a fatty substance. Among the North AmericanIndians, the Siberian tribes, the Finns and Laplanders,the soothsayers had recourse to other customs,sometimes very strange, yet all having onecommon objectthe complete suppression of theexternal life. They employed, to this end, sometimesthe circular dance or the monotonous chant,

sometimes the inhalation of tobacco-smoke accompaniedwith yellings and the sound of the tambourine.(^^) Again, they would combine the wholetogether, and add the action of strong drinks.Among the Laplanders the sorcerer carried ahammer, and beat upon the anvil a brazen frog orserpent, which he turned upon all sides, mutteringformulas of conjuration, until he fell to the groundmotionless. People would come to consult thesesoothsayers about the fate of an expedition that



had delayed its return, or for news of a relativeor somebody else who might be very far away.(88^ From the very first outbreak of the modern spiritualisticmovement, the unseen intelligences have required singing orplaying upon musical instruments at seances. I think that, asa rule, a preference has been shown for airs embodying shortrhythmic measures. It "will be seen in th e Appendix that Indiansorcerers and mediums use a small drum monotonously beaten.There is in the Adyar Library a specimen of the drum usedin Kathiawar upon such occasions. The dugpas, or " led-eap"sorcerers of Bhootan, Sikkim, and Nepal use such a drum, thebodyit can scarcely be called a cylinderof "which is composedof t'wo human skulls fastened together at their apices ; and theyalso play upon a pipe made of a man's thigh-bonciPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 227The preliminary steps for bringing on the trancewere usually tedious, and it was only after waitingfor him several hours that the patient, coming tohimself, gave his replies. They were always accurate,and were verified in all their details upon thereturn of the absent persons. The spiritto usethe common expressionleft the magician's bodyas soon as he fell into the state of unconsciousness,

and went in search of the one inquired about. Hisquest being finished, he would re-enter the bodyhe had temporarily left, and recall it to life. Thesefacts are accounted for above. The fatiguing practicesto which the sorcerers submitted themselvesled, in some, to the projection of the Double ; inall, to the liberation of an excessive quantity ofmesmeric fluid; and we know that this fluid canextend itself to great distances, and, by a reflex'effect, telegraph to the brain that which passesafar off, so that it is frequently hard to say if oneis having to do with the phantom itself or the

simple action of the cerebral ether.CHAPTER X.THE MESMERIC ETHER AND THE PERSONALITY WHICHIT ENGENDERS {continued).THE INCUBUS.THEOBSESSING SPIRIT.We are now coming to the most extraordinaryphenomena that are presented, in its exterior152228 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.manifestations, by the fluidic personality of man,or rather of woman, for it is principally with thelatter that these prodigies are noticed. I speakof the incubus. This word, which one scarcely

meets elsewhere than in theological treatises, wasquite unknown to me when I saw it for the firsttime, but its peculiarly Latin physiognomy mademe easily guess its meaning. I did then what Ihad already done in other circumstances, notablyin connection with posthumous vampirism, to whichI shall soon recur : I turned the page and passedon to another chapter. The history of the posthumousvampire seemed to me a little hazardous;it exceeded all bounds, and seemed to me the most



formidable of mystifications. However, this sameword recurring in most of the authors whom I consulted,I found myself compelled, in spite of myself,to become acquainted with it, and the result wasmy recognizing in it a certain objectivity, ratherdifficult to define and circumscribe ; for, direct verificationbeing almost always impossible in suchkinds of phenomena, one is naturally led to attributethem to hallucination. I shall, then, be briefin my quotations, and I hasten to add that I throwthe whole responsibility upon those from whom Itake them, although the latter appear to have drawnthem from the best sources. (^') The following(^') I have not, like M. d'Assier, had to rely entirely upon thirdparties for this class of repulsive facts, several cases having comeunder my own observation, and two under my treatment. One ofthese was that of a young Buddhist priest ; the other a respectablePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 229story will serve me as a transition, for it is indirectlyallied with our subject:" In a town in the county of Somerset, England,there lived, about fifty years ago, an old woman whopassed generally for a sorceress. She was thin and

dried up, bent with age, and walked with crutches.Her voice was hollow, solemn, mysterious, but, atthe same time, hypocritical. Her eyes darted apenetrating light, inspiring fear. A young man oftwenty-two years, healthy and robust, who lived inthe same village, found himselftormented all at onceby an impure spirit, to such a degree that his healthwas affected, and that, at the end of three or fourmonths, he was pale, thin, exhausted, and presentedall the signs of a speedy death. He knew very welljas well as his relations, what was the cause of thissickness ; and as he was of a very decided character,he finally resolved one night to await the sorceress.

She was a long time coming, but finally, aboutmidnight, he heard the noise of light footsteps onthe stairs. It was she, in fact. She came to thefoot of his bed, climbed up, and slipped gently overhis feet. He let her alone until she got as far ashis knees, and was about to fall on him with all hermarried lady in America. In the former, I cured the patientin one month's time by making him drink water I had mesmerised;in the latter, I taught the lady how to rid herself of the obsessionby the exertion of her own will-power and the observance of a nonstimulativediet. In a third ease the victim, an elderly Asiaticlady, died of sheer exhaustion of her vitality, after many years of

real or imagined relationship with her obsessing demon.230 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.weight. Then, with both hands, he caught her bythe hair, and held her with a convulsive effort,crying out to his mother, who slept in a neighbouringroom, to bring a light. While she ran to iindone, the young man and the sorceress struggledfuriously on the floor. But, with the first glimpseof light that came from the stairs, the woman toreherself with supernatural force from the hands of



the young man and disappeared like lightning.His mother found him standing breathless, and histwo hands full of hair."'I asked him,' said Barnet, the author of thenarrative, ' where he had put the hair.'"'I was stupid enough,' he answered, 'not topreserve it: it would have helped to provethe identity of the person. But in the trouble inwhich I was, I let it fall on the ground, and sheto whom it belonged took good care to carryit off; but I handled her so effectually that shecame no more to trouble me. It is singular,' headded, ' that while I held and struggled with her,although I was certain that it was she, her breathand her whole figure indicated a young girl.'"' He to whom this happened is still alive,' addsBarnet, from whom Gorres took the story. ' Hehas told it me several times, and I can guarantee itstruth, without being able to give any explanation.'"Whilst this tale presents all the characteristics oftruthfulness, it would seem impossible, if we hadnot observed in the posthumous vampire facts no

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 231less extraordinary. It is a simple phenomenon ofduplication. Since it is established by manyobservations that the living phantom can leave itsbodily habitation, to go and drink and eat in a placewhere the latter could not go, there is no difficultyin admitting that it might be the same in a casewhere an individual, predisposed to doubling, isurged by a need not less imperious than hunger.This brings us to the evidence of the incubus.The spiritists, ascribing all that they see to themanifestations of the posthumous being, make ofthe incubus a satyr from beyond the tomb. It is

not difficult to demonstrate the absurdity of suchan opinion. Every incubic act, traced to its primarycause, supposes an excess of vitality in the normalfunction of the organ of which it is the seat. Thefluidic structure of the posthumous being in no wayrecalls such a mechanism. The shade is, then, inall respects the antithesis of the satyr, and it is,we think, in the actions of the living phantom thatwe must seek the solution of the enigma. Theanalysis of some examples will show upon what factrests our view of the case.Grorres, to speak only ' of this author, citesnumerous facts of incubi borrowed from the writings

of the theologians. Brognolis, an Italian monk ofthe seventeenth century, had acquired a certainrenown as an exorcist in this kind of witchcraft,naturally attributed to demoniac agency. But suchinstances would not serve as a basis for rational232 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.examination, for, relating generally to nuns shut upin a cloister, they appear almost always as the resultof a delirious imagination in hysteric women.What is to be said, for example, of the confessions



of Madeleine de la Crux, abbess of a convent ofCordova in the first half of the sixteenth century ?She confided to her confessor that during thirtyyears she had had commerce with an incubus. Thelatter came to her every night in her cell, andshowed himself under the appearance of a Moor.We know that the Moor was often cited in theromances of that period as the perfect type ofgallantry. What shall we say, also, about that nunof the third order of St. Francis, confessing toBrognolis, who had come to exorcise her, that foreighteen years the devil had misused her bodyunder the form of a handsome young man, and thatat night he would often take her out of her home togive her up to other enchanters ? What enchanterswere meant ? That is what Brognolis does not explain.In his conscientious researches upon theincubus, M. des Mousseaux did not confine himself,like his predecessors, to the confessions of penitentsin convents. He has compared these facts withother phenomena of the same order, which arerecorded in the annals of spiritism. Here it is nota question of mysterious confidences of subjectiveorder, made behind the gratings of a cloister, but of

real facts occurring in open day and susceptible ofcontrol.POSTHUMOUS HUaiANlTY. 233[The author here cites a number of historicalfacts going to prove the reality of immodestrelations between male and female phantoms andnormal beings of the opposite sex. As they willhardly bear translation, the scientific student maybe referred to the many authors, ancient as well asmodem, of all countries who have written upon thissad and repulsive theme. Among others, theChevalier Gr. des Mousseaux, a great modern Catholicwriter upon magic, whose books are very highly

recommended by leading prelates of his Church, hasentered at great length into the discussion. In hisLes Hants Plienomenes de la Magie, he devotesa hundred pages to it. It is also treated by Lenormant,in his Chaldean Magic ; by Ennemoser, in hisHistory of Magic, and by scores of others. FatherSinistrari's De Dcemonialitate et Incubis et Succubis(French edition by Liseux, Paris, 1875) learnedlyand exhaustively deals with the whole question. (^'')Besides all these, and besides the voluminous annalsof the tribunals of Great Britain, France, Grermany,Italy, and other countries, numerous cases have beenreported among our modern spiritualists. After

('") A very curious collection of such facts is to te found in theHistoire des Fantomes et des Demons qui se sont montres parmiles Hommes, par Mde. Gabrielle de P » * * »(Paris, 1819). A ease, made the more disgusting by being takenan grand seriewx by the author, as a prognostic of a possible improvementof the human race by unions between spirits and mortals, iscited by Putnam, in his Witchcraft of New England explained hyModem 8]nritualism (p. 155).234 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.citing his facts, M. d'Assier goes on to discuss the



nature of these impure spirits, and in a few brief paragraphspretty effectually disposes of the theologicalhypothesis of diabolical agency by showing that itinvolves various contradictions and is inconsistentwith the character of God as depicted by theChurch, His fifth proposition we may now translateliterally.Translator.]V. Finally, admitting that all the foregoingobjections are put aside, there will always remain tobe explained how a being of immaterial nature (herefers to the devil) flies like the phantom of a simplemortal before a sword or a firearm, as all attest whohave had recourse to this means to free themselvesfrom incubic obsessions.Let us pass on to another most strange manifestationof the mesmeric ether, or rather of the personalitywhich it gives rise to.From the remotest antiquity there has been observeda singular malady. The characteristics whichit presented were so extraordinary that it was attributedto a demon, or to the soul of a deceasedperson who had taken possession of the body of the

patient. The doctors finding themselves helplessbefore such symptoms, the people hastened to thetemples and implored the help of the priest. WhilstApollonius of Tyana was at Athens, he deliveredfrom a demon a young Corcyrsean woman who cameto attend his lectures. At the time of his visit tothe Indian sages, a woman came to beg the latter. POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 2^5to free her adolescent son from the soul of a mankilled in battle, which had possessed him for severalyears. The young man having refused to follow hismother, larchus, the elder of the Brahmans, gaveher a letter which would effectually conjure the

obsessing spirit and drive it away. Long beforethis epoch, a Eamses of the twentieth dynasty receiveda messenger from an Asiatic prince, the kingof Bakthren, who begged him to send an exorcist,selected from among the priests of the great templeof Thebes, to deliver his daughter from an evilspirit. The sage sent by the Pharaoh, not findinghimself strong enough to drive away the demon,they had to despatch a second, more learned orbolder, (^^) who cured the young girl. The methodemployed by these exorcists of ancient times was thesame as that made use of to-day. The thaumaturgistsummoned several times the obsessing spirits

to depart, and the latter yielded after having mademore or less resistance.Possessions and exorcisms, rare in our times, werevery frequent in the earlier times of Christianityand during the Middle Ages. Summoned to revealits name, the spirit usually called itself a demon,rarely a lost soul. In some cases it stubbornly triedto conceal its personality; in others, as is nowoccurring daily with mediums, and as was recentlyseen at Morzine, the spirit gabbled, sometimes



(") Or a stronger mesmerist ?533 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.giving himself out as a demon, sometimes as one ofthe damned ; occasionally he replied with witticisms.One day it declared, in the case of a young girlwhom they were exorcising near Lucca, that he wascalled the guardian of the frogs (Grorres, vol. iv.,p. 442). "With such incoherent responses, it seemsthat one ought to entertain suspicions as to the truenature of the pretended obessor. But they ascribedall these contradictions to diabolical malice, andsaw in them only one of the familiar frolics of the" father of lies."Other contradictions, not less singular, presentedthemselves when one studied the origin of themalady, its symptoms, its modes of cure. Amongthe moral causes which brought about possession,one of the most frequent was remorse for a faultthat they dared not confess. The diabolical agencyappeared then perfectly manifest, and they appliedthe remedy naturally indicatedconfession. Theexample of a young girl of the neighbourhood ofVallombreuse, who became possessed because shehad seen her parents commit a theft, and who was

released when the latter had made restitution, oughtto have caused some reflection ; for, in strict justice,it was upon the authors of the crime that thepunishment should have fallen. It was much worsewhen one reviewed the other causes of obsessions.Grorres, who has devoted to the study of thequestions several chapters of his Mystique, makes,in this connection, the most candid confessions.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 237He relates seriously that, in 1609, in the diocese ofToledo, a woman, named Maria Garcia, was possessedfor seven years, from eating an orange that had beengiven her by a neighbour. Near Sens, a child

became so because, in his great thirst, he had drunkgreedily from a bucket of water. In 1605, theobsessing spirit entered the body of a young orphangirl, after some bad treatment that she had receivedin the house of a miller, where her guardians hadplaced her. In Lorraine it was a beverage whichcaused Marie de Ranfain to be possessed. Herdoctor, smitten by her beauty, had given her a lovephiltre. Other unfortunates fell into this stateafter certain illnesses. The moon herself exercisedan influence upon demoniac action : in certain ofthe possessed, this action increased or diminishedaccording to the course of that orb. The same

singularity there was as to the modes of cure, withor without exorcism. As Jeanne Morette, of Venice,was being exorcised by St'. Cajetan, the demoUjspeaking by her mouth, said that he would go away,because he could not stand the smell of orange,which the saint exhaled. In Old Castile, a monkcured a case of possession by blowing into thepatient's mouth. St. Vincent de Paul, exorcisingin vain a woman, suddenly seized her by the hair,as if he were enraged, all the while continuing his



conjurations, and the patient was speedily released.In certain cases the patient was cured by theadministration of purgatives. A young monk, of238 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.the convent of St. Ethelred, becoming suddenlypossessed, passed the night, by order of the prior,at the tomb of the saint, while the monks remainedin prayer. In the morning he was taken withviolent colic pains, and was delivered in the mannerabove indicated. Three possessed persons, exorcisedby St. Nicet, became cured by profuse expectoration.A woman, taken to the tomb of St. Ulrich,found herself cured after strong nasal haemorrhage ;others were so after having vomited either blood orsome dark fluid. If we add to that the violentattacks which occurred in most of the possessed inthe moments of their crises, their frightful bodilycontortions, and the foam which came out of theirmouths, we shall not be surprised that medicalscience has only seen in these pretended obsessionsforms of catalepsy.But if the physiologists had disposed of dia*bolical agency, the patients were no better ofif;for the doctors found themselves controlled by a

personal equation which was scarcely any better,than that of the theologians. Thus the advantagehas remained until now with the latter, whohave at least on their side the appearances, andwho, it would be puerile to deny, have obtainedin a great number of cases complete cures by theemployment of exorcisms. The characteristicswhich certain of the possessed present in the hoursof the crisis are so different from those that areobserved in other maladies, that they seem to resultPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 239from a supernatural action. I do not speak of thestrange things that they emit sometimes by the

mouth, such as coals, hair, or living reptiles ; itis not necessary to suppose that these objects wereswallowed, to explain their presence in the interiorof the human body. All physiologists know thatthey may, in certain cases, be formed in differentparts of the organism under the feverish andabnormal action of the vital forces. The mostcommon are coals and reptiles. The former seemto be excrementary matters, to which the commonpeople give the name of coal, because of theirconsistency and their blackish colour. As to thereptileSj they are intestinal worms, so various, aswe know, in form and size. In 1870, when I was

editing the Revue d'Aquitaine, I was able to satisfymyself of this fact. One of my correspondentsinformed me that the Zouave Jacob, of whom therewas much talk at that time, had just effected amarvellous cure upon a young lady of the neighbourhoodof Marmande. This lady, abandoned bythe doctors, suffered from convulsions which resembledthose of the possessed. After some inagneticpasses, and amidst horrible suffering, shethrew up a sort of reptile about fifteen centimetres



in length. This scene having occurred in the houseof M. Dambres, of Marmande, I requested the latterto send me the facsimile of the animal which hehad preserved in alcohol. M. Dambres sent me apencil drawing, and I recognized at a glance that,240 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.as I had suspected, the pretended reptile was amonstrous helminth.The characteristics which distinguish possessedpersons, properly so called, are of another order.When they enter the crises, certain of them acquirea muscular vigour so great that the most feeblewomen occasionally escape from the hands of severalrobust men who are exerting themselves to holdthem.Others, becoming electrical, climb with surprisingagility to the tops of the highest trees, dart frombranch to branch like squirrels, then return to theground head first without doing themselves anyharm, to the stupefaction of persons witnessingthese prodigies.Some show themselves lucid (clairvoyant) ; theyread the contents of a sealed letter, name differentobjects shut up in a box, divine the secret thoughts

of persons about them, and make in this connectionmost piquant revelations. Some are polyglots;but all, or nearly all, understand what the exorcistsays, answer all his questions, whateyer may be thelanguage he employs, and if he happens to deceivehimself do not shrink from addressing him in suchterms as these: "Ass that thou art; that is not theway to talk !" This sudden transformation of anilliterate person into a linguist is, in the eyes ofthe theologians, the undeniable proof of diabolicalpossession. It is no longer the possessed who talks;

it is the obsessing spirit who expresses himself byPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY, 241the other's mouth. Such a view of the case is themore natural, since the tone of the voice is sometimescompletely changed ; the new interlocutorspeaking in his own name and not in the nameof the patient, who is for him but a stranger,and, interrogated as to his origin, freely calls himselfan emissary of Satan, or at least a lost soul;and indicating the day when he will depart, aswell as the name of the exorcist who will forcehim to decamp. Let us add to this another trait

not less characteristic of obsession : the fury intowhich the possessed are thrown whenever they arespoken to about holy things ; the aversion thatthey show for priests, churches, and ceremonies ; thehorror that relics cause them, contact with whichthey describe as like that of fire. In presenceof these facts, which I have condensed, and whichshow in the least equivocal way the action of amysterious personality of a supernatural order, howavoid giving reasonableness to the theologians ?



It was, in truth, that which the sceptics themselveswere forced to do before the discovery ofmesmerism. But, for serious minds, there is nolonger to-day any question of obsessionat least, ofdemoniacal obsessionsfor magnetism, sometimeseven simple catalepsy, repeats the strange phenomenathat the possessed present. In the annals of themagnetizers, and more particularly of the spiritists,it is not rare to find facts relative to persons whohave become electrical under the influence of the16242 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.mesmeric fluid. Some shoot up from the ground,like certain ecstatics, driven by an ascensionalforce, and it sometimes requires the efforts ofseveral men to pull them down. Others acquire aherculean strength. I have quoted, in connectionwith incubic phenomena, the example of a younggirl in whom a passion for turning tables haddeveloped an almost miraculous muscular power.Lucidity is a common thing in somnambulism. Incataleptics has been observed a clairvoyance not lessremarkable. The gift of languages is commonenough among mediums, and it is known that a

number of them write their replies in idioms whichto them are entirely unknown. It is a fact, also,that patients gifted with magnetic lucidity predictthe return of their crises, and, like the possessed,indicate in advance the day and the hour of thatone which will be the last. This supreme crisisoffers other analogies not less surprising. Inexorcism there is one peculiarity worthy of remark,which the theologians consider as the touchstone ofpossession. At the moment when the possessingspirit declares that he is about to leave the body ofthe patient, the exorcist, wishing to satisfy himselfthat he is not the dupe of a falsehood, orders him

to give a visible sign of his departure. Usually, itis one of the surrounding objects which is to beupset or moved from its place. ('^) In an example('2) It is the custom in India also ; tlie commonest signal is thebreaking of a branch of some tree near the house. A ceremonyPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 243cited by Gorres, the spirit having declared thatthere were thirty demons in the body of a younggirl, the monk in charge of the exorcism, afterhaving caused thirty wax candles to be lighted,ordered that the departures should be successive,and that each demon should mark his going out byextinguishing one light. The programme was

punctually carried out.These prodigies, which at first sight appearsupernatural, nevertheless are included in thecategory of mesmeric phenomena. The first wasreproduced by ApoUonius of Tyana, when he relievedthe young woman of Corcyra, whom I have mentionedabove. The thaumaturgist having orderedthe obsessing spirit to give a sign of its departure, it,replied' that it would upset one of the statues in.the portico that was near. The statue was presently



seen to totter upon its base, and then fall. TheIndian fakir, of whom Louis JacoUiot speaks in his.Voyage au Pays des Perles, did even better. Heproduced several miracles before the author of thecalledSraddha is performed after every Hindu's death, to ascertain!if the deceased has any unsatisfied longing, the persistence of whichiwould bind the soul to earth. Balls of cooked rice are laid outsidethe house to tempt the crows, which swarm everywhere andsnap up anything' of the nature of food they can steal. If thesebirds gather about the rice-balls bxit do not eat them, it istaken as a (preconcerted) signal from the deceased that he is stilllingering near. In such case, the relatives take every possiblemeans to ascertain, as quickly as possible, his wishes:, and to satisfythem.16-2244 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.narrative. By a simple act of his will, he causedfurniture to move, opened and closed doors, extinguishedlights placed at the end of the hall.Having observed through a window a gardenerdrawing water from a well, he arrested by a singlegesture the movement of the pulley, to the greatstupefaction of the gardener, and the rope movedfreely again only when a second gesture had been

made. Here no jugglery was possible. The incidenthappened in the house of an English colonel;the fakir, quite naked save for a small strip of clotha few inches wide {langanti), remained motionless,whilst the house-servants themselves brought andlit the candles. As for the aversion shown by thepossessed for holy things, it is easy enough to beaccounted for. It is a necessary consequence of thenature of their fluid (aura). Like ordinary electricity,the vital electricity has two modes of action,mutually opposed. The production of each of theseresults either from the individual organization or

from the cause which gives it birth. They are thetwo poles of its battery : the one leads to ecstasis,the other to obsession. Whilst the ecstatic feelshimself drawn by an irresistible force towards thealtars, the obsessed feels an invincible repugnance toapproach them. Occasionally the fluid manifestsitself in the same individual, now in one, now inthe other of these states, and then the patient showshimself by turns ecstatic and possessed. I havegiven, in a preceding chapter, the example of thePOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 245young novice of the Spanish convent of Moreola,who presented this singular phenomenon.

The moral epidemic which burst out, a few yearssince, in certain villages of Savoy enabled us toverify most of the facts relating to obsession, andto show once again that the theologians, whiledeceiving themselves as to the causes of this strangemalady, obtain cures, unlike the physicians, whoarrive at no result, although they confine themselvesto the scientific territory. Early in thespring of 1857, several young girls of Morzine, often or twelve years of age, showed the symptoms



of possessionextraordinary physical vigour duringthe crises, horrible blasphemies against holy things,dialogues sui generis between the obsessing spiritand the persons present, second sight, the gift oftongues in some, marvellous ascension of the tallesttrees, &c. The contagion soon seized upon adultsand boys, but preferentially attacked young girls.The crisis past, these poor children had no recollectionof what had happened, and could not believewhat was told them about the vile language theywere charged with using against religion and theirown cure, for whom they professed the greatestrespect.The country physicians confessed theirinability to treat such an illness, and left the fieldto the exorcists. These latter effected some cures;but the contagion was so wide that many younggirls who had been relieved afterwards succumbedagain. The famous doctors of Lyons, and then246 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.those of Paris, were called in. These gentlemen,seeing themselves as helpless to conjure away theillness as had been their colleagues of Savoy,accused the priests of nursing the moral disorder,

and tried to prevent the use of exorcisms. Thusleft to itself, the pest could but become indomitable.It reached some distant localities, and didnot disappear until about 1863. The outcome of theaffair may be thus stated : perfect helplessness ofthe doctors; actual successes obtained by certainexorcists, fruitless attempts of others. Let us tryto explain these contradictions.The physicians found themselves disarmed, becausethey refused to open their eyes as tothe cause of the evil. They fully recognizedthat it was one of the forms of catalepsy; butdenying mesmerism, or having but a very imperfect

knowledge of it, they could not detect inobsession an abnormal afflux of nervous fluid inthese poor children. The very way in which thepest broke out left no room for doubt in thisrespect. It proceeded like every contagious epidemicwhich spreads from one neighbouring placeto another. Several villages near Morzine weresoon attacked. A remedy naturally suggested itselfto remove the patients far away from the centreof infection. This was done for several younggirls ; their symptoms soon decreased, and finallydisappeared. It may be said that, besides theexorcisms, this was the sole treatment that yielded

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 247a result. This is a direct proof that the atmosphereof Morzine was impregnated with a foreignfluid (aura), since all that was required was to givechange of air to ensure escape from the clutchesof the disease. In certain families the domesticanimals ate nothing, or satisfied themselves bygnawing the wood of their mangers; at other times itwas the cows,goats, or sheep which gave no more milk,and what little some yielded was unfit for making



into butter. These phenomena especially showedthemselves in families where there were patients.Occasionally it worked a shifting of the sicknessbetween persons and animals. Was a young girlrelieved, a beast in the stable fell sick : was thelatter cured, the young girl fell again into herformer state. In face of such facts it was no longerpossible to be talking about obsession. The pestbursting forth simultaneously in houses and cattleshedscould only be ascribed to a physical cause,and the disorders that it provoked in personsattacked showed clearly that these phenomena weredue to an excess or a degeneration of the mesmericfluid. As they had been occupying themselveswith the turning-tables for some months beforethe appearance of the epidemic, it has been thoughtthat that was a predisposing cause of the abnormaldevelopment of the cerebral ether, and possiblythis fact might explain it all. (^^) But Dr. Kerner('") A Hindu friend of mine, a Government topographical engineer,tried to work Planchette, and succeeded so well as to beedme248 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITYIhaving noticed in the mountains of Wurtemburgasudden afflux of this fluid manifesting itself simultaneously

among men and animals, and which couldonly be attributed to the vegetation of those altitudes,it is in order to ask if it vras not the samething in the Alps-like mountains of Savoy, and ifthis second cause should not be joined to the firstnamed.Obsession being an abnormal afflux of magneticfluid upon the nervous system of the patient, thedirect remedy is naturally the neutralization of thisfluid by a current of cerebral ether turned in theopposite direction and emanating from an energeticwill: this was the method of the Brahmans ofIndia, the priests of Egypt, and of ApoHonius of

Tyana; it is also that of the exorcists. If theydo not invariably succeed, it is because they thendo not fulfil all the 'physical and moral conditionswhich such a practice demands, and which may bethus summarized great magnetic power and a willstrongly imperious.Of all the prodigies that obsession displays, thea medium and an epileptic, and finally was forced to take sick leave.After some months of medical treatment, from which he derivedlittle benefit, he came to Adyar, and begged me to treat him mesmerically.I did so with success, and he was soon able to returnto duty. This ease supports our author's theory, and indicates thetrue remedy. A priest who proves himself a sueeessful exorcist

must drive out his devils by mesmeric aura. This is why, asD'Assier shows, the identical prayers and ceremonies succeed withone priest and fail with another.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 249most siirprising is, without question, the sudden appearanceof that mysterious personality which converseswith the exorcist, and which I will call theepigastric personality. We have seen this samefactor of human physiology reveal itself in naturalsomnambulism, magnetic somnambulism, catalepsy,



ecstasis, the magician, the incubus : the genesis ofthese strange phantoms is most closely linked withthat of the mesmeric ether, and seems to attain itshighest expression in the phenomena of the incubus.CHAPTEK XI.CAUSES OF THE EAEITY OF THE LIVING PHANTOM.CAUSE OF THE RARITY OF THE TRANS-SEPULCHRALPHANTOM. RESEMBLANCE OF THE SPIRITISTIC PHENOMENATO THE PHENOMENA OF THE POSTHUMOUSORDER.LYCANTHROPY.We have passed in review, in the preceding chapters,the beginnings of the mesmeric ether and its chiefmodes of action. Let us now resume our inquiryupon a higher level. Why the exceeding rarity ofthe projection of the Double ?The answer to this question, which we have hadto leave in suspense until now, has become possible,since the elements of the problem have been broughtout in the successive analyses that we have madeabove. These elements are two in numberthefluidic being, which is virtually m each of us, andthe mesmeric ether. The first is the gasiform250 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

duplicate of the liuman body. Its existence hasbeen proven by the phenomena of duplication, andby this fact, that persons who have lost an arm or aleg often experience pains in the missing membera member which the Seeress of Prevorst perceiveddistinctly on all amputated persons. It plays apurely passive part, and only becomes animatedunder the action of the vital fluid. The latter,whose reservoir is the nervous apparatus, is developedin great quantity as the result of a very strongmental strain, a moral commotion, certain diseases,or other physiological causes. Under its vivifying

influence, the inner being awakens, and, althoughremaining always in the latent state, reveals itselfby unequivocal manifestations. One would say, then,that there was in man a second personality entirelydifferent from the ordinary personality, and puttingitself at times in antagonism with the latter. Ifthe energies that it receives from the thaumaturgicfluid are so potent as to enable it to burst the bondsof its prison and assume momentarily an independentexistence, it detaches itself from the body andshows itself under its visible form. This is duplication.This phenomenon is observed only in someorganizations exceptionally gifted in the matter of

sensitiveness ; and this explains its extreme rarity.There are persons in whom the fluidic being,while remaining invisible, manifests itself naturallyand, so to say, nt will. The agency of the mesmericether is here latent, for no apparent cause indicatesPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 2jlits action, which is exclusively due to a special predispositionof the organism. These mediums of anew kind present a most curious fact, inexplicableat first sight. Their fluidic personality, like the



familiar demon of Socrates, is a slave always readyto execute the wishes of the master. Occasionally,however, it becomes mutinous, argumentative,threatens to disobey. To insist is then dangerous,for one exposes himself to grave reprisals. We iindin Des Mousseaux a singular story of this kind. Icopy it in brief:M. de B., a fugitive from the French Eevolution,had retired to Palermo, where he practised medicine.There was much talk at this time of a seeress calledthe Sybil of Etna, because she lived at the foot ofthis mountain. M. de B. at first paid no attentionto it. But the facts related of this extraordinarywoman becoming more and more the subject ofconversation, his scepticism was at last shaken, andhe went one day to Etna, to satisfy himself as to theknowledge of the prophetess. Instead of meeting,as he had expected, an old sorceress, wrinkled andbent by age, he found, before the cottage pointed outto him, a woman of about thirty, having all theattractions of youth and beauty. The followingdialogue then took place between them :" The Sybil of Etna ?"

« Is myself."<' You, so young ? Could you tell me my past andmy future ?"262 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY." Certainly. Enter ; you shall see and judge."" Here is some paper," said the young girl, assoon as they were inside the house; "you shallwrite your questions yourself. Yet, no ; you mightthink that the paper had been specially prepared.Tear out a leaf from your note-book, and put yourquestions upon it."While speaking, she threw some dry herbs into

the chimney-place ; she then stirred up the jBre.Some clouds of black smoke arose, and the paperbeing rapidly exposed to the flame, whose tonguesshot through this thick spiral, was almost immediatelywithdrawn. A reply was found legiblywritten on it ; it was correct. Astonished, but notyet convinced, the doctor several times repeated theexperiment, varying his questions, and alwaysobtained the same success. A certain intimacyhaving been formed between him and the younggirl, he became a constant guest at the cottage, andcould, at his ease, question the sybil about thesecret of her art.

" Nothing is more simple," she told him. " Ihave at my orders a spirit of Etna. As soon as thefire bums and the smoke rises, he comes out of thiscurling vapour and traces characters upon thepaper, which, wherever his claw has not touched it,remains pure and white. However, there are timeswhen the spirit declares that he is not free, andthat if I call him he cannot come. I have, it istrue, powerful means to compel him, and if IPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 253



venture upon them he comes, but in a state offearful rage, and his threats long ring in my ears.At such moments I am afraid, and feel myself as onthe eve of some terrible thing; he must not bedefied." {^*)Some time after that, the doctor was able toconvince himself that the pythoness had told butthe simple truth. Having come, one day, to beg herto give him news of his family, from whom he hadreceived no letters, she replied :" To-morrow, not to-day ; for the spirit cannotcome this time ; I do not dare to compel him."However, overcome by the pressing impatience of(''') There was in India, some few years ago, a Mahomedansorcerer, called Hassaa Khan Djinni, -who is said to have receivedfrom his father control over several elementals (djins), and with theirhelp he performed, before Europeans as well as Indians, a vastnumber of phenomena. A favourite kind was to command hisspirits to bring fruits of different distant countries, bottles of wineand other drinkables, and other articles. He would extract jewelsor money out of locked burglar-proof safes, or out of the innermostbox of a nest of boxes, locked or sealed. He would tell you togather the fiiiger-rings of the company and cast them yourself intoa well, and presently either produce them to you out of his hand

or somebody's pocket ; or would tell you to go and pick an orangeor lime off a tree in the gardenhe not touching itand uponcutting it open you would find the rings there. In short, his phenomenawere the prototypes of the familiar illusions of our Westernconjurors, effected by them by the help of confederacy and sleightof hand. Latterly, having become a great drunkard and debauchee,he is said to have lost control of all the djins save one, and of thisone he had a mortal terror. If a bottle of wine or other heavyobject was called for, he would give the command, but put up hishands to guard his head from the projectile the angry spirit wouldnow invariably make of it. The man died in prison.254 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.her friend, the poor girl resigned herself to take the

risk. She lights her prepared packet of driedherbs, and the paper which her hand holds is putin contact with the flame and smoke. But scarcelyhad she touched it than she fell as if under ahammer-stroke, rending the air with a frightfulcry of distress. Her demon had horribly burnt it,and, as a souvenir of his anger, he left on her armthe imprint of a hand of fire.The most curious fact of this story is not in thetranscription of the replies below the questions.We have seen the same phenomenon occurring,with the exception of the singularity of the variation,with certain mediums, and on the tombs of

certain wonder-workers of the first centuries ofthe Church. It was the fluidic being of the sybilwhich played the part of scribe. The new aspectof the question is in the repugnance which theinvisible secretary showed at intervals, and thereasons which he alleged to secure an adjournment.From what I have said of the manifestations of themesmeric personality, it is easy to understand thatthis unwillingness was the unconscious avowal of atemporary weakness. The fluidic being only attains



its plenitude of action when it is vivified by asufficient quantity of nervous ether. Now thisquantity is necessarily variable, since it dependsupon physiological causes that act upon theorganism, and some of which are temporary oraccidental. We know that the most gifted mediumsPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 205experience at times eclipses in their faculty ofsecond sight. "When the pretended demon of Etnademanded a postponement of the execution of anorder until the next day, it was because the fluidicpersonality of the pythoness had lost a part of itsliving forceI mean of its mesmeric etherandthat it had need of a delay of twenty-four hours torecuperate them fully. If summoned to obey, itsweakness revolted against such an injustice, and ittestified by the sternness of its reprisals that thisbarbarous order condemned it to frightful tortures.Let us return to the posthumous phantom. Itsvisible manifestations are as rare as those of theliving phantom. This comes evidently from thesame causes. It is not enough that death frees thefluidic being from its bonds for the latter to becomean independent and active personality, endowed

with a life of its own ; it is further necessary thatat this moment it shall be suitably saturated withmesmeric ether. Now this fluid decreasing withage and illness, and losing at the same time itsessential qualities, it is excessively rare that itshould have sufficient strength and energy to vivifythe phantom at the instant when the latter is aboutto open the doors of its prison. Let us quote inthis connection a fact worthy of remark, which willfurnish us with the direct proof. It has beennoticed that the most tumultuous and persistentof the post-sepulchral manifestations, hence the bestmarked, resulted from violent deaths. I have

256 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.mentioned an example of this kind in the firstchapter. It concerned a man of the Canton d'Oust,who was hanged. In these moments of struggle,of sufifering, and despair, a physiological labour wascaused, which led to an abundant liberation of vitalfluid. Under those circumstances the phantomcould supply itself with living force, and make sureof a posthumous existence.The living spectre and the spectre from beyondthe tomb, having the same origin, can present intheir manifestation the same common characteristics.Such are the noises that occur in certain habitations,

where the chairs, furniture, crockery, &c., areseen to change place or to shake under the impulseof an invisible hand. When the hubbub is nocturnal,and the family has lost one of its members, thephenomenon should be attributed to the actions ofthe posthumous being. If the noises occur duringthe day, and no death has happened, the cause ofthe prodigy must be sought in the effects of mesmerism.By scrutinizing closely, we shall probablyfind that there is in the house some electric person



whose fluidic self is the cause of all these disorders;usually it is a young girl. When it is a case ofvisions occurring in sleep, it is not so easy todiscern the nature of the agent and to know if onehas to do with a phenomenon of the objective orsubjective order. We think, however, that the principlemay be laid down that it must be ascribedin greater part to mesmerism. As a general rule,POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 257one should beware of pretended posthumous interferences,the part played by the ghost being purelypassive except in cases of personal importunitiesthat occur at the beginning of its new existence.Let us quote some examples.The. first is taken from the book of ValeriusMaximus upon dreams, the details into which theauthor enters giving to his recital all the featuresof a historical fact. The poet Simonides, landingupon a certain coast, found a body lying withoutsepulchre, and rendered to it the last offices.During the night the dead man warned him notto embark the next day. He remained on shore;those who sailed were caught in a tempest and

perished before his eyes. The grateful poet haspreserved the memory of this adventure in anelegant piece of verse, thus raising to the deadman who had saved him a monument more lastingthan that which he had given him upon a desertshore.Must we see in the warning given to Simonidesa posthumous interposition, or simply a vision ofthe poet ? The death was recent, as the narrativewould indicate, and the ghost might have consciousnessof itself, and act within certain limitsas an active force. But here is the announcementof an event which is about to take place. Now

the prescience of the future is hardly within thedomain of the shades. Their perceptions are confinedto a vague notion of the present and to some17258 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.reminiscences of the past. The advice which thepoet received during his sleep should, then, beclassed among the effects of magnetic clairvoyance,which is observed in the somnambule and themedium.Let us quote another case from Dr. Kemer.One day when the Seeress of Prevorst was inher kitchen, she perceived the spectre of a woman

holding a child in her arms. Although familiarizedwith apparitions of this kind, she did not at firstunderstand the meaning of this one. But thisphantom having shown itself on the following daysat the same place and in the same posture, theseeress had the idea to cause the flagstone uponwhich it planted itself to be raised, and to dig atthis spot. At a depth of several feet they foundthe corpse of a child. Madame Hauffe had the lastoffices paid to it, and the spectre appeared no more.



There is here no question of a dream, but of aphantom showing itself to a waking person. Inevery other circumstance this apparition wouldhave to be taken seriously. But it concerns theSeeress of Prevorst, with whom spectres were insome sort a result of her physiological state, somuch so that they seemed to spring up at herevery step. There is no necessity, then, to see,in our opinion, in the double phantom of themother and child anything njore than a subjectivephenomenon.I will finish this study of the mesmeric perPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITy. 259sonality with some views upon lycanthropy. Thisfeature, perhaps the most obscure of the manifestationsof the fluidic being, long seemed to meso utterly unreasonable that I did as with thequestions of posthumous vampire and the incubusI turned over without reading the pages thattreated on this theme, and I gave but a veryinattentive hearing to what was told me aboutthese singular metamorphoses. If I decide tospeak of it now, it is because it would not bewise to oppose a systematic denial to a multitude

of facts reputed authentic which corroborate eachother. However, as I only skirt along this subjectin passing and, if I may venture to say, asa memorandum, I will confine myself to the twofollowing examples.The first occurred about fifteen years ago, atSt. Lizier, in a house occupied by two brothers.It is from one of them that I have the story.It is almost literally as follows :" I lived at that time in one of those little housesthat you can see at the upper end of the town.I was about twelve years old, and my brother,older than myself, was perhaps seventeen or eighteen.

We slept together in a room, to which we ascendedby a little staircase of some steps. One eveningwe had just gone to bed, and were not yet asleep,when we heard some one ascending the steps whichled to our room. Soon we saw before us an animalof the size of a calf. As the window had no blinds,172260 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and the night was clear, it was easy for us tomake it out. Frightened at this sight, I clungto my brother, who at the first moment seemedas frightened as myself. But, soon recovering fromhis terror, he leaped out of bed, ran and caught

up a pitchfork which was in a corner of the room,and, placing himself before the animal, said to itin a firm and resolute voice:" ' If thou comest by permission of God, speak;if from the devil, thou wilt have to deal with me.'"My brother, already strong and vigorous, wasrenowned through all St. Lizier for his intrepidity.Thus encountered, the animal wheeled around, and



in turning it struck with its tail the frame of mybed. I then heard it descending precipitately thesteps of the staircase ; but as soon as it had arrivedat the bottom it disappeared, without my brother,who was at its heels, being able to see where itpassed. Useless to add, the door of the house wasfast shut. On my part, as soon as I had heard itdescend the stairs I took courage, and as thewindow of the room was over the street-door, I hadopened it to watch the strange visitor go out. Isaw nothing. My brother and I thought that wehad had to do with a wehr-wolf, and we accused aninhabitant of the vicinity, to whom were chargedother adventures of this kind."Here is a case of lycanthropy clearly defined, andyet it does not teach us much as to the nature ofthe phenomenon. They accused a man of that disPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 261trict ; but how to prove that it was his mesmericpersonality which was acting ? The following fact ismore explicit. It occurred about thirty years ago,at Serisols, in the Canton of St. Croix:A miller, named Bigot, had some reputation for

sorcery. One day when his wife rose very early togo and wash some linen not very far from the house,he tried to dissuade her, repeating to her severaltimes, " Do not go there ; you will be frightened."" Why should I be frightened ? " answered thewoman. " I tell you you will be frightened." Shemade nothing of these threats, and departed.Hardly had she taken her place at the washing-tub,before she saw an animal moving here and therebefore her. As it was not yet daylight, she couldnot clearly make out its form, but she thought itwas a kind of dog. Annoyed by these goings andcomings, and not being able to scare it away, she

threw at it her wooden clothes-beater, which struckit- in the eye. The animal immediately disappeared.At the same moment, the children of Bigot heardthe latter utter a cry of pain from his bed, and add," Ah ! the wretch ! she has destroyed my eye."From that day, in fact, he became one-eyed. Severalpersons told me this fact, and I have it from Bigot'schildren themselves.Here there is no possible doubt as to the authorof this scene of lycanthropy. It was certainly theDouble of the miller which projected itself while hewas in bed, and wandered about under an animal282 .POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

form. The wound which the phantom received atonce repercussed upon the eye of Bigot, just as wehave seen the same thing happen in analogous casesof the projection of the Double by sorcerers. It isthe fate that sooner or later is reserved for every onewho has the sad privilege of turning wehr-wolf.This personage is, by nature, an inoffensive being,who goes about nightly under the shape of someanimala wolf, calf, dog, &c., and is satisfied withfrightening people whom he visits or who meet him



in the way. But when they take the matter seriously,and hunt the spectre with a weapon, there is sure tobe found, next morning, in some neighbouringhouse a man riddled with wounds and refusing toexplain how he came by them.I shall not attempt to give an explanation of theseprodigies, which are, in fact, an insoluble problemfor myself. The fluidic and, consequently, elasticnature of the mesmeric personality permits of itsadapting itself to lycanthropic forms ; but where shallwe place the efficient cause of these metamorphoses ?Must we fall back upon atavism ; in other words,upon the most delicate and least-known chapter ofbiology ? I prefer to confess my incompetency,and to leave to those who are more skilled than myselfthe task of expounding the enigma. Yet I willadd one final fact, for which Allan Kardec is responsible.It seems relative to the subject under consideration,and may cast a new light upon the veryuncertain and obscure causes of lycanthropy.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 263" Here is a fact, in connection with transfiguration,whose perfect authenticity we can endorse, andwhich happened in the years 1858 and 1859, near

St. Etienne :A young girl of fifteen years had thissingular faculty of transfiguring herself, that is tosay, of assuming at fixed moments all the appearancesof deceased persons : the illusion was so complete,that it would seem as if the very person werebefore you, no detail being wanting in features, look,Toice, and even jargon. These phenomena occurredhundreds of times without the desire of the younggirl acting at all. She took on several times the appearanceof her brother, deceased several yearspreviously ; she had not only the face, but the heightand physical bulk as well. A physician of the place,a frequent eye-witness of these puzzling effects, and

anxious to satisfy himself that he was not the sportof an illusion, made the following experiment. Wehave the facts from himself, from the father of theyoung girl, and from several other witnesses who arevery honest and trustworthy. He conceived theplan of weighing the young girl in her normal state,then in that of the transfiguration, whilst she hadthe appearance of her brother, aged twenty oddyears and much larger and stronger than herself.Well, he found that in this latter condition theweight was almost double. The experiment wasconclusive, and it was impossible to attribute thisappearance to a mere optical illusion."

264 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.CHAPTEE XII.A GLANCE AT THE FATINA OF THE SHADES.THEIR PEEOCCDPATIONS.THEIE REMINISCENCES.HOW THEYPROLONG THEIR EXISTENCE. THE POSTHUMOUSVAMPIRE.From all that I have said in the preceding chapters,as well about the living phantom as about theposthumous phantom, the conclusion is warrantedthat these two personages have a common origin,



or, to speak more exactly, that the second is thecontinuation of the first. Their identity beingthus established, it becomes easy to measurablyassure oneself with respect to certain facts connectedwith the life beyond the tomb. As the fluidic beingexperiences, in disengaging itself from the body,but a change of environment, it must preservesomething of its customs, tendencies, and prejudiceswhich it had acquired during life. This verydistinctly appears from these manifestations. Itsfirst desire, when it has any marked desire, isconnected with its sepulture. It would seem to bevery jealous of receiving funereal honours accordingto the sect -to which he belonged, and it knows howto enforce them. Unable to speak audibly, it hasrecourse to other acoustic processes according tolocal circumstances. Its favourite method is knockingupon walls or throwing of projectiles. Plinythe Younger relates a curious tale in this connection.A house at Athens was haunted by a spectre, whichPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 265nightly made the sound of rattling chains. No onedared to live in the house, until the philosopherAthenodorus resolved to pass the night there and

await the coming of the spectre. The latter soonappeared, rattling its chains, and made a sign tothe philosopher to follow it. Athenodorus compliedwith the phantom's invitation, and was led into thecourtyard of the house, where it disappeared. Someexcavations having been made at this spot, therewere found some human bones mingled with chains.The honours of burial were given to these relics,and quiet was restored to the house. Similarstories are to be found in other authors.The most common yearning of the posthumousbeing is, it would seem, to bid the last farewell tothose who are dear to it. I have given, in the first

chapter, several accounts of such apparitions. Avariety of examples demonstrate that it is equallyaccessible to ideas of vengeance. If it died thevictim of assassination, it comes to set its nearestrelative to avenging the outrage. In his work on" Apparitions," Morton speaks of a young man who,having been killed at London, in a brawl, appearedwith his forehead all bloody to his brother atBoston, and gave him the names of the persons whohad struck him, begging him to avenge his murder.If man sometimes carries with him beyond thegrave his hatreds and anger, he may also preservethe memory of his jealousies and his baiHed hopes.

We find an illustration of this in the archives of266 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.the Prefecture of Policethe record of a verysingular adventure which occurred in Paris underthe reign of Louis XIV. It is as follows :A young man, desperately in love with a woman,pursued her with his attentions for three years, butwithout success. In despair at not being able tomake her listen to him, he fell into a wastingillness, which finally carried him off. In the last



interview with her who was the cause of hispremature end, he vowed to her that, in revenge forher obduracy, he would persecute her after deathfor as long a time as she had rebuffed him.Unusual noises, which were heard immediatelyafter his decease, in this lady's house, remindedher of the threat, to which she had at firstpaid no attention. There were nocturnal disturbanceswhich changed after a certain time, andoccasionally assumed very peculiar characteristics.Sometimes were heard clappings of hands, followedby sarcastic laughter ; again there were suddenexplosions, like the detonations of bombs orfirearms. Wearied with this hubbub, and notknowing how to relieve herself from it, the mistressof the house waited upon the Lieutenant of Policeto tell him what was going on in her residence, andbegged him to give her some help. The latterplaced at her disposal his best spies, but all theirinvestigations were fruitless. They heard, but sawnothing. After all sorts of expedients to discoverthe author or authors of these mysterious disPOSTHUMOUSHUMANITY. 267turbances, they were forced to confess their

powerlessness and give it up. As the dying manhad announced, this matter went on for three years.The ghost of one who was unhappy in hisaffections is not always satisfied to signify hisresentment by noisy but harmless manifestations.Father Tyrroec, author of a remarkable work onposthumous apparitions, tells of a young man whocruelly persecuted after his death a young girl,'because she had refused him her hand. She foundherself daily scolded, maltreated, and beaten by theghost of her rejected lover. What she related couldnot be accounted for as hallucination, for she carriedon her body the bruises of the blows which she said

she had received. Father Tyrrcee, who knew thisyoung girl, was able to satisfy himself personally ofthe reality of the facts.The two following circumstances, related byDr. Passavant, and which have all the appearanceof indisputable authenticity, prove that the posthumousbeing, as I have already had occasion toremark, sometimes likes to resume the occupationswhich were familiar to it. During the reign ofFrederick II., a Catholic priest, who lived in thePrussian village of Quarrey, having lost his servantmaid,took another woman. Scarcely had the latterbeen installed at the Presbytery than she found herself

the butt of all sorts of molestations, and wasforced to relinquish her employment. Her presencewas, indeed, perfectly useless; for^ invisible268 .POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.hands lighted the fire, swept the rooms, tidied thefurniture, did, in a word, the whole work of thehouse. (^') The noise of this prodigy having reachedthe Court, the king-philosopher sent to the spottwo of the officers of his Guard to verify suchwonderful facts. At the moment when the commissioners



are about to cross the threshold of theParsonage, a military march is beaten before them,but without their seeing any performer. Scarcelyhad they entered the room when they witnessedthe prodigies which had been reported to them,and which they had come to verify. One of themhaving exclaimed, " This is worse than the devil !"received immediately a buffet from the invisiblehand which was putting the furniture in order.Frederick II., convinced by the reports of his officersthat the Presbytery was haunted, ordered it to betorn down and rebuilt in another spot.All the inhabitants of Quarrey were witnesses ofthese strange things, and no one was in doubt asto the personality of the invisible being whichengaged their attention. It was, indeed, the phantomof the deceased servant, which continued tobusy itself with her daily duties, and would notallow of any stranger coming to do her work.This phantom had no visible forma very common(°°) For a modern example of this performance of householdduties by the dead, see Mr. Morell Theobald's Spiritucdism atHome (London, 1886). The deceased daughters of the author

are said to have lit firas, boiled water, and performed quite around of domestic duties. Mr. Theobald is an F.O.A. of London.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 269thing with the posthumous being. This was notthe case in the following story, which is not lesssignificant nor strange :In 1659 there died at Crossen, in Silesia, anapothecary's apprentice, named Christopher Monig,Some days after they perceived a phantom in thepharmacy. Every one recognized Christopher Monig.This phantom seated itself, rose, went to the shelves,seized pots, flasks, &c., and changed their places.It examined and tasted drugs, weighed them in

the scales, pounded the drugs with a noise, servedthe persons who presented prescriptions, receivedthe money and placed it in the drawer. No one,however, dared to speak to it. Having, doubtless,some grudge against the master, then very seriouslyill, it busied itself with giving him all sorts ofannoyances. One day it took a cloak which wasin the pharmacy, opened the door, and went out.It walked through the streets without looking atany one, entered the houses of several of his acquaintances,gazed at them a moment withoutspeaking a word, and withdrew. Meeting a servant-girl in the cemetery, it said to her

:"Gro to your master's house and dig in thelower room; you will there find an inestimabletreasure."The poor girl, overcome with terror, fell senselesson the ground. It stooped down and lifted her,but left on her a mark which was long visible.Eeturning home, and although suffering from great270 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.terror, she related what had happened to her. They



dug at the spot indicated, and found, in an old pot, apretty hematite (bloodstone ?). It is well knownthat the alchemists attributed occult properties tothis stone. The rumour of these prodigies havingreached the ears of Princess Elizabeth Charlotte,she ordered that the body of Monig should beexhumed. It was thought that this was a caseof vampirism; but nothing was found except acorpse in rather an advanced state of putrefaction.The apothecary was then advised to get rid of allthe things that had belonged to Monig. Thespectre reappeared no more from that time. Thesefacts are recorded in the annals of the Academyof Leipzig, which publicly discussed them after aninvestigation.Most of the manifestations by which the shadesreveal themselves seem to indicate that the posthumousexistence is a burden. The relatives ofthe deceased suppose, naturally, that his soul isin suffering, and hasten to employ the practiceswhich, in popular belief, can abridge its sufferingsor mitigate its fate. Is it necessary to say thatthe expiatory ceremonies vary with each countryI should say with the religions there professed

and that each cult has its formulas of conjurationand appeasement for shades in suffering ? InCatholic countries they cause masses to be said;the Protestants have recourse to prayers and toalms ; the followers of the Koran invoke Allah andPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 271his prophet, after a purification by fasting andablutions. Useless to add that this intercessionby the living in favour of the dead seems oftenof doubtfal efficacy, even when it is not entirelyuseless. Certain shades are quieted as soon as

they perceive that people are thinking of them;but others persist in continuing their lamentationsdespite all that is done to draw them out of theirtrouble, or they subside but very gradually andafter a long time, as though they were weariedout. We find in the narratives of the theologians,both Catholic and Protestant, many stories ofhaunted houses that they have been forced toabandon to the spectres, although there had beenexhausted on their behalf the whole arsenal ofposthumous ritualmasses, prayers, exorcisms, &c.If the ghost has a certain perception of the present,

is it the same as regards the future, I mean of thefate which time has in store for it, whose destructiveaction detaches one by one its constituent atoms torestore them to the universal medium; in otherwords, has it consciousness of its becoming ? Such aquestion can only be solved by the rare replies thatcertain shades consent to give to the relatives orfriends to whom they appear, and that the latterinterrogate as to their situation. (^^) These in-('^) Since M. d'Assier overlooks the numterless commuuioations



made, as alleged, by revenants with regard to the future life and theprogress and destiny of humanity in the supermundane^ spheres, ourinference must be that he regards all such as coming from the272 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.significant or senseless answers warrant the suppositionthat the posthumous being has no consciousnessof the future reserved for it, and that its notions arelimited to a vague sense of the present and somememories of the past. The shade only talks aboutits personal predilections, and remains deaf to everyquestion outside the limits it has prescribed foritself. All the colloquies that have been gatheredupon this subject resemble that of Bezuel and Desfontaine(1697) reported by Dr. Bri^re de Boismont.They were two college comrades, two intimate friends,who had sworn to each other that the first who diedshould appear to the other to give him some newsabout himself. The following year Bezuel perceived,one day, the shade of Desfontaine, who took him bythe, arm to draw him aside and speak to him. Theother persons present saw Bezuel talking with aninvisible interlocutor, for they heard the questionsand answers of the former, but not those of thelatter. This fact, which has been elsewhere

remarked, is something quite natural. The shade,unable to produce articulate sounds, limits itself tofluidic emissions perceptible only to the one towhom they are addressed. " I agreed with you,"said Desfontaine, " that if I died first I would comeand tell you. I was drowned in the Caen river, theday before yesterday, at this same hour, in companyDouble or "epigastric personality" of a living person. Thegenuine messages from posthumous persons irould, then, be theegoistic scraps he has enumerated.POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 273of Such and Such ; " and he related the circumstanceswhich had caused his death. " It was his very.voice,"

says Bezuel. " He requested me, when his brothershould return, to tell him certain things to be communicatedto his father and mother. He gave meother commissions, then bade me farewell and disappeared.I soon learned that everything that he hadtold me was but too true, and I was able to verify somedetails that he had given. In our conversation herefused to answer all the questions I put to him asto his actual situation, especially whether he was inheaven, in hell, or in purgatory. One would havesaid that he did not hear me when I put such questions,and he persisted in talking to me of that whichwas upon his mind about his brother, his family, or

the circumstances which had preceded his death."To sum up, one may say that the impression leftupon the mind by the lamentations and the rare repliesof those shades who succeed in making themselvesheard is almost always a sentiment of profoundsadness. I cannot do better, to convey an ideaof it, than to liken the moral state of the postsepulchralman to that of a European .transplantedsuddenly, without arms and clothing, to an inhospitabledistrict in Australia, amid an inclement



nature, and who. would have preserved of his reasononly just enough to have the feeling of his impotenceand of an eternal isolation. (^')(*') The works of Eliphas Levi are a mine of facts and explanationsfor the student of occult science. Upon the point made above by18274 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.I have said that the existence of the shade is buta brief one. Its tissue disintegrates readily underthe action of the physical, chemical, and atmosphericforces which constantly assail it, and re-entersmolecule by molecule the universal planetarymedium. Occasionally, however, it resists thesedestructive causes, continuing its struggle forexistence beyond the tomb. We touch here uponthe most curious phase of its history, for this bringsus to the posthumous vampire. The first time Iread this word, applied by Grorres to spectres whichleave their graves and come and drain the blood ofa relative or friend, as a weasel bleeds a rabbit, Iturned the page, as I had no desire to be the dupeof a mystification. But as this wordj too, occurredin most of the authors whom I subsequentlyconsulted, I was obliged, in spite of myself, to read

what was said about the matter, and I was soonM. d'Assier he says {JDogme et Bitml de la Haute Magie,vol. i ., p. 261 ): "Eien ne peut entrer dans le ciel que ce quivient du ciel. Apr^s la more, done, I'esprit divin qui animaitI'homme retourne seul au ciel, et laisse sut la terre et dans I'atmosphere dexix cadavres, I'un terrestre et elementaire, I'autre a^rien etsideral ; I'un inerte d^ja, I'autre encore anim^ par le mouvementiiniversel de I'ame du monde, mais destine a mourir lentement,absorb^ par les puissances astrales qui I'ont produit. . . LorsqueI'homme a bien v^cu, le cadavre astral s'evapore comme un eneenspur en montant vers les regions supMeures ; mais si I'homme a v^cudans le crime, son cadavre astral, qui le retient prisounier, cherchsencore les objets de ses passions et veut se reprendre a la vie. . . .

Mais les astres I'aspirent et le boivent ; il sent son intelligences'affaiblir, sa m^moire se perdre lentement, tout son etre sedissoudre.''POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 275satisfied that posthumous vampirism is but toomuch of a reality. Several of these stories couldnot be rejected as doubtful, since they related toevents of which whole towns were witnesses. Letme select some that, in view of the sources fromwhich they are taken, appear to be most authentic.First let Dom Calmet speak:" In the last century there died, at the village of

Kisilova, three leagues distant from Gradisca inSclavonia, an old man of about sixty-two years ofage. Three days after his interment, he appearedat night to his son, and asked for something to eat;the latter having served him, he ate and disappeared.The next day, the son related to hisneighbours what had occurred, but the spectre didnot show himself on that day ; but the third nighthe again appeared, and again asked for food. It is



not known whether the son gave it or not ; but theyfound him in the morning dead in his bed. Thesame day five or six persons fell suddenly ill in thevillage, and died, one after the other, a few daysafter. The bailiff of the place, being informed ofwhat had happened, sent an account to the Court atBelgrade, which ordered two ofits officers to go to thevillage, in company with the executioner, to inquireinto the aSair. The imperial officer, from whomthe present narrative emanates, himself went therefrom Grradisca to personally verify a story of whichso much had been heard. They had the tombs ofall who had died within the previous six weeks182276 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.opened : when they came to that of the old man,they found him with his eyes open, his complexionrosy, breathing naturally, although motionless anddead, whence they concluded that he must be animmistakable vampire. The executioner plungeda sharpened stake through the heart. They erecteda pyre, and reduced the corpse to ashes. No signof vampirism was found in either the body of theson or in that of any of the others."

In the case I have just reported, the vampireonly shows himself, so to say, by stealth. Weknow the object of these apparitionsit is to seeknourishment; but we doi not know how death iscaused to the selected victim. The following factswill reveal it in its true aspect:"In 1718, after parts of Servia and Wallachiahad fallen to Austria, the Austrian governmentreceived several reports from the commanders of thetroops cantoned in those countries. They statedthat it was a general beliefamongthe people that deadpersons, but still living in the grave, came out

under certain circumstances to suck the blood of theliving, and thus sustain underground a remnantof health and strength. As early as 1720, onereport announced that at Kisolova, a villagesituated in Lower Hungary, a certain PierrePlogogowitz, about ten weeks after his sepulture,had appeared by night to several residents, and sosqueezed their necks that they had died withintwenty-four hours ; so that, in the course of a week,POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 277nine persons, some young, some aged, had died inthis manner. His widow herself had been annoyedby him, and had left the village on this account.

The inhabitants demanded permission of the commandantto exhume and bum the body. Thecommandant having refused it, they declared thatthey would all leave the village unless their requestwas complied with. The commanding officer thereuponcame to the village in company with the cureof Gradisca. He caused the coffin of Pierre to beopened, and they found his body intact, except theend of the nose, which was a little shrivelled ; butit exhaled no bad odour, and seemed rather the body



of a man asleep than of one dead. His hair andbeard had grown, and fresh nails had replaced theold ones which had fallen ofif. Under the externalskin, which appeared pale and dead, had formed anew living skin ; the hands and feet resembled thoseof a man in perfect health. As they found in hismouth fresh blood, the people believed it must havebeen he who had sucked the blood of those who hadquite recently died, and nothing could prevent theirplunging into the breast of the corpse a sharpenedstake. There then gushed a quantity of fresh andpure blood from the mouth and nose. The peasantsthrew the body upon a pyre and burned it.*' Some years later, a soldier of the frontier, wholived at Haidamac, told his regiment that, being oneday at table with a guest, he saw enter a stranger,who came and sat himself down with them ; that278 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.his guest was very much alarmed, and that he haddiedthe next morning; that he had subsequentlylearned that this stranger who had died morethan ten years previously, was the father of hisguest, and had announced and even caused hisdeath. Count Cabrera, a captain in the regiment,

was ordered to investigate the case, and repaired tothe place with several brother-ofSeers, the auditor,and surgeon. He questioned the persons of thehouse, and as their testimony was confirmed bythat of other inhabitants of the place, he caused thecorpse to be disinterred. They found it perfectlypreserved, with the lively expression of a livingman. The head was cut off, and the body was thenrestored to the grave.Another man, who had died some thirty yearsbefore, had thrice come, as was said, in daylightto his house, and had killed, by sucking theirblood, first his own brother, then one of his sons,

and finally a domestic. His corpse was found inthe same state, and it was re-interred after a largenail had been driven through the two temples.Cabrera had a third burned, who had died sixteenyears before, and who, it was reported, had killedhis two sons. He handed in a report to the commandantof his regiment, who forwarded it tothe Court, after which the emperor formed acommission of officers, judges, pleaders, physicians,and men of science to thoroughly investigatethese extraordinary phenomena." DomPOSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 279Calmet cites this fact in liis dissertation upon

vampires.Here are facts at once significant and incontestable.I might multiply them, for there areother countries, notably in Northern Europe, wherehistories of this kind are equally numerous andwell authenticated ; but those which I have quotedseem to me quite enough to convince the readeras to the reality of posthumous vampirism, as wellas the phenomena which characterize it. Thesefacts at the same time bring into a new and clear



light the physiognomy of the posthumous being.It is one of those cases where the fluidic being,instead of abandoning the body from which deathhas just separated it, persists in stopping with itand in living with a new life, in which the partsare reversed; the corpse being unable to leave itslast dwelling-place, it is the phantom that assumescharge of the functions which the former performedpreviously. Thenceforth the struggle for existencecontinues beyond the tomb with the same tenacitythe same brutal and seliish ferocity, one might saythe same cynicism, as in living nature. The spectreis seen to come as a nocturnal marauder, like amalefactor, on behalf of its old landlord; it entersa habitation, goes straight to the one selected asa victim, springs at his throat like a jaguar or awild cat, and does not relinquish its prey until ithas imbibed his blood. It is the members of itsown family whom it seems to seek by preference.280 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.In default of these, it attacks the inhabitants ofthe locality, and if in great straits will satisfy itselfwith a sheep or some other domestic animal, asis proven by a mass of testimony which it will not

profit us to collect.Let us now examine what becomes of the bloodaspired by the spectre. We find here a repetitionof what we have observed several times in thepreceding chapters in connection with the livingphantom. Its structure is bound so intimatelywith that of the body of which it is the image,that all absorption of liquid by the former passesat once into the organs of the latter. It mustbe the same in the phenomena of posthumousvampirism, since the post-sepulchral phantom isthe continuation of the living phantom. All theblood swallowed by the spectre passes instantly

into the organs of the corpse which it has justleft, and to which it returns as soon as its poachingwork is finished. The constant arrival of thisvivifying liquid, which at once disseminates itselfthrough the circulation, prevents putrefaction, preservesin the limbs their natural suppleness, andin the flesh its fresh and reddish tint. Under thisaction is seen to continue a sort of vegetative lifewhich causes the hair and nails to grow, forms anew skin as the old one dries up, and, in certaincases, favours the formation of adipose tissue, ashas been proved by the exhumation of certain vampires.Persons who had known them found them

POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY. 281plump and fleshy to a degree far beyond that theyhad at the time of their decease. Popular instinctdivined that there was but one way to break thisstrange association of the spectre and the corpse;it was to reduce to nothing one of them. Powerlessto attack the phantoms, they^ disinterred andburned the body. The remedy was infallible; forfrom that moment the vampire ceased his dreadfuldepredations.



APPENDIX.The existence of nearly one hundred branches ofthe Theosophical Society throughout the IndianPeninsula induced me to try to collect the popularbeliefs of the several races respecting the postmortemvicissitudes of the human entity. To thisend I addressed the following questions to a numberof the more enlightened members of the Society:/. What do the people of the District of yourpresent residence, and those of yowr Native District,believe as to the nature and locality of Kama, orVayu, Loha ?II. Do they think it a place with geographicallimits and boundaries ; or merely a condition, orstate of existence, through which the soul must passbefore entering a higher one ?///. Are the races inhabiting it human, subhuman,or super-humanlower in development tomankind, or higher than ourselves ?IV. Which of these beings are hostile and whichfriendly to us ; and to what sorts of persons amongus are they respectively hostile or kind ?V. How can they do us injury ?

APPENDIX. 283VI. Is it considered a good or a bad thing formankind to encourage intercourse . with theirdeceased friends, or with any deceased personssupposing such intercov/rse to be possiblewhetherfor the purpose of deriving instruction or of keepingup former personal relations, or with anyother object ?VII. It is alleged by many that a deceasedperson, upon whose mind there lingers some strongdesire to complete some earthly business, is therebyearth-bound, and that he or she soTnetimes manifestshis or her presence and wishes, by controlling

a living member of the family and speaking bytheir m,outh. In the West such chosen agents arecalled "mediums." Have you known of suchinstances ? If so, kindly give particulars.VIII. Is such an occurrence regarded withpleasure and as something to be proud of, or thereverse?IX. In your District, or elsewhere to yourknowledge, are there persons who practise so-calledmagical rites, such as ceremonies, the recitation ofmantrams, spells or chwrms, to evoke the souls of thedead, or demons of any sort ; to control the spirits

of the elements ; to cure diseases; to get knowledgeof future events, the welfare of distant or lostfriends, or buried treasures ; or to injure anenemy, win the affections of persons of the oppositesex, favourably influence the minds of superiors,or for any other purpose f284 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.X. Have, you knowledge of the dead makingthemselves visible to the living, either by day or bynight ? If so, at what hours, and under what



circumstances, as regards the number, intelligence,and calmness of witnesses ?XL Have you knowledge of any predictionsm,ade by such alleged 'phantoms, and were suchpredictions verified or not ?XII. Have you knowledge of living personsbeing persecuted, attacked, or injured by the Double,or phantom, of a living practitioner of sorcery orBlack Magic ? Give particulars.XIII. If yes, please state how such victim, wasrelieved of the persecution.XIV. Have you actual knowledge of any temple,well, or other alleged holy place having cured anypilgrim or devotee of any disease or ghostlyobsession ?XV. Do you know, or is it popularly believedin your District, that persons called sorcer&rs canm,ake themselves seen at a distance from, theirphysical bodies, either in their own or an animalshape? and if so, have they done any injury toperson or property ?XVI. Can you report any case of a dyingperson showing himself to a friend, then far distantfrom him ?

APPENDIX. 285While it is true that the replies which werereceived afford an instructive glimpse of Indianpopular opinion in this direction, yet it is verymeagreas compared with what we should havelearned but for two factorsthe Asiatic loathingfor all meddling with the dead, and their naturalindifference to research that involves their takingtrouble for matters not connected with daily routine.It would, however, be quite practicable for me tocollect further data in the course of future officialjourneys, and these may be embodied in othereditions of the present work, should such be called

for. The correspondents to whom I am indebted forthe particulars embraced in the following epitomeare all gentlemen of position and credibility. Ifany one wishes to inquire further of them, I shallbe happy to furnish the addresses. Their names anddistricts are as follows :Southern India.Madura.S. Eamaswamier ; Sackara Josiar ; PNaraina Iyer, B.A., B.L.Malabar Coast.Naib Dewan A. Sankariah; N.Sankunni Wariyar.Goromandel Coast.M. V. Soobba Eow.Mysore.

jBa'n.g'aiore.-Ândinarainswamy Naidu ; A. KrishnappaGraru.Nizam's Territory.Hyderabad.P. lyaloo Naidu.Baroda.Baroda. Eao Bahadur Janardhan S. Gradgil.286 posthumous humanity.Kathiawae.Bhavnagar.Prof. J. N. Unwalla.Bengal,



Calcutta.Neel Comul Mukeiji.Berhampur (Murshidabad). Kali PrasannaMukerji.OUDH (N. W. P.)Bareilly.Prof. Gryanendra N. Chakravarti.All irrelevant matter, and reports of ignorance asto matters asked about, have been omitted from thecompilation.The word "Elemental" means a non-humanentity, a spirit of the elements. An " Elementary "means a human soul, a " posthumous phantom,"in the sense of M. d'Assier.There is a vast body of literature in India pertainingto our subject, one very erudite and enlightenedBrahman gentleman estimating it for me at 10,000separate volumes, I shall not assist my readers toexperiment in sorcery by publishing the titles ofsuch as have come to my notice ; but the curiousminuteness to which this kind of research has beenpushed will be inferred by my enumerating a few ofthe subjects of books easily procurable, viz.:1. How to cause instantaneous growth of a tree orplant [by forcing a current of vegetable life-principle

to rush through the seed-germ]. How to compel aperson of either sex to do your bidding and followyou like a dog [vide Calcutta case of the barber andthe boy, reported by Dr. Esdaile, Presidency surgeon].How to make savage animals dumb andAPPENDIX. 287liarmless. How to eat harmlessly live coals, breathefire, eat glass, &c.2. Treats of the science of curing blindness, deafness,and other ailments, and of propitiating elementalspirits.3. Ceremonial invocation and control of certainspirits ; and description of what may be phenomenally

done with their help.4. How to attach them to you as wife, mother, orsister.5. A variety of other methods for attracting andusing elementals.6. How to gain and keep control over femalespirits.7. How, by elemental agencies, to cure snakebites.8. How to understand the voices of animals [thetheory being that interested spirits can control themto give us every sort of warning and informationrespecting things which concern us, if we will onlylearn their telegraphic code] ; how to interpret significant

dreams; how to prolong life; and how toknow the secret virtues of herbs and other medicinalremedies.9. How to control the breath.10. How to kill or inflict disease and madnessupon selected victims.It should be observed, moreover, that all theseinfernal arts are widely practised even at the presentday throughout India, especially in Bengal, Behar,Kathiawar, and among various hill tribes not yet



civilised into disbelieving the evidence of their senses288 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and the reality of man's latent psychical powers.The witnesses whom we are now to listen to areneither ignorant, obscene, nor vicious, but gentlemenof such standing as to give importance to theirobserved facts, and weight to their independenttestimony.ANSWEES TO THE QUESTIONS.QUESTION I.Baroda State.Baroda.The belief of the people of the districtI reside in at present, Baroda, and of my native district,Zilla Satara, Bombay Presidency, is that VayuLoka is a portion of space surrounding our earth.The earth is said to have seven covers, of which Vayu,or air, is one; lightning (electricity) another, &c.The word K&ma Loka is not known among thepeople, but as the souls or Beings are supposed tolive in it with only their Sukshma or Linga Shariras(or bodies of desire, shaped according to the strongestdesire they had at the time of their death, that is, atthe time of their throwing off the outer visible corporealbodies), the space they live in may be called

Kama Loka, or the world of desire. Some of thesesouls may be so earth-bound, that is, so attracted tothis earth by strong desires, that they may evenremain in the regions inhabited by man. There arevarious narratives given in "Yoga Vasistha," astandard work on Adwaita philosophy, of deceasedpersons with special attractions to the houses theyAPPENDIX. 289had lived in, and of some who had strong desires atthe time of their death that they should be kings,&c., lingering in those very places ; the consequenceof which was that their souls, being cut off fromthe normal evolution from material existence towards

the spiritual state, were tied or tethered, so to say, tothose places, and there they enjoyed imaginaryworlds or kingdoms begotten of their strongestdesires.Southern India.Madura.According to the popular belief in thispart of Southern India, Kama Loka has nothing to dowith the soul, if the latter be taken to mean Atma(the immortal spirit). According to " Brahmasutra,"*the jivatma, when it deserts one body and leaves onestate of existence, enters another body and anotherstate of existence, with the latent potentiality offuture births in various states of existence (bhutasukohna).

The Teluga phrase, Satkupaya (literally, " Sat isgone "), shows actually the idea of death as entertainedby the Hindus.The lower principles belonging to the earth, thatcannot go beyond the earth's sphere, commonlycalled shell or reliquae, alone belong to the state ofKS,ma Loka.Nizam's Tereitory.Hyderabad.The belief of the people of thevarious parts of the country I have visited, about



* Adhyaya 3, pada 1, siitra 1. Tadantara-prati-pattav, ramhati19290 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.Vayu Loka and Kama Loka, is that the former isa region of the atmosphere, and that the latterforms but a part of the Vayu Loka. IL is believedthat in the Kama Loka human monads of thelowest type hover about and await future progressin the scale of evolution.OUDH.Bareilly.The ideas of the people here aboutKama Loka (or, as is more generally known here,Yama Loka) are mostly derived from " GrarudPurana." The popular notions are too hazy andvague to be taken into account. The book, " GarudPurana," may be regarded as a mythological work,which gives an idea of the state after death in anobjective form, so as to bring it within the rangeof common conception. It deals mostly with thesufferings of evil people when they die. The pangsto which they are subjected are, as gathered fromthe descriptions contained in it, of a mostly physicalnatureperhaps intentionally made so, torestrain people from evil deeds, as a purely subjective

punishment would hardly have any meaningto them. Yama Loka is considered as a regionbetween this physical world and Swarga orNaraka, (heaven or hell), as the case may be.An entity has to pass through this loka, settle theaccount of its Karm,a, and then pass on to establishitself either in heaven or hell.Kathiawar.Bhavnagar.Kfi-ma or Vayu Loka is a locality ofwhich the people have but a vague notion in thisAPPENDIX. 291province. The Bhuwas, of whom a detailed accountis given in Dalpatram's book,* and who, as a rule,

are themselves mediums and induce mediumisticconditions in others, being an illiterate class, haveno definite notion of the Kama Loka.The people who are a little higher in the scale ofintelligence believe that the Kfi,ma Loka is Yamapurijtmentioned in the " Grarud-purana,"Bengal.Calcutta.The peopleI mean the general massliving in and around my present residence, i.e.Calcutta, have no notion of Kama or Vayu Loka.A few very learned men are, of course, excepted.The people of Hugli believe in the existence ofPreta Loka (Kama Loka), whither, generally speaking,

every one has to go after death, and thereremain for some time, according (a) to the life he orshe may have led, and (6) according to his or hermode of death.Malabar Coast.Cochin.-Vayu Loka (the etheric region betweenearth and heaven) is the abode of devils and elementaries,according to the Hindus. The denizensare, of course, subject to the influence of Kama(desire) and Krodha (anger), but the term " Kd.ma



Loka " is probably Buddhistic.^ Vayu Loka is the* "Bhiit Nibandh." Translated from the Marathi, by A. K.Forbes. Bombay (eire. 1849).t The city of Yama.] Partly true. Buddhists in Ceylon recognize the Kdma Loka,and call its inhabitants Kdmorwacherabeings still controlled byunappeased desires.H. S. 0.192292 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.gulf between birth and emancipation. The souls ofgood and bad men must pass into Vayu Loka; thegood souls passing through to Swarga, and the badsouls wandering in it for a time, and then returningto the earth.The trials of a chela in this Vayu Loka and the" Aranyam,,'' or wilderness of temptations of theMahabharata and Eamay&na and the Bible, are onlytypical of Vayu Loka. The object of all sacramentswhile in the flesh, as well as the Srddha (ceremoniesperformed by relatives for the deceased), isto strengthen the soul against the devils and elementariesof this Loka. Devil is the term opposedto Deva, and both are superhuman beings. Elementaries(the undissolved ghosts of human beings)

are drawn towards them in Vayu Loka, accordingto their Karma and afflnities. Preta is theSanskrit name for all disembodied souls. Thedevil-ridden only are put en rapport with weakmediums by the Black Magicians, but the devaprotectedsometimes annoy their relatives andfriends, just for prayers as helps to cross on toDevachan, or Swarga. The pitrls are the devasof dead worthies,COEOMAKDEL CoAST,Godavery awl Kistna, Districts.The popularbelief in this part of India respecting KS,ma Lokais that it is a state of existence to which must pass

the souls of men whose desires for this world havenot been satisfied. The popular notion is not uniformas to the nature and locality of this KamaAPPENDIX. 293Loka, But one thing is pretty uniform, so far as myinformation goes, and it is thisthat this state ofexistence is far from desirable. Some of the ceremoniesperformed for the sake of the deceased areaimed at the deliverance of the soul from this loka.In our parts of the country a young bull is, amongstcertain classes, let loose, after the chanting of somemantrams on the last day of the faneral ceremonies.The popular belief is that at that time the departed

soul is carried by the ceremonies daily madethrough the greater portion of its journey in KdmaLoka, and at that stage there is a stream to becrossed, and that this ball is necessary to help thesoul in crossing it. It appears to me that thedifficulties which the 7noi,na,s or karana sarirahas to go through before its reaching the Devachanicstate, and the help that the relatives of the deceasedcan render to the mcmas so circumstanced,are given to the populace in parables ; and time



working, the spirit of the thing is lost and theshell retained. But the anxiety in the mind ofthe deceased's heir or relative about the deliveranceof the soul from all the troubles which it will haveto encounter before reaching the swarga fwhich,I think, corresponds with Devachan), and the beliefthat unless the sradhs are performed with scrupulousexactness such deliverance cannot be had,still remain. I am not speaking about the notionsof our Anglicised young men, but about the notionsof the orthodox portion of our community. Theideas of the people about this matter seem to bepretty consistent. It is only a man who is connected294 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.with this world that requires these funeral ceremoniesand this help from mantrams ; because up to the lastmoment of his life he will be thinking of this world'sthings, desiring this and shunning that, pantingafter the accomplishment of this object and wishingthat another thing should never happen, anxiousfor not knowing whether his B.A. son will becomea big man or not, or discouraged about the futureprospects of his more stupid son, and so on ; entangled,as it were, in the network of human

desires and aspirations, his soul cannot be freefrom the effects of such desires, which are so manyforces drawing his soul earthwards, and his relatives'assistance through mantrams is necessary.But when a man renounces the world and becomesa sanyasi, he is no longer bound to the earth, andno ceremonies are necessary, and the belief seemsto be that, as the soul at once gets into the swargaeven the cremation of his body is not necessary.His soul has had a clean severance, if I may so say,from the body, and there is no tie between thetwo which remains to be dissolved. To suchblessed souls there is no Kamaloka.

Of Vayu Loka I have never heard anything. Theexpression is scarcely used by ordinary men, and isperhaps confined to the learned pundits.QUESTION II.SOUTHERX IXDIA.Madura.Kama Loka is no place ; it is simply astate of existence of the shells until they are disinAPPENDIX.295tegrated in the ordinary course of nature. Thisdisintegration is only a matter of time. It occursspeedily when the rnanas (physical intelligence) of thedeceased was under the control of his Buddhi ( spiritualintelligence) during his lifetime, like a well-broken

horse under an experienced rider. It takes a longtime in a case where his Ahamkara (egotism) was allowedto get the better of his Buddhi. But in theend it must disintegrate. All the ceremonies performedby the Brahmins during the ten days succeedingthe death of a person are calculated to aidthe disintegration of the shell. The ceremonies, beit observed, are not addressed to the Atma, but tothe Preta. The word " preta " literally means " gone "(pra, prefix, meaning intensity, and " ita," gone, from



the root " e," to go)that which is left when the " sat,"or the " being," is gone. The general purport of themantrams used in the funeral ceremonies is this:" I pour this water to satisfy the preta's unsatisiiedthirst. I make this offering of rice and sessamamseed to satisfy the preta's unsatisfied hunger,&c." Among very rich persons, as soon as a man isdead thirty-two balls of rice and curry are preparedand spread before the preta, who is supposed to beinvisibly present. One end of a cord of Kusa-grassis bound by -inantrams (words of power) to the pretaand the other to a poor Brahmin. The latter is thenmade to eat the rice, he being paid for this act anenormous sum, sometimes from ten to a hundredthousand rupees. But as the general belief is that theBrahmin will not live out the year at the utmost, thisceremony cannot be performed by all ; therefore in296 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.the case of ordinary people the balls are put into thefire with the appropriate mantrams.The number represents 32 Kalas, of which 12belong to the sun, 16 to the moon, and 4 to the fire;

these being the original Tatwas, which are reckonedat 96 by a further subdivision of each into Satwa,Rajas, and Tamo gunas.In the case of suicides, persons dying by accidentfrom fire, water, wounds in battle, &c., the funeralceremonies cannot be performed till at least sixmonths after their death. The reason for this is thatin the case of these persons the annamaya kosha, orthe physical body, alone is destroyed, the other principlesare not destroyed ; therefore, as there is no deathin the proper sense of the word, the funeral ceremoniescannot be performed with efifeet at the time,Nizam's Territory.

Hyderabad.I do not think they could be localizedin any particular spot ; they are in that stage ofexistence through which the soul must pass beforeentering a higher one.Kathiawar.Bhavnagar.A short account of Yamapuri, theabode of the elementals and elementaries, is givenon pages 6 and 7 of " Bhut Nibandh." That the" Garuda-purana " should contain all that is allegedabout Kamaloka is very suggestive ; for is not Graruda,the eagle of Zeus Pater, symbolical of astral lightAkasha ?Any distinction as to whether K^ma Loka is a

APPENDIX. 297place with geographical limits, or a state of being,does not exist in the popular belief, although theShastrisI do not mean the very learned onesdomake some kind of distinction, but it is so vague thatit cannot bear any close scrutiny.That there are certain very high elementals whoact as familiars of the gods themselves is a beliefthat is very common. I may even assert thatthese elementals, and even the lower ones, are



looked upon as gods that must be worshipped assuch.Baroda.Usually the Vayu Loka is considered to be aregion much higher than the atmosphere whichmodern physical science recognizes as surroundingour globe, and the souls living in Vayu Loka areconsidered to live there, but as they have LingaShariras (astral bodies), in which the element of air(Vdyu) preponderates, they can move about swiftlyfrom one region to another as they desire.Many souls are regarded as living in this conditionfor " a long time before, by rebirth amongmen, they take another visible physical body {SthulSharira) ; but many also are thought to pass atonce to another superior or inferior world of theuniverse, such as the Brahma Loka, Surya Loka,or the Yama Loka, &c., according to the intensityof their merits or demerits.Bengal.It is generally believed that men after deathmust go through Preta-yoni. The place has no298 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.geographical boundaries, but is thought to exist

somewhere in the Southern quarter of space.Every soul must pass through it. Violent or accidentaldeath causes the Preta to be earth-bound, andmany legends are told regarding it. It is the dutyof the Brahmins daily to give oblations of water,tulseed, or gangilly, called (tarpan), to the forefathers,to keep them pleased, as well as to benefittheir departed souls. It is one of the daily dutiesof a Brahmin to make tarpan at the time of hisdaily worship. Just before the Doorga Pooja, inthe dark aspect of the moon, it is incumbent onalmost all Hindus to make tarpan in the riverGranges.

II.A state of existence; as regards locality,earth.OUDH.Yes, they consider it to be a definite place at acertain distance from the earth. Yama's residenceis described to be 86,000 yqjanas* from our planet,and in its journey to that place the entity has topass through sixteen places, or stages, named Ugra(populated with Fretas), Sowripur, Varendra (thickforest), GandharvaguTn, Siddhyagam, Karur naggur(where there is a shower of stones), Krounchpur,Vichitrapur (here the soul crosses theBaitarni river), Bahnvapad, Duhhhad, Nanakrand,

Sutappur, Rand/rapur (very hot sun), Piovarvarshana(constant rain), Shitadh (very cold), Buhibhitpur.*A yojana is ahnmt nine miles.appekdix. 299Malabar Coast.Only a state of existence througli which the soulMysore.Vayu Loka is not a geographically circumscribedlocality, but an interior plane of existence, embracedwithin the Akasha, and intermediate between



the earth-life and that supreme spiritual statecalled Swarga (heaven).COROMANDEL COAST.They never give it geographical limits or boundaries,but they think that this loka has a specifiedlocality in space. Exoteric language says so; butthe esoteric meaning seems to be that it is a stateof existence through which the soul must passbefore entering a higher one. Our purobits themselvesunderstand the subject so little that they arescarcely better off in their notions about thesethings than the ordinary people. When the soul isvery much earth-bound owing to the strong desiresit entertained at the time of death, it is supposedto wander upon the face of the earth, appearing tosome and possessing some others, as opportunitiesoccur. From this it maybe inferred that the KS,maloka begins with this earth, though it is not confinedto it. But the notions of the people in general areso vague that it is difficult to say whether the K^maloka is entirely on the earth, or partly on it andpartly elsewhere ; and no two people, perhaps, agreein all points as to the nature and locality of K5,ma300 POSTHUilOUS IIUMANITy.

loba. Some people think that the soul must passthrough manylokas before entering Swarga, whereassome call the whole of the path Kama loka, andsubdivide it into different stages.QUESTION III.Mysoee.The soul of every deceased person passes intoVayu Loka, and lingers there a longer or shortertime until the ties engendered in that particular birthare broken. The natural term of this sojourn inVayu Loka is believed to be from ten to about sixteendays, and the funeral ceremonies {ShraddK), ofprayers, &c., &c., are regulated in different parts of

India according to the local or sectarian belief as tothe length of this term. If a religious person dieswith some strong earthly longings unsatisfied, he orshe becomes a brahma-pisdckaan earth-bound soulof a certain sort ; if the person was an infidel or atheist(nastika), he or she becomes a pisdchaa malicioussoul, a devil. The Shraddh ceremonies are believedto help the soul through Vayu Loka and on to Swarga.Soldiers killed in battle pass at once into Swarga;but their employers, if their cause be an evil one,suffer corresponding punishment. Persons dying byaccident or suicide have to linger in Vayu Loka as

many years as they would have existed in the bodyhad they lived out their natural term. There arethree lokas in the AkashaVayu, Naraka, and Swarga,or Indra, lokas. The first is a transitive state ; thesecond one of punishment (hell) ; the third one ofAPPENDIX. 301happiness (heaven). The stay of a being in eitherof the two latter continues until his evil or gooddeeds have been fully compensated, or, as Hindussay, until the Karma is exhausted. The being then



returns to earth-life and takes birth in accordancewith previous, but not yet exhausted, Karma. Inthe realms of torture and of happiness there arenon-human beings, or spirits, the agents of thesupreme deities presiding over those realms. Thesespirits are not employed by magicians or sorcerers towork phenomena (miracles) or injure living persons;but bhutas, pisachas, and other human unliberatedsouls, are thus employed.Kathiawar.From my inquiries I find that the races inhabitingthe Kama-loka are looked upon as human and subhuman,as well as superhuman. The innate spiritof veneration is so far developed in this countrythat they are, I believe, all looked upon as objectsworthy of worship and veneration (as if they were allgods themselves) by the people who believe in themand fear them. The intelligent classes who believein them do, at any rate, look upon Bhairava and allothers like him as gods, higher than human beings,and to be worshipped as such by prayers, sacrifices,&c. It is a very difficult task to find out whetherthe Matas or the Shaktis are elementals pure and

simple, or goddesses, or symbols representing theattributes of the superior gods. There is such ahopeless confusion in the modern Hindu mind, thatit would be vain to expect to come to any definiteconclusion.302 POSTIIUilOUS HUMANITY.Following are the names of a few prominentMatas evoked by the Bhuwas in this province ofKathiawar:Meladi, Khodlar, Chamund, G4tral, Magal, MomaiEaveshi, Chhinkotora, and Varndi.In the Southern Mahratta country, where I was for

very nearly five years, I used to hear much of a Matacalled YellammS,a most powerful Mata, but I wasassured by intelligent orthodox Brahmins that shewas beyond the pale of the Hindu pantheon.I have no means of ascertaining which of theseelementals are purely Hindu and which are purelyaboriginal. Anyhow the general belief is that theyare superhuman.Southern India.Madura.The beings that inhabit this regionare called by various names : Grandharvas, Kinnaras(literally sub-human), Pisacha (lit. flesh-eater),Bhuta (lit. those who can fulfil their desires, not

disembodied spirits, as they are called), Guhiakas(lit. guardians of hidden treasure), Siddhas (lit. possessorsof anima, mahima, &c., Siddhis). They arenone of them considered to be above man in thescale of creation. They may sometimes wield powergreater than man ; but that does not make themsuperior to him, any more than the elephant or thelion. The received idea about these beings is this.There are five Bhutas, or original elements, viz. Akas,Tejas (light), Vayu (air), Ap (water), and Prithivi



(earth). Every thing or being in the created universeis a comb,ination of these principles. It is only whenAPPENDIX. 303the primitive portion of a being predominates that itbecomes an object of perception to the ordinaryman, as distinguished from those who have the giftof second sight by nature, or who have acquired it.These beings are considered to have less of thePrithivi Bhuta, and so are imperceptible to the sensesof ordinary humanity. They are said to have morepower than man over fire, water, akas, &c., accordingto the particular bhutam (element) that predominatesin their constitution. They may also do thingswhich are impossible for man in his present state, byreason of t heir familiarity with certain laws of naturewhich appertain to their state of existence. Theyare believed to be capable of assuming any animalform, and making themselves visible. But all thesedo not make them superior to man, but, on the contrary,they are the absolute slaves of the adept whocan control them completely and compel them tocarry out his will. Such of these semi-human beingsas are of mischievous tendencies can be coaxed intocarrying out evil behests by the black magicians.

To keep up their goodwill the latter sacrificeanimals to these beings periodically, generally onnew-moon or full-moon days.Hyderabad.Either equal to, or lower than,humanity, but never higher. This is the prevalentnotion. I may be permitted to mention here, thatsometimes the greatest sages have to halt for a shorttime in the Kama Loka, by way of expiation forsome trifling error, or for some wrong desire theymight have cherished within themselves duringtheir lifetime. I have known a clairvoyant who304 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.used to hear (clairaudiently) the bemoaning cries

of these creatures, at times innocent, at times mischievous,but always anxious to escape from the unenviablesphere.*Baroda.The forms of the Lingo, Shariras of the soulsliving in the Vayu Loka may be variedhuman orotherwiseaccording to the strongest desire at thetime of death, that is, at the time of leaving theSthula Sharira. These souls can, if possessed ofhigher powers, assume other shapes for a short timeand become visible to men. But most of these lastare earth-bound, and live in the regions inhabitedby man.

OuDH.They (the residents of Yama lok:i) can see andhear from any distance, and ciu appear instantly atany place. There is a distinction of sex there ; i.e.,there are both msn and women. The residents ofYamaZohob include entities that were once humangiants and demons (elementals) of terrible shapes,and Yama's messengers, who are kind and gentle topious souls, but extremely hard on the evil ones.



Bengal.Some are considered superhuman ; but, accordingto Hindu belief, it is considered a calamity if it isthought that the soul has become earth-bound;* See " Thessophist" for 1880-81, pp. 101, 102.APPENDIX. 305and many are the rites and formalities which areprescribed in our ancient books to elevate the soulfrom such a state. There is a Hindu ceremony,called Sraddha, which is performed to free the soulfrom such condition. Especially it is said that bygiving oblations at Grya the soul is freed. It is saidthat sons are needed to do this ceremony. The word" Putra " means the male issue, who has the powerof relieving the soul from the hell called " Put."COROMA^fDEL COAST.People call the souls inhabiting it Pisachas.They do not consider them human. In somerespects Kdma Loka is considered as sub-human, forthose Pisachas which inhabit it are pitied as beingin an undesirable condition. But they (Pisd,chas) arebelieved to be superhuman in their power eitherfor good or for evil. People believe that the soul of

a friend and relative may be watching its connectionsstill on earth, and protecting them from Pisachas,and sometimes from other dangers. It is alsobelieved in some quarters that these Pisachas sometimesgive warnings to friends or relatives of comingdangers.QUESTION lY,Southern India.Madura.They are not believed to have anyfeeling of either hostility or friendliness for mankind.Some of them are by their nature moremischievous than well-disposed, and vice versa 20

308 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.but the generality are an indifferent combinationof both. They attach themselves to, or possess,persons whose nature and disposition are similar totheirs, or whose extreme passivity attracts theirinfluence. The general belief is that men attractto themselves such of these beings as are in sympathywith their habitual thoughts and predominantpassions or tendencies, " Like seeks like."Hyderabad.Humanity, all the world over, isdivided into three main classes: (1) men of SatvaGuna; (2) men of Eajo Guna; and (3) men ofTamo Guna. The people of the Kama Loka are

unable to do any harm to human beings of thefirst order; but those of the third are, as a rule,accessible to them. I may here cite the case ofa grammarian of Mysore, which I heard of sometime ago. His knowledge of the Sutras of Panini,&c., was profound. Day and night his zeal wasto impart his knowledge to others; but, in themidst of all his solicitudes, death cut off his life.His unsatisfied desire, that chief goal of his ambition,to teach his grammatical lore to humanity,



made him a denizen of the KS-ma Loka. Everyevening he used to haunt a tree in the back compoundof his house, from whose top he used torecite verses for the edification of those pupils ofhis who were eager to profit by his instructions.It is said that the students who were allowed theprivilege of hearing him were able afterwards torightfully construe some of the doubtful passagesof the Vedas. Of the pranks and mischief committedby the Kama Loka entities upon men ofAPPENDIX. 307Tamo G-una there are hundreds of instances. Theircontact is always injurious, and no good whateverresults from their intimacy with the third class ofhuman beings.Kathiawar.Bhavnagar.It would be difficult to answer thisquestion satisfactorily. The Bhuwas and other BlackMagicians look upon their familiars as ver^jfriendlyto themselves ; but at the same time I cannot helpimagining that they have a secret dread of them,for they are extremely careful with regard to' certainceremonies and observances, which they must performdaily, so as to avoid displeasing them.

I think that the Hindus, as a rule, look upon thesuperhuman elementals as gods or Devatas.I know of a case, easily verifiable, where the wifeof a friend of mine, who is a medium under thecontrol of a Mohammedan elementarya venerableold silvery-bearded gentlemanlooks upon him asfriendly; for he has in her dreams often predictedfuture events, consoled her in her misfortunes, promisedhis help, and has even gone so far as toassure her that he does not belong to the classof bad spirits, and that she should in no way distrusthim, as he is pious and good in every way.But it should be remembered that the majority

of the intelligent class of orthodox Hindus lookupon most of them, if not all, as hostile to us,and treat those who dabble in such practices asunworthy of encouragement. Their belief is thatthey would all turn elementals or elementariesthemselves, without any hope of Moksha.202308 posthumous humanity.Mysore.Both Brahma-pis&chas and Pisachas obsess ortake control of living persons ; but the former arenot malicious : tricks, persecutions, and foolish phenomenaare done by the latter. The hhwta has

some desire to satisfy, and if that is gratified hewill be released and go away. The Pisacha seemsto delight in causing confusion and trouble, inflictingpain, gratifying low appetites, and taking life.A perfectly pure and good person, if of a religiousmind, will not be attacked by an evil spirit; butany vicious habit attracts them. Ignorance of religiousthings, also, renders persons liable to theirinfluence.Baroda.



Of the earth-bound souls, some are of good tendencies,but the large majority are considered tobe of bad tendencies. If they died with specialstrong affections to some human beings, they arefriendly to them; if with special hatred to some,they are hostile to them. It is believed that theycan be utilized, according to their natural tendenciesfor good or evil, by those living humanbeings who can control them.A dying man's unsatisfied desire for a woman,or a woman's for a man, will tend to attach themafter death to that person, if there exists in himor her any responsive desire, however carefullymasked by social conventionality ; for there isthen a positive mutual attraction, and the livingcannot repulse the dead until that is extirpated.appendix. 309Bengal,There are no different classes that are hostileor friendly; but it is believed that in most casesthey are hostile. Both men and women are possessed,but generally women. I may mention here,that in some cases bad women feign possession ; butnowadays the English doctors call these hysteriacs.

II. All are hostile to ordinary individuals ; kindonly to those who propitiate them and lead apeculiarly unclean life.OUDH.The djinn (elementals) are supposed to be bothfriendly and hostile. Elementaries (Bhdtas andPretas) are generally considered to do injury tomen who are evil.-COROMANDEL COAST.It is believed that these beings are hostile totheir enemies and friendly to their friends. Theyare supposed to be hostile to the weak-minded.QUESTION V.

SouTHEEN India.The injury they do us is either physical or mental.The former is perceived by a gradual diminutionof vital activity, culminating in death. This deathsometimes takes place in a moment. But in eithercase no trace will be perceptible of the manner ofthe wound or disease causing death. No physicalremedy will withstand it ; but any one accustomedto manipulate these forces will be able to cure the310 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.malady. As for the mind, the man gradually developsdisposition in one particular direction, andsome tendency either for good or bad, which he had

formerly, and which was not observed hitherto,begins to grow to intensity at the expense of allthe rest. The man becomes a monomaniac, harmfulor harmless according to the being that controlshim.They attack men, women, and children indiscriminately,producing fever, hysteria, and manynervous complaints.Baeoda.Earth-bound souls can do us injury by entering



our visible physical bodies and giving them pain,and by tormenting us even to death. It is thoughtthat these earth-bound souls, the bad ones of thembeing called Bhutas or Pishdchas, have very strongearthly desires for food, &c., but that they havenot the physical instruments, viz., the corporealbodies, by means of which they can satisfy theirdesires ; they have therefore to enter the corporealbodies of others, and satisfy their desires by thatmeans.Mysore.In person, women are more subject than mento their attacks, but only after attaining puberty.The victim loses health, appetite, and interest indomestic affairs; constantly broods over the controllingPisacha, and, when not controlled by it,seems stupid and absent-minded. She is oftenAPPENDIX. 311made to gratify his lust, believing that the maritalact takes place between them ; and she feels thestrongest repugnance to her husband and any otherman.Kathiawar.They are capable of doing us harm in a variety

of ways ; by depriving us of our " means of subsistence; " by depriving us of children and near relations; by bringing about sickness, madness, leprosj',&c., in the family ; by the death of the medium orthe exercisers themselves ; in short, by every imaginablemeans that might bring about death and ruinin any of their forms.Bengal.When it is said that a woman is possessed by anelemental, she acts like a mad woman, and herhealth gradually decays and her whole appearancechanges for the worse.II. Bodily injury ; in persons of peculiarly mild

temperament mental injury is also done.OUDH.Elementaries can do injury by obsession andfrightening.COROMANDEL COAST.They are supposed to injure us by possessing us,and thereby deranging our minds, and in variousother ways. They phenomenally deposit rubbishin our boxes and rice-pots, tear our valuable cloths312 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and such other things which involve the disintegrationor destruction of tangible matter. In oneinstance the " devil " used to throw some babe in

the house among thorns, where it was often foundin the morning. This is an incident connectedwith the family of a relation of mine, and took placewhen I was a boy of about ten years. Many relations,who are still alive, can testify to the facts ashaving been seen by them. Sometimes stones arepelted at men and into the houses. I know a casewhich was a matter of great notoriety in the townin which I am now living. There is a house whichnow belongs to a near relation of mine. During the



time of its former owner, and for some time afterit came to the hands of its present owner, onepeculiar phenomenon was often witnessed by manymen now living. This house stands close by am(Xs;ifZ where there are some tombs of Mohammedans.This masjid is supposed to be haunted, even up tothis day. What occurred was that huge stoneswould fall into this house and compound from theside of the Tnasjid. For some time it was supposedto be due to human agency, but all attempts toprove it so failed. One thing which is very peculiarwas this, that the stones would invariably fall justby a man or a vessel; but though they say thatstones without number fell in this way, not one wasobserved to have injured either a human being orany material object. No human skill can, I think,be so exact in its aim as that. In this case thedevil is supposed to have played tricks with theinmates of the house for some reason best known toAPPENDIX. .313itself. Some time after a certain man came and,by mantrams, put a stop to these innocent butrather terrifying pranks. The popular idea seemsto be that there is nothing impossible for a devil or

PisS,cha, and that it can only be controlled by mantramschanted by a magician of great skill.QUESTION VI.Baroda.It is considered a bad thing for mankind to encourageintercourse with their earth-bound deceasedfriends or other persons, because these earth-boundsouls, having become earth-bound through strongworldly desires, cannot really give such instructionas will emancipate the soul of the living man, whichis the highest goal that should be aimed at ; and,secondly, because these earth-bound souls are likely,by their intercourse, to inflame such desires in the

living persons as will make them also earth-boundat their death. The state of these earth-bound soulsis considered not at all a desirable one ; for they continuein this state for a long, long time, tormentedby desires which they cannot satisfy. This existenceretards the progress of man towards final emancipation.Mysore.A bad thing: no respectable family would encouragesuch intercourse ; only sorcerers do so, andthey always get punished for it. If they omit theleast part of their magical ceremony, or in any waydo anything to weaken their acquired will-power314 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

over their " spirits," they are instantly killed by thelatter. A sorcerer is said to have been thus destroyedby fire in the streets of Calcutta. It is considereda wicked act of selfishnessan interferencewith the order of nature and the law of Grod.Bengal.It is generally considered a calamity when a personis possessed by an elemental ; but we can find insome of the Tantric works how an elemental couldbe invoked and commanded to do the biddings of the



human invoker : this is what is called the " BlackArt." Those people who have control over the elementalsdo not command a very high respect, althoughthey are dreaded. It is a common belief that it isnot good to invoke elementals to have anything todo with them. In many Hindu families childrenwear madoolies, or some other charms, to protectthem from elementals. The metal iron, is muchused for the purpose. The customs regarding thisprotection are various.II. Injurious in all cases. None of the highercastes would attempt it.Southern India.Madura.This matter is viewed with such abhorrenceamong people here that any one who is evendistantly suspected of having any such dealings is atonce excommunicated by his caste ; he becomes achandala, or pariah.Hyderabad.In some cases intercourse with deceasedfriends and relatives does take place. SuchAPPENDIX. 315an intercourse is deemed favourable in a few cases,and the reverse in others, according to the good orbad motives with which the intercourse is opened,

and according to the development of the impartingentities.Malabar Coast.Invoking the spirits of deceased relatives on annualoccasions of anniversaries is a sort of intercourse.The non-performance on the fixed days renders thedefaulter subject to penance and penalty. The performanceis calculated to be an honour to the family.Any misfortune or domestic calamity is attributedto the wrath of the Pitris, or the departed ancestors.Cochin.No good can ever come of intercourse with the badpretas, who will only inflame the physical cravings

of weak girls and men by " possessing " them, andassist black magicians for the sake of offerings ofdrink, flesh, and lust. They are known as "Chathan" on the Malabar coast, where Christians, Brahmans,and of course also black magicians, playthe exorcists. They are powerless, wheri directedagainst good men of virtue and self-control.OUDH.In all cases whatever, intercourse with elementariesand elementals is considered to be ominous, and islooked upon with disgust by the Hindus.Kathiawar.Bhavnagar.It is certainly considered by the

316 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.intelligent classes that intercourse with deceasedpersons is highly dangerous.COKOMAXDEL COAST.There seems to be a wide-spread belief that intercoursewith deceased persons should be avoided asmuch as possible. If the soul of the departed isinvoked it is only with a view to fiud out the wishesand other particulars about the devil which possessesa man, whose cure is put in the hands of a mantrika



(one who knows mantrams), and, by satisfying thosewishes or otherwise, to deliver the patient from thehold of the devil. Even this is not done by mantrikas,who are supposed to be of the higher class.They only go through the mantrams and expel thedevil, or PisS,cha, without any invocation or any apparentintercourse with it.QUESTION VII.Southern India.Madura.1 am about to state a certain accidentin my family, some fourteen years ago, in connectionwith the death of my elder maternal uncle. Iwas living with my said uncle's son, named Narayanasamy,in Combaconum, at a distance of 150miles from my village, Melur. My uncle was attackedall of a sudden with paralysis, while ata neighbouring village for cultivation business,and was brought to the house by two servants.About thirty days after the attack he breathedhis last. The sickness was not communicatedto us, as it was thought it would interfere withAPPENDIX. 317his son's appearance for a certain university examination.One night, when I was half-awake,

I saw my uncle, who was much attached to me,standing before me near my bed. He stayed abouttwo minutes and then disappeared, I immediatelygot up, but was much depressed. Next eveningat 4 P.M., a servant from home, who came to takeus to our village, informed us of the death of myuncle three days previously. I saw him in the nightof the second day after his death.Southern India.Hyderabad. I answer this question in theaffirmative. I may cite an instance I have drawnfrom a trustworthy source. About three years agoan oilmonger died within the vicinity of Arnee,

whom I will call, for the sake of convenience, A.Sometime after his death, a kinsman, or friend of his,whom I may name B, also appeared to breathe hislast. But the latter, a few hours after the apparentstoppage of breath, came to life again, and thefirst thing that he said was that he had seen Asomewhere in the other world, adding that he hadreceived peremptory orders from him, which requiredhis relatives to pay off a debt he had contractedin his lifetime as soon as possible.A second case of the kind in question is as follows.It occurred at Darapoorum, where a rich merchantof some celebrity died. A few years after, a friend

of the deceased also appeared to die ; but, as in theabove case, he revived. As soon as he was able tospeak, he said he had a message from the deceased318 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.merchant to be delivered to his living nephew. Duringthe apparent cessation of life, he had seen him(the merchant) somewhere in the other world (KS,maLoka), commissioning his nephew to lose no timein building a temple, for which he had reserved asum of money in his lifetime. The relatives of



the deceased, who had assembled to hear thisstrange story, were moreover told that, unless thewishes of the departed were carried out by hisnephew, there was no hope of any diminutionof the sorrows he had to undergo in some disagreeableregions. The nephew was told that ifhe wanted to see his uncle free from posthumouspains he must set to work at once to construct thetemple, and so fulfil the unsatisfied desire whichkept his uncle earth-bound. The nephew did whathe was ordered to do, and this seems to have givenrest to the troubled soul of his uncle.Mysore.In 1858, 1 being at Madras and an UDcle of mineat Tirippatur (about 80 miles away), he suddenlydied at about daybreak. At about eight o'clockthat morning I waked from a doze, and saw himbefore me. I was startled, and tried, but was powerless,to rise. Two females and two males were inthe room with me, and saw my agitation; but nonebut myself saw him. Six years later I was prostratedwith jungle fever, with no medical aid available,and for a day and night was insensible. The nextday, at about noon, I regained consciousness, opened

my eyes, and saw my deceased uncle before me. HeAPPENDIX. 319asked me why I was lying there ? I said I hadno medicine, and no nurse to care for me. Hetold me to open my box, and use the medicine Ishould find there. I opened the box, found somegreyish powder, wrapped in a paper, and took itin water. It had a sweetish taste. I broke outinto a profuse perspiration, which continued allthe afternoon. At the end of six hours I was quitewell. Since then I have seen him in dreams only.I never saw any other deceased person.I am a pensioned ressaldar (troop-leader) of the

Mysore Horse, and my service took me much intovarious districts, among others Shivamoogah, whereit is a common thing for people to have intercoursewith Pisfi.chas. Some possess mantrams, or spells,by which they control them. They compel them toguard their property. If a thief lay his hand uponany article in the house, or any fruit in the gardenof a man so protected, he is unable to stir fromthe spot or withdraw his hand until the ownerreturns, and not even then until the spirit isordered to set him free. A Pisdcha so employedis called a chowdi ; by accepting his help forsuch a selfish purpose, the sorcerer gives him a

stronger hold upon himself, and he has to exerciseall the more caution, lest he fail for a moment tokeep the control, and thus lose his life. Sorcererscan transfer the services of their chowdis, and itis a common thing for the purchaser of a garden totake from the seller the mantram by which theguardian chowdA is controlled ; otherwise he wouldnot be able to enjoy the fruits of the field ory20 POSTHUMOUS HUJIANITV.orchard. Pisdchas sometimes take possession of a



house, a well, or a tree. They are driven away by aviantriki (one possessing knowledge of mantraTris),by reciting charms, suspending jft?iii'as (cabalisticalsigns inscribed on sheet-copper plaques) on thewalls, sides, or branches, as the case may be, andother devices. Sometimes, when the Plsdcha(spirit-control) is expelled from a medium he is obsessing,the mantriki will cut a lock of her hair,wrap it about an iron nail and drive the nail into atree ; the Pisdcha is then bound to the tree untilthe nail rusts away.Kathiawar.Bhavnagar.Mediumistic phenomena are verycommon indeed in this part of India. Possessionsand obsessions manifest themselves in tremors ofthe whole of the body, but the Western mediumand his or her cabinet and psychography are, as faras we find, unknown here. Materializations duringa Bhuwa's seance we have never heard of.The following are a few particulars which mayinterest students of occult lore.To appease the " control," the Bhuwa exerciser,with his assistant's or Jogi's peculiar mode of beatinghis hand-drum and his peculiar plaintive chant,

demands of the control what sacrifices would suitit. If it is a goat or a sheep which has to be sacrificed,we have heard from many that when the pooranimal is brought before the trembling medium,and when accepted by the control, it soon begins totremble in a most unusual manner.APPENDIX. 321The trembling medium, or rather the control, iscompelled by the exerciser, by incantations or threatsand objurgations, to declare who it is that possessesor obsesses the medium, and how it is to be pacified.These objurgations sometimes take days before anydecisive issue is reached, during which time the

exerciser frequently invokes his favourite Mata, byhis own tremors, to compel the control, elementalor elementary, to leave the patient for good.The Jogis adopt different modes of beating thedrum for different Matas.The exerciser, of course, has the greatest reverencefor his Mata ; an image of her is religiously kept ina niche in his house, which he constantly worships,and to which he offers his oblations and sacrifices.In many of his ceremonies he uses alcoholicdrinks ; but he is very chaste, for he really believesthat unlawful sexual intercourse will offend his controllingMata.

Baroda.I have seen some such mediums at two placesviz., at Narsoba's Vddi, near Kurundwad, SouthernMaratha country, and at Mird Ddtdr's mosque atUnja, in the Kari Division of the Baroda State;but at both places I found that the mediums weretormented by the earth-bound souls, and they (themediums) had resorted to these holy places to getrid of their intercourse with the said earth-bound



souls.Bengal.Calcutta,It is not often that people dying with21232 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.some earthly desires come back or become earthbound; but it is supposed that mostly people dyingsuddenly by accident or committing suicide becomeearth-bound. Such souls obsess some members ofthe family. I have no personal knowledge of suchcases, but have heard many stories about these,some of which I have no reason to doubt, as theyare well authenticated.II. Very rare ; we think it a misfortune.OUDH.Bareilly.I know a case (about which I havewritten to you already) in which a departed ladymaterialized herself to a friend in the CentralProvinces, and said that she had, without the knowledgeof her husband, lent money to some personsfrom whom she wanted to recover the sum.COKOMANDEL COAST.I have heard of many cases and seen some of thissort ; but I have never observed any, in my mature

age, under test conditions. What I have observedmay, for aught I know, have been mere hallucinations.But almost every orthodox man believesthat such things do occur. A case happened in myown family in 1 875-76, where the patient used totell me (I was standing by and assisting the patient)that she could see the devils (three in number)sitting by her and beside her, as well as she couldsee myself. When the devil was to fall on her, sheused to tell me : " Now look here ! the devil is preparingand girding up her loins to fall upon me. Beon the alert." Immediately after that, I used toAPPENDIX. 323

observe the usual convulsions in the patient. Thepatient used to pre-announce the hours of attack bythe devil, and she was so sure of it that she used totell us (the assisting men) to go away on our business,but be ready by the hour and minute predicted.I always found the prediction true. At last theobsessing devil stated all the particulars of herunsatisfied desires to us through the lips of thepatient, with a request that before driving her outby mantrams we should satisfy them. The devilsaid, she (it was the spirit of a woman) died full ofdesires which were not yet satisfied. We compliedwith her wishes, and till this moment we have been

free from further annoyance. The devil has keptits word. The man who subdued this spirit was a.well-known " white magician," who was respected,by one and all of the community in which he lived..He was known to be an extraordinarily good, pious,,truth-speaking man. I saw him several times, andI was always inspired in his presence with awe andrespect. He told me that the devil above spoken ofhad many conversations with him, in which sheplaintivelyrequested him to see her desires satisfied..



I say she, because, of the three devils above spoken,of, onethe most important of themseemed to be.-the spokesman of the rest.I have had no other experience worth mentioning..QUESTION VIII.In reply to this question, a gentleman, who doesnot wish his name mentioned, says:" My mother used to tell me that her grandmotherin-law had become earth-bound, though she was a212324 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.good-natured lady, through intense affection for heryoung children whom she had left behind at herdeath. Her husband was an eminent magician,and she had constant opportunity of seeing obsessedpersons, and it was believed that these scenes hadprobably something to do with her having becomeearth-bound. Her medium was her daughter-inlaw,that, is my mother's mother-in-law. Somemembers of the family did not believe in the truth ofthe manifestations, and regarded the medium as onlypretending to be possessed by her mother-in-law.One day her son became suddenly ill ; all medicine

failed, and it was thought that he would die in ashort time. Suddenly the medium became obsessed,and began to say that if any members of the familythought the obsession mere humbug, they might tryall the medicines in the world and save her son ifthey had the power. The family members imploredthat the earth-bound soul which manifested itselfthrough the medium, and was the guardian angelof the family, might save her son. The obsessionceased for a while, but reappeared soon afterwards,and the medium began to say that she, the earthboundsoul, had to take very great trouble to driveoff the evil earth-bound souls that had entered the

house along with a certain idol that was broughtinto the family from a distant country, and that theidol should be at once removed and taken out of thehouse. This was done in the dead of night, andthe medium scratched up a little earth from theground and applied it to the forehead of her dying son,after which he at once got better and recovered.APPENDIX. 325The medium used to become obsessed wheneverthere was great danger to any member of thefamily, and the earth-bound soul used to relate,through the mouth of the medium, that her strong

desire for the children made her a Bhut or Pishdcha(earth-bound soul), and that that state of existencewas not at all desirable ; and when her son was aboutto start for Benares on pilgrimage, she suddenlymanifested herself through the medium, and saidthat she was tired of her existence as Pishacha, andthat her son should perform at Benares the rite forher called the Fishdcha mochani (the rite ofemancipating an earth-bound soul from the earthboundstate), so that she would be delivered from



the condition of a Pishacha. The rite was performed,and the medium never became obsessedafter that time. Mediumship is not considered athing to be proud of, but rather the reverse."Madura,Such an occurrence is considered to bea great misfortune : it brings the family into badrepute. As soon as it occurs no trouble or expenseis spared to get rid of it at once by some costly ceremonyor pilgrimage to distant shrines, or whateverother thing may be demanded by the deceasedthrough his medium.Such an order is regarded either with pleasure orpain according to the means or otherwise of thosewho are commanded to carry out the wishes of a deceasedfriend or relative. If the order go to a richman, it will give him great pleasure, and he willconsider himself blessed; but by one who is not ina position, or one who has not the wherewithal t6326 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.satisfy the wishes of the deceased, it will be receivedwith positive sorrow.I here cite an example.There was a member of a Brahmin family livingin a village of Sholinghur, where there is a famous

temple, who happened to die about a century ago.There are some intelligent members of the samefamily yet living, two of whom are pleaders. Myinformation comes from one of the latter, and henceI think it has all the more claim to credence.It seems that whenever any marriage ceremonywas to be performed, or any Sraddhas were to be celebrated,one of the younger daughters of the familywould be attacked with some malady. On everyfestival a younger girl was sure to be the victimof some bodily sufifering. At length, after manyenquiries, the true cause of such occurrences wasascertained. It seems that a member of the family,

who had died about a hundred years before, had metwith an unnatural death, or, as he said himself, hewas throttled by some one in the family; whencecame these unfailing visitations on every festiveoccasion. To assuage the spirit of the man who hadmet with a violent death, poojahs were offered toavert any evil consequences, with beneficial results toother members of the family.Kathiavfae.Bhavnagar.Such occurrences are not regarded,as a rule, with pleasure ; on the contrary, they arelooked upon as misfortunes in the family.It is strange that in India mediumship, except in

APPENDIX. 327very rare instances, is looked upon as a misfortune,whilst the spiritualists of the West seem toencourage it as a means of communication betweenthe living and the dead, or between men and theangels. It is sad to think what terrible misfortunesthey are bringing upon their several communities bythus ignorantly breaking down the barriers erectedby nature between the two worlds. Our knowledgehas been bought by the miseries of ancestral experience,



and perhaps the Western nations, will have tojourney by the same road.Bengal.People consider it a calamity when the soul of amember becomes earth-bound.II. The reverse, certainly. It is a great misfortuneand disgrace.OUDH.Never with pleasure ; just the reverse.COROMANDEL COAST.Such an occurrence is never regarded with pleasure,or as something to be proud of. It is alwaysconsidered to be some bad fate for the soul whichappears as the devil, and some misfortune to thepatient possessed.Of mediums proper, as known in the West, Iknow nothing ; nor have I heard anything.328 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.QUESTION IX.Malabar Coast.There are rites:(1) to control the spirits of the elements ; e.g., itis considered the duty of the Hindu rajahs to ask

the learned Brahmins of the district to assembleand perform what is called the Jala-japam, theefficacy whereof is to bring about immediately agood shower ; generally done on occasions of droughtand scarcity. It is recorded that on a recent occasionof the Murajapam ceremony, continuing, oncein twelve years, at Trevandoum for fifty-six days,there was no water in the tanks and wells, and thatby this Jala-japam there was instantly broughton a shower, enough for the purpose.(2) To cure diseases. The magician and astrologerare allied to some extent. Immediately a child orman gets suddenly ill, or is confined to bed by any

disease, the astrologer is consulted. He invariablytells you the name of a particular magician, receiptfrom whom of a charm will alone serve the object,like a doctor advising his patient to have his prescriptionmade up at a particular chemist's only.(3) To get knowledge of buried treasures. The"art of reading through ink," some time agodescribed in the " Theosophist." In 1879 a pamphletwas published. It contained certain mantram^to be recited, often at dead of night on a darkAmavasi day, several thousands, or lacs, of times.It also prescribes certain materials, such as skulls offemales who have died during delivery, &c. The

APPENDIX. 329reciter must be completely naked, and must have nothread on his body.There are a few persons who, although they donot practise as a profession, know the spells by heart.Formerly different tribunals used to be assisted bysuch persons in detecting cases of theft of movableproperty. Even now police ofBcers and a few magistratessend for persons who are reputed to bemembers of the trade, to see if they can get any



clue.(4) To win the affections of persons of the oppositesex, &c. There is a general belief in the existenceof certain herbs, &c., which, if mixed up and administered,tend to influence the mind favourably.Similarly, to injure an enemy, a magician is oftenconsulted, to prescribe counteractive measures. Thisis called Kaio-visham (lit. hand-poison.).Southern India.The districts of Madura, Tinnevelly, and the nativekingdoms of Travancore and Cochin abound inpeople who do all the things mentioned in thisquestionHyderabad.All the incidents mentioned in thisquestion often happen in the Malabar district,the borders of which are only twenty or twenty-fivemiles distant from my native place, Coimbatore. Ihave heard that such occurrences are not rare inthose parts of India.I have also heard from a friend of mine the caseof a Pariah who was in communication with a spirit.He used to live in Sarun, a village about ten or330 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.twelve miles distant from Bulsar, in the Bombay Presidency.

The man had his sSances every Tuesday andSunday, and hundreds of men used to flock thereasking him numerous questions. These questionswere not put verbally, but every man who had someinquiry to make put a pie and some rice on a pieceof wood before the Pariah. About a hundred suchpies were placed in rows before he commenced hiswork. In the beginning he would untie his hair,take a brass plate and beat it vigorously, swinginghis head to and fro. This process continued forabout half an hour, when all at once the brass platewould fall from his hand, and the Pariah, continuingto swing his head as before, answered the questions

put. My friend, who saw the man himself,said that many questions were rightly answered, andalmost all those who came to consult him went homesatisfied with his answers. Many were cured ofdiseases ; lost articles were found ; discarded wivesonce more reconciled to their husbands ; unfortunatepersons iu search of employment were commandedto go to a certain country in quest of their object;and, in short, many cravings of greedy humanitywere satisfied by the spirit which inhabited thebody of the Pariah. A mamlatdar had been robbedof some jewels by a servant of his. Upon inquiries

at a sSance the Pariah indicated the very spotunder a tree where the jewels were buried. All thisis authentic, and you are authorized to make anyuse of it you like. Similar cases occur even now allover India.Madura.I have lived with Eamanuja Yogi forAPPENDIX. 331three years. He was an Iyengar by caste. Hedied about four years ago; and although I am aTamil Brahmin, I alone performed funeral ceremonies



for him. He has taught me something,and I am trying to lead the life to the best ofmy ability and circumstances. The following areone or two of the actions I have seen him performon several occasions.I. He ordered my nephew, a child of a year old,to be brought to him. The child was made to siton the floor in front of us. He said he was goingto show some wonder, and that I could ask anyquestion of the child, in any language I chose.He then covered himself with his rettarium,* andtouched the child with a light rattan he had inhis hand. The child immediately sat in the postureknown as Virasanam, and gave me a learneddiscourse on Eaja Yoga in beautiful Tamil, verse.I was so struck with this wonder that I did notthen avail myself of his permission to ask the childquestions, but continued to be a passive hearer.While this was going on I looked at the Yogi,and found that his body was motionless and rigid.I thought he was in a trance, and tried to wakehim. His body was at first like a corpse ; but in afew seconds he got up, and at the same instantthe child began to weep very loudly. His first words

were, "Take the child away, and give it milk instantly."This was done.II. On another occasion there was a trial going Upper gai-ment.332 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.on, in the High Court of Madras, of a case in whichI was interested. On the day appointed for hearingthe case I was in Madura, and felt anxious aboutthe result. The Yogi was then with me, and tohim I communicated my anxiety. In a few secondsthere was a bright spot before me of the size ofa rupee. Gradually it increased, and I was in themidst of the light. I found that I was in the High

Court, in the midst of the people there, and thatthe trial had already closed. I asked one of theparties present in the court the result of the trial.He told me that judgment was given against him.After this the Yogi touched my shoulders, and thelight was gone. Subsequently, when I saw thesame person, he described everything as I had seenit. Eut he knew nothing of my asking him thequestion.III. On one occasion I left, through forgetfulness,my sampudam (a small circular brass vessel, containingashes, money, &c., usually kept in the foldof the cloth about the waist) by the river where

I had bathed. As soon as I returned home Ilooked for the sampudam, and missed it. I wassorry. The Yogi, who was then with me, told meto unlock a certain room of my house and searcha particular corner. I looked in the place, andthere was the sampudam as I had had it on the riverbank.IV. On another occasion he was talking of variousthings while on the river-bed, when we were performingjapam, and all of a sudden he asked me



to confess before him all the sins I had committed.APPENDIX. 333I told him I had nothing of importance to tell him.He then ordered me to bring olai and iron stylus.He then made a seat of sand in a square shape,wrote on it some letters, and asked me to sit onit. After I had taken my seat, he gave me a smartblow with his rod. I then all of a sudden began towrite. I was conscious 1 was writing, but had nocontrol over what I wrote. I could not but write ;some mysterious force compelled me to do it. Iyielded. I felt a sort of mild intoxication. Abouthalf an hour afterwards the Yogi snatched the olafrom my hands, splashed cold water over my face,and took me out for a walk. He then, after sometime, gave me the ola to read. But what was myamazement when, in my own handwriting, I founda detailed and circumstantial account of all mydisgraceful peccadilloes which I would not for theworld have had anybody know, much less the reveredYogi. He took pity on my state of mind,tore the ola into pieces, and directed me to prostratemyself before the sun, which was then settingin the west, and devoutly pray Grod that all my sins

might be consumed in His eternid jyoti (light).Cochin.They are invoked by the sorcerer for a bribe togratify the enemy of the victim. Setting fire tohouses and clothes, causing stone-showers, puttingunclean things into food, making noises or loudraps, cutting off the locks, driving into hystericalravings, and injuring cattle in the illusive form of afurious bull, are the phenomena of the day to whichliving testimony can be had. No sorcerer in India334 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.would dare to exhibit experiments at s&ances, as hewould at once be shunned and punished as a wicked

man. Yet spiritualistic phenomena seem to be inrequest in this sceptical age to prove that an innerman survives the death of the body. It is certifiedby many, including government officials, that a lowcasteman at Shoranou, and one at Alattoor, also anastrologer, give fairly accurately the past incidentsand present ailments of the questioner, as well asvaluable information in respect of thefts and othercrimes. I am unfortunate in finding them to \)efailures. Their success seems to be in proportion tothe credulous anxiety of the questioner.Bengal.I know of several persons who are professionally

elemental invokers. Their services are requiredwhen any case occurs in which a person is possessedby an elemental.II. Yes, to cure diseases, and for the welfare ofdistant friends ; these are called " Santi-sastayana."Kathiawar.Bhavnagar.The question can be easily solved.Every one of us here knows that there are suchblack magicians, who are capable of doing wonders,and who can do all that is enumerated by Colonel



Olcott in this question. In fact, we can safely saythat those of us who take an interest in occult lorefind that, as an unmistakeable sign of these degeneratetimes, in our country we constantly hearmuch more of Black Magic than of White Magic.appendix 335Baeoda.There are several such persons in Baroda, but Ihave no personal experience of their powers.OUDH.In plenty, and the black magicians make moneyby it. It is, even in these sceptical days, alucrative trade.COROMANDEL COAST.It is the undoubted belief of the people at largethat there are such magicians. I know some menwho profess to be such. I have also observed someperformances, but they are not of a high order,except two cases (that I can now recall to mymemory) where I observed extraordinary cures bymantrams.QUESTION X.Nizam's Territory.Hyderabad. Two cases of this kind I have

known in my lifetime. One is the case of mysecond granddaughter. The night before her deathI was sitting in a chair on the balcony of my housein Hyderabad ; at about 1 1 p.m. my second daughter,who was on the ground-floor, cried out that she hadseen my grand-daughter coming downstairs hastilyfrom the upper floor. The room where her bed wasplaced was facing the east. Coming down sherushed into a room facing northwards, adjacent toher own sick-room. Following her immediately, I333 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.went into the room she had entered. Finding notraces of her there, I rushed at once into her sickroom,

where she was lying, as I suppose now, in atrance. I called her, asked her many questionswithout getting any answer. She was fond of me;I think her Double went up to give me intimationof her approaching end. She died next morning atabout 7 A.M.The case of a Moodeliar, by name ManalleeChinnya, may also be mentioned here. He wasonce a very rich and famous man of Madras, andwas the factotum of the Raja of Tangore. It soturned out that before his death he had a greatmind to give a certain sum of money to a Brahmin

friend of his. A little before his death he told themembers of his family that he had a great mind togive some money to the Brahmin in question ; butas death was at hand, should the Brahmin notturn up in time to receive the gift, he enjoined themto give it to him without fail. So saying, he putthe money in a purse, deposited it under his pillow,and breathed his last. The Brahmin, who hadalready started from his house for that of thedeceased, was walking slowly on his way ; all of a



sudden he saw Chinnya coming towards him in apalanquin. The Moodeliar said that he was goingto a di«tant country, whence he might probably notreturn ; and as a remuneration for many services hewished to give him some money, which the Brahminmight receive from his (Moodeliar's) relatives. TheBrahmin was, moreover, told that the money wasdeposited under the pillow of his bed. The nextAPPENDIX. , 337day the Brahmin arrived at the house of Chinnya,which was about ten or twenty miles distant fromhis place. The funeral had already taken place.The relatives were in deep grief, but he would nottrust his ears when he heard of the death of thevery man whom he had seen but a few hours beforeseated in a palanquin. However, at length he hadto give way. The money left under the pillow wasmade over to him according to the dying dictates ofthe Moodeliar. Our southern people do not scrupleto concoct stories, but this one I have heard frommore than two or three sources. Similar casesother than this are also known. The death ofChinnya, and his Double appearing to the Brahmin,took place in the daytime.

I may also add that, in connection with Question X.you may refer to the " Theosophist " for 1880-1881,pages 81 and 84.Another story of the same kind is as follows.A friend of mine, by name A. Parthas&rthiMoodeliar, now about fifty years of age, is a theologianof the Tamil Vedas, which he used to reciteevery night before several people from a book called"Nalayar Prabhandham." His recitations madehim a great favourite among his neighbours.About thirty years ago he was invited by a family atMadras to recite the Vedas. The distance betweenhis own house and that of the family where he had

to go to recite verses was about a mile. Every nighthe returned to his own house. The recitations werekept up for thirty or forty nights. One night, when,he was returning home as usual, a Shrivaishnava22338 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.Brahmin crossed his path from under a large treeand accosted him, accompanying him all the way asfar as his house, talking on religious philosophy, andremoving many of the doubts of Parthasdrthi. TheBrahmin added that he was very much pleased withthe recitations, which he took very great care tohear from a corner in the house in which they

took place. He was much gratified at seeing himtake such a zealous interest in religious subjects athis young age. It was for that reason, the Brahmintold the Moodeliar, that he liked to accompany himon his way home. Night after night the Brahminkept up his practice. When the Moodeliar wasgoing home at night, a boy of fifteen used toaccompany him, and whom he asked one night if heheard all that passed between the ShrivaishnavaBrahmin and himself. Upon receiving an answer in



the negative,Parthasd.rthi grew a little suspicious,andthought that the man who daily met him was notan earthly creature. As usual, the next night theBrahmin put in his appearance ; all of a sudden theMoodeliar stopped thunderstruck and dared notmove on. He looked stedfastly at him and found, tohis no small surprise, that the feet of the Brahmindid not touch the ground, but were some twentyinches above it. Seeing his learned friend standlike a statue in the middle of the road, the Brahminundertook to lift him up on his shoulders in case hewas tired that night. The Moodeliar answered thatexhaustion was not the cause of his stopping thusabruptly, but that his mind was filled with gravedoubts about this curious creature who held interAPPENDIX.839course with him every night. Whereupon theBrahmin narrated his whole story as below." When I was a tenant of the world to which youbelong, I devoted my life to the study of theVedas and Shastras. Through ignorance I transgressedthe rules of mantras, which circumstancehas now. entailed upon me the body of an elementary.The chief cause why I like so much to hear

you recite from the Nalaiyar Prabhandham is that bya devout attention to the verses therein contained Imay purge off my past misdeeds, and thus minimizethe efifects of bygone karmas for my own benefit.After you iave done reading the book at theplace where you daily go, I shall wend my wayto Eajmandri. Eest assured I will not injure a hairof your head."Accordingly, when the recitations were over, theBrahmin as usual accompanied him, and with tearsin his eyes took leave of the Moodeliar by prostratinghimself at his feeta form of respect which thelatter also did not forget to offer to the spirit who

used to accompany him.Kathiawar.Prince Harisinghji tells me that he has beenassured at Sihor of the truth of the story of a ghost,fully materialized, asking water to drink from hiswidow, at a well, a long time after the man wasdead and gone. This was in the presence of manywitnesses, and in the daytime.We have heard of innumerable instances wherethe dead have made themselves visible under everyvariety of circumstances.22- 2340 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.

Mysore.I have never known of a dead person being visibleto all bystanders, hence such cases as have cometo my knowledge are probably subjective apparitions.OODH.Yes, I know of an apparition making herself visibleboth by day and night. The apparition has beenseen by at least half a dozen personssometimeswhen two were together. The witnesses were mostlyintelligent, and one or two very calm ones, who have



discoursed with her for about an hour at a time.She has been seen at noon, in the afternoon, in themorning, and, in fact, at all the hours of the day andnight.Bengal.In the year 1859 or 1860, on a dark night, atabout midnight, my mother going out (we werethen living in a large dilapidated house, belongingto a relative of ours) saw what she fancied to be mypaternal grandmother's sister. She called her, butgot no answer. Eeturning, she found my grandmother'ssister in her bed. My father, who wasawake, on being called, got up and began to watchthe apparition. It was a white thing, looking like aperson in very white clothes in a sitting position.After some time the thing got up, rose in the airand vanished. Besides my parents, two or threeothers saw the apparition.APPENDIX. 341QUESTION XI.Bengal.In my own case only once. A relative of mineappeared in a dream and told me something whichwas fulfilled.

Mysore.Not by phantoms ; but we have in Mysore fortunetellers(ooduku) who make certain ceremonies toinvoke the Devatas. higher non-human spirits, callup the soul of any deceased person you name, andbecome, or pretend to become, possessed by thesame, and to deliver predictions. Sometimes thesecome true, but oftener not. They will also readyour thoughts.Other correspondents answer this question in thenegative.QUESTION XII.Kathiawar.

Bhavnagar.We have heard of such instances,of which the following can be verified.N. B. informs me that he knows of a Brahminwho has met with such strange experiences. TheBrahmin's sister once had the usual mediumistictremors, and the control, being questioned as to whoit was, declared that it was a living sorceress, whofelt aggrieved with the patient because of nothaving been properly treated by her. The Brahmin,who was a bold and dare-devil sort of a fellow, com342POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.pelled her to leave the patient by burning her handwith a small torch, and similar harsh measures.

Next day he, being a Bhikhshu (mendicant), purposelywent to the sorceress and asked for a handfulof rice, his dole. She looked at hira wistfully, andgave him the dole with her left hand ; for evidentlyshe meant to conceal the burn of the previous dayon her right hand. He, nothing daunted, chaffinglysaid, " Why, madame, do you give me the rice withthe left hand, and not the right ? / know why.Your right hand was burned yesterday. Do yourworst, let us see ; " or words to that effect. Being a



man of " brass," the woman could not do himimmediate harm ; but after some time he fell ill;he became very weak, and the woman began totrouble him with the nervous tremors. He washelpless, and in his helplessness was advised toappease the woman. He did so, and after manymonths of entreaties he recovered, " a sadder and awiser man."Kathiawar.I have a friend at R, a Parsi, a shopkeeperand merchant. He has a son. P., about twentyyears old, a nice young man, but physically weak, whowas for very nearly a year subject to wild ravingsand fits, which his father, a man of sound commonsense, at first attributed to hysteria. No medicinewould cure him, and the boy became more and mareviolent, and his father assures me that in his fits hewould talk in purer Hindustani than in his sobermoments ; that he was forced to suspect at length,much against his will, that there was somethinguncanny about it. He took him to his native place,AITEXDIX. 343E., not far from Surat, in Gujerat, and consulted anexerciser Brahmin who was sent for from Surat.

It is one of the most interesting features in thisremarkable case that on the first occasion after thearrival of the Brahmin, when in a violent fit, P., orrather his control, eyed a pot of mesmerized waterthat the Brahmin had prepared beforehand, yelledin a highly excited manner, and said that there wasfire issuing from the pot, and the lambent flameswere striking on him with deadly efl'ect. Evidentlyhe could see the antagonistic aura of the exerciserissuing from the pot. In accordance with theBrahmin's instructions, the father rubbed a smallquantity of the water on his chest, and P. got relief.This was continued as often as the boy got the fits,

but the control never left him for good. His fatherconsulted many others known as exorcisers, but P.failed to get permanent relief from the vampire.At length his father was advised to go to E. withhis son, and consult a Sanyasi there. This holyman gave P. a string, evidently full of his puremagnetism, to be tied round his arm. By allaccounts, as far as I know, P. is quite well now.The control in this case was very often asked toleave the patient, and not to worry him any longer ;and when matters had grown very serious his father,being inquisitive and desirous of studying his casethoroughly, induced him to say who he really was.

After some trouble a very strange revelation wasmade. The control said that he was a beggar at R.,and was employed by the wife of a rival shopkeeperto annoy, by his magical arts, M. in some way or341 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.other, and that he had chosen his favourite son as avictim. On being reminded that P. had often shownhim favours by giving him food and money, and thathis conduct towards him was very ungrateful, thecontrolling sorcerer, evil and mean as he evidently



was, did not seem in any way moved by such appeals.He used to give further proofs of his identity, and itwas found that the sorcerer was then in the land ofthe living, and not dead. The father was advised byhis friends not to speak to the man " in flesh andblood," and, for aught I know, he has never spoken tohim about his unwelcome and objectionable visits tohis son.This circumstance appears to us noteworthy,that controls, elementals and elementaries, whenthey are pressed to do so, declare themselves whothey are; but it seems strange, nay, contrary to whatone should expect, that the controls of living sorcerersshould reveal their identity when they know, orought to know, that such a confession is prejudicialto them, as they are still alive.In this connection, perhaps, I may draw the attentionof students of occult lore to a belief entertainedby some knowing ones whom I have talked to,about black magiciansthat persons who dabble inthe black art lose all their power if beef, or waterfrom the pot of a tanner (Chamar), in which hesoaks leather, &c., is administered to them clandestinely.

How far this is true we have at present nomeans of ascertaiuing.Bengal.'When we were boys, we often used to see in ourAPPENDIX. . 345village people being attacked by Dyeens, or witches,the symptom being an hysterical one, when personswho were experts in these matters used to come andutter certain incantations, and the djin then left itsmedium. Once I saw a patient walk out, holdingwith the teeth a ghurra* filled with water, and thenfall down quite cured.Southern India.

I have heard that in the Malabar district sorcerersappear in the shape of animals, attack, injure, andpersecute living beings, if they are inimical to them.QUESTION XIII.Nizam's Territory.Hyderabad.There are some persons,whose specialsubject is Black Magic, who are able to exorcise evilspirits from anybody, and take measures to preventfurther visits from such unwholesome creatures.Such persons are to be found in the Coimbatore andMalabar districts. I have no more particulars onthis subject.Kathiawae.

Bhavnagar.Such victims get reliefby appeasingin some way or other the originals, or by the powerfulmagnetism of a pure Yogi.QUESTION XIV.Malabar Coast.About four or five years ago a well near Porrany, aseaport town, to the west of Tirver railway station,^Ghurra, a clay water-pot.346 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.was reported in the papers to possess special curing



powers. For a few days persons flocked thither forleprosy, &c. ; but nothing has been heard of it since.The temple of Guruvayoor (sacred to Krishna) hasa reputation for the cure of all sorts of rheumaticcomplaints; there are several such temples inMalabar, Just as famous as the above is Cranganore,sacred to Bhagavathi (goddess of smallpox, &c.).There are pagodas which have a simply local reputationonly. They are numerous ; offerings, or vowsof offerings, are calculated to cure a man if ill,or to secure an object in view. I do know personswho have performed the vows, and have got curedof their complaints.At Guruvayoor aforesaid, a silver or gold eye isoffered (if the complaint is in the eyes), a similarfigure of any other part of the body (as the affectionmay be), or the whole body itself. There are theseiigures ready made there ; people have only to payaccording to their means or intentions. In fact, afew sets of figures serve for generations. A religiousstay at the station for a particular number of daysis also calculated to do, and does, much good.About three hundred years ago, a Brahminscholar became cured of a bad rheumatic complaint,

and, sitting in the Mandapam, there composed a workof above one thousand slokas in praise of Krishna,and recounting his exploits.The god there is also known as " Vathalayesen," orthe god who removes cases of rheumatic complaints.About twelve miles to the west of it is an ancientpagoda of Eama, offerings to which place are parAPPENDIX. 347ticularly voted for asthma, &c. About six thousandrupees are annually collected on one head alone.The cash is expended for the firing of popguns, orkathinaathe Mofussil substitute for cannon, andalways used on festival-days at temples. The rate is

three guns for 4 as. 8 p. The largest number vowedis 101 for any particular object. The net proceeds(after expenses of firing gunpowder and of servants),are devoted to the charitable feeding of Erahmins.These guns are held specially sacred to Sri Eama.Jemadars of the neighbourhood have set apart fundsfor firing guns at particular hours every day.There are not many shrines sacred to Hanuman(the so-called monkey-god), son of the " god of thewinds ; " but when a boat is at sea or on water and aheavy gale threatens, it is usual for a vow or offering tobe made to Hanuman, invoking his assistance to lowerthe wrath of the high wind, so that the boat and persons

or goods in it may not be stranded. The nivedyamgenerally consists of bitter rice (3.vil), cocoa nuts, andjaggery.At the village of Kolloor, at the northern end ofSouth Carara (included in ancient Malabar), is thetemple of the goddess of letters (Sarasuati). Theplace is called Mookamli (because an asara namedMookan was killed by the goddess there). Theswallowing of a sweet preparation, offered as nivedyamto the goddess, turns the devotee into a man



of accomplishment in some " fine art " to which hehas the greatest desire.' The Brahmin priests makea fortune out of it. They seldom give what is reallyoffered as nivedyam except for a good consideration.348 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.There are several people on the coast who Laveresorted there and afterwards become good songsters,poets, &c.There are several spots on rocks on hill-tops wherepure water springs on certain Amavasi occasions.They are considered sacred Theerthaws, and personsoften resort thither on such occasions. The wateris taken and sprinkled on the head and face.The foot of a hill a.t KaUati Kotan, near Palghaut,is the seat of a few experts in the black art, who train,under a masonic pledge, persons in the mode in whichtheir business is to be done. " KaUati Kotan " is theplace known all over the district as the resort of allwould-be magicians. "Pischa" (devil) is a wordoften in abuse used to a naughty child. Mothersfrighten their children to sleep with stories of thedevil, and hence the superstition is instilled early inlife.A few miles to the east of Ponani, a seaport town

fifty miles south of Calicut, is a village called Porandakat,with an ancient Siva pagoda. Pilgrims gothere in virtue of the supreme efficacy of the localdeity to cure cases of ghostly obsession, especiallychildren, cases of epilepsy, &c. Pregnant women gothere and stay days together religiously, so thatchildren in the womb may be born without defector complaint. Weighing the body with equivalent inkadali plantains is the most favourite vow.Benoal.I know the temples of Baydo Nath, of Tarkeswar,and many others where many sick are cured. TheyAPPENDIX. 349

lie down in Dhunna, i.e., without taking any food orwater for days together, and mostly on the third daythey get an Adesh in a dream as to the way in whichthey will be cured. Besides the temples mentionedabove, there are many places of such nature in andaround Bengal.Kathiawae.Bhavnagar.Such places are usually templesdedicated to Matas: their name is legion. TheBhuwas and the people here have, we often hear,great faith in the famous temples at Prawas Patau,in Kathiawar, and Bahachraj i, near Mount Aboo, forthe cure of ghostly visitations.

Mysore.There are various Sivaite and Vishnavite templeswhich are famed for relieving pilgrims of obsessingpisdchas. I myself have seen the phenomenon ascore of times at the Hanumanta, the Vishnu, andthe Durga temples in Bangalore. My wife has seenthe same at the Minakshi temple in Madura. Apis^cha medium will not sit quiet to hear theEamayana read ; she will jump up and run away.Southern India.



Madura.Almost all temples in India are consideredto be places for the cure of obstinatediseases. In cases of ordinary diseases people donot resort to the temples. They generally remainfor forty-five days in the temples, leading a strictlyascetic life. There are many cases in which various350 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.diseases, leprosy included, have been so cured. Thebelief of the individual that he will be cured, hisstrictly ascetic life, during which he eats only oncea day, and even then confines himself only to rice,milk, pure water, and plantain fruitshow far eachof these acts on his bodily system to produce thedesired result is for science to determine. Butsick people do resort in great numbers to all holytemples for Bhajana, as it is technically called.During the Navaratri (Dasra) all persons, maleand female, obsessed by ghosts resort to the Madurapagoda. Every year the number amounts to nearlytwo hundred. They all go away cured by the ninthor Saraswati puja day. Their wild pranks and theirbowlings, their superhuman actions in some cases,all make the pagoda a regular pandemonium inthose nine days. At San Kara Nainar Kovil, in

Tinnevelly, this takes place all the year round.At Tiruvathir, near the seaport of Tondi, in theMadura District, is a famous temple. There is asmall tank in it, and whoever bathes in it is saidto get cured of diseases. Every Friday a largecrowd gathers in the temple. Whoever is bittenby a cobra is taken to the temple, bathed in thetank, and made to eat the leaves of the margosatreeon its bank. He is then cured.At Nanguneri, twenty miles south of Tinnevelly,there is a well, where is gathered the oil, ghu, &c.,used in washing the idol. It has the reputationof curing diseases, and people pour into the well

sessamun oil, and take an equal quantity of the contentsof the well and use it for curative purposes.APPENDIX 351Hyderabad.Yes ; I have heard of one or twotemples possessing the wonderful power of effectingcures. The temple of the goddess Minaxi, in thecity of Madura, is specially gifted with this power.At Narsoba's Vadi, near Kurundwar, SouthernMaratha country, there is a small temple of D&ttatraya,on the confluence of the Krishna and theCunch Granga. I saw several obsessed persons therewhen I visited it some fifteen years ago, severalof whom were, as their relations told me, in a fair

way towards recovery. The place is very famousfor curing people suffering from obsession. Priestcrafthas not much scope there, because generallythe obsessed person himself gets a dream or amanifestation as to what he should do for his cure.Hundreds of cases are, it is said, cured there.At Mira Datdr's mosque at Unjha, Kari Division,Baroda State, also, I saw several cases of obsession.The place is famous for curing such cases.-Madura.In my native place, Permagoody, Madura



District, there is a temple near the Agraharam(Brahmin quarters) dedicated to the Deccata Hanumar.The structure of the temple is very simple.In the heart of a compound there is a venerableancient tamarind-tree, hollow throughout a greaterportion of its. trunk, with a raised peedam (raisedbasement) all around ; at its base there are half adozen images of Hanumar, a cluster of five bellsoverhanging them from one of the branches of thetree. The origin of this temple is full of deepmeaning to a student of occultism. About thebeginning of this century, the districts of Madura352 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.and Tinnevelly were troubled by the factions of thePoligars of the south. The country was overrunby numerous bands of brigands. In their lootingand plunder they had petty quarrels among themselves; petty skirmishes were fought between rivalfactions of the Poligars. One of such skirmishes wasfought at Permagoody; a small body of Maranars, ofSinaganga (they say one hundred in number), thathad sought shelter from their inimical faction inthe Eamnad chuttrum at Permagoody, were massacredto the last man. In consequence of this

incident, the chuttrum and the adjoining Brahminquarters became haunted by the disembodied spiritsof 'the dead. The poor people of the agraharamwere tormented by these spirits ; all sorts of bowlingswould be heard in and about the chuttrum;murderous sounds and groans would be loudly. ringing in the haunted grounds. For one year theplace around the chuttrum presented a desertedappearance. About that time a Bairagi pilgrimfrom the north, who was on his way to Ramaesmaram,happened to break his journey at Permagoody,and to put up in the haunted chuttrum.The devils also tried their pranks upon him. Finding

the place haunted, he instituted, at the baseof a big tamarind-tree that then stood hard by thechuttrum, the worship of Hanumar. The imagesthat are now found are later introductions. Bychakara sthapanam (burying in the ground a squarecopper plate, with certain occult diagrams inscribedwith certain letters) of the powerful Deccata Hanumar,he enchained, as it were, to the tamarind-treeAPPENDIX. 353the disembodied spirits that were hovering about,and thereby relieved the people of Permagoody oftheir afflictions from these pisachas. The treestands in full vigour even to this 'day. The power

of the Deecata, that has been focused (if I mayuse that phrase) in the mystic copper plate buriednear the foot of the old tamarind-tree, still seemsto be in full swing, as persons of refractory possessionsresort to it as the last place of final cure.P.S.This was communicated to me by my oldgrandmother, who is dead. It has been confirmedby mdny old residents of the place. A local inquirywill satisfy a sceptical mind.QUESTION XV.



Mysore. 'Î know of no such thing being done by sorcerers;but about^ forty years ago there was at Bangalore avery holy and respected Yogi, named Eamavadhudha,who was known to have appeared at distant places,while his physical body was here. He stopped forabout four years in the garden of my uncle, the lateDewan of Mysore, C. Kristnama Naidu. Oneday he went miraculously to Benares, where Bangalorepeople saw him bathe in the Granges, make hisceremonies and eat. The next day he was backagain.* Another time he similarly visited Combaconum.Another time he similarly attended the festivalat Sivagunga Hills, about twenty-six miles fromBangalore, and was seen by several Bangaloreans,* .Distance from Bangalore to Benares, about 1200 miles as thecrow flies, or about 2000 by rail.23351 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.among others by one Combulingan Pillai, now living,but blind. While the festival was in progress hisphysical body was in a locked room in the Bangalorebazaar, where it was confined twenty-four hours.

When the door was unlocked the next day, the bodywas there as it had been left. Shortly afterwardsan officiating priest of the Shivagangam Templecame inquiring the whereabouts of this Yogi, sayingthat he had been at the temple the day before, andhad left his brass drinking-tumbler and brass spoon,which drinking - tumbler and spoon he, thepujari, or priest, had .brought with him. The Yogiwas awakened, and the brass utensils delivered to himby the messenger.I once knew another Yogi, a holy man who livedin a forest in the Bellary District. My troop wasstationed about six miles from the spot, and I rode

over one day with the Inam Commissioner to try andfind him. Men were sent in various directions, butcould not discover him. We then sat down in ahouse to eat, and had just finished our meal whenthe Yogi suddenly appeared at the house. Aftersaluting him, we placed him between us, and gavehim a portion of food sufficient for six or seven njen.He consumed this, and then drank a correspondingportion of water, which he had retained only for a fewminutes before he spat out a quantity in a glutinousstate, like a colourless jelly. It was quite unmixedwith food. After stopping with us perhaps a quarterof an hour, he rose to go. We presented him

with two cloths of the kind commonly worn byHindus, throwing them over his shoulders, as heAPPENDIX. 355made no oflfer to receive them in his hands. He movedtowards the house-door, we following close behindhim ; he stepped over the threshold, and instantaneouslydisappeared from under our very eyes. Thetwo cloths fell to the right' and left where he hadstood. Some people were just outside the door, butthey did not see him pass them. This man is reported



to be of a fabulously great age, three witnesses,grandsire, son, and grandson, all elderly men, havingknown him for .ja century as appearing no youngernor older than |he seemed when I met him as abovestated. "When he appeared at the house, he saidthat as he knew we were so very anxious to see him,and our messenger could not find him, he had come.Malabar Coast.It is popularly balieved that a low caste of peoplepractise Oti. The word literally means " bending."A person assumes the shape of a dog, a cow, or anelephant ; walks about at night, and injures people.Generally a plurality of men are engaged in the profession,naked. They bend their physical body andwalk together in such a manner that ordinary personsthink they are natural dogs, cows, or elephants.They waylay passengers, kill cattle, &c. Contactwith a human being is supposed to convert thefigure into its original natural figure. Several casesare reported by respectable friends to have occurredwithin their experience.Practising this branch is considered the basest ofconduct ; therefore low-caste men only are creditedwith it. I have heard that a particular root is placed

232353 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.beliind the ear, which has some power to help thesorcerer cast the desired glamour over the sight ofthe intended victim.Occasionally one hears that, through the interventionof a sorcerer, some one causes serious annoyanceto his enemies by introducing unpleasant things (e.g.excrement) in the plate of rice~(while being servedor eaten), causiag the fall of small stones on housetops and terrifying people inside, &c. On the mostvigilant search no trace of a human being wouldappear in the neighbourhood.

Magicians are believed to have the art of causingthe entry into the womb of a pregnant female ofsomething, for instance, an earthen pot, &c., and oftaking out the foetus. Such a case of sorcery, combinedwioh murder, came up for trial (in a reportedcase) before the Court ofFarjadore Adaulautin J 834.The prisoner was convicted ; but the judges thererepudiated the suggestion, and " pitied the superstitions" prevailing in the district. Cases of abnormalor extraordinary dissolution of the foetus in the wombare even now attributed to sorcery.Last year (1885) there was a case in Calicut District,where the evidence showed that a murder was

committed because the deceased had been suspectedof interfering with the murderer's female relativesagainst his wish; the approach of the sorcerer tohis victim having been effected unnoticed, underthe illusive appearance of a dog.Kathiawae.Bhavnagar.We have heard of cases in whichAPPENDIX. 357the Doubles of black magicians have madethemselves visible, and even materialized as human



beings or, very rarely, as animals ; it is a generalbelief that only the most powerful ones can do so.Well-authenticated instances it is at present impossiblefor us to give.QUESTION XVI.~ _ Kathiawar.Bhavnagar.We have many instances of wraithsmaking themselves visible. Many of these can beeasily verified.One of us, N. B., saw his sister's wraith, someyears ago, appearing before him, when alone andin his room, at the very hour at which she wassubsequently reported to have died, some thirtymiles away.A European friend of mine, J. A., used to assureme, some eighteen years ago, at a time when I wasa great scoffer, that he had, when in Bombay awayfrom his wife, who was at Madras, in a dreamactually seen his wife on her death-bed. He heardher saying, " After all, I forgive you, John, beforeI die," or words to that effect. He was so horrifiedthat he awoke, wept bitterly, large drops of perspirationsuffusing his body, and related the wholeincident to a friend sleeping in the same room with

him, who himself was startled to find J. A. in somuch distress, and who at first thought that J. A.had taken a drop too much. After some days, J. A.was informed by post, by his wife's brother, .that shehad died at that very hour, on that very day, her358 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.last words being the very same that J. A. had heardin his dream or trance.One of us, K. I., a Parsi, tells me that his fatherdied at Quetta, some five years ago, one morning atfour or five o'clock. The news of his death wastelegraphed to him by his father's friends at once.But before he got the telegram in Bombay, at about

half-past nine, he dreamed that a very bright ball oflight shot across the sky like lightning, whilst hewas .standing in an extensive plain that he hadnever seen before, and in a strange land. Thebrilliancy of the ball of light was so sudden that hpwoke up, to find the telegraph-pffice peon at hisdoor, ready to hand over his telegram. He took thetelegram, without opening it, to his mother, inanother part of his house ; and he assures me thatsomething prompted him to tell his mother that theunopened telegram contained the news of his father'sdeath. He opened the telegram, and found that itwas too true ; he had died almost suddenly. K. I.'s

father, it may be mentioned, was a highly virtuousand honest man, loved and respected by all whoknew him.A friend, G., a Brahmin, assures me that, someyears ago, when he was travelling in Upper India insearch of manuscripts, in the company of a wellknownantiquarian, he one day halted under a tree ;and in a state between waking and sleeping, whilsthe was lying under that tree, he distinctly saw hisuncle standing before him, and then vanishing away



in a most mysterious manner. In his note-book,Gr., on awaking, instantly put down the date andAPPENDIX. 359the hour. Some two or three weeks afterwardshe received a letter from his relations at A., inKathiawar, informing him of his uncle's death atthat very hour, on that very day, his last wordsbeing, " "Where is G. ? "for he was very muchattached to Gr.The cases are evidently cases of clairvoyance,superinduced by the aura of the dying or recentlydeceased persons.K. I. was, some years ago, a naval engineer in avessel plying between Jeddah and Aden. He tellsme that a brother-officer, named Shayers, one night,on their way to Aden, got suddenly wild, wept andcried bitterly, and told K. I., and afterwards everyone on board, that he had dreamed his wife was deadin Bombay on that day. His friends ridiculed theidea, and thought that it was all owing to his havingtaken a drop too much. Two days afterwards, on theircasting anchor in Aden harbour, a telegram wasreceived by Shayers. He handed it over to K. I. tobe opened and read aloud ; for, he said, he would not

read a telegram conveying the sad news of his wife'sdeath. K. I. opened it, and found that Shayers wasright.Bengal.At the time of the death of my own mother, mygrandmother (mother's mother), who was living at adistance, saw my mother in a dream the eveningshe died, and sent a man to inquire, my grandmotherbeing quite unaware of my mother's illness.I know of another instance of a highly respectable330 POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.man, travelling in a railway first-class carriage, theevening his brother died, who saw a corpse lying on

the bench opposite."COKOMANDEL COAST.There is one peculiar case I have heard of from arespectable relation of mine, who is an eye or ratherear witness to the phenomenon. In a certain placethere was a gentleman who was a very pious man.He was seriously ill, and could not move about.My relative above named and some others wereseated at a place which, for our purposes, maymerely be described as far distant from the sickgentleman. This invalid was a rich man, and usedto go about always in a palanquin, with a certain

distinguishable sound of the bearersa monotonoussort of refrain to which they would keep step.Now where my relative and others were sittingthey heard exactly the same sound as that whichalways attended the palanquin of their sick friend,and they at once got up under the momentaryimpression that he was coming. There was, however,nothing to be seen ; but, on inquiring, it wasfound that at that very moment when they heardthe sound the invalid had breathed his last.



THE END.FKOMGEOKGB REDWAY,16, YORK STREET, COVBNT GARDEK, LONDON.1887.

16, YosK Stkeet, Covent Gaedek,London, May, 1887.12mo., cloth, 2,9.Nature and Law.AN ANSWER TOProfessor Drummond's " Natural Law in theSpiritual Worlds"i* Nature and Law ' is an answer to Professor Drummond's ' Natural Law inthe Spiritual World,' by one who modestly withholds his name. The writeris with the Professor when he remarks 'No one who feels, the universalnecessity of a religion can stand idly by while the intellect of tlie age is slowlydivorcing itself from 'it ;' he approves Uie intention, but objects to the method.The Professor sought to materialise the future world, and to establish anidentity between this imperfect terrestrial sphere in act and deed with theunknown future spiritual world. His critic traces all the laws of earth to acelestial source, without thereby identifying the celestial and terrestrial.

Who but Time can decide between the two ?"Sunday Tmes.GEOKGB EEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.A NEW NOVELIST.Fifine:A NOVEL.BYAliFBED T. STORY.2 Vols., 21s." The account of the various families is most amusing. Soon after Fifine'sarrival her husband reappears, and begins to persecute her ; but she is sav,edby a clever stratagem of the Professor's, one that we do not remember havingpreviously come across in a novel. It would not be fair to spoil the interest

of this story by even hinting how Fifine is relieved from her husband, andhow all ends happily. If the author will only change his style and be contentto use plain language, he bids fair to be successfxil in writing novels."Saturday Review." Exhibiting genuine abihtv."Scotsman." Readers v^l be glad that the morally unpleasant portions of the book arebriefly narrated."Scotsman.GEORGE REDWAT, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

MR. EEDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.Poit 8«o., cloth. Price 10s. ^d.The Life of Philippus Theophrastus, Bombast ofHohenheim,KNOWN BY THE NAME OPParacelsus,Jnd the substance of his teachings concerning Cosmology',Anthropology, Pneumatology, Magic and Sorcery, Medicine,Alchemy and Astrology, Theosophy and Philosophy.Extracted and translated from his rare and extensive works and



from some unpublished Manuscripts,BYFRANZ HARTMANN, M.D.,AUTHOE or "magic," ETC.'' Paracelsus was a high priest among mystics and alchemists, he left behindhim one hnndred and six treatises upon medical and' occult subjects, whichare likely to be read by the cmious as long as mysticism remains a necessarystudy for whoever would trace the developments of civilization." From some considerable acquaintance with the writings of Paracelsus, wecan say that Dr. Hartmann has made his excerpts from them with a gooddeal of skill. Students, indeed, should be grateful for this book, despite itssetting of Theosophical nonsense ; since to read one of Bombast's Latin orGerman treatises is a very stiff exercise indeed, unless you are well versed inhis very recondite terminology.,"Dr. Hartmann has compUei a very full and accurate glossary of occultterms, which will be of great use to future readers of Paracelsus ; and for somuch he is to be thanked."Dr. Hartmann quotes some of his recipes for transmuting metals andproducing the 'electnlmmagicum.' But Paracelsus is the most transcendentalof European mystics, and it is not always easy to know when he is writingallegorically and when practically. Dr. Hartmann says he has tried theseprescriptions and found them all right ; but he warns the uninitiated against

irumiing the risk of blovring themselves up in the endeavour to follow themaster's instructions."Paracelsus held firmly to the belief of some of the hermetic writers ofthe Middle Ages, that it is perfectly possible to create human beings byalchemical means ; and he even gives directions (in his treatise ' De NaturaRerum ') for the production of homunculi.' On the whole, however, Dr. Hartmann has produced a very amusing bookand a book which wiU have some permanent value to the student of theoccult. "-^Sf. James's Gazette.GEORGE REDWAT, YORK STREET, COVBNT GARDEN.MR. EEDWAY'S publications.Monthly^ One Shilling.Walford's Antiquarian Magazine

ANDBibliographical Review.EDITED BYG. W. REDWAY, P.R.Hist.S.*** Volumes I. to X, Now Beadyt jpi'ice^Js. &d. each.The following are the Contents of the Four Numbers published this year.Articles :Domesday BookFrostiauaSome Kentish ProverbsThe Literatureof Ahnanacks" Madcap Harry " and Sir John PophamTom Coryateand his CruditiesNotes on John Wilkes and Boswell's Life of Johnson.Earities in the Locker-Lampson CoUecbionA Day with the late Mr. EdwardSollyThe Defence of England in the 16th CenturyThe Ordinary from Mr.Thomas,Jenyns' Booke of ArmesA Forgotten Cromwellian TombVisitation

of the Monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. The RosicruciansTheSeiH6re LibraryA Lost WorkSir Bevis of HamptonMore Kentish ProverbsCromwell and the Saddle Letter of Charles I.Recent Discoveries atRomeFolk-Lore of British BirdsAn Old Political Broadside.Notes forCoin CollectorsHigham PrioryByways of Periodical LiteratureHow toTrace a PedigreeThe Curiosities of AleThe Books and Bookmen of ReadingThe Language of the LawWords, Idioms, etc. , of tiie VulgarNotes onOld Chelsea^The Romans in Cumbria.Collectanea.Early Italian PrintsTercentenary of the PotatoChaucer'



DiscoverySir John Soane's MuseumCopyright in Government Publications PausaniasThe Lan of ManuscriptsPaper Making in 1588Portraits ofCharles DickensHopton CastleA very Ancient WatchThe Value ofAntiquarian StudyCurious Forestry PrivilegeA " Factory "ThimblesOld and NewMrs. Glasse's Cookery BookA Bucks EstateChalfont St.GilesGreek CoinsShakespearian LiteratureGeography in the SixteenthCenturyWelsh Place NamesJapanese Art--Duelhug in 1760Shelleyana English ArchersOriental PorcelainSouth Italian Folk-loreSerpent-loreModem WitchesThe Domesday PloughA Bishop of the Olden TimeHistorical Treasures in the Upsala CathedralThe Witches LadderOldPrayer-BookA Relic of James II.Pontefract and RiponOld ShoesLoveCharmsCounty FamiliesA Roman Fire BrigadeParish RegistersBorder RaidingPeasant, ProprietorsQueen Mary's TreeThe Turks and ^Persians as Book-lovers Epitaph of John Ruskin's ParentsQuakers"Yankee" and the "Stars and Stiipes"GipsiesThe Royal AcademyChigwell Church, EssexPrinters' ErrorsA Village Club-An HistoricalFisheryA SurvivalA Cock MatchEarly PublishingPancakes at WestminsterSchoolThe Archbishop's Palace at CroydonThe Art of the SaracensIn Egypt^The Early Custody of Domesday Book. ,Correspondence.The late Bishop Hannington's AncestryA Reacier ofCurious BooksThrowing the Dart in Cork HarbourThe De la PolesTheFamily of John HampdenThe "OUa Podrida", and T. ,MonroLife ofBertram MontfichetMagdalen College, Oxford Book Bound in a Murderer's

SkinA Forgotten SocietyLatin Verses by Dr. Johnson" Merchet " andthe " Jus Primse Noctis "Hanna, Hanet, and WallaceAnother Book Boundin a Murderer's SkinHumorous Portrait of Charles DickensBeating Boysat Parish BoundariesDestruction of National Antiquities,.ReviewsObituary MemoirsMeetings of Learned SocietiesNews andNotes.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. REDWAY'S publications.J8S" The Athen^dm says :" Admirers of Thackeray maybe grateful for a reprint of ' Sultan Stork.'"In large 8vo., uniform with the New " Standard" Editionof Thackeray's Works. Price Ws. 6

ASultan Stork,And other Stories and Sketches.BYWILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (182944).Now first collected, to which is added the Bibliography ofThackeray, revised and considerably enlarged.'' " The remains of Thackeray are now in the hands of the resurrectionists,Writera In the Athenceim. have been gloating over them, and Mr. GeorgeRedway, a London publisher of peculiar and quaint literature, has issued ahandsome volume of Thackerayan fragments."QLasgoio Herald.

** Thackeray collectors, however, have only to be told that none of the piecesnow printed appear in the two volumes recently Issued by Messrs. Smith,Elder, and Co., in order to make them, desire their possession. They will alsowelcome the revision of the Bibliography, since it now presents a completelist, arranged in chronological order, of Thackeray's published writings inprose and verse, and also of his sketches and drawings."Daily Chronicle." * Sultan Stork' which purports to be told by Scheherazade on thethousand and second of the 'Arabian Nights,' is undoubtedly the work of



Mr. Thackeray, and is quite pretty and funny enough to have found a placein his collected miscellanies. ' Dickens in France ' is as good in its way asMr. Thackeray's analysis of Alexander Dumas" ' Kean ' in the ' Paris Sketch-Book.' .... There are other slight sketches in this volume which areevldentiy by Mr. Thackeray, and several of his ohite)' dicta in them are worth,preserving We do not assume to fix Mr. Thackeray's rank or toappraise his merits as an art critic. We only know that, in our opinion, fewof his minor writings are so pleasant to read as his shrewd and genial commentson modem painters and paintings.*'Saturday Review.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVBNT GARDEN.Just published, 32 pages, wrapper. Price Is,The New Illumination.BYEDWARD MAITLAND,AUTHOB OP "THB PILGKIM AND THE SHRINE."GBOEGB REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.In post ito. Illustrated with Ehgravings on Wood. Most chastelybound in tohite vellum. Price 10s. 6d.ASTROLOGY THEOLOGIZED.The Spiritual Hermeneutics ofAstrology and Holy Writ.

BEINGJ Treatise upon the Influence ofthe Stars on. Man, and on theArt of Ruling them by the Law of Grace,Reprinted pkom the Original op 1649,With a Prefatory Esaay on Bible Hermeneutics.BYANNA KINaSFOKD, M.D., Paris." It is well for Dr. Anna Kingsford that she was not born into the siderealworld four hundred years ago. Had that been her sorry fate, she wouldassuredly have been burned at the stake for her preface to ' Astrology Theologized.'It is a very long prefacemore than half the length of the treatiseit introduces ; it contains some of the finest flowers of Theosophical philosoph

y,and of course makes very short work of Christianity."St. James's Gazette.' Mrs. Kingsford, amid many things which we do not understand, and somefew which we think we comprehend afar off, gives a more detailed analysis ofghosts than we remember to have met with in any of the ancient hermeticwriters."St. JarMs's Gazette." The only pleasing features of the book are the reproductions of a numberof beautiful symbolical figures with which it is illustrated. That on p. 28,representing Christ surroimded by an elliptical glory and carried up to heaven

by angels, is taken from an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth centuryin the Bibliothfeque Royale ; and the figure of the Virgin in an aureole, on p.94,is from a tenth-century illuminated manuscript in the same library. Someof the figures here reprodued are among the finest things in Christianiconography. "St. James's Gazette.GEORGE BBDWAY, YORK STREET, COVBNT GARDEN.MR. KEDWAY'S publications.



In demy 8to., cloth. Price 10s. M.The Mysteries of Magic jA DIGEST OfThe Writings of Eliphas Levi.WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYBYARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.Eliphas Levi, who died in 1865, and whose real name was Alphonse LouiHConstant, ranks, beyond controversy, as the prince of the French adepts.His writings contain a revelation of the Grand Secret and a lucid interpretationof the theory of the Astral Light, which is the great Magical Agent. Hisphilosophy of miracles is of lasting value and interest, and absolutely indispensableto all students of occultism. It establishes a harmony betweenreligion and science based on a rational explanation of all prodigies. EliphasLevi revealed for the first time to the modem world the arcanum of willpowerin the operations of transcendental magic, and he was also theoriginator of a new departure in Kabbalistic Exegesis. In the present digest,the information on the various branches of esoteric science, which is scatteredover six large volumes of the French originals, has been diligently collated,and the translation carefully made." A very curious book."Time.

"To the rapidly-extending catalogue of remarkable books published byMr. George Redway, of London, an important addition has been made by theissue of a digest of the writings of Eliphas Levi. Many people, we dare say,will consider the voltime to be 'fuU of nonsense,' but it is really a verycurious and improving work, going over a vast space of ground, and presentinga great deal of matter that is worth thinking over. The author has earneda title to be heard. As a contribution to what is called 'occult science,' thepresent book will, of course, find a welcome from many readers, among thoseespecially whose passion it is to grope for the unseen, and to these the variedcontents will give delight. The roatter contained in Mr. Waite's volume iswonderfully varied, and much of it worth reading, even by those who do notbelieve in magic of any kind, bla.ck or white."

Glasgow Herald.' Mr. "Waite has rendered an important service to English students of occultscience by the preparation of his digest of the works of Eliphas Levi. Onewould rather have welcomed soprofoundly philosophical a volume undersomesimpler name less calculated to alienate the sympathies of a cultivated worldat large. True magic^the science of the Magiis in reality nothing less thanspiritual knowledge, and the name is strictly appropriate, of course, in iisloftiest significance, to the grand philosophy of the ancient Wisdom-Religion'which Eliphas Levi partly unveils. We have merely objected, in passing, tothe title of Mr. Waite's book, in so far as it may to some extent lessen itsacceptability to a generation not yet generally ripe to understand it, butfrom the midst of which it may still be possible, bythe presentation of occulttruth in a certain way.to attract more advancedminds into the path of spiritual

inquiry, No determined student of Nature's higher mysteries, setting outfrom the standpoint of modem European culture, can afford to remainignorant of Eliphas Levi's works. But to study them in the original is awearisome task, if for no other reason, on account of their aggref|;ate length.The present single volume is a.digest of half a dozen books enumerated by theMR, REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.THE MYSTERIES OF MAGICcontinued.present author in a ' biographical and critical essay * with which he prefaceshis undertaking. These are the Boyme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, the Histoirede la, Jâgie, the Clefdes Grands Mysttraa, the Sorcier de Meudon, the PhilosopM



eOcculte, and the Science des Esprits. To attack, the whole serieswhich,indeed, it might be difficult to obtain now in a complete formwould be abold undertaking, but Mr. Waite has endeavoured to give his readers theessence of the whole six books in a relatively compact compass."Mr. A. P.SiNNETT, in Light,GEOBGE BEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.In small Svo., cloth. Price 5s.Mountaineering Below the Snow-Line;Or, The Solitary Pedestrian in Snowdonia and Elsewhere.BYM. PATERSON.WITH ETCHINGS BY MACKANBSS.Vanity Fair says :" Mr. Paterson writes charmingly of a charming subject,He is a cultured and an athletic man, and tells of the climbs he has done, innervous, descriptive English. He confesses to some partiality for gettingalong alone, but he is evidently not a churl, and he opens the store of hisexperiences under the snow-line in Wales, Cumberland, Scotland, and Norwaywith a skill which will make his wanderings acceptable to a much largernumber of people than can ever climb mountains themselves."GEORGE EBDWAT, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.Small ito., Illustrated, doth. Price 5s.Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in

Great Britain,Chronicled from the Earliest to the Present Time.BYWILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.Hist.S.Only 400 copies printed.GEORGE RBDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.10 MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS."The interest of this compilation is naturally not to be compared to thataroused by the ever-fresh ' Thousand and One Nights ;' but it has had highreputation among particular admirers, and the gentleman to whom we areindebted for this English versionapparently the most complete in any languageof Western Europemerits the thanks of the reading public for thework performed."

Athenceum.About 500 pages, crovm Bvo., doth. Price 10s. Sd,The History of the Forty Vezirs;OB,The Story of the Forty Morns and Eves,Written in Turkish by Shetkh-Zada, and now done into Englishby E. J. W. GiBB, M.il.A.S." A delightful addition to the wealth of Oriental stories available to Englishreaders is ' The History of the Forty Vezirs ' (Redway), done into English byMr. E. J. "W. Gibb, from the Turkish of Sheykh-Zada. The collection comprises112 stories. To the forty told by the Lady and those of the forty Vezirs,

Mr. Gibb has added four from Belletete, twenty from a MS. in the IndiaOffice, six from Dr. Behmauer's translation, and two from a MS., recentlypurchased by Mr. Quaritch. The results of collation are admirally summarisedin a comparatire table that analyses the contents of the various texts. In thepreface Mr. Gibb deals with the bibliography of the French and German versions,and indicates some of the more interesting parallels suggested by thoseold stories in the * Gesta Romanorum,' the ' Decameron,' the ' Thousand andOne Nights/ the ' Mabinogion,' and other treasures of old-world fable. Inshoi-t, Mr. Gibb has considerately done everytiiing to help the reader to anintelligent appreciation of this charming book. "



BaXv/rday Heview.*' In my opinion the version is definite and final. The style is light andpleasant, with the absolutely necessary flavour of quaintness ; and the notes,though short and few, are sufficient and satisfactory. Mr. Gibb does not writeonly ad clerum ; and thus he has been obliged to leave in the obscurity of anEastern language ' three whole tales (pp. 35S, 366, and 399), No. 2 being exceedinglywitty and fescennine. He has the good sense, when he supplants a.broad joke by a banal English phrase, to subjoin in a note the original Turkish(pp. 109, 140, 199, 215, and 382). Tet some of the -novelle are highly spicedenough : see the amorous princess in the Eleventh Wazir's story (pp. 381-3);and the truly Turkish and imspeakable version of modest ^sop's * Countrymanand his Son.' Of the less Milesian I would especially commend thestory of the Venus-star and the magical angels, Harut and Marut (p. 167) ; theexplanation of the proverb, 'Take counsel of the cap that is on thy head '(p. 362), and the Thirty-seventh Wazir's tale, showing why ' men have beatentheir wives since the days of Saint Adam ' (p. 349).~îr Richabd F. Bdeton,in The Academy.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS. 11In large crown 8vo., handsomely printed in borders with original

headpieces, on u, special make of toned paper, and bound in bestcloth, the cover designed by Matthew Bell. Price 10s. 6d.Sea Song and River RhymeFrom Chaucer to Tennyson.SELECTED AND EDITED BYESTELLE DAVENPORT ADAMS.With a New Poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne.Illustrated with Twelve Original Etchings.** Mr. Swinburne's new patriotic song, ' A Word for the Navy,' is as fiery inits denunciation of those he believes to be antagonistic to the welfare of thecountry as was his lyric with which he startled the readers of the Times onemorning."

Athenaum.GEORGE BEDWAT, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.In post 8vo. , with numerous plates coloured and plain, cloth.Price 7s. 6d.Geometrical Psychology;OK,The Science of Representation.Being the Theories and Diagrams of B. W. BeitsEXPLAINED BYLOUISA S. COOK." Hia attempt (B. W. Betta') seems to have taken a similar direction tothat of George Boole in logic, with the difference that, whereas Boole's express

ionof the Laws of Thought is algebraic, Betts expresses mind-growthgeometrically; that is to say, his growth-formulae are expressed in numerical series,of which each can be pictured to the eye in a corresponding curve. When theseries are thus represented, they are found to resemble the forms of leaves andflowers."â:ti'act^-om " Symbolic Methods of Study," hy Mary Boole.GEORGE EEDWAr, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.12 MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.A few copies only remain of the following important work, by theauthor of " The Rosicrucians."



Phallicism :Its connection with the Rosicrucians and the Gnostics, and itsFoundation in Buddhism.BYHARGBAVE JENNINGS,AUTHOR OF "THE BOSICEUOIANS."Demy Svo.j cloth." This book is written ad clerum, and appeals to the scholar only, and not tothe multitude. It is a masterly and exhaustive account of that worship of thecreative powers of nature which, under various names, has prevailed among allthe nations of antiquity and of mediaeval times, alike in Egypt and India, inItaly and Gaul, among the Israelites of old, and among the primitiveinhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland . . .a most valuable auxiliary toall who care to pursue such a subject of inquiry, a subject for which Mr.Jennings is the better fitted on account of his long and intimate acquaintancewith the Bosicrucians, their tenets, and their practices."^niiguarian Magazineand Bibliographer." Unpleasant as this subject is, we are quite prepared to agree that in itsscientific aspect, as a form of human worship, it has considerable importance. . . Mr. Jennings deals almost entirely with the subjective part of hisinquiry, and he has evidently made a considerable amount of research into theliterature of early religions He has produced something which is, atall events, worth the attention of the student of comparative psychology."Antiquary.

" This book. . . is profoundly learned, and gives evidence on each page ofdeep thought, intense powers of research, clear and unmistakable reasoning,and thorough mastership of the subject. The appendix also contains muchvery curious matter which will interest those who desire to study the subjectunder all its different aspects and bearings."iZeWg-uary.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. REDWAY'S publications. 1.3In demy 8i;o., cloth. Price 10s. M.Incidents in the LifeOFMadame Blavatsky,Compiled from Information supplied by her Relatives and Friends,AND EDITED BY

A. P. SINNETT.With a Portrait reproduced from an Original Painting by HermannSOHMIEOHEN." Mr. Sinnett's memoir is fluently written, and is free from unsympatheticscepticism. Theosophists will find both edification and interest in the book ; and the general student of science will profit more or less by having his attentioncalled to, etc "Pall Mall eazette." Mr. Sinnett, however, offers on all the disputed points explanations whichwill be perfectly satisfactory to those who do not agree with the committee ofthe Psychical Society."Pal! Mall Oazeite." For any credulous friend who revels in such stories I can recommend' Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky.* I read every line of the

BOOK WITH MUCH INTEREST."TrMtt.GBOBGE EBDWAT, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN." An admirable study of a primitive belief and custom. One of the utmostimportance in considering the growth of civilization."Large post Svo., cloth, uncut. Price Is. 6d.The Blood Covenant:j4 Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture,BYH. CLAY TRUMBULL, D.D.



"A profound interest will be aroused by the keenness and clearness ofvision, no less than by the wealth of learning, by means of which he followsa line of research, tracing through this one rite the cannibalism of savages toa religious impulse not essentially different in its symbolical aspect from oneof the most vital principles of Christianity. In the details of the work willbe found much to attract the attention of the curious. Its fundamental andessential value, however, is for the student of religions ; and all such wil} begrateful to Dr. Trumbull for this solid, instructive, and enlightening work."ScoUman, March 14th,GEORGK REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.14 MR. RBDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.HINTS TO COLLECTORSOP ORIGINAL EDITIONS OFTHE WORKS OFWilliam Makepeace Thackeray.BYCHABIiES PLUMPTRE JOHNSON.Printed on hand-made paper and hound in vellum.CrovmSvo.j 6s.**.... A guide to those who are great admirers of Thackeray, and are collectingfirst editions of his works. The dainty little volume, bound in parchmentand printed on hand-made paper, is very concise and convenient in form;on each page is an exact copy of the title-page of the work mentioned thereon,

a collation of pages and illustrations, useful hints on the differences in editions,with other matters indispensable to collectors. . . . Altogether itrepresents a large amount of labour and experience."The Spectator." . . . . Mr. Johnson has evidently done his work with so much loving carethat we feel entire confidence in his statements. The prices that he hasafl&xed in every case form a valuable feature of the volume, which has beenproduced in a manner worthy of its subject-matter."The Academy.'' The list of works which Mr. Johnson supplies is likely to be of high interest

to Thackeray collectors. His preliminary remarks go beyond this not verynarrow circle, and have a value for all collectors of modern worl^." ô(e«and Queines." .... It is choicely printed at the Chiswick Press ; and the author, Mr.Charles Plumptre Johnson, treats the subject with evident knowledge andenthusiasm. . . . It is not a Thackeray Bibliography, but a careful andminute description of the first issues, with full collations and statement ofthe probable cost. . . . Mr. Jnhnson addresses collectors, but is in additiona sincere admirer of the greatest satirist of the century."Boo/c Lore.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. redway's publications. 15

HINTS TO COLLECTORSOF ORIGINAL EDITIONS OPTHE WORKS OFCharles Dickens .BYCHARLES PLUMPTRE JOHNSON.Printed on hand-made paper, and hound in vellum.Crown 8yo., 6s." Enthusiastic admirers of Dickens are greatly beholden to Mr. C. P. Johnsonfor his useful and interesting ' Hints to Collectors of Original Editions of



the Works of Charles Dickens ' (Eedway). The book is a companion to thesimilar guide to collectors of Thackeray's first editions, is compiled with thelike care, and produced with the like finish and taste."The Saturday Review."This is a sister- volume to the * Hints to Collectors of First Editions ofThackeray,' which we- noticed a month or two ago. The works of Dickens,with a few notable 'Dickensiana,' make up fifty-eight numbers .... andMr. Johnson has further augmented the present volume with a list of thirtysixplays founded on Dickens's works, and another list of twenty-threepublished portraits of Dickens. As we are unable to detect any slips in hiswork, we must content ourselves with thanking him for the correctness ofhis annotations. It is unnecessary to repeat our praise of the elegant/ormatof these books "The Academy.GEORGE BBDWAr, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.In crown Bvo.^ cloth. Price 5s.The History of Tithes.BYH. W. CLARKE." We have no hesitation in saying that he has produced the best book ofmoderate size yet published for the purpose of enabling an ordinary reader tothoroughly understand the origin and history of this ancient impostThe author gives a great deal of interesting information concerning theplanting and growth of Christianity in these islands, the origin of parishes,

and the founding and endowment of parish churches Mr. Clarkedeclares himself in his book to be a member of the Church of England. Hethus writes in no spirit of hostility to her. But he rightly uses very plainlanguage in giving his opinion on the wilful distortion of facts by Churchwriters aiming to defend their Church No one who wishes thoroughlyto understand the history of tithes should be without this book. It will wellrepay perusal as a book of ecclesiastical history apart from its special object. Literary World, March 25th.GEORGE BEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.16 MR. redway's publications.Handsomely pHnted and tastefully hound, 436 pages,large croion Svo., cloth extra, Is, Qd.Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs.

BYTHE COTTNTESS EVEL'SN MARTINENGO-CESARESCO.'A pleasant volume on a pleasant topic. . . . The Countess, with hersincere enthusiasm for what is simple, passionate, and sensuous in folk-song,and with her lucid and unaffected style, well understands the mode in whichthe educated collector should approach the shy singers or story-tellers ofEurope. . . . Her introduction is perhaps, to the scientific student of popularculture, the best part of her book. . . . Next to her introduction, perhapsher article on * Death in Polk-Poetry' is the most serviceable essay in thevolume. . . .' Folk Lullabies ' Is perhaps the most pleasant of the remainingessays in the admirable volume, a volume remarkable for knowledge, sympathy,and good taste."Extracts from a page notice in the Saturday Review

,April 24, 1886." This is a very delightful book, full of information and thoughtful suggestions.It deals principally with the Folk-songs of Southern peoples, Venetian,Sicilian, Armenian, Provence, and Greek Songs of Calabria, but there areseveral essays devoted to the general characteristics of Folk-Poetry, such asthe influence of Nature, the Inspiration of Death, the idea of fate, the numeroussongs connected with the rites of May, Folk-Lullabies, and Folk-Dirges.



There is also an interesting essay on what is called the White Paternoster, andChildren's Rhyming Prayers. This is one of the most valuable, and certainlyone of the most interesting, books which have been written on a subject whichhas of late years been exciting an ever-increasing attention, and which involvesmany important problems connected with the early history of thehuman rauCQ."Standard." ' Folk-Songs,' traditional popular ballads, are as tempting to me as KingCharles's head to Mr. Dick. But interesting as the topic of the origin anddiffusion and literary merit of these poems may bepoems much the same inall European countriesthey are rather caviare to the general. The CountessMartinengo-Cesaresco is, or should be, a well-known authority among specialstudentsofthis.branch of literature, to whom I heartily commend her 'Essaysin the Study of Folk-Songs.' The Countess is, perhaps, most familiar withSouthern volksleider, as of Greece, Italy, and Sicily. Her book is a treasurehouseof Folk-lore of various kinds, and the matter is handled with muchpoetic appreciation and a good deal of learning."Daily News."A kind of popular introduction to the study of Folk-lore."St. James'sGazette.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STKEET, COTENT GARDEN.

MR. KEDway's PUBLICATIONS. 17In crown Svo., in French grey wrapper. Price 6s.Afew copies on Large Paper. Price 10s. 6d.The Bibliography of Swinburne;A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST, ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICALORDER, OF THE PUBLISHED WRITINGSIN VERSE AND PROSEOFALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE(1857-1884).This Bibliography commences with the brief-lived College Magazine, towhich Mr. Swinburne was one of the chief contributors when an undergraduate

at Oxford in 1857-8. Besides a careful enumeration and descriptionof the first editions of all his separately published volumes and pamphlets inverse and prose, the original appearance is duly noted of every poem, prosearticle, or letter, contributed to any journal or magazine (e.g., Once a Weeh,The Spectator, The OornMll Magazine, The Morning Star, The Fortnightly Review,The Examirier, The Dark Blue, The Academy, The Athenmum, The Tatler,Belgravia, The Gentleman's Magazine, La E&publique des Lettres, Le Rappel, TheGlasgow University Magazine, The Daily Telegraph, etc., etc.), whether collectedor uncollected. Among other entries will be found a remarkable novel,published in instalments, and never issued in a separate form, and severalproductions in verse not generally known to be from Mr. Swinburne's pen.The whole forms a copious, and it is believed approximately complete, recordof a remarkable and brilliant literary career, extending already over a quarter

of a century.\* ONLY 250 COPIES PRINTED.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.18 MK. REDWAY'S publications.Post free, price Zd.The Literature of Occultism andArchaeology.Being a Catalogue of Books ON SALE relating toAncient Worships.Astrology.



Alchemy.Animal Magnetism.Anthropology.Arabic.Antiquities.Ancient History.Behmen and the Mystics.Buddhism.Clairvoyance.Cabeiri.China.Coins.Druids.Dreams and Visions.Divination.Divining Bod.Demonology.Ethnology.Egypt.Fascination.Flagellants.Freemasonry.Folk-Lore.Gnostics.

Gems.Ghosts.Hindus.Hieroglyphics and Secret Writing.Herbals.Hermetic.India and the Hindus.Kabbala.Koran.Miracles.Mirabilaries.Magic and Magicians.Mysteries.

Mithraic Worship.Mesmerism.Mythology.Metaphysics.Mysticism.Neo-platonism.Orientalia.Obelisks.Oracles.Occult Sciences.Philology.Persian.Philosophy.

Physiognomy.Palmistry and Handwriting.Phrenology.Psychoneurology.Psychometry.Prophets.Rosicrucians.Round Towers.Rabbinical.Spiritualism.



Skeptics, Jesuits, Christians andQuakers.Sibylls.Symbolism.Serpent Worship.Secret Societies.Somnambulism.Travels.Tombs.Theosophical.Theology and Criticism.Witchcraft.GEORGE EEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDENMR. REDWAY'S publications. 19In crown Svo, , cloth. Price Is. &d.Theosophy, Religion, and OccultScience.BYHENRY S. OLCOTT,PRESIDENT OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.WITH GLOSSARY OF INDIAN TERMS AND INDEX." This book, to which, we can only allot an amount of space quite incommensuratewith its intrinsic interest, is one that will appeal to the prepared,student rather than to the general reader. To anyone who has previouslymade

the acquaintance of such books as Mr. Sinnett's ' Occult World,' and ' EsotericBuddhism,' or has in other ways familiarised himself with the doctrines ofthe so-called Theosophical Society or Brotherhood, these lectures of ColonelOlcott's will be rich in interest and suggestiveness. The American officer isa person of undoubted social position and unblemished personal reputation,and his main object is not to secure belief in the reality of any * phenomena,'not to win a barren reputation for himself as a thaumaturgist or wonderworker,but to win acceptance for one of the oldest philosophies of natureand human lifea philosophy to which > of late years the thinkers of theWest have been turning with noteworthy curiosity and interest. Of course,should the genuineness of the phenomena in question be satisfactorily established,there would undoubtedly be proof that the Eastern sages to whom

Colonel Olcott bears witness do possess a knowledge of the laws of thephysical universe far wider and more intimate than that which has beenlaboriously acquired by the inductive science of the West ; but the theosophyexpounded in this volume is at once a theology, a metaphysic, and a sociology,in which mere marvels, as such, occupy a quite subordinate and unimportantposition. We cannot now discuss its claims, and we will not pronounce any opinion upon them ; we will only say that Colonel Olcott'svolume deserves and will repay the study of all readers for whom the byewaysof speculation have an irresistible charm." Manchester Examiner.GEORGE REBWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.20 MR. redway's publications.Now ready, at all Booksellers', and at Smith's Railway Bookstalls.Popular Edition, price Is. 6d.

Burma:As it Was, As it Is, and As it Will be.BYJ. G. SCOTT ("Shway Yoe")*Crown 8vo., cloth.'' Before going to help to govern them, Mr. Scott has once more written onthe Burmese . . . Mr. Scott claims to have covered the whole ground, toshow Burma as it was, is, and will be ; and as there is nobody competent to



criticise him except himself, we shall not presume to say how far he has succeeded.What, however, may be asserted with absolute confidence is, that hehas written a bright, readable, and useful book."Saturday Review, March 27."Very lively and readable "Pall Mall Gazette." The author knows what he writes about."St. Stephen's Review." There is a good deal of curious reading in the book."Literary World."The book is amusing and instructing, and Mr. George Redway, thepublisher, will have done the public and himself a service."dynrt Journal."The print is clear, and the binding in excellent taste."Bookseller." Evidently full of genuine information."Society." A handy guide to Burma, as readable as it is accurate."

Globe'' Mr. Scott should have called this volume * A book for Members of Parliament.'"London and China Telegro.ph."The sketch of Burmese cosmogony and mythology is very interesting.'*Nature." A competent historian. He sketches Burma and the Burmans with minutefi.delity."Daily Chronicle.

" Probably no Englishman knows Burma better than Mr. J. G. Scott."Contemporary Review.An excellent description both of land and people."Contemporary Review." Most interesting." St. James's Gazette." ShwayYoe is a graphic writer ... no one can supply this informationbetter than Mr. Scott."AsioAic Quarterly Review.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, OOVENT GARDEN.MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS. 21A few large-paper copies, with India proofportrait, in imperial 8j)o. ,

parchment paper covers. Price 7s. Sd.An Essay on the Genius of GeorgeCruikshank.BT"THETA" (WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY).With all the Original Woodcut Illustrations, a New Portrait ofCruikshank, etched by Pailthoepe, and a Prefatory Note onThackeray as an Art Critic, by W. E. Church." Thackeray's essay *0n the Genius of George Cruikshank,' reprinted fromthe Westminster Review, is a piece of work well calculated to drive a critic of



these days to despair. How inimitable is its touch ! At once familiar andelegant, serious and humorous, enthusiastically appreciative, and yet justand clear-sighted ; but, above all, what the JbVench call personnel. It is notthe impersonuel reviewer who is going through his paces . . . it is Thackeraytalking to us as few can talktalking with apparent carelessness, evenramblingly, but never losing the thread of his discourse or saying a word toomuch, nor ever missing a point which may help to elucidate his subject orenhance the charm of. his essay. , . . Mr. W. E. Church's prefatory note on'Thackeray as an Art Critic ' is interesting and carefully compiled."Westtninstei'2ieview, Jan. 15th."As the original copy of the Westminster is now excessively rare, thisreissue will, no doubt, be welcomed by collectors."Birminghain. Daily Mail."The new portrait of Cruikshank by F. W. Pailthorpe is a, clear, firmetching." 3'Ae Artist.GEORGE REDWAT, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.In demy 8vo., wrapper^ tbncut, with Extra Portrait,Price 5s.rniZ (Hablot Knight Browne):A Memoir ; including a Selection from his Correspondence andNotes on his Principal Works. By Fked. G. Kitton.

With a Portrait and numerous Illustrations./tS" A few copies only remain.GEORGE EEDWAY, YOBK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.22 MR. redway's publications.In preparation.NEW TRANSLATION OF "THE HEPTAMERON."The Heptameron ;OB,Tales and loTels of Margaret, Queen of lavarre.Now first done completely into English prose and verse, from theoriginal French, by Aethue Maohen.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.One vol., crown 8vo., iOO pages, doth. Pi-ice 6s.

A Regular Pickle :How He Sowed his Wild Oats.ETHENRY W. NESFIELD,Author of "A Chequered Career.""Mr. Nesfield's name as an author is established on such a pleasantly soundfoundation that it is a recognised fact that, in taking up a hook written byhim, the reader is in for a delightful half-hour, during which his risible andhumorous faculties will be pleasantly stimulated. The history of youngArchibald Highton Tregauntly, whose fortunes we follow from the cradle towhen experience is just beginning to teach him a few wholesome lessons, is assmart and brisk as it is possible to be."

Whitehall Review.'* It will be matter for regret if the brisk and lively style of Mr. Nesfleld,who at times reminds us of Lever, should blind people to the downrightwickedness of such a perverted career as is here described."Daily Chronicle.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. EEDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS. 23544 pages, crovm 8iio., green doth hoards, price 7s. 6d. (Only 500copies printed.)



Dickensiana.A Bibliography of the Literature relating to Ohablbs Diokensand his Writings.Compiled by !Frbd. Gr. Kitton, author of " 'Phiz' (Hablot K.Browne), a Memoir," and "John Leech, Artist and Humourist."With a Portrait of "Boz," from a Drawing by Samdbl Laurence."This book is honestly what it pretends to be, and nothing more. It is acomprehensive catalogue of all the writings of Mr. Charles Dickens, and of agood quantity of books written about him. It also contains copious extractsfrom reviews of his works and from sermons on his character. The criticismsare so various, and some of them are so much at variance with others, thatthe reader of them can complain of nothing leas than a lack of material onwhich to form his judgment, if he has not formed it already, on the claim ofMr. Dickens to occupy a front place in the rank of English classics. Assertions,if not arguments, are multiplied on either side."Saturday R&view."Mr. Fred. G. Kitton .... has done his work with remarkable thoroughness,and consequently with real success. It is a subject on which I mayfairly claim to speak, and I may say that all I know, and a great deal I didnot know, about Dickens is to be found in Mr. Kitten's work."" Atlas," inthe World." DICKENSIANA.""If with your Dickens-lore you'd make

Considerable headway.The way to be well-read'a to takeThis book brought out by REDWAY.*Tis dear, exhaustive, and compact.Both well arranged and written;A mine of anecdote and fact.Compiled by P. G. WITTOIS."Punch.GBOEQB EBDWAY, YOEK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. In the press.MR. SWINBURNE'S NEW POEM.A Word for the Navy.ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

Edition limited to 250 copies, each numbered.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVBNT GARDEN.24 MK. kedway's publications.Transactions of the LondonLodge of the TheosophicalSociety :Nos. 1 and 2.Out of print.No. 3.On the Higher Aspect of Theosophio Studies. ByMoHiNi M. Chattekji.No. 4.A Synopsis of Baron Du Prel's " Philosophie der Mystik.''By Bertram Keightlbt.No. 5.A Paper on Reincarnation. By Miss Arundalb. Andother Proceedings.

No. 6.The Theosophical Movement. By A. P. Sinnbtt.No. 7.The Higher Self. By A. P. Sinnett.No. 8.The Theosophical Society and its Work. By MOHINIM. Ohattbeji.No. 9.A Paper on Krishna. By MoHiNi M. Chattehji.No. 10.On Mesmerism. By A. P. Sinnett.No. 11.Theosophy in the Works of Richard Wagner. By W.AsHTON Ellis.Nos. 3 to 11, and each succeeding number as issued, may be had,price One Shilling.



GEORGE RBDWAY, YORK STREET, COVBNT GARDEN.In large crown 8wo. Price 3s. 6d.Sithron, the Star Stricken.Translated [Ala herehet Allah) from an anqjent Arabic Manuscript.BYSALEM BEN UZAIK, of Bassora."This very remarkable book, * Sithron,' ... is a bold, pungent, audacioussatire upon the ancient religious belief of the Jews. ... No one can read thebook without homage to the force, the tenderness, and the never-failing skillof its writer."St. James's Gazette.GEORGE RBDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN,MR. bedway's publications. 25In demy 8vo., choicely printed. Cloth or Japanese parchment.Price 7s. M.Primitive SymbolismAs Illustrated in Phallic WorsMp ; or, Tlie ReproductivePrinciple.BYThe late HODDEB M. WESTBOPP.With an Introduction by Majob-Genbeal Foblong, Author of"Rivers of Life."'

' This work is a midtum in parvo of the growth and spread of Phallioism, aswe commonly call the worship of nature or fertilizing powers. I felt, whensolicited to enlarge and illustrate it on the sudden death of the lamentedauthor, that it would be desecration to touch so complete a compendium byone of the most competent and soundest thinkers who have written on thisworld-wide faith. None knew better or saw more clearly than Mr. Westroppthat in this oldest symbolism and worship lay the foundations of all thegoodly systems we caUBeligions."J. G. R. Foklong." A well-selected repertory of facts illustrating this subject, which shouldbe read by all who are Interested in the study of the growth of religions."Westminster Jieview.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.Printed on Whatman's hand-made paper, at the Chiswick Press.

Price Is.Immodesty in Art.An Expostulation and Suggestion in a Letter to Sir FrederickLeighton.BYTBEDEBICK GEOBGE LEE, LL.D., P.S.A.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.26 MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.Ill sinillSvo., han, homely printed on antique paper, and tastefullybound. Price 2s. 6d.Pope Joan(THE FEMALE POPE),A Historical Study. Translated from the Greek of Emmanuel

Rhoidis, with Preface byCHARLES HASTINGS COLLETTE."When Dr. DoUinger wrote to the efifect that * the subject of Pope Joanhas not yet lost interest,' he said no more than the truth. The probability isthat the topic will always have its attractions for the lovers of the curiositiesof history. Mr. Baring-Gould has declared that ' the whole story of PopeJoan is fabulous, and rests on not a single historical foundation ;' but othersare iiot so firmly convinced in the matter, and at ail times there are thosewho are anxious to investigate singular traditions Eho'idis discusses



the topic with m,uch learning and ingenuity, and Mr. Collette's introductionis full of information."Globe." It is interesting enough, and is accompanied by curious illustrations." Notes and Queries,GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.NOW READY.In crown 8vo., about 350 pages, with UlustrationSj and Historicosymholicalbinding. Price Is. 6d.History of the Rosicrucians.Founded on their own Manifestoes,AND ON Facts and Documents Collected from the Writings ofInitiated Members.BYARTHUR EDWARD WAJTE,Author of" The Mysteries of Magic : a Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Levi."GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR redway's publications. 27Dtmy ISmo., 200 pagies, clofh, uncut. Price 2s.WellerismsFROM" Pickwick " and " Master Humphrey s Clock."

Selected by Charles F. Eideal.EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BTCHARLES KENT,Author of " The Humour and Pathos of Charles Dickens.""Some write well, but he writes Weller.''Epigram on Dickens." Some of the best sayings of the immortal Sam and his sportive parent arecollected here. The book may be taken up for a few minutes with the certaintyof affording amusement, and it can be carried away in the pocket."Literary World.*' It was a very good idea .... the extracts are very humorous . . . .here

nothing is missed."Glasgow Herald.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.64: pp., 8vo., wrapper. Price Is. 6d.THE" Occult World Phenomena,"ANDThe Society for Psychical Research.BYA. P. SINNETT,AUTHOR OF "the OCO0LT WORLD," "ESOTERIC BUDDHISM," ETC.With a Protest by Madame Blavatsky.

" An interesting addition to the fast-expanding literature of Theoeophy."Literary World." AU who are interested in Theosophy should read it."Glasgoa Herald."Mr. Sinnett scores some points against his adversary, and his pamphlet ia tobe followed by some memoirs of Madame Blavatsky, which may contam furtherrefutations. Madame Blavatsky herself appends to the pamphlet a brief andindignant denial of the grave charges which have been made against her. Graphic.GEORGE EBDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.28 MR. redway's publications.



In crown Svo., 2 vols., cloth. Price 6s.The Valley of Sorek.BYGEBTRTTDE M. GEORGE.With a Critical Introduction by Richard Hbene Shepheed." There is in the book a high and pure moral and a distinct conception ofcharacter, . . . The dramatis personce .... are in reality strongly individual,and surprise one with their inconsistencies just as real humanbeings do. . . . There is something powerful in the way in which the readeris made to feel both the reality and the untrustworthiness of his (the hero's)religious fervour, and the character of the atheist, Graham, is not less stronglyand definitely conceived. ... It is a work that shows imagination andmoral insight, and we shall look with much anticipation for another fromthe same hand."Ctmtemiporary Review.GEORGE RBDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.Price Is.Low Down.Wayside Thoughts in Ballad and other Verse,BYTWO TRAMPS." This is a collection of short pieces, most of which can fairly be considered

poetryno slight merit, as verses run just now. Some of the pieces are singularlypathetic and moumfxil ; others, though in serious guise, are permeatedby quaint hum,our ; and all of them are of considerable merit. From thevariety and excellence of the contents of this bundle of poetical effusions, itis likely to attract a great fiumber of readers, and many passages in it areparticularly suitable for recitation."^rm;/ and Navy Gazette, Aug. 14, 1886."But 'Low Down,' as it is called, has the distinction of being multicoloured,each sheet of eight pages consisting of paper of a special hue. Toturn over the leaves is, in fact, to enjoy a sort of kaleidoscopic effect, a glimpseof a literary rainbow. Moreover, to complete the peculiarity of the thing, thevarious poems are printed, apparently at haphazard, in large or small type, asthe case may be. There are those, perhaps, who would take such jokes too

seriously, and bring them solemnly to the bar of taste, there to be as solemnlycondemned. But that is scarcely the right spirit in which to regard them.There ia room in life for the quaint and curious as well as for the neat andelegant."The Globe.GEORGE BEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MK. redway's publications. 29Monthly, 2s.; Yearly Subscription, 20s.The Theosophist:A Magazine of Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature and Occultism.CONDUCTED BY

H. p. BLAVATSKY.Vols. I. to VIIL Now Beady.'' Theosophy has suddenly risen to importance. . . . The movement impliedby the term Theosophy is one that cannot be adequately explained ina few words . . . those interested in the movement, which Is not to beconfounded with spiritualism, will find means of gratifying their curiosityby procuring the back numbers of The Theosophist and a very remarkablebook called 'Isis Unveiled,' by Madame Blavatsky."iiterary World.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.



LITERARY & HISTORICAL EDITION OF FOE'S RAVEN.Crown Svo.y parchment, gilt top, uncut, price Qs.The Raven.EDGAR ALLAN POE.With Historical and Literary Commentary.By John H. Ingram."This is an interesting monograph on Foe's famous poem. First comesthe poet's own account of the genesis of the poem, with a criticism, inwhich Mr. Ingram declines, very properly, we think, to accept the historyas entirely genuine. Much curious information is collected in this essay.Then follows the poem itself, with the various readings, and then its afterhistory; and after these ' Isadore,' by Albert Pike, a composition whichundoubtedly suggested the idea of ' The Raven ' to its author. Several translationsare given, two in French, one in prose, the other in rhymed verse ;besides extracts from others, two in German and one in Latin. But perhapsthe most interesting chapter in the book is that on the ' Fabrications.'" I'haSpectator." There is no more reliable authority on the subject of Edgar Allan Poethan Mr, John H. Ingram . , . the volume is well printed and tastefullybound in spotless vellum, and will prove to be a work of the greatest interestto aU students of English and American literature. "The PuUisher's Circular.GEORGE REDWAY, YOR? STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

30 MR. KEDWAY'S PUBLICJATIONS,Jn crovm 8wo., parchment. Price 3s. &d.The Anatomy of Tobacco;Or, Smoking Methodised, Divided, and Considered after a NewFashion.BYLEOIilNUS SILURIENSIS.'' A very clever and amusing parody of the metaphysical treatises once infashion. Every smoker will be pleased with this volume."Notes and Queries.

'' We have here a most excellent piece of fooling, evidently from a Universitypen. . . . contains some very clever burlesques of classical modes of writing,and a delicious parody of scholastic logic."Literary World." A delightful mock essay on the exoteric philosophy of the pipe and thepipe bowl . . remindingonealtemately of 'Melancholy 'Burton and Hen-Teufelsdroch, and implying vast reading and out-of-the-way culture on thepart of the author." Bookseller,GEORGE KEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.[In the Press.]Posthumous Humanity:

A STUDT OF PHANTOMS.ADOLPHE D'ASSIER,MEMBER OF THE BOEDBAUX ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BTHENKY S. OLCOTT,President of the Theosophical Society.Only authorized translation.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. REDway's PUBLICATIONS. .31EBEIEZER JOIES'S POEMS.



In post 8«o., cloth, old style. Price 5s.Studies of Sensation and Event.Poems by Ebenezer Jones.Edited, Prefaced, and Annotated by Richard Heene Shepherd.With Memorial Notices of the Author by Sumner Jonesand W. J. Linton.A new Edition. With Photographic Portrait of the Poet." This remarkable poet affords nearly the most striking^ instance of neglectedgenius in our modem school of poetry. His poems are full of vividdisorderly power."D. G. Eossetti.GEORGE BBDWAT, YOEK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.In demy &V0., elegantly printed on DtUch hand-made paper, andbound in parchment-paper cover. Price Is.The Scope and Charm of AntiquarianStudy.BYJOHN BATTY, P.R.Hist.S.,Member of the Yorkshire Aroh-eologioal and TopogsapioalAssociation." It forms a useful and entertaining guide to a beginner in historicalresearches."Notes and Queries." The author has laid it before the public in a most inviting, intelligent,

and intelligible form, and offers every incentive to the study in every department,including Ancient Records, Manorial Court-Rolls, Heraldry, PaintedGlass, Mural Paintings, Pottery, Church Bells, Numismatics, Folk-Lore, etc.,to each of which the attention of the student is directed. The pamphlet isprinted on a beautiful modem antique paper, appropriate to the subject ofthe work."Brighton Bxaminer." Mr. Batty, who is one of those folks Mr. Dobson styles 'gleaners aftertime,' has clearly and concisely summed up, in the space of a few pages, allthe various objects which may legitimately be considered to come within thescope of antiquarian sbxij."Academy.

GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.An edition de luxe, in demy ISmo. Price Is.Confessions of an English HachishEater.*' There is a sort of bizarre attraction in this fantastic little book, with itsweird, unhealthy imaginations."WhiuTiall Review." Imagination or some other faculty plays marvellous freaks in this littlebook."Lloyd's Weekly.

" A weird little book. . . . The author seems to have been delighted withhis dreams, and .... carefully explains how hachish may be made fromthe resin of the common hemp plant."Daily Chronicle."To be added to the literature of what is, after all, a very undesirablesubject. Weak minds may generate a morbid curiosity if stimulated in thisdirection."Bradford Observer.



" The stories told by our author have a decidedly Oriental flavour, and wewould not be surprised if some foolish individuals did endeavour to procuresome of the drug, with a view to experience the sensation described by thewriter of this clever brochure."Edinburgh Courant.GBOHGB RBDWAT, YORK STREET, OOVENT GARDEN.NEWLT-DISCOYEEED POEM BY CIIELES LAMB.Beauty and the Beast ;OB,A Rough Outside with a Gentle Heart.By Charles Lamb. Now first reprinted from the OriginalEdition of 1811, with Preface and NotesBYKICHARD HSBNE SHEPHERD.Ovly 100 Copies printed.Foap. 8vo., printed on handsome paper at the Chiswick Press,and bound in parchment by Burn to form a companion volumeto "Tamerlane." Price IDs. 6d.GEORGE RBDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.ME. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS. 33THE OXLY PUBLISHED BIO&BAFHY OF JOHN LEECH.An idition de luxe in demy ISmo. Price Is.John Leech,

ARTIST AND HUMOURIST.A BiosEAPHiOAL Sketch.BTPRED. G. KITTON.New Edition, revised." In the absence of a fuller biography we cordially welcome Mr. Kitton'sinteresting little sketch."Notes and Quemes." The multitudinous admirers of the famous artist will find this touchingmonograph well worth careful reading and preservation." i>aiiy Chronicle." The very model of what such a memoir should be."

Graphic.GEORGE EBDWAY, TOEK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.Fourth Edition, newly revised, in demy 8vo., with Illustrative Plates.Price Is.The Handbook of Palmistry^.BYROSA BAUGHAN,AUTHOE OF "indications OF CHAEAOTBB IN HANDWEITING."" It possesses a certain literary interest, for Miss Bau^han shows the connectionbetween palmistry and the doctrines of the Kabbala."

Graphic." Miss Rosa Baughan, for many years known as one of the most expertproficients in this branch of science, has as much claim to consideration asany writer on the subject."Sussex Daily Nevis."People who wish to believe in palmistry, or the science of reading characterfrom the marks of the hand," says the haily News, in an article devotedto the discussion of this topic, "will be interested in a handbook of thesubject by Miss Baughan, published by Mr. Redway."



GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.34 MR. REDWAY'S PTJBLICATIONS.Fourth Edition. With Engraved Frontispiece. In crown Bvo., 5«.Cosmo de' Medici:An Historical Tragedy. And other Poems.BTBICHARD HEXGIST HOBNE,Author of " Orion."" This tragedy is the work of a poet and not of a playwright. Many of thescenes abound in vigonr and tragic intensity. If the structure of the dramachallenges comparison with the masterpieces of the Elizabethan stage, it is atleast not unworthy of the models which have inspired it."Times.GBOEGB EEDWAY, YOBK STREET, COVBNT GAEDEN.Edition limited to 500 copies, handsomely/ printed on antique paperand tastefully hound. Price Is. 6d.THE ASTROLOGER'S GUIDE.Anima Astrologiae ;OB,A Guide for Astrologers.Being the One Hundred and Forty-six Considerations of theAstrologer, Guido Bonattjs, translated from the Latin by HenryColey, together with the choicest Aphorisms of the Seven Segments

of Jeeom Cardan, of Milan, edited by William Lilly(1675) ; now first republished from the original edition withNotes and PrefaceBYW. C. ELDON SERJEANT.'' Mr. Serjeant deserves the thanks of all who are interested in astrology forrescuing this important work from oblivion Tlie growing interest inmystical science will lead to a revival of astrological study, and advancedstudents will find this book an indispensable addition to their libraries. Thebook is well got up and printed."T7ieosoj)7iisi.GEOEGE EEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVBNT GARDENMR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS. 35

Fifth Thousand.An edition de luxe, in demy 18mo.Sound infancy doth, uncut edges. Price 2s.Tobacco Talk and Smokers' Gossip.An Amusing Miscellany of Fact and Anecdote relating to" The Great Plant " in all its Forms and Uses, includinga Selection from Nicotian Literature." One of the beat books of gossip we have met for some time. ... It isliterally crammed full from beginning to end of its 148 pages with well-selectedanecdotes, poems, and excerpts from tobacco literature and history."Graphic."The smoker should be grateful to the compilers of this pretty little

volume. ... No smoker should be without it, and anti-tobacconists haveonly to turn over Its leaves to be converted."PnW MaU Gazette."Something to please smokers ; and non-smokers may be interested intracing the effect of tobaccothe fatal, fragrant herbon our Uteratine."Literary World.GEORGE BEDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.The Handbook of Physiognomy.BYBOSA BAUaHAIf.



Demy Svo. , wra;pper, price Is." The merit of her book consists in the admirable clearness of her descriptionsof faces. So vivid is the impression produced by them that she is ableto dispense with illustrations, the reader using the faces of his acquaintancesfor that purpose. The classification, too. Is good, although the astrologicalheadings may bo regarded by the profane as fanciful. Physiognomy may nowbe scientifically studied by means of composite photography."Pall MallGazette.GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.36 MR. REDWAY'S publications.NEW NOVEL BY MR. A. P. SINNETT,Author of " Karma," etc.In 2 vols., crown 8vo,, cloth.Published at 21s. Now offered at 10s. &d.United .BYA. P. SINNETT." Mr. Sinnett's previous works on * Esoteric Buddhism ' and 'Tbo OccultWorld' in some way prepare the reader for the marvellous psychologicalphenomena with which 'the present volumes abound, and which cannot fallto have an irresistible charm for all those who love the byways of speculation."

Literary World.'' There is, nevertheless, a weird attractiveness about ' United ' which makeseven the non-believer in theosophy loth to puti down the book when oncehe has taken it up ; while to the lovers of occult pb,enom,ena it will proveirresistibly fascinating."Literary World."Literary ability is evident throughout the book."St. James's Gazette." Mr. Sinnett has produced a novel, turning on psychic, mesmeric, andmagnetic causes operating on English men and women of ordinary and very

extraordinary types, and he has succeeded in making it of special interest forspirituaUstSj and readable by common people."The Lady." It is even doubtful whether Mr. Sinnett will win one genuine convert tooccultism by ' United '; but those who are occult already will take his powerfulromance to their hearts ; will pour out libations before him, and loudlycry * 'Well done !' "Court aiid Society Review.'' Over this thrice-silly subject the author has expended some most excellentwriting, ideas that equal in breadth and strength some of those of our best

writers, pure English, and undeniable grammar."T/ie Whitehall Revimo."It would be dif&cultto point to a more.eamest writer than Mr. Sinnett, andall he says invariably carries force and weight. .... The book has a power ofits own which compels respect, and Mr. Sinnett is so much the same as healways is, so eager and sincere in expounding the mysteries in which he is afervent believei', that one seems to be inspired with some of the curiousfascination of his teaching. .... In spite of all the Improbable and weirdfancies which have to be accepted by the student of the occiilt religion, it



should always be borne in mind that its tenets are eminently elevating andbeautiful ; that it appeals to the best side of our nature But all Isvague confusion to the uninitiated, and it has to be reluctantly admitted thatif attracted one is sadly dazzled by the perusal of such a couple of volumes as* United.' The purpose of * United ' is a good one ; it is written with markedability, and the story is pleasantly related in the happy vein of a characteristicauthor."Morning Advertiser^ Dec. 31st, 18S6.GEORGE REDWAT, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.MK. redway's publications. 37Small ito,, with Illustrations, bound in vegetable parchment.Price lOs. 6d.TheVirgin of the World.BY HERMES MEEGUEIUS TRISMEGISTDS.A Treatise on INITIATIONS, or ASCLEPIOS ; the DEFINITIONSof ASCLEPIOS ; FRAGMENTS of theWRITINGS of HERMES.TKANSLATED AND EDITED BY THE AUTHORS OF " THE PEEPEOTWAT."With an Introduction to " The Virgin of the World " by A. K.,and an Essay on " The Hermetic Boolcs " by E. M.

" It will be a most interesting study for every occultist to compare thedoctrines of the ancient Hermetic philosophy with the teaching of theVedantlc and Buddhist systems ofrehgious thought. The famous books ofHermes seem to occupy, with reference to the Egyptian religion, the sameposition Which the Upanishads occupy in Aryan religious literature."The Theoaophist, November, 1885.GEORGE EEDWAT, TOBK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.The Path :A Magazine devoted to- the Brotherhood of Humanity, Theosophyin America, and the Study of Occult Science, Philosophy,and Aryan Literature.EDITED BY

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.(Published under the auspices of The Aryan Theosophlcal Societyof New York.)Monthly. Subscription, 10s. per annum.GEORGE REDWAT, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.38 MR. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS.In crown 8i;o., cloth, price 10». 6d.Myths, Scenes, and Worthiesof Somerset.BYlyiBS. E. BOGEB.Twenty-four pages, wrapper, price Zd.An Omitted Incident

in the "Great Naval War of 1887."BYLIETJT.-COLONEL W. HOPE, V.C.Grown 8wo,, picture cover, Is,Dreams of the Derby :TOGSTHEE WITH MANYCurious Tips and Omens for other Races,Nozv first collected and arrangedfor the printer.BYFORTUNATXTS.



Fcap. 8w., cloth.The Love Affair:A DRAMA OF AN ANCIENT DEMOCEACY,In Five Acts, with Six Tableaux.BYW. W. ALDRED,AUTHOB OP "a lost CAUSE."ME. REDWAY'S PUBLICATIONS. 39Small crown ivo., cloth, 5s.Ambulance Sermons :BEING A SBEIBS OFPopular Essays on Medical and Allied Subjects^BTJ. A. AUSTIN, M.D.Demy 8uo., cloth.The Life, Times, and Writings ofThomas Cranmer, D.D.,THE FIRST EEFOSMINS ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.BTCHARLES HASTINGS COLLETTE.To he published shortly, handsomely printed and bound in one vol.Small demy 8wo price 10s. 6d.The Kabala Denudata

(Translated into English),CONTAININO THE FOLLOWING BOOKS OF THE ZOHAE :1. Tie Book of Concealed Mystery^2. The Greater Holy Assembly.3. The Lesser Holy Assembly.Collated with the original Hebrew and the Latin text of Knorrde Kosenroth's " Kabala Denudata,"BYS. lilDDELL M. MATHERS.GEORGE EEDWAY, YOEK STEEET, COVENT GAEDEN.INDEXPAGE

Ambulance Sermons 39Astrology ITieologized ^ . ..7Anatomy of Tobacco 30Antiquarian Stvdy 31Astrologer's Chdde 34Arch(eolqgy and Occultism . . ..18Adams, F. W. L 30Adams, Mrs. Davenport . . .11

Andrews, W 9Arundale, Miss 24Baughan, Boaa 33, 36Elavatsky, H. P 13, 27Burma 20Batty, John 31Boger, Mrs. E 38Bonatus .. .. .. ..34Browne, HablOt K 21Betts.B.W U



Beauty and the Beast 32Blood Covenant 13Cosmo de' Medici 34Curate's Wife, The ^26Confksbion^ of an English HachishEater ..32Cruikshank, George 21Church, "W. E.Cardan . . , . . .Cook, Miss Louisa S.CoUette^ C. H. ..Chatterji, Mohini M.Clarke, H. W. ..Dickens ..DickensianaDreams of the DerbyDrummond

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