Urania Part 9

"Look," said he; "do you not see a woman going down the street, holding a child in her arms, and should you not say that it is Latta, our friend Schmidt's wife?"

"I cannot say; I do not see her very distinctly," replied the workman.

Fritz said no more; but the different circ.u.mstances of this real or imaginary apparition fixed themselves firmly in his mind, especially the day and hour. Some time after that, Schmidt, his compatriot, arrived, carrying a little girl in his arms. Latta's visit then came into Fritz's mind; and before Schmidt had spoken a word he said to him,--

"I know all, my poor friend: your wife died during the pa.s.sage. Before she died, she came and showed me her little girl, that I might take care of her. Here is the date and hour."

It was really the day and hour noted by Schmidt on board the boat.

In his work on the Phenomena of Magic, published in 1864, Gougenot des Mousseaux reports the following incident, which he certifies as absolutely authentic:-

Sir Robert Bruce, belonging to the ill.u.s.trious Scotch family of that name, was mate of a vessel. One day, when sailing near Newfoundland, and while busy with his calculations, he thought he saw the captain seated at his desk, but looked at him attentively, and noticed that it was a stranger, whose cold, fixed look surprised him. He went on deck; the captain noticed his surprise, and asked him what it meant.

"Who is at your desk?" asked Bruce.

"No one."

"Yes, there is some one there. Is it a stranger; and how did he come there?"

"You are either dreaming or joking."

"Not at all. Come down and see for yourself."

They go down to the cabin, but there is no one at the desk. The s.h.i.+p is thoroughly searched, but no stranger is found.

"And yet the man I saw was writing on your slate; the writing must be there still," said he to the captain.

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They looked at the slate; it bore these words: "Steer to the northwest."

"This must be your writing, or some one's else on board the s.h.i.+p."

"No; I did not write it."

Every one was told to write the same sentence, and no handwriting resembled that on the slate. "Very well," said the captain; "we will obey these instructions and steer the s.h.i.+p to the northwest; the wind is right, and will admit of our trying the experiment."

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Three hours later, the watch perceived an iceberg, and near it a vessel from Quebec, headed for Liverpool, dismantled and covered with people.

They were brought off by boats of Bruce's vessel.

As one of the men was climbing up the side of the rescuing vessel, Bruce started, and drew back in great agitation. He recognized the stranger whom he had seen tracing the words on the slate. He reported the strange incident to the captain.

"Will you write 'Steer to the northwest' on this slate?" asked the captain, turning to the new-comer, and offering the side which bore no writing.

The stranger complied with his request, and wrote the desired words.

"Will you acknowledge that to be your ordinary handwriting?" asked the captain, struck with the similarity of the two sentences.

"Of course; how can you doubt it? You saw me write it yourself."

As a reply, the captain turned the slate over, and the stranger was amazed to see his own writing on both sides.

"Did you dream of writing on that slate?" said the Quebec captain to the man who had just been writing.

"No,--at least I have no remembrance of doing so."

"What was that pa.s.senger doing at noon?" asks the rescuer of his brother captain.

"The pa.s.senger was very tired, and had fallen into a sound sleep, as near as I remember, a little before twelve o'clock. An hour or more later he awoke, and said to me, 'Captain, we shall be saved this very day;' adding, 'I dreamed that I was on board a vessel coming to our relief.' He described the s.h.i.+p and its rigging, and we were very much surprised, when you headed for us, to recognize the exactness of the description."

After a while the pa.s.senger said, "It is very strange, but somehow this s.h.i.+p seems quite familiar to me, and yet I was never on it before."

Baron Dupotet, in his article on "Animal Magnetism," reports the following fact, published in 1814 by the celebrated Jung Stiling, who had it from the observer himself, Baron de Sulza, chamberlain to the king of Sweden.

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He was going home one night in summer about twelve o'clock, an hour at which it is still light enough in Sweden to read the finest print. "As I reached the family estate," he said, "my father came to the entrance of the park to meet me; he was dressed as usual, and carried a cane which my brother had carved. I greeted him, and we talked together for a long time. We went into the house and up to his bedroom door together.

On going into the chamber I saw my father there, undressed, when the apparition instantly faded away. A little while afterwards my father awoke and looked at me inquiringly. 'My dear Edward,' said he, 'G.o.d be praised that I see you safe and well! I was greatly distressed about you in my dream. I thought that you had fallen into the water and were in danger of drowning.' Now on that very day," added the baron, "I had been on the river with some friends crab-fis.h.i.+ng, and had come very near being dragged down by the current. I told my father that I had seen his double at the park gate, and that we had had a long talk together. He told me that he had often had similar experiences."

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In these various stories are seen spontaneous apparitions and appearances which were provoked, so to speak, by the will. Can mental suggestion go so far as that? The authors of the book mentioned above, "Phantasms of the Living," reply affirmatively by seven well-attested examples, of which I will present one to the attention of my readers.

Here it is:--

"The Rev. C. G.o.dfrey, living in Eastbourne, in the county of Suss.e.x, having read an account of a premeditated apparition, was so struck thereby that he determined to attempt it himself. On the fifteenth of November, 1886, about eleven o'clock, he concentrated the whole power of his imagination and all the strength of will of which he was master, upon the idea of appearing to a lady, a friend of his, by standing at the foot of her bed. The effort lasted about eight minutes, after which Mr.

G.o.dfrey felt very much fatigued, and went to sleep. The next day the lady who had been the subject of the experiment came of her own accord to tell Mr. G.o.dfrey of what she had seen. When asked to make a memorandum, she did so in these words: 'Last night I awoke with a start, feeling that some one had entered my room. I heard, too, a noise which I supposed to be the birds in the ivy outside my window. I then experienced a sort of uneasiness, a vague desire to leave my room and go down to the lower floor.

This feeling became so strong that at last I rose, intending to take something to quiet myself. Going up to my room again, I met Mr. G.o.dfrey standing under the great window which lights the staircase. He was dressed as I am accustomed to seeing him, and I noticed that he was looking at something very intently. He stood there motionless while I held up the lamp and looked at him in astonishment. This lasted three or four seconds, after which I continued my way upstairs. He disappeared. I was not frightened, but very much agitated, and could not go to sleep again.' Mr. G.o.dfrey thought, very sensibly, that the experiment which he had tried would have much more importance if it were repeated. A second attempt failed, but the third was successful.

Of course the lady upon whom he operated was not apprised of his intention any more than on the first occasion. 'Last night,' she writes, 'Tuesday, December 7th, I retired to bed at half-past ten, and was soon asleep. Suddenly I heard a voice, which said, "Wake up," and I felt a hand touch the left side of my head.

[Mr. G.o.dfrey's intention this time was to make her feel his presence by voice and touch.] In an instant I was thoroughly awake. There was a curious noise, like a jews-harp, in the chamber. I felt, too, a cold breath, which seemed to envelop me.

My heart began to beat violently, and I distinctly saw a figure leaning over me. The only light in the room came from a lamp outside, making a long stream of light over the toilet-table; this was darkened by the figure. I turned quickly, and it seemed as if the hand fell from my head to the pillow beside me. The figure was bent over me, and I felt it rest against the edge of the bed. I saw the arm on the pillow all the time. I could see the profile of the face but dimly, as if through a haze; it might have been about a minute and a half. The figure had slightly pushed back the curtain, but I noticed this morning that it hung as usual. There is no doubt that the figure was Mr.

G.o.dfrey's. I recognized him by the turn of the shoulders and the shape of the face. All the time that he was there, a current of cold air blew through the room as if the two windows had been open.'"

These are _facts_!

In the present condition of our knowledge it would be absolutely foolhardy to seek to explain them; our psychology is not yet far enough advanced. There are a great many things which we are forced to admit, without the power to explain them in any way. To deny what we cannot explain would be pure folly. Could any one explain the world's system a thousand years ago? Even now, can we explain attraction? But science moves, and its progress will be endless.

Do we know the whole extent of the human faculties? The thinker cannot for a moment doubt that there may be forces in Nature still unknown to us,--as, for example, electricity was less than a century ago,--or that there may be other beings in the universe, endowed with other senses and faculties. But is terrestrial man entirely known to us? It does not seem so. There are facts whose reality we are forced to admit, with no power whatever to explain them.

Swedenborg's life offers three of this nature. Let us put aside for a moment planetary and sidereal visions, which appear more subjective than objective. We will remark, by the way, that Swedenborg was a savant of the first order in geology, mineralogy, and crystallography; a member of the Academy of Sciences of Upsala, of Stockholm, and of St. Petersburg; and we will content ourselves with recalling the three following facts.

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The 19th of July, 1759, this philosopher landed at Gothenburg on his return from a journey to England, and went to dine with a certain William Costel, where there was quite a large company. At six o' clock in the evening Swedenborg, who had gone out, came back to the drawing-room pale and anxious; he said a great fire had at that moment broken out at Stockholm at the Sudermoln, in the street in which he lived, and that the fire was spreading rapidly towards his house. He went out again and returned, lamenting that a friend's house had just been reduced to ashes, and that his own was in the greatest danger. At eight o'clock, after being out again, he said joyfully, "Thanks be to G.o.d, the fire has been extinguished at the third house from mine!"

The news of this spread throughout the city, which was all the more excited because the governor gave it attention, and many people were anxious for their property or friends. Two days afterwards the royal messenger brought a report of the fire from Stockholm; there was no disagreement between his account and that which Swedenborg had given.

The fire had been extinguished at eight o'clock.