Apparitions; Dreams; Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Parapsychology -- Early works to 1900
ASTR.—Even those displayed before our learned bodies. Madame Celini
Sauvage, you remember, in the presence of the committee, in Paris, was
placed in somnambulism. Even while insensible to stimuli she formed, it
is recorded, a correct judgment of the diseases of persons around her,
especially in the person of M. Marc, one of the committee; and in that
of a young lady, on whom M. Dupuytren had operated for dropsy, and had
tried the effects of the milk of a goat which had been anointed with
mercury. Madame, unconscious of this, _prescribed the very same remedy_.
You remember the report, Evelyn.
EV. I remember, but believe it not.
CAST. And is it thus with _all_ our legends? have you no more faith in
your own order? There is the learned physician, Justin Kerner. _You_
have not forgotten, Astrophel, his beautiful story of that most
accomplished somnambule, the Prophetess of Prevorst, who seemed, as she
said, to draw from the air a living principle, and whose _very
vitality_, it was believed, was preserved by the magnetic influence. The
body of this ethereal creature enfolded her spirit like a veil of
film,—she was a very flower of light living on sun-beams. Her senses
were lighted up by the minutest atom. A web of gossamer stung her waxen
skin like a nettle. At the pale green light of a glow-worm, she fell
into ecstatic sleep; and then, (as to my own Tasso,) came to her
spectral visitants, with whom she conversed, and whose colourless forms
were visible even to her earthly companions. This fair creature had, as
the story goes, been some time dead, when her mother made passes over
her cold face and lips; and lo! her eyes opened, and a tremor was on her
lip. Were I Astrophel, methinks I would make a pilgrimage to Lowenstein,
where her body lies. And now, Evelyn, if you will, reprove me for my
wildness, but confess there must be a sort of truth in legends so
circumstantial as these.
EV. A fair question, dearest Castaly. Yes, it is the crude or false
interpretation of that _sort of truth_, a transient glimpse it may be,
of some embryo principle, that leads to popular error. A baseless theory
is raised on an _isolated_ fact; and infantile science, bursting from
its leading-strings ere it can crawl, topples headlong down the
precipice, and splits on the rock of hypothetical presumption.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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