And it is here the proper place to observe, that, in undertaking to treat of the phenomena in question, I do not propose to consider them as supernatural; on the contrary, I am persuaded that the time will come, when they will be reduced strictly within the bounds of science. It was the tendency of the last age to reject and deny everything they did not understand; I hope it is the growing tendency of the present one to examine what we do not understand. Equally disposed with our predecessors of the eighteenth century to reject the supernatural, and to believe the order of nature inviolable, we are disposed to extend the bounds of nature and science, till they comprise within their limits all the phenomena, ordinary and extraordinary, by which we are surrounded. Scarcely a month passes that we do not hear of some new and important discovery in science. It is a domain in which nothing is stable, and every year overthrows some of the hasty and premature theories of the preceding ones; and this will continue to be the case as long as scientific men occupy themselves each with his own subject, without studying the great and primal truths—what the French call les vérités mères—which link the whole together. Meantime, there is a continual unsettling. Truth, if it do not emanate from an acknowledged authority, is generally rejected; and error, if it do, is as often accepted; while, whoever disputes the received theory, whatever it be—we mean especially that adopted by the professors of colleges—does it at his peril. But there is a day yet brooding in the bosom of time, when the sciences will be no longer isolated; when we shall no longer deny, but be able to account for, phenomena apparently prodigious, or have the modesty, if we can not explain them, to admit that the difficulty arises solely from our own incapacity. The system of centralization in statistics seems to be of doubtful advantage; but a greater degree of centralization appears to be very much needed in the domain of science. Some improvement in this respect might do wonders, particularly if reinforced with a slight infusion of patience and humility into the minds of scientific men; together with the recollection that facts and phenomena, which do not depend on our will, must be waited for—that we must be at their command, for they will not be at ours.
But to return once more to our own subject. If we do believe that a future life awaits us, there can be nothing more natural than the desire to obtain some information as to what manner of life that is to be for which any one of us may, before this time to-morrow, have exchanged his present mode of being. That there does not exist a greater interest with regard to this question in the mind of man, arises partly from the vague, intangible kind of belief he entertains of the fact; partly from his absorption in worldly affairs, and the hard and indigestible food upon which his clerical shepherds pasture him—for, under dogmatic theology, religion seems to have withered away to the mere husk of spiritualism; and partly, also, from the apparent impossibility of pursuing the inquiry to any purpose. As I said before, observation and experience can alone guide us in such an inquiry; for, though most people have a more or less intuitive sense of their own immortality, intuition is silent as to the mode of it; and the question I am anxious here to discuss with my readers is, whether we have any facts to observe, or any experience from which, on this most interesting of all subjects, a conclusion may be drawn. Great as the difficulty is of producing evidence, it will, I think, be pretty generally admitted that, although each individual case, as it stands alone, may be comparatively valueless, the amount of recurrent cases forms a body of evidence that, on any other subject, would scarcely be rejected; and since, if the facts are accepted, they imperatively demand an explanation—for, assuredly, the present theory of spectral illusions can not comprise them—our inquiry, let it terminate in whatever conclusion it may, can not be useless or uninteresting. Various views of the phenomena in question may be taken; and although I shall offer my own opinions and the theories and opinions of others, I insist upon none. I do not write to dogmatise, but to suggest reflection and inquiry. The books of Dr. Ferriar, Dr. Hibbert, and Dr. Thatcher, the American, are all written to support one exclusive theory; and they only give such cases as serve to sustain it. They maintain that the whole phenomena are referrible to nervous or sanguineous derangement, and are mere subjective illusions; and whatever instance can not be covered by this theory, they reject as false, or treat as a case of extraordinary coincidence. In short, they arrange the facts to their theory, not their theory to the facts. Their books can not, therefore, claim to be considered as anything more than essays on a special disease; they have no pretence whatever to the character of investigations. The question, consequently, remains as much an open one as before they treated it; while we have the advantage of their experience and information, with regard to the peculiar malady that forms the subject of their works. On that subject it is not my intention to enter; it is a strictly medical one, and every information may be obtained respecting it in the above-named treatises, and others emanating from the faculty.
The subjects I do intend to treat of are the various kinds of prophetic dreams, presentiments, second-sight, and apparitions; and, in short, all that class of phenomena which appears to throw some light on our physical nature, and on the probable state of the soul after death. In this discussion, I shall make free use of my German authorities, Doctors Kerner, Stilling, Werner, Eschenmayer, Ennemoser, Passavent, Schubert, Von Meyer, &c., &c.; and I here make a general acknowledgment to that effect, because it would embarrass my book too much to be constantly giving names and references, although, when I quote their words literally, I shall make a point of doing so; and because, also, that, as I have been both thinking and reading much on these subjects for a considerable time past, I am, in fact, no longer in a condition to appropriate, either to them or to myself, each his own. This, however, is a matter of very little consequence, as I am not desirous of claiming any idea as mine that can be found elsewhere. It is enough for me, if I succeed in making a tolerably clear exposition of the subject, and can induce other people to reflect upon it.
CHAPTER II.
THE DWELLER IN THE TEMPLE.
It is almost needless to observe, that the Scriptures repeatedly speak of man as a tripartite being, consisting of spirit, soul, and body: and that, according to St. Paul, we have two bodies—a natural body and a spiritual body; the former being designed as our means of communication with the external world—an instrument to be used and controlled by our nobler parts. It is this view of it, carried to a fanaticism, which has led to the various and extraordinary mortifications recorded of ascetics. As is remarked by the Rev. Hare Townshend, in a late edition of his book on mesmerism, in this fleshly body consists our organic life; in the body which we are to retain through eternity, consists our fundamental life. May not the first, he says, “be a temporary development of the last, just as leaves, flowers, and fruits, are