Legend
< Clairvoyance (continued from page 10-98) >
this electric influence (the manner of which our correspondent will not at present disclose) the mind can be directed to any spot or scene, and is susceptible of the same impressions and conditions as would be experienced in the person of the patient himself. Scenes thus visited, and impressions thus received, arc not only quite accurate, but the patient, when released from the electric influence, retains a perfect remembrance of information so acquired.
Our correspondent informs us that his patient, on recovering from a prolonged state of coma, insisted most strenuously in the assurance that he had visited a scene and noted every detail of an event many miles away. He appeared to be so thoroughly convinced this was no mental delusion that careful inquiries were instituted, which led to a surprising corroboration of all the circumstantial minutiae. Utterly astonished at such an unexpected manifestation of mental faculties beyond the limits of any abnormal power of the ordinary senses, our correspondent was induced to repeat the experiment, selecting another patient unacquainted with the marvellous occurrence related. On returning to sensibility this patient also described events he had mentally witnessed, all which proved to be accurate in every particular. In order, however, to place the phenomena beyond doubt, our correspondent subjected himself to the electric treatment with the same result, and, after repeated personal tests, has arrived at the conviction that the body can be so acted on by electricity as to develop qualities and activity of mind marvellous in their range, and vast in their importance.
Is there any connection between such phenomena and the recognised facts classed under electrobiology? Are we really approaching the solution of a great problem of life, which will reveal mysterious forces in nature hitherto unknown?
That great philosopher Humboldt tells us that “a presumptuous scepticism which rejects facts without examination of their truth is, in some respects, more injurious than unquestioning credulity,” and we know that “there are more things in heaven and earth than arc dreamt of in our philosophy.”
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in an essay on miracles, has related many instances of miraculous clairvoyance. He tells us that Sir Walter C. Trevelyan once received a letter from a lady, in which she mentioned the loss of a gold watch. Sir Walter sent the letter to a doctor who had a patient professing this strange power. The patient immediately described the watch accurately, depicted the furniture of the house, named the thief, and declared that she could recognise the culprit’s handwriting. Her statements were doubted, for they fixed the theft on a favourite servant; but subsequent events proved every word to be true.
Our correspondent, whose eminent position in the medical and scientific world entitles his opinion to great respect, promises to make known the exact method employed to produce this extraordinary phenomenon, which he considers is susceptible of very simple scientific explanation, and which he believes it is in the power of every person to develop in himself.
Should the facts stated by our correspondent be ultimately substantiated by further evidence, it is almost impossible to measure the extent to which such a discovery must revolutionise all modern thought and action. The contingencies of temporarily quitting at will our encumbrances of the flesh, and defying time, space, and all the immutable laws of the material universe, require a desperate flight of imagination to conceive.
We shall find ourselves face to face with a new era of philosophical inquiry. A light will fall athwart the dark untrodden paths where lie the mysteries of conscious life, and we shall break from our finite bonds to stand in the presence of the infinite.
Correspondence
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Spiritualism in the Provinces
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Editor's notes
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 376, November 7, 1879, p. 225