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THE COUNTERPART APPEARS WHERE

of death. This, doubtless, is a superstition; and, by the aid of the preceding examples, one may rationally conjecture how it originated..

The indications are,―

That during a dream or a trance, partial or complete, the counterpart of a living person may show itself, at a greater or less distance from where that person actually is.

And that, as a general rule, with probable exceptions, this counterpart appears where the thoughts or the affections, strongly excited, may be supposed to be.*

In the case of Mary Goffet the type is very distinct. Hers was that uncontrollable yearning which a mother only knows. "If I cannot sit, I will lie all along upon the horse; for I must go to see my poor babes." So when the thoughts of Mrs. E, dying in London, reverted to her infant, then lying in its coffin in Cambridgeshire. So, again, when the Irish clergyman went to dine with his bishop, leaving his wife sick at home, and she seemed to come forth to meet the returning absentee. To the apprentice, the probable murderer, we cannot ascribe what merits the name of affection. But we can imagine with what terrible vividness his feelings and apprehensions may have dwelt, throughout the protracted Scottish church-service, on the spot where lay the body of his victim and of his unborn child.

Less distinctly marked are some of the other cases, as that of Joseph Wilkins, not specially anxious about his mother; the Indiana bridegroom, Hugh, separated but an hour or two from his bride; the servant-boy, Silas, gone a-fishing; finally, Mademoiselle Sagée, with no

"Examples have come to my knowledge in which sick persons, overcome with an unspeakable longing to see some absent friend, have fallen into a swoon, and during that swoon have appeared to the distant object of their affection."-JUNG STILLING: Theorie der Geisterkunde, 2 100. † Chapter on Dreams,

THE THOUGHTS AND AFFECTIONS ARE.

359 cause for uneasiness more serious than the fear that her pupils might waste their time and get into some mischief or other. In some of these cases, it will be observed, death speedily followed; in others it did not. Joseph Wilkins lived forty-five years after his dream. Hugh survived his wife. Silas is still alive, a prosperous tradesman. The counterpart of Mademoiselle Sagée showed itself at intervals for sixteen years: how much longer we know not. It is evident that a speedy death does not necessarily follow such an apparition.

The reasons why it is in many cases the precursor of death probably are, that during a fatal illness the patient frequently falls into a state of trance, favorable, in all probability, to such a phenomenon; then, again, that, in anticipation of death, the thoughts recur with peculiar liveliness to absent objects of affection; and, finally, perhaps, that the spiritual principle, soon to be wholly freed from its fleshly incumbrance, may, as it approaches the moment of entire release, the more readily be able to stray off for a time, determined in its course by the guiding influence of sympathy.

But it is evident that the vicinity of death is not needed to confer this power, and that anxiety, arising from other cause than the anticipation of approaching dissolution, may induce it. A tempest aroused the fears of the mother for her son on the Bremen packet. She appeared to him in his cabin. Yet both mother and son are alive at this day.

In this, as in a hundred other cases, the dispassionate examination of an actual phenomenon, and of its probable cause, is the most effectual cure for superstitious excitement and vulgar fears.

CHAPTER III.

APPARITIONS OF THE DEAD.

"Dare I say

No spirit ever brake the band

That stays him from the native land

Where first he walked when clasped in clay?

"No visual shade of rome one lost,

But he, the spirit himself, may come,

Where all the nerve of sense is dumb,

Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost."-TENNYSON.

IF, as St. Paul teaches and Swedenborgians believe, there go to make up the personality of man a natural body and a spiritual body;* if these co-exist, while earthly life endures, in each one of us; if, as the apostle further intimatest and the preceding chapter seems to prove, the spiritual body--a counterpart, it would seem, to human sight, of the natural body-may, during life, occasionally detach itself, to some extent or other and for a time, from the material flesh and blood which for a few years it pervades in intimate association; and if death be but the issuing forth of the spiritual body from its temporary associate; then, at the moment of its exit, it is that spiritual body which through life may have been occasionally and partially detached from the natural body, and which at last is thus entirely and forever

*1 Corinthians xv. 44. The phrase is not, "a natural body and a spirit;" it is expressly said, "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."

† 2 Corinthians xii. 2.

THEORY AND FACT.

361

divorced from it, that passes into another state of exist

ence.

But if that spiritual body, while still connected with its earthly associate, could, under certain circumstances, appear, distinct and distant from the natural body, and perceptible to human vision, if not to human touch, what strong presumption is there against the supposition that after its final emancipation the same spiritual body may still at times show itself to man ?*

If there be no such adverse presumption, then we ought to approach the subject, not as embodying some wild vagary barely worth noticing, just within the verge of possibility, but as a respectable and eminently serious question, worthy of our gravest attention, and as to which, let us decide as we will, there is much to be said on both sides before reaching a decision.

Nor is an apparition of the dead a phenomenon (or alleged phenomenon) of which the reality can be settled, affirmatively or negatively, by speculation in the closet. A hundred theorists, thus speculating, may decide, to their own satisfaction, that it ought not to be, or that it cannot be. But if sufficient observation show that it is, it only follows that these closet theorists had no correct conception of the proper or the possible.

The Rev. George Strahan, D.D., in his preface to his collection of the "Prayers and Meditations" of his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson, (London, 1785,) has the following passage:—

"The improbability arising from rarity of occurrence or singularity of nature amounts to no disproof: it is a presumptive reason of doubt too feeble to withstand the conviction induced by positive credible testimony, such as that which has been borne to shadowy reappearances of the dead."

"One true report that a spirit has been seen may give occasion and birth to many false reports of similar incidents; but universal and unconcerted testimony to a supernatural casualty cannot always be untrue. An appearing spirit is a prodigy too singular in its nature to become a subject of general invention." . . . "To a mind not influenced by popular prejudice, it will be scarcely possible to believe that apparitions would have been vouched for in all countries had they never been seen in any."

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APPARITIONS AND AEROLITES.

It was in the field, not in the closet, that the question was decided whether aerolites occasionally fall upon our earth. Chladni and Howard might have theorized over their desks for a lifetime: they would have left the question open still. But they went out into the world. They themselves saw no aerolite fall. But they inspected meteoric masses said to have fallen. They made out lists of these. They examined witnesses; they collected evidence. And finally they convinced the world of scientific skeptics that the legends in regard to falling stones which have been current in all ages, ever since the days of Socrates, were something more than fabulous tales.

I propose, in prosecuting a more important inquiry, to follow the example of Chladni and Howard, with what success time and the event must determine.

Innumerable examples may be met with of persons who allege that they have seen apparitions,—among these, men eminent for intelligence and uprightness. A noted example is that of Oberlin, the well-known Alsatian philanthropist, the benevolent pastor of Bande-la-Roche.

He was visited, two years before his death,-namely, in 1824,-by a Mr. Smithson, who published an account of his visit. Thence are gleaned the following particulars.

OBERLIN.

The valley of Ban-de-la-Roche, or Steinthal, in Alsace, the scene for more than fifty years of Oberlin's labors of love, surrounded by lofty mountains, is for more than half the year cut off from the rest of the world by snows obstructing the passes.

"Intellectual Repository" for April, 1840, pp. 151 to 162.