The Unknown Guest

o it is, I believe, that recently published by M. Ernest Bozzano, under the title Des Phenomenes Premonitoires. Availing himself of excellent earlier work, notably that of Mrs. Sidgwick and Myers[1] and adding the result of his own researches, the author colle

ings, Vols.

latent seems to foresee this disease and the death which will be its conclusion), by telepathy (when a sensitive is aware beforehand of the arrival of a person or a letter), or lastly by clairvoyance

a good deal of scientific research would become decidedly impracticable. And this remark applies as much to the nature of the incidents related as to the actual authenticity of the narratives. We can contest or suspect any story whatever, any written proof, any evidence; but thenceforward we must abandon all certainty or knowledge that is not acquired by means of mathematical operations or laboratory experiments, that is to say, three-fourths of the human phenomena which interest us most. Observe that the records collected by the investigators of the S. P. R., like those discussed by M. B

sily-accessible sources which I have mentioned above. It will suffice, to give an accurate idea of the gravity of the problem to any one who has not time or opportunity to consult the original documents if I sum up in a few words some of these pioneer adventures, selected among those which seem least open to dispute; for it goes without saying that all have not the same value, othe

her full time, that "she will take fright at something," that she will have a fall and that the result will be a miscarriage. She adds that, on the 12th of May, after having had a fright, she wi

whereupon she repeats word for word what she told him four days before. They wake her up. The dangerous hour is drawing near. They take every imaginable precaution and even close the shutters. Mme.-, made uneasy by these extraordinary measures

r with you?" she asks.

not: I speak in the i

"if it is in the interest of my health, that is a

rn which the incident has taken. Suddenly, a piercing shriek is heard and the noise of a body falling. He runs out and finds Mme.- wild with fright and apparently dying in her husband's arms. At the moment when, leaving him for an instant, she opened the do

f-suggestion, her illness, her fright, her fall and her miscarriage and adapted herself to most of the circumstances which she had foretold in her secondary state. The appearance of the rat at the fatal moment is the only thing that would suggest a precise and disquieting vision of an inevitable future event. Unfortunately, we are not told that the rat was perceived by other witnesses than the

ical Phenomena. It concerns a vision which was described to him eight days before the event and which he told to many people before it was accomplished. A sensitive perceived in a crystal the following scene: a large steamer, flying a flag of thre

d the accident to the Deutschland, whose boile

ns the percipient: a curious detail, but one which is not uncommon in these cases. The mistake in reading Leutschland for Deutschland, which would have been quite natural in real life, adds a note of probability and authenticity to the phenomenon. As for the final act, the foundering of

e sensitive has given me other curious instances; and these cases, compared with others which I myself have observed or with those of whi

tapsychical Phe

y, science professor at the university of Geneva, in his remarkable work, Esprits et Mediums. Professor Flournoy is known to be one of the most learned and most critical exponents of the new science of metapsychics. He even carries his fondness for na

he Moratief family at Kazan as governess to two girls. She continued to correspond with the family and also with a Mme.

arlet had a dream which she described the following morning in a letter

inside called to us. When we came up to the carriage, we saw Mlle. Olga Popoi lying acr

that Mme. Nitchinof will le

iage then

dream was fulfilled in a tragic fashion. Mme. Nitchinof died on the 16th of an infectio

nd the replies which came from Russia were communicat

hat circumstances and especially the existence of a document dated p

its of our unknown guest. The date is fixed precisely; but only a veiled and mysterious allusion (the woman lying

ould have to suppose that, on the 9th of December, a week before her death, Mme. Nitchinof had in her subconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she transmitted this presentiment across some thousands of miles, from Kazan to Geneva, to a person with whom she had never been int

1908, the summary of an experiment by Mrs. A. W. Verrall told in full detail in Vol. XX of the Proceedings. Mrs. Verrall is a celebrated "automatist"; and her "cross-correspondence" occupy a whole volume o

1, at 11.10 p.m., Mrs.

{greek here}. calx pedibus inhaerens difficultatem superavit. magnopere

times even the 'automatist' speaks or writes languages of which he is com

V. and perhaps someone else. Chalk sticking to the feet has got over the difficulty

a humorous drawing rep

. The phenomena began at 12:43 A.M. and ended at 2:09 A.M. The watchers noticed marks on the powdered chalk. On examination it was seen that the marks were "clearly defined bird's footprints in the middle of the floor, three in the left-hand room and five in the right-hand room." The marks were identical and exactly 2 3/4 inches in width; they might be compared to the footpri

J. G. Piddington, a member of the council of the S. P. R., and d

g about the happenings in the haunted house and that the wa

ho score in this case, not without some reason, will have it that a spirit, in order to prove its existence and its intelligence, organized this little scene in which the future, the present and the past a

ght she dreamt that she saw a cart drive up and stop near when she was. It contained three coffins, "two white and one blue. One white coffin was bigger than the other; and the blue was the biggest of the three." The driver took out

ings, vol.

he 2nd of October, being then sixteen months old. It was decided to bury the two children on the same day. On the morning of the day chosen, the parish priest informed Mr.

y dream will come true. For th

nded exactly with the dream premonitions, the smallest being that of the child who died first, the next that of

s written by Mr. Alfred Cooper and attested by the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duke of Manchester and an

ings, vol.

d upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see him professionally. After I had finish

er, how is

earl?' and, on my answeri

ctly asleep, but thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were Lord L-, in a chair, as if in a fit,

hen

very little the matter with him; he is not g

, at the end of six or seven days after this, I was call

taken ill. But, when I saw the other, the dream of the duchess was exactly represented. He was standing near a bath over the e

old two weeks before the death of Lor

and that premonition opens its mysterious and capricious vistas of the future in connection with the most diverse and insignificant events. It cares but little for the human value of the occurrence and puts the vision of a number in a lottery in the same plane as the most dramatic death. The roads by which it reaches us are also unexpected and varied. Often, as in the exa

ose which have been most strictly tested and investigated.[1] A young peasant from the neighbourhood of Ghent, two months before the drawing for the conscription, announces t

ings, vol.

n, I shal

l amazement, he do

indescribable form appear in a corner of his room, with the number 90 standing out plainly in the middle, in figures the size of a man's hand. He sat u

by M. van Dooren during his term of office. I am the less inclined to doubt their declaration inasmuch as I am personally acquainted with them and know that their statements, as regards the objec

or other, the astonishment is general and free rein is given to the imagination. This is true; nevertheless, it is well to enquire whether these predictions are as frequent as is loosely stated. In the matter of those which concern the conscription-drawings, for instance, I have had the opportunity of interrogating more than we constant witness of these little dramas of fate; and all admitted tha

ed. We find the ghost, the phantom animal or the mysterious noise which, in certain families, is the traditional herald of a death or of an imminent catastrophe. We find the celebrated vision which the painter Segantini had thirteen days before his decease, every detail of which remained in his mind and was represented in his last picture, Death. We find the Messina disaster dearly foreseen, twice over, by a little girl who perished under the ruins of the ill-fated city; and we read of a dream which, three months before the French invasion of Russia, foretold to Countess Toutschkoff that her husband would fall at Borodino, a village so little known at the time that those interested in the dream looked in vain for its name on the maps. Until now we have spoken only of the spontaneous manifestations of the future. It would seem as though coming events, gathered in front of our lives, b

as awakened by soap bubbles, crystals and mirrors;[1] the clairvoyant who, eighteen years before the event, foretold the death of a girl by the hand of her rival in 1907, in a written prophecy which was presented to the court by the mother of the murdered girl;[1] A. J. C. Kerner: Die Scherin von Prevorst 141 [1] the gypsy who, also in writing, foretold all the events in Miss Isabel Arundel's life, including the name of her husband, Burton,

rime was committed in Paris an

f Captain Sir Richd. F. Bur

iety for Psychical Res

ings, vol.

in certain cases, psychometry. I have spoken at sufficient length of this last faculty not to linger over it now. All that we have still to do is to consider it for a moment in its relations with the foretelling of the future. A large number of investigations, notably those conducted by M. Duchatel and Dr. Osty, show that, in psychometry, the notion of time, as Dr. Joseph Maxwell observes, is very loose, that is to say, the past, present and future nearly always overlap. Most of the clairvoyant or psychometric subjects, when they are honest, do not know, "do not feel," as M. Duchatel very ably remarks, "what the future is. They do not distinguish it from the other tenses; and consequently they succeed in being prophets,

hey occupy in space. Thus she sees the future in front of her, the past behind her and the present beside her. But, notwithstanding these distinctly-graded visions, she also is incapable of nam

ead in our own subconsciousness, which is momentarily lighted by his presence. We must not therefore ask him for predictions of a general character, whether, for instance, there will be a war in the spring, an epidemic in

ure in it? After three years of numerous, cautious and systematic experime

f my life, had always been foretold to me, not all by each of the clairvoyant subjects, but all by one or other of them. As I have been practising these tests c

incidents and inevitable repetitions would make almost readable. Moreover, it could scarcely help taking the form of an intimate and indiscreet autobiography; and it is not easy to bring one's self to make this sort of public confession. But it has to be done. In a science which is only in its early stages, it is not enough to show the object attained and to state one's conviction; it is necessary above all to describe every path that has been taken and,

if she sees you in a certain house in a certain street meeting this or that person, it is impossible to say that, on the one hand, she is not already reading your as yet unconscious plans or intentions, or that, on the other hand, by doing what she has foreseen, you are not obeying a suggestion against

nce could not decently be put forward. But, as everybody is not, in the peaceful course of his threatened by such an absolutely convincing event, the clairvoyant cannot a

ications calls for further enquiry, although it is

Galvani, and in the early days of hypnotism, is much more easy and seems more respectable and prudent than to stop, admit and examine. Nevertheless we must not forget that it is to some who did not smile so lightly that we owe the best part of the marvels from whose heights we are preparing to smile in our turn. For the rest, I grant that, thus presented, hastily and summarily, without the details that throw light upon them and the proofs that support them, the incidents in question do not show to advantage and, inasmuch as they are isolated and sparingly chosen, lose all the weight and authority derived from the compact and imposing mass

st and present to reassure ourselves, to fasten on to some certainty, to convince ourselves that we are still in our right place in this life where that which is not yet seems as substantial, as real, as positive, as powerful as that which is no more. We discover with uneasiness that time, on which we based our whole existence, itself no longer exists. It is no longer the swiftest of our gods, known to us only by its flight across all things: it alters its position no more than space, of which it is doubtless but the incomprehensible reflex. It reigns in the centre of every event; and every event is fixed in its ce

their attempts to explain the working of the stra

an reach us by the normal process of the senses or the intelligence. But, even by extending these two theories to their uttermost point and positively abusing their accommod

se discarnate beings. Let us grant it for the moment, for to beg the question, which is merely an indefensible trick of the superficial logic of our brain, does not necessarily condemn a theory and neither takes away from nor adds to the reality of things. Besides, as we shall insist later, the intervention or non-intervention of the spirits is not the point at issue; and the crux of the mystery does not lie there. What most interest us is far less the paths or intermediaries by which prophetic warnings reach us than the actual existence of the future in the present. It is true-to do complete justice to neospiritualism-that its position offers certain advantages from the point of view of the almost inconceivable problem of the preexistence of the future. It can evade or divert some of the consequences of that problem. The spirits, it declares, do not necessarily see the future as a whole, as a total past or present, motionless and immovable, but they know infinitely

n place and do a certain thing, they urge us irresistibly to proceed to the spot named and there to perform the act prophesied. But this theory, like those of self-suggestion and telepathy, would explain only a few phenomena and would leave in obscurity all those cases, infinitely more numerous

erately hostile to me and find diversion only in the spectacle of my suffering. What could those spirits be, from what evil world would they arise and how should we explain why our brothers and friends of yesterday, after passing through the august and peace-bestowing gates of death, suddenly become transformed into crafty

consistent speculation and ingenious dreaming in the dark; in any case, it is adventitious, secondary and provisional. Let us keep to the facts as we see them: an unknown faculty, buried deep in our being and generally inactive, perceives, on rare occasions, events that have not yet taken place. We possess but one certainty on this subject, namely, that the phenomenon actually occurs within ourselves; it is therefore within ourselves that we must first study it, without burdening ourselves with suppositions which remove it from its centre and simply shift the mystery. The incomprehensible mystery is the preexistence of the future; once we admit this-and it seems very difficult to deny-there is no reason to attrib

uld allow us to avoid it. What can be the childish or mysterious reason of this strange reticence? In many cases it is almost criminal; for instance, in a case related by Professor Hyslop[1] we see the foreboding of the greatest misfortune that can befall a mother germinating, growing, sending out shoots, developing, like some gluttonous and deadly plant, to stop short on the verge of the last warning, the one detail, insignificant in itself bu

never

ings, vol.

s a strong impulse to burn all matches of the kind easily lighted. About an hour before the fatal disaster, she reaches for a box to destroy it; but she says to herself that her eldest boy is gone out, thinks that she may need the matc

the ma

its nap. She then goes downstairs to work. After a while, she hears the child cry and, hurrying up to t

ies or clues which the great riddle of this world offers us in its moments of inattention or graciousness. At the beginning of an enquiry we must know how to content ourselves with little. For the incident in question to be convincing, previous evidence in writing, more or less official statements would be required, whereas we have only the declarations of the husband, a neighbour and a sister. This is insufficient, I agree; but we must at the same time confess that the circumstances are hardly favourable to obtaining the proofs which we demand. Those who receive warnings of this kind either believe in them or do not believe in them. If they believe in them, it is quite natural that they

which tells of a personal experience of the late W. T. Stead, are supported by more substan

st know that they will be useless, because they manifestly foresee the event as a whole; but they must also know that one last word, which they do not pronounce, would be enough to prevent the misfortune that is already consummated in their prevision. They know it so well that they bring this word to the very edge of the abyss, hold it suspended there, almost let it fall and recapture it suddenly at the moment when its weight would have caused happiness and life to rise once more, to the surface of the mighty gulf. What then is this mystery? Is it incapacity or hostility? If they are incapable, what is the unexpected and sovereign force that interposes between them and us? And, if they are hostile, on what, on whom are they revenging themselves? What can be the secret of those inhuman games, of those uncanny and cruel diversions on the most slippery and dangerous peaks of fate? Why warn, if they know that the warning will be in vain? Of whom are they making sport? Is there really an inflexible fatality by virtue of which that which has to be accomplished is acc

em do in the circle in which our logic imprisons them? Either they foretell us a calamity which their predictions cannot avert, in which case there is no use in foretelling it, or, if they announce it to us and at the

ence and liberty of action and which is the most inconceivable and the dreariest of mysteries; on the other, intelligences apparently superior to our own, since they know what we do not, which, while aware that their intervention is always useless

ight the most seductive, declares itself, on examination, the most difficult to justify. We will also once more put aside the theosophical theory or any other which assumes a divine intention and which might, to a certain extent, explain the hesi

me clumsy and superfluous movement, which upsets all that we believed we knew, without teaching us anything. Is it making fun of us, is it jesting, is it amusing itself, is it facetious, teasing, arch, or simply sleepy, bewildered, inconsistent, absent-minded? In any case, it is rather remarkable that it evidently dislikes to make itself useful. It readily performs the most glamorous feats of sleight-of-hand, provided that we can derive no profit from them. It lifts up tables, moves the heaviest articles, produces flowers and hair, sets strings vibrating, gives life to inanimate objects and passes through solid matter, conjures up ghosts, subjugates time and space, creates light; but all, it seems, on one condition, that its performances should be without rhyme or reason and keep to the province of supernaturally vain and puerile recreations. The case of the divining-rod is almost the only one in which it lends us any regular assistance, this being a sort of game, of no great importance, in which it appears to take pleasure. Sometimes, to say all that can be said, it consents to cure certain ailm

its knowledge or its power. Let us add, to be quite fair, that, in those warnings which we would wish to see efficacious, it stumbles against the same difficulties

nd to attract our attention. Is our conscious and individual life separated by impenetrable worlds from our subconscious and probably universal life? Does our unknown guest speak an unknown language and do the words which it speaks and which we think that we understand disclose its thought? Is every direct road pitilessly barred and is there nothing left

the ma

e, why should it find it dif

hes there that will set

e everlasting question: if it cannot complete the second sentence because it would be de

ntify it; but it is unable to say those which would prevent it from coming, seeing that it has come, that it is already present and perhaps past, manifest, ineffaceable, on another plane than that on which we live, the only plane which we are capable of perceiving. It finds itself, in a word, in the position of the man who, in the midst of peaceful, happy and unsuspecting folk, alone knows some bad news. He is neither able nor willing to announce it nor yet to hide it completely. He hesitates, delays, makes more or less transparent allusions, but does not either say the last word that would, so to speak, let loose the catastrophe in the hearts of the people around him, for to those who do not know of i

ld the only indispensable and decisive words, there are, nevertheless, some that often seem to save those who obey them. These, it is true, are rarer t

n irresistible impulse to turn and go the other way. He instantly obeys, though his reason protests and "berates him for a fool" in taking a roundabout way to his destination. The next day he discovers that, if he

ings, vol.

imity of some unknown water and consequently of an imminent danger, an unexplained but fairly frequent subliminal sensitiv

iver in a canoe; the party are just about to run close to a promontory when a sort of mysterious voice, which he has already heard at different momentous times of his life, imperiously orders him immediately to cross the river and gain the other shore as qui

Esprits et m

ss observed more than once, a sort of premonition induced by subconscious perceptions, which has been christened by the barbarous name of "cryptaesthesia." But the interval between the mo

by Dr. Hodgson. The dentist was bending over a bench on which was a little copper in which he was v

w, quick! Run to

n suddenly he heard a tremendous report and, looking round, saw that

ings, vol.

ts between things and ourselves a sort of sympathy or subliminal communion which makes us experience the trials and emotions of matter that has reached the

as driving alone with his wife along a mountain road, skirting a perpendicular cli

to

human being amid the solitude. At last the sculptor alighted and saw that the left wheel of the carriage, which was grazing the edge of the prec

uestion, tell us that certain unperceived circumstances, such as the grating of the wheel or the swaying of the carriage, did not give him the fir

the last fatal step, that the carriage will not be overturned, that the copper will not hurt anybody and that the canoe will pull away from the promontory. It is inadmissible that, seeing one thing, it will not see the other, since everything happens at the same point, in the course of the same second. Can we say that, if it had not given warning, the little saving movement would not have been executed? How can we imagine a future which, at one and the same time, has parts that are steadfast and others that are not? If it is foreseen that the promontory will fall and that the traveler will escape, thanks to the supernatural warning, it is necessarily foreseen that the warning will be given; and, if so, what is the point of this futile comedy? I see no reasonab

n will be destroyed before the month is out," we should have an excellent example. But it is a remarkable thing that genuine premonitions of this kind are very rare and nearly always rather indefinite in regard to events of a general order. In M. Bozzano's excellent collection, which is a sort of compendium of Premonitory phenomena, the only pretty clear cases are nos. cli, and clviii., both of which are taken from the Journal of the

or something dreadfu

l, vol. vi

ender fell, breaking through the protecting wall and crashing

n with his two boys, then on their holidays. He promised the boys that he would take them to the theatre and boo

heatre; take the bo

, vol. i.

impressing themselves upon him; and, in the end, he definitely decided not to go, much to the two

which I have already alluded, I will give the story in fuller

hkoff dreamt that she was at an inn in a town unknown to her and that her father cam

ning Countess Toutschkoff's husband-"

hird time. Her anguish of mind was such

looked for the name on t

of reserve; and one morning her father, holding her son by the hand, entered her room at the i

. He has falle

bjects that she had seen in her dreams. Her husband was one of the many who perished in t

and Labours of Stephen

for us to rely upon it? That I cannot say. In any case, it has not been sifted by the S.P.R. Next, from the special point of view that interests us for the moment, we are unable to declare that this premonition had any chance of being of avail and preventing the general from going to Bo

s believe in some definite power of free will. Nevertheless, the mysterious entity that foresaw the catastrophe must also have foreseen that nothing would happen to the person whom it was warning; and this brings us back to the useless farce of which we spoke above. Whereas, with the theory of a subconscious self, the latter may have-as in the

egions; and that the part of a prophet is, next to that of a commentator of prophecies, on

know nothing about it; and Kant, speaking in the name of the "apriorists," who hold that the idea of time is innate in us, does not teach us much when he tells us that time, like space, is an a priori form of our sensibility, that is to say, an intuition preceding experience, even as Guyau, among the "empiricists," who consider that this idea is acquired only by experience, does not enlighten us any more by declaring that this same time is the abstract formula of the changes in the universe. Whether space, as Leibnitz maintains, be an order of coexistence and time an order of sequences, whether it be by space that we succeed in representing time or whether time be an essential form of any representation, whether time be the father of space or space th

hich the river flows like a long path of gladness leading to the misty hills of the estuary. I am looking down on the village-square, with its ring of young lime-trees. A procession leaves the church and, amid prayers and chanting, they carry the statue of the Virgin around the sacred pile. I am conscious of all the details of the ceremony: the sly old cure perfunctorily bearing a small reliquary; four choirmen opening their mouths to bawl forth vacantly the Latin words which convey nothing to them; two mischievous serving-boys in frayed cassocks; a score of little girls,

ible changes wrought by the passing days and weeks. In a word, this insignificant moment is unique, irrecoverable, inimitable, as are all the moments in the existence of all things; and this little picture, enduring for a few seconds suspended in boundless duration, has lapsed into e

manner not only that such representations are possible, but that we may arrive at them more frequently, not to say more conveniently, than at those of the past. Now, once this representation preexists, as we are obliged to admit in the case of certain number of premonitions, the riddle remains the same whether the preexistence be one of a few hours, a few years or several centuries. It is therefore possible-for, in these matters, we must go straight to extremes or else leave them alone-it is therefore possible that a seer mightier than any of to-day, some god, demigod or demon, some unknown, universal or vagra

s but an eternal present, an immense punctum stans, as the metaphysicians say, in which all the events are on one plane; but it is no less probable that we ourselves, so long as we are men, in order to understand anything of this eternal present, will always be obliged to divide it into three parts. Thus caught between two mysteries equally baffling to our intelligence, whether we deny or admit the preexistence of the future, we are really only wrangling over words: in the one case, we give

in limits, is nevertheless not, like time, incomprehensible and illusory in all its parts. We are certainly quite able to conceive that those towns which we have never seen and doubtless never will see indubitably exist, whereas we find it much more difficult to imagine that the catastrophe which, fifty years hence, will annihilate one of them already exists as really as the town itself. We are capable of picturing a spot whence, with keener eyes than these which we boast to-day, we should see in one glance all the cities of the earth and even those of other worlds, but it is much less easy for us to imagine a point in the ages whence we should simultaneously discover the past, the present and the future becau

vanni de Figueroa, one of the most famous fencing masters at Palermo, dreamt that he was in the country, going along a road white with dust, which brought him to a broad ploughed field. In

mule fastened to a swinging manger was blocking the bottom step; and the chevalier had to push it aside before climbing the staircase. On reaching the loft, he noticed that from the ceiling were suspended strings of melons, tomatoes, onions and Indian corn. In this room were two women and a little

heard of. As soon as they were some way in the country, he was curiously impressed by the white and dusty road. The car pulled up at the side of a field which he at once recognized. They lighted;

ent in front, for he already knew the way. He found the stable and, exactly at the place which it occupied two months before, near its swinging manger, the mule blocking the way to the staircase. The fencing master went up the steps and once more saw the loft,

r: this is a pretty frequent and almost classical phenomenon, which, as it affects the realities of space, does not astonish us beyond measure and, in any case, does not take us out of the world which our senses perceive. The field, the house, the hut, the loft do not move; and it is no miracle that they should be found in the same place. But, suddenly, quitting this domain where all is stationary, the phenomenon is transferred to time and, in those unknown places, at the foretold second, brings together all the moving actors of that little drama in two acts, of which the first was performed some two and a half months before, in

onishing, granted that it overhangs us on every side, that we should not discover it oftener and more easily. It remains to be learnt what would become of our life if everything were foreseen in it, if we saw it unfolding beforehand, in its entirety, with its events which would have to be inevitable, because, if it were possible for us to avoid them, they would not exist and we could not perceive them. Suppose that, instead of being abnormal, uncertain, obscure, debatable and very unusual, prediction became, so to speak, scientific, habitual, clear and infallible: in a short time, having nothing more to foretell, it would