Part 2 (2/2)

Thus Hume, first denies the existence of such evidence, given in such circ.u.mstances as he demands, and then he produces an example of that very kind of evidence. Having done this, he abandons (as Mr. Wallace observes) his original a.s.sertion that the evidence does not exist, and takes refuge in alleging 'the absolute impossibility' of the events which the evidence supports. Thus Hume poses as a perfect judge of the possible, in a kind of omniscience. He takes his stand on the uniformity of all experience that is not hostile to his idea of the possible, and dismisses all testimony to other experience, even when it reaches his standard of evidence. He is remote indeed from Virchow's position 'that what we call the laws of nature must vary according to our frequent new experiences.'[3] In his note, Hume b.u.t.tresses and confirms his evidence for the Jansenist miracles. They have even a martyr, M. Montgeron, who wrote an account of the events, and, says Hume lightly, 'is now said to be somewhere in a dungeon on account of his book.' 'Many of the miracles of the Abbe Paris were proved immediately by witnesses before the Bishop's court at Paris, under the eye of Cardinal Noailles....' 'His successor was an enemy to the Jansenists, yet twenty-two _cures_ of Paris ... pressed him to examine these miracles ... _But he wisely forbore_.' Hume adds his testimony to the character of these _cures_. Thus it is wisdom, according to Hume, to dismiss the most public and well-attested 'miracles' without examination.

This is experimental science of an odd kind.

The phenomena were cases of healing, many of them surprising, of cataleptic rigidity, and of insensibility to pain, among visitors to the tomb of the Abbe Paris (1731). Had the cases been judicially examined (all medical evidence was in their favour), and had they been proved false, the cause of Hume would have profited enormously. A strong presumption would have been raised against the miracles of Christianity. But Hume applauds the wisdom of not giving his own theory this chance of a triumph. The cataleptic seizures were of the sort now familiar to science. These have, therefore, emerged from the miraculous. In fact, the phenomena which occurred at the tomb of the Abbe Paris have emerged almost too far, and now seem in danger of being too readily and too easily accepted. In 1887 MM. Binet and Fere, of the school of the Salpetriere, published in English a popular manual styled 'Animal Magnetism.' These authors write with great caution about such alleged phenomena as the reading, by the hypnotised patient, of the thoughts in the mind of the hypnotiser. But as to the phenomena at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, they say that 'suggestion explains them.'[4] That is, in the opinion of MM. Binet and Fere the so-called 'miracles' really occurred, and were worked by 'the imagination,' by 'self-suggestion.'

The most famous case--that of Mlle. Coirin--has been carefully examined by Dr. Charcot.[5]

Mlle. Coirin had a dangerous fall from her horse, in September 1716, in her thirty-first year. The medical details may be looked for in Dr.

Charcot's essay or in Montgeron.[6] 'Her disease was diagnosed as cancer of the left breast,' the nipple 'fell off bodily.' Amputation of the breast was proposed, but Madame Coirin, believing the disease to be radically incurable, refused her consent. Paralysis of the left side set in (1718), the left leg shrivelling up. On August 9, 1731, Mlle. Coirin 'tried the off chance' of a miracle, put on a s.h.i.+ft that had touched the tomb of Paris, and used some earth from the grave. On August 11, Mlle.

Coirin could turn herself in bed; on the 12th the horrible wound 'was staunched, and began to close up and heal.' The paralysed side recovered life and its natural proportions. By September 3, Mlle. Coirin could go out for a drive.

All her malady, says Dr. Charcot, paralysis, 'cancer,' and all, was 'hysterical;' 'hysterical oedema,' for which he quotes many French authorities and one American. 'Under the physical [psychical?] influence brought to bear by the application of the s.h.i.+ft ... the oedema, which was due to vaso-motor trouble, disappeared almost instantaneously. The breast regained its normal size.'

Dr. Charcot generously adds that shrines, like Lourdes, have cured patients in whom he could not 'inspire the operation of the faith cure.'

He certainly cannot explain everything which claims to be of supernatural origin in the faith cure. We have to learn the lesson of patience. I am among the first to recognise that Shakespeare's words hold good to-day:

'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

If Dr. Charcot had believed in what the French call _suggestion mentale_-- suggestion by thought-transference (which I think he did not)--he could have explained the healing of the Centurion's servant, 'Say the word, Lord, and my servant shall be healed,' by suggestion & distance (telepathy), and by premising that the servant's palsy was 'hysterical.'

But what do we mean by 'hysterical'? n.o.body knows. The 'mind,' somehow, causes gangrenes, if not cancers, paralysis, shrinking of tissues; the mind, somehow, cures them. And what is the 'mind'? As my object is to give savage parallels to modern instances better vouched for. I quote a singular Red Indian cure by 'suggestion.' Hearne, travelling in Canada, in 1770, met a native who had 'dead palsy,' affecting the whole of one side.

He was dragged on a sledge, 'reduced to a mere skeleton,' and so was placed in the magic lodge. The first step in his cure was the public swallowing by a conjurer of a board of wood, 'about the size of a barrel-stave,' twice as wide across as his mouth. Hearne stood beside the man, 'naked as he was born,' 'and, notwithstanding I was all attention, I could not detect the deceit.' Of course, Hearne believes that this was mere legerdemain, and (p. 216) mentions a most suspicious circ.u.mstance.

The account is amusing, and deserves the attention of Mr. Neville Maskelyne. The same conjurer had previously swallowed a cradle! Now bayonet swallowing, which he also did, is possible, though Hearne denies it (p. 217).

The real object of these preliminary feats, however performed, is, probably, to inspire _faith_, which Dr. Charcot might have done by swallowing a cradle. The Indians explain that the barrel staves apparently swallowed are merely dematerialised by 'spirits,' leaving only the forked end sticking out of the conjurer's mouth. In fact, Hearne caught the conjurer in the act of making a separate forked end.

Faith being thus inspired, the conjurer, for three entire days, blew, sang, and danced round 'the poor paralytic, fasting.' 'And it is truly wonderful, though the strictest truth, that when the poor man was taken from the conjuring house ... he was able to move all the fingers and toes of the side that had been so long dead.... At the end of six weeks he went a-hunting for his family' (p. 219). Hearne kept up his acquaintance, and adds, what is very curious, that he developed almost a secondary personality. 'Before that dreadful paralytic stroke, he had been distinguished for his good nature and benevolent disposition, was entirely free from every appearance of avarice,... but after this event he was the most fractious, quarrelsome, discontented, and covetous wretch alive'

(p. 220).

Dr. Charcot, if he had been acquainted with this case, would probably have said that it 'is of the nature of those which Professor Russell Reynolds has cla.s.sified under the head of ”paralysis dependent on idea.”'[7]

Unluckily, Hearne does not tell us how his hunter, an untutored Indian, became 'paralysed by idea.'

Dr. Charcot adds: 'In every case, science is a foe to systematic negation, which the morrow may cause to melt away in the light of its new triumphs.'

The present 'new triumph' is a mere coincidence with the dicta of our Lord, 'Thy faith hath made thee whole.... I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.' There are cures, as there are maladies, caused 'by idea.' So, in fact, we had always understood. But the point is that science, wherever it agrees with David Hume, is not a foe, but a friend to 'systematic negation.'

A parallel case of a 'miracle,' the stigmata of St. Francis, was, of course, regarded by science as a fable or a fraud. But, now that blisters and other lesions can be produced by suggestion, the fable has become a probable fact, and, therefore, not a miracle at all.[8] Mr. James remarks: 'As so often happens, a fact is denied till a welcome interpretation comes with it. Then it is admitted readily enough, and evidence quite insufficient to back a claim, so long as the Church had an interest in making it, proves to be quite sufficient for modern scientific enlightenment the moment it appears that a reputed saint can thereby be claimed as a case of ”hystero-epilepsy.”'[9]

But the Church continues to have an interest in the matter. As the cla.s.s of facts which Hume declined to examine begins to be gradually admitted by science, the thing becomes clear. The evidence which could safely convey these now admittedly possible facts, say from the time of Christ, is so far proved to be not necessarily mythical--proved to be not incapable of carrying statements probably correct, which once seemed absolutely false. If so, where, precisely, ends its power of carrying facts? Thus considered, the kinds of marvellous events recorded in the Gospels, for example, are no longer to be dismissed on _a priori_ grounds as 'mythical.' We cannot now discard evidence as necessarily false because it clashes with our present ideas of the possible, when we have to acknowledge that the very same evidence may safely convey to us facts which clashed with our fathers' notions of what is possible, but which are now accepted. Our notions of the possible cease to be a criterion of truth or falsehood, and our contempt for the Gospels as myths must slowly die, as 'miracle' after 'miracle' is brought within the realm of acknowledged law. With each such admission the hypothesis that the Gospel evidence is mythical must grow weaker, and weaker must grow the negative certainty of popular science.

The occurrences which took place at and near the tomb of Paris were attested, as Hume truly avers, by a great body of excellent evidence. But the wisdom which declined to make a judicial examination has deprived us of the best kind of record. a.n.a.logous if not exactly similar events now confessedly take place, and are no longer looked upon as miraculous. But as long as they were held to be miraculous, not to examine the evidence, said Hume, was the policy of 'all reasonable people.' The result was to deprive Science of the best sort of record of facts which she welcomes as soon as she thinks she can explain them.[10] Examples of the folly of _a priori_ negation are common. The British a.s.sociation refused to hear the essay which Braid, the inventor of the word 'hypnotism,' had written upon the subject. Braid, Elliotson, and other English inquirers of the mid-century, were subjected to such persecutions as official science could inflict. We read of M. Deslon, a disciple of Mesmer, about 1783, that he was 'condemned by the Faculty of Medicine, without any examination of the facts.' The Inquisition proceeded more fairly than these scientific obscurantists.

Another curious example may be cited. M. Guyau, in his work 'The Non-Religion of the Future,' argues that Religion is doomed. 'Poetic genius has withdrawn its services,' witness Tennyson and Browning! 'Among orthodox Protestant nations miracles do not happen.'[11] But 'marvellous facts' _do_ happen.[12] These 'marvellous facts,' accepted by M. Guyau, are what Hume called 'miracles,' and advised the 'wise and learned' to laugh at, without examination. They were not facts, and could not be, he said. Now to M. Guyau's mind they _are_ facts, and therefore are not miracles. He includes 'mental suggestion taking place even at a distance.'

A man 'can transmit an almost compulsive command, it appears nowadays, by a simple tension of his will.' If this be so, if 'will' can affect matter from a distance, obviously the relations of will and matter are not what popular science tells us that they are. Again, if this truth is now established, and won from that region which Hume and popular science forbid us to investigate, who knows what other facts may be redeemed from that limbo, or how far they may affect our views of possibilities? The admission of mental action, operative _a distance_, is, of course, personal only to M. Guyau, among friends of the new negative tradition.

We return to Hume. He next argues that the pleasures of wonder make all accounts of 'miracles' worthless. He has just given an example of the equivalent pleasures of dogmatic disbelief. Then Religion is a disturbing force; but so, manifestly, is irreligion. 'The wise and learned are content to deride the absurdity, without informing themselves of the particular facts.' The wise and learned are applauded for their scientific att.i.tude. Again, miracles destroy each other, for all religions have their miracles, but all religions cannot be true. This argument is no longer of force with people who look on 'miracles' as = 'X phenomena,' not as divine evidences to the truth of this or that creed. 'The gazing populace receives, without examination, whatever soothes superst.i.tion,' and Hume's whole purpose is to make the wise and learned imitate the gazing populace by rejecting alleged facts 'without examination.' The populace investigated more than did the wise and learned.

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