to a knowledge of the death of their acquaintances or fellow-townspeople. There have been a great many instances of such death-prophetesses, and, what is most important, some cases have been verified in courts of law. I may say, in passing, that this power of second sight is found in persons who are in ecstatic states, in the spontaneous or artificially induced somnambulism of the higher kinds of waking dreams, as well as in lucid moments before death. These prophetic glimpses, by which the clairvoyance of the unconscious reveals itself to consciousness,1 are commonly obscure because in the brain they must assume a form perceptible by the senses, whereas the unconscious idea can have nothing to do with any form of sensual impression: it is for this reason that humours, dreams, and the hallucinations of sick persons can so easily have a false signification attached to them. The chances of error and self-deception that arise from this source, the ease with which people may be deceived intentionally, and the mischief which, as a general rule, attends a knowledge of the future, these 1"Häufig sind die Ahnungen, in denen das Hellsehen des Unbewussten sich dem Bewusstsein offenbart, dunkel, unverständlich und symbolisch, weil sie im Gehirn sinnliche Form annehmen müssen, während die unbewusste Vorstellung an der Form der Sinnlichkeit kein Theil haben kann."-Philosophy of the Unconscious, 3d ed., p. 96. considerations place beyond all doubt the practical unwisdom of attempts to arrive at certainty concerning the future. This, however, cannot affect the weight which in theory should be attached to phenomena of this kind, and must not prevent us from recognising the positive existence of the clairvoyance whose existence I am maintaining, though it is often hidden under a chaos of madness and imposture. The materialistic and rationalistic tendencies of the present day lead most people either to deny facts of this kind in toto, or to ignore them, inasmuch as they are inexplicable from a materialistic standpoint, and cannot be established by the inductive or experimental method -as though this last were not equally impossible in the case of morals, social science, and politics. A mind of any candour will only be able to deny the truth of this entire class of phenomena so long as it remains in ignorance of the facts that have been related concerning them; but, again, a continuance in this ignorance can only arise from unwillingness to be convinced. I am satisfied that many of those who deny all human power of divination would come to another, and, to say the least, more cautious conclusion if they would be at the pains of further investigation; and I hold that no one, even at the present day, need be ashamed of joining in with an opinion which was maintained by all the great spirits of antiquity except Epicurus-an opinion whose possible truth hardly one of our best modern philosophers has ventured to contravene, and which the champions of German enlightenment were so little disposed to relegate to the domain of old wives' tales, that Goethe furnishes us with an example of second sight that fell within his own experience, and confirms it down to its minutest details. Although I am far from believing that the kind of phenomena above referred to form in themselves a proper foundation for a superstructure of scientific demonstration, I nevertheless find them valuable as a completion and further confirmation of the series of phenomena presented to us by the clairvoyance which we observe in human and animal instinct. Even though they only continue this series through the echo that is awakened within our consciousness, they as powerfully support the account which instinctive actions give concerning their own nature, as they are themselves supported by the analogy they 1 "Ebenso weil es diese Reihe nur in gesteigerter Bewusstseinresonanz fortsetzt, stützt es jene Aussagen der Instincthandlungen über ihr eigenes Wesen ebenso sehr," &c.-Philosophy of the Unconscious, 3d ed., p. 97. present to the clairvoyance observable in instinct. This, then, as well as my desire not to lose an opportunity of protesting against a modern prejudice, must stand as my reason for having allowed myself to refer, in a scientific work, to a class of phenomena which has fallen at present into so much discredit. I will conclude with a few words upon a special kind of instinct which has a very instructive bearing upon the subject generally, and shows how impossible it is to evade the supposition of an unconscious clairvoyance on the part of instinct. In the examples adduced hitherto, the action of each individual has been done on the individual's own behalf, except in the case of instincts connected with the continuation of the species, where the action benefits others that is to say, the offspring of the creature performing it. We must now examine the cases in which a solidarity of instinct is found to exist between several individuals, so that, on the one hand, the action of each redounds to the common welfare, and, on the other, it becomes possible for a useful purpose to be achieved through the harmonious association of individual workers. This community of instinct exists also among the higher animals, but here it is harder to dis tinguish from associations originating through conscious will, inasmuch as speech supplies the means of a more perfect intercommunication of aim and plan. We shall, however, definitely recognise this general effect of a universal instinct in the origin of speech and in the great political and social movements in the history of the world. Here we are concerned only with the simplest and most definite examples that can be found anywhere, and therefore we will deal in preference with the lower animals, among which, in the absence of voice, the means of communicating thought, mimicry, and physiognomy, are so imperfect that the harmony and interconnection of the individual actions cannot in its main points be ascribed to an understanding arrived at through speech. Huber observed that when a new comb was being constructed a number of the largest working-bees, that were full of honey, took no part in the ordinary business of the others, but remained 1 "Wir werden trotzdem diese gemeinsame Wirkung eines Masseninstincts in der Entstehung der Sprache und den grossen politischen und socialen Bewegungen in der Weltgeschichte deutlich wieder erkennen; hier handelt es sich um möglichst einfache und deutliche Beispiele, und darum greifen wir zu niederen Thieren, wo die Mittel der Gedankenmittheilung bei fehlender Stimme, Mimik und Physiognomie so unvollkommen sind, dass die Uebereinstimmung und das Ineinandergreifen der einzelnen Leistungen in den Hauptsachen unmöglich der bewussten Verständigung durch Sprache zugeschrieben werden darf."-Philosophy of the Unconscious, 3d. ed., p. 98. |