An Essay on Demonology 2

An Essay on Demonology 2

The lady, with great presence of mind, brought the articles of

clothing which had caused the alarm, and thus composed her fears.

After she had become tranquil and was able distinctly to recall her

sensations, she declared that the perfect image of the deceased, just

as she was dressed for her coffin seemed to be before her sight. She

contemplated it as long as her fears would permit her, before she

exclaimed. She was sure that she recognised every feature of her

friend, and even the pits of the small pox, of which she died, in her

face. And she affirmed that before any tribunal she would have been

willing to make oath to this fact.' 'I have introduced this anecdote,'

says Dr Smith, 'merely to illustrate the power of the imagination by

its reaction on the nervous system, to complete the pictures that any

sudden impulses of the senses, occasioned by surprise or by

superstitious or enthusiastic feeling, have begun to form. It is not a

solitary anecdote of the kind. But I have selected it, because I am

more perfectly possessed of the circumstances, than of many others

that are circulated through certain classes of society. Nor are these

classes always to be found among the most ignorant and credulous.'

Lord Lyttleton was a man of splendid abilities, but degraded himself

by a continued course of profligacy and the basest dissipation. He was

arrested in his career by a sudden and remarkable death, at the age of

thirtyfive in the year 1779. The various narrations that have been

published relative to this singular event concur in most of the

following particulars. Three days previous to his death, being in

perfect health, he was warned in a dream or vision of the event,

which, accordingly, took place without any previous illness. According

to his own account, he awoke from sleep, and saw the image of his

deceased mother, who opened the curtains of his bed and denounced to

him, that in three days he should die. On the sentence being

denounced, he started up in great terror, incoherently saying, 'what!

shall I not live three days?' The reply was, no, you will not live

more than three days, and the apparition instantly vanished. This

alarming vision his lordship related, at breakfast the next morning,

to several women who were his companions. They fell a crying; but he,

although secretly agitated, pretended to disregard the affair, laughed

at their credulous folly, and professed to have no sort of belief, or

apprehension about it. On the third day of the prediction, he invited

Admiral Woolsey and another friend to dine with him, at his country

seat. At dinner, his lordship, appeared more than usually loquacious

and desultory in his conversation, reciting the probable remarks that

would of course be made whenever the news of his death should be

announced. In the evening, perceiving his female companions in a

gloomy mood, he took one of them and danced a minuet with her, then

taking out his watch, said, 'Look you here, it is now nine o'clock,

according to the vision I have but three hours to live, but don't you

mind this, madam; never fear, we'll jocky the ghost, I warrant you.'

At eleven o'clock he retired to bed earlier than usual with him, but

his pretence was, that he had planned for the party to breakfast

early, and spend the day in riding into the country. Admiral Woolsey

and his friend resolved to sit in the parlor till the predicted hour

was past, and the clock was privately put a little forward, and as

soon as it struck twelve, his lordship said, 'you see I have cheated

the ghost;' but soon after a voice was heard from the staircase,

uttering these words. 'He's dead? Oh, my lord is dead!' Instantly

running up stairs, they found him in bed, fallen back, and struggling.

Admiral Woolsey took his hand, which was grasped with such violence

that it was painful to endure, but he spake no more. His eyes were

turned up and fixed. They opened the jugular vein, but no blood

issued, and he was entirely dead at midnight of the third day.

Admiral Woolsey gives the following remarkable particulars in

addition. At the distance of thirty miles from the place where this

melancholy scene happened there lived a gentlemen, one of the intimate

companions of Lord Lyttleton, M. P. Andrews, Esq.; and they had agreed

that whichever of them should die first, the survivor should receive

one thousand pounds from the estate of the deceased. On this very

night he awoke about one o'clock and rung his bell with great

violence. His servant ran to him with all speed, and inquired, 'what

is the matter?' The gentleman sitting up in bed, with a countenance

full of horror, cried out, 'Oh John! Lord Lyttleton is dead!' 'How can

that be?' he replied, 'we have heard nothing, but that he is alive and

well.' The master exclaimed with the greatest perturbation, 'no, no, I

awoke just now on hearing the curtains undrawn, and at the foot of the

bed stood Lord Lyttleton, as plain as ever I saw him in my life. He

looked ghastly, and said, "all is over with me, Andrews. You have won

the thousand pounds," and vanished.' After attending to the

particulars above detailed, it would seem to require a philosophical

firmness to resist the impression in favor of supernatural

visitations; but this latter instance will, I believe, bear a

different explanation. The gentleman was apprised of Lyttleton's

vision and predicted death, which, with the thousand pounds depending,

must have excited in his mind an exquisite degree of anxiety, and

roused a guilty conscience. He doubtless counted every hour, and

although he fell asleep, could not be calm, and probably had a

disturbed dream. Awaking suddenly, it is quite natural that he should

have the impression, that the prediction was fulfilled. Dr Smith, who

is quoted above, comments as follows on the death of Lord Lyttleton.

His lordship was a man who had worn down to a very feeble state, a

lively and elastic constitution, and impaired a brilliant wit, by

voluptuous, and intemperate excesses. A few days before his death, he

imagined that he saw before him the perfect resemblance of his

deceased mother, who denounced to him that on such a day, and at a

prescribed hour, he should die. Under a constrained vivacity, his

mind, during the interval, was evidently much agitated. And on the

predicted day, and at the prescribed time, he actually expired.

 

This fact has been regarded by many persons, and those by no means of

inferior understandings, as a decisive proof of the reality of

apparitions from the spiritual world; and by others has been attempted

to be resolved on a variety of different grounds. The principles

already suggested, may, perhaps, serve to explain it in conformity

with the known laws of human nature, if the theory of nervous

vibration be admitted to be true, without resorting to the solution of

supernatural agents. The irregular and convulsive motions in the

nervous system which frequently arise from long continued habits of

intemperate indulgence, might be especially expected in a constitution

so irritable and debilitated, as that of Lord Lyttleton. If, either

sleeping or waking, or, in that indefinite interval between sleeping

and waking, their disordered movements could present to the fancy or

excite in the visual nerves, the distinct image of a living person

apparently resuscitated from the dead, which has been shown to be a

possible case, the debilitated frame of his lordship, agitated as it

must have often been, by the conscious apprehension of his

approaching end, may naturally be supposed to have predisposed them to

such a vision. Conscience, notwithstanding his assumed gayety,

somewhat perturbed by the fears of death, and with a recollection of a

pious mother, whose anxious admonitions had often endeavored in vain

to recall him from his vices, and to fix his thoughts on his future

existence, might naturally retrace her features in this formidable

vision. It is not improbable, that the whole scene may have been a

kind of waking dream, or if it was wholly transacted in sleep, it

might have been with such a forcible and vivid vibration, or impulse

of the nerves concerned in the formation of such an image, as would

give it the distinctness and vivacity of waking sensation. In the

tumult of his spirits, and the fear-excited vibrations of his whole

system, it is not strange, that the image of that disappointed and

reproaching parent should be presented to him, with a solemn and

foreboding aspect. And it would be adding only one trait of terror to

the scene, already so well prepared to admit it, and one that is

perfectly conformable to our experience of the desultory images of

dreaming, as well as what we have learned of similar visionary

impressions--that a particular period should be denounced to him for

his death, the symptoms and presages of which, in all probability, he

frequently felt in the tremors and palpitation of a breaking

constitution. The principal difficulty in the minds of those who have

only carelessly attended to this history, is to account for the exact

correspondence of the event of his death to the time fixed by the

prediction, if it had no other foundation than nervous impression. The

imagined prediction itself was sufficient, in a debilitated and

exhausted constitution, like that of Lord Lyttleton, to produce its

own accomplishment. Seizing upon his fears, in spite of his reason and

philosophy, for a life of dissipation and sensual excess generally

very much weakens the powers both of the mind and of the body, it

would naturally throw his whole system into great commotion. These

perturbed and tumultuous agitations would increase as the destined

moment approached, till the strength of nature failing, may well be

supposed to break at the point of extreme convulsion; that is, at the

expected moment of death.

 

To a case analogous, in many respects, to that of his lordship, there

are many witnesses still living in the city of Philadelphia. The

contrast in the issue of the latter, serves to confirm the solution

which has just been given of the former. Mr Edwards, a clergyman of

the Baptist persuasion in that city, of a tendency somewhat addicted

to melancholy in his habit, but, otherwise of a vigorous constitution,

had, like Lord Lyttleton, a visual impression, so clear and distinctly

defined, that he mistook it for a supernatural messenger from the

spiritual world to announce to him that at the end of a certain

period, he should die. He was so persuaded of the reality of the

vision, and the verity of the prediction, that he took leave of his

particular friends, and of his congregation, before the appointed day.

On the evening of this day, I saw his house filled with spectators and

inquirers, awaiting with solicitude the catastrophe of this

extraordinary affair. The tumult of his whole system, his difficult

respiration, his quick and tremulous pulse, and its frequent

intermissions, led many to announce, at various times during that

evening, to the surrounding spectators, that he was just expiring.

And without doubt, if his frame had been as weak and delicate as his

nervous system, he could not have survived the agitations, and, I may

say, almost convulsions, into which he was thrown. And here would have

been another prediction, and another supernatural appearance, as

extraordinary as those of Lord Lyttleton. But his constitution

triumphed, and he remained a monument to prove the force of nervous

illusion, which, in this case, as doubtless it has proved in many

others, appears to have given birth to an image as clear and definite

as could have been produced by the actual presence of such an object

as was supposed to have created it. I would hardly have ventured to

relate such an anecdote, if there were not ample testimony to its

verity still existing. The good man was so ashamed of his delusion,

and it so much lessened his credit with his spiritual flock, that he

was obliged to leave the city, and the church where he had formerly

been highly esteemed, and retire to a remote position in the country.

Many anecdotes to confirm the reality of _nervous sensation_, if I may

apply that phrase to designate those _sensible perceptions_ which are

sometimes caused in the mind, without the presence or aid of external

objects, must have occurred to those who have had extensive opportunities of practically observing human nature.