Visions.

One reads in the Courrier de Lyon:

“On the night of the 27th to the 28th of August 1857 a singular case of intuitive vision occurred at Croix-Rousse, in the following circumstances:

“About three months ago, the B… couple, honest weavers, moved by a sentiment of praiseworthy commiseration, took into their home, in the capacity of servant, a simple-minded young girl who lived in the vicinity of Bourgoing.

“Last Sunday, between two and three o'clock in the morning, the B… couple were awakened with a start by the piercing cries of the servant girl, who slept in an attic, adjoining their room.

“Lighting a lamp, Mrs. B… went up to the attic and found her servant who, melting in tears and in an exaltation of spirit difficult to describe, was wringing her arms in horrible convulsions and calling her mother whom, she said, she had just seen die.

“After consoling the young girl as best she could, Mrs. B… returned to her room. This incident was almost forgotten when yesterday, Tuesday, in the afternoon, a postman of the Post brought to Mrs. B… a letter from the young girl's guardian, informing the latter that, on the night of Sunday to Monday, between two and three o'clock in the morning, her mother had died in consequence of a fall she suffered from the top of a ladder.

“The poor idiot left yesterday morning itself for Bourgoing, accompanied by Mr. B…, her master, to receive the share of the goods that fell to her in the inheritance of her mother, whose deplorable end she had seen so sadly in a dream.”

Facts of this nature are not rare and many times we shall have occasion to refer to those whose authenticity could not be contested. Sometimes they occur during sleep, in the state of dreaming; now, since dreams are nothing more than a state of incomplete natural somnambulism, we shall designate the visions that occur in this state by the name of somnambulistic visions, to distinguish them from those that take place in the waking state and which we shall call visions by second sight. Finally, we shall call ecstatic visions those that occur in ecstasy; in general they have for their object the beings and things of the incorporeal world. The following fact belongs to the second category.

A shipowner, an acquaintance of ours, residing in Paris, related to us a few days ago the following: “Last April, being a little indisposed, I went for a walk with my partner in the Tuileries. The weather was magnificent; the garden was full of people. Suddenly, the crowd disappears from my eyes; I no longer feel my body; I am as though transported and I distinctly see a ship entering the port of Le Havre. I recognize it as the Clémence, which we were awaiting from the Antilles; I saw it dock at the quay, clearly distinguishing the masts, the sails, the sailors, and the most minute details, as if I were there. Then I said to my companion: ‘Here is the Clémence arriving; we shall receive news this very day; its crossing was a happy one.’ On returning home, a telegram was handed to me; before reading it, I said: ‘It is the announcement of the arrival of the Clémence, which entered Le Havre at three o'clock.’ Indeed, the telegram confirmed the entry at the very hour at which I had seen it from the Tuileries.” When the visions have for their object the beings of the incorporeal world, one could, apparently with some reason, qualify them as hallucination, because nothing can demonstrate their exactness to us; but, in the two cases we have just related, it is the most palpable and most positive truth that is evidenced. We defy all the physiologists and all the philosophers to explain them to us by the ordinary systems. Only the Spiritist Doctrine is capable of doing so, through the phenomenon of the emancipation of the soul which, escaping momentarily from its material tentacles, transports itself beyond the sphere of bodily activity. In the first case, it is probable that the mother's soul came to seek out her daughter to warn her of her death; but, in the second, what is certain is that it was not the ship that came to find the shipowner in the Tuileries; it must, then, have been his soul that went to seek it out in Le Havre.