A new Nebuchadnezzar.

— We are written to from Kharkov (Russia):

In writing to you, Mr. President, I dare hope that Spiritism may perhaps cast some light upon a fact, hitherto inexplicable, which seems to me to offer a powerful interest. I gathered it from an eyewitness, a close relative of the person in question. Here is what was told to me.

All the members of the R… family made themselves noticed by the originality of their character and by their inclinations. But here I shall speak only of the two brothers, Alexander and Voldemar. What was striking in the latter were his eyes, whose impression is impossible to describe. As children we played together; far from being a coward, I nevertheless could not endure his gaze. I made the observation to my father, who confessed to me that he experienced, in looking at him, the same feeling of disturbance, and advised me to avoid him. It seems that Voldemar was not the favorite of the family. When he reached the age of serious studies, the two brothers went to study at the University of Kazan. Voldemar was not slow to leave masters and colleagues stupefied by his uncommon attitudes; he often boasted in the presence of his brother, whom he had chosen as the target of his mockeries. But his successes did not last long. At sixteen years of age, he died in his brother's arms. It is with this latter that we are going to occupy ourselves. Though to a lesser degree, Alexander also possessed, in his black eyes, that fascinating magnetism which was so shocking in his brother; nor did he have his brilliant qualities; but this did not prevent him from having much wit and from learning with ease. His brother's death made such an impression upon him that he became another man. Six weeks later, he remained without opening his eyes, ceased to comb his hair, to wash himself, and would not, under any pretext, change his clothes, so that the linen and the suit rotted upon his body and fell to rags.

Then his mother took him to the countryside. An uncle who did not live far away got her to entrust the nephew to him for some time, promising to make him forget all his fancies. Indeed, he told him very severely that if he dared to maintain such an attitude in his house, he would have no scruples as to the means of correcting him. Alexander soon became perfectly reasonable; he offered no resistance to his uncle's orders, but secretly wrote to his mother, imploring her to come deliver him from his tormentor. The mother promptly attended to his wish. But, once far from the uncle, the eccentricities began again, more and more. Among other things, he demanded that the church bells be rung when he sat down to table. They thought of a disorder of the brain and placed him in a sanatorium at Kazan. Strange thing! Once again he changed completely. Nothing in his conduct, in his words, betokened a sick brain. The doctors thought of a family intrigue and observed him no more closely. One night, seeing that everyone was asleep, he put on the cap and donned the apron of one of the doctors, left the room, passed near the porter without being recognized, gained the street and walked about 30 kilometers ⁱ on foot, as far as his farm. He entered a kind of hut, which served as a henhouse, took off all his clothes and, placing himself in the middle of the room, declared that two square meters ⁱ of ground were sufficient for the life of a man, and that he needed nothing. His mother, on her knees, in vain implored him to change his mind; in vain did they try to persuade him at least to allow a roof to be made on his hut, but he remained inflexible; he wanted at his side only an old servant, who had never left him and who had for him a fidelity and an attachment like a dog's. His father, seeing that nothing produced any result, ordered all his peasants to leave the place and go establish themselves 7 kilometers away. He himself departed, nicknaming the village "Lost Hamlet." Then they wished to place the property under guardianship. They appointed commissions, but Alexander was always warned in time and would dress himself, though without wearing his undergarments; then he came to meet the people. To all questions he replied with good sense, with an exactness that left nothing to be desired, and he did it so well that the commission, imagining on arrival that it was dealing with a madman, withdrew disappointed. This took place in 1842 and, until now, Alexander is always in the same state. He keeps himself standing, completely naked, in a hovel without doors or windows, exposed to all the winds and where, in winter, the cold reaches 30° below zero. He feeds on a little grape jelly, which is brought to him once a day in an earthen bowl; they throw it to him with a spoon and he catches it in the air, in the manner of animals, whose roar he has adopted, for he no longer makes use of human speech. By dint of keeping his head bowed, he can no longer raise it; his feet have attained an inordinate width and he can no longer walk. Sometimes, at night, he falls prostrate, allowing himself to be covered with a sheepskin. His appearance, moreover, presents nothing extraordinary, except the eyes. He is neither fat nor thin; his physiognomy bears the stamp of suffering. Once he was asked the reason for his bizarre conduct. He replied: "Do not speak to me of it, it is a failing of the will." They could obtain nothing more. What did he mean by failing of the will? Was it a vow?… Sometimes he pronounces the name of his dead brother; other times he exclaims: "When will this end?" He follows none of the rules imposed by his religion. They had sent his hair to a celebrated somnambulist in London; the answer came that "it was the disease of Nebuchadnezzar." And yet, he is not mad! What is most extraordinary is that alongside this purely bestial existence, there is in him an intellectual life, for he takes an interest in all that goes on in the world; he has many newspapers brought to him and, as his dwelling is dark, he allowed a kind of shed to be built beside his hovel. It was there that formerly, for whole hours, his mother read to him. Now that she is dead, she has been replaced by a hired reader.

The commission charged with investigating the case obtained the following details which, at bottom, only muddled it further. D***, a colleague of Alexander R… at the university, deposed that, when they were together, he was able to observe that he was very much in love with the wife of a pharmacist; she was a creature of rare beauty and, besides, very virtuous. Daily Alexander mounted his horse, to have the pleasure of passing in front of her windows and seeing her, sometimes, from afar, his love being limited to this. However, there was brought to him every day and at the same hour, a sealed letter; if there was someone in his room, he hastened to hide it in a drawer. Persuaded that these were love notes, D*** was not much interested in knowing their contents. Later, when the inquiries began, they found only two letters (he had burned the rest), it being supposed that they were among those he received at the university. The first was couched more or less in these terms: "Yesterday a strange thing happened to me. I was returning from our Russian Switzerland (the name of a promenade in the environs of Kazan) and was crossing the field of Ars, when I heard a cry: Help! I also cried out and, rushing toward the side from which the cries came, I drew near a fenced cemetery. I saw appear atop the fence a young man who thanked me warmly for my intervention, saying that he had been attacked by thieves; but, hearing a voice, they fled. (A textile factory was situated in the field of Ars; as work had been suspended for some time and the workers found no means to earn their bread, they gave themselves over to robbery.) We took together the road to the city, a very interesting and lively conversation being established between us. I cannot tell you here what it was about, but I shall tell you when we meet. "At last we arrived at the house of my stranger and there I spent the whole evening. On saying goodbye he thanked me once more, without, however, inviting me to come see him at his home; he only indicated to me a place where he walked every day at a certain hour and where, if I wished, I might see him. What is strange is that, on returning to my home, it was not possible for me to recall either the street, or the house I had just left and, nevertheless, I know perfectly the city where I have lived for four years. I propose to go see my stranger at the indicated place; I shall try to introduce myself into his house and, surely, this time I shall remember." There was no signature. Here is the second letter, which gives a sequel to the preceding one. It is only much shorter: "I saw my stranger at the indicated place; he invited me to come to his house; we spent the whole evening together, but, on returning to my home, I once again forgot completely the street and the house." Nothing of a signature. Examining the handwriting attentively, they thought they found a great resemblance with that of one of his comrades. But when they read them to this latter, he began to laugh, declaring that he had never written such things.

Here all the inquiries stop. It is supposed that there is in this a great mystery, and only three persons can know it. First his mother, then the old servant who never left him and, finally, his sister. The first two are dead, the third lives with her husband in the same village as Alexander. She goes to see him daily and there spends three or four hours at a stretch. Of what can they speak? Does her brother forget his roars to speak a human language, becoming rational again? That is what no one knows. What is singular is that this so extraordinary fact is very little known; it has never been published by any newspaper and, nevertheless, it takes place quite near Kazan, a city where there is a university, scientists and doctors. It is true that at the beginning they made inquiries, but it seems they grew discouraged very quickly. Yet, what a vast field for the observation of Science, not to speak of the psychological side! It is a present-day fact, which anyone can verify. Could Spiritism, which explains so much, give the solution of this strange phenomenon? I do not dare ask you for a reply in writing, since your time is very precious; I only hope that if you consider the fact worthy of your examination, you might give your opinion in the Spiritist Review, which we receive here.

Accept, etc.

— One thing evidently stands out from this account: this young man is not mad, in the scientific acceptation of the term; he enjoys the plenitude of reason, when he wishes. But what can be the cause of such eccentricity, at that age? We believe that much time will yet pass before Science finds it, with its purely material resources. Meanwhile, there exists something more than a simple mania: it is the assimilation of the voice and gestures of animals. One has seen, it is true, creatures abandoned in the forests, from a tender age, living with wild beasts, adopting their cries and customs by imitation; but here this is not the case. The young man pursued serious studies, lives on his lands, in the midst of a village; he is in daily contact with human beings; it is not, then, a question of habit and isolation. It is, said the somnambulist of London, the disease of Nebuchadnezzar.

But what disease is this? Is the history of that king not a legend? [See Daniel, chapter 4.] Is it possible for a man to be transformed into a wild beast? Yet, if one compares the biblical account with the present-day fact of Alexander R…, one will note between them more than one point of resemblance. One understands that what happens today may have happened in other times, and that the king of Babylon may have been stricken by a similar malady. If, then, that king, dominated by an analogous influence, left his palace, as Alexander R… left his castle; if he lived and cried out like him, in the manner of wild beasts, one could say, in the allegorical language of the time, that he had been transmuted into a wild beast. It is true that this destroys the miracle; but how many miracles fall today before the laws of Nature, which are discovered every day! Religion has only to gain if it accepts as natural a fact that was repelled as marvelous. When the adversaries of Spiritism say that it resurrects the supernatural and superstition, they prove that they are ignorant of its first words, since it comes, on the contrary, to prove that certain facts, reputed mysterious, are nothing but natural effects.

This account having been read at the Society of Paris, as a subject of study, a medium was asked to evoke the Spirits who might give their explanation. The following three communications were obtained: one from the dead brother, Voldemar; the second from the protecting Spirit of the two brothers; the third, from the spiritual guide of another medium.

(Spiritist Society of Paris, October 13, 1865. – Medium: Mr.

Desliens.)

I.

— Here I am!… What do you want?… By what right do you meddle in family affairs and wholly intimate ones!… Know that no one has ever offended me with impunity, and fear to incur my wrath, if you seek to penetrate a secret that does not belong to you! Do you wish to have the key to the reasons that lead my brother to do such follies?… Know that the whole cause resides in me, who punished him in this manner for the lack of faith of which he became guilty toward me. A bond united us, a terrible bond, the bond of death!… Let him suffer, then, the penalty for a fault that could not find grace with me!… My accomplice in the deed, he should have followed me in the torment. Why did he hesitate?… Today he suffers the penalty of his hesitations. Not being able to constrain him to follow me, at least immediately, I employed the magnetic force, which I possess in extreme degree, to oblige him to abandon his will and his being to my free will. He suffers in that posture!… so much the better! each of his inner groans causes me an agitation of somber satisfaction.

Are you content with my urbanity? do you find my explanations sufficient?… No; you would like to moralize me… But who are you to make sermons to me? are you a priest? no. Well then! by what title do you wish me to listen to you? I will hear nothing and I return to the place I should not have left. He understands his ills at this moment; perhaps his will may react upon matter! Woe to you if you let him escape my dominion!

Voldemar R…

II.

— Do not attempt, at least for now, to oblige this poor madman to hear you; he could not do it and your words would only excite his brutal rage. I come in his place to give you some explanations that will cast a little light upon the somber drama of which these two beings were the actors in another existence. At this moment they expiate it, suffering the consequences of the criminal actions, into whose details I could not enter today. Know only that, of these two individualities, Alexander was, under another name and in another epoch, a subordinate of Voldemar, in a social condition that you will be able to surmise from a few words of the account you have read. Meditate on the passage in which it is said that Alexander demanded that the bell be rung at the beginning of his meals, and you will be on the path. A subordinate, as I told you, of Voldemar, under the latter's instigation he committed various actions, the responsibility for which both bear today, and which are the source of their sufferings. Alexander was and is still a weak and vacillating character, when some cause gave someone dominion over him; toward others he was haughty, despotic, brutal. In short, he was under the dominion of his brother. What the two did is what the future will tell you in the sequel to this study. Let us pass to the results.

They promised never to betray nor to abandon each other. Moreover, Voldemar reserved to himself the right to trample, with all his powerful will, upon his unfortunate accomplice. You saw that he had taken him as the target of his mockeries, in the phase of existence they traversed together. Endowed with uncommon intelligence, these two beings had formerly formed, by the association of their evil inclinations, a fearsome league against society. Voldemar was carried off by a design of Providence, which thus prepared the way for the renewal of these two beings. Dominated by his promise, Alexander wished to follow his brother into the grave, but his affection for a person, of whom mention was made in the account, and the fatigue of a yoke that he bore with great difficulty, made him take the resolution to struggle. The brother could not kill him materially, but killed him morally, enveloping him in a tangle of influences that determined the cruel obsession, whose consequences you know. The somnambulist who designated this affliction under the name of the disease of Nebuchadnezzar was not so far from the truth as one might believe, because Nebuchadnezzar was nothing but an obsessed person, convinced that he had been transformed into a wild beast. It is, then, an obsession which, as you know, does not exclude the action of the intelligence and does not annihilate it in a fatal manner. It is one of the most notable cases, the study of which can only be profitable to all. This night it would drag us very far, by the developments it calls for. I shall limit myself to this exposition, asking you at the same time to gather your spiritual forces to evoke Voldemar. As he fears with reason, in his absence the brother recovers his energy and may free himself. This is why it is repugnant to him to leave him and why he exercises upon him a continual magnetic action. The guide of both, Paulowitch.

III.

(Medium: Mrs. Delanne.)

— My well-beloved brethren, certain facts referred to in the Scriptures are looked upon, by many people, as fables for children. They have disdained them, because they did not understand them and refused to give them credence. Nevertheless, freed of the allegorical form, the substance is true and only Spiritism could give the key to it. There are going to occur facts of diverse natures, not only among Spiritists, but throughout the whole world and over all the Earth, forcing scientists to study, and it is then that they will be able to convince themselves, in spite of what some may say, that Spiritism teaches the new, because it is through it that the explanation of what has remained unexplained until today will be had. Were you not told that obsession was going to adorn itself with new forms? This is an example. The punishment of Nebuchadnezzar is not a fable. He was not, as you said very judiciously, transmuted into a wild beast; but he was, as in the case that occupies you at this moment, deprived for some time of the free exercise of his intellectual faculties, and this in conditions that made him resemble a wild beast, making of the powerful despot an object of pity for all. God had struck him in his pride.

All these questions are connected with those of fluid and of magnetism. In that young man there is obsession and subjugation; he has great lucidity in the Spirit state, and his brother exercises upon him an irresistible magnetic influence; he draws him easily out of the body, when a friendly and sympathetic person is not there to retain him; he suffers when detached; for him too it is a punishment, and it is then that he lets out fierce roars.

Do not hasten, then, to condemn what is written in the sacred books, as do the majority of those who see only the letter and not the spirit. Daily you enlighten yourselves more and new truths will unfold before your eyes, for you are far from having exhausted all the applications of what you know in Spiritism.

Saint Benedict. ⁱ

— It results from this eminently rational explanation, that this young man is under the empire of an obsession, or, rather, of a terrible subjugation, similar to that which King Nebuchadnezzar suffered. Does this destroy the justice of God, who had punished that proud monarch? In no way, for we know that obsessions are, at the same time, trials and chastisements. Thus, God could punish him, placing him under the yoke of a maleficent Spirit, who constrained him to act like a wild beast, without, for this, metamorphosing him into an animal. The first of these punishments is natural and is explained by the laws of the relations between the visible world and the invisible world; the other is unnatural, fantastic and is not explained; one presents itself, in our day, as a reality, under the diverse forms of obsession; the other is found only in fairy tales. In short, one is acceptable to reason, while the other is not. From the point of view of Spiritism, the fact offers an important subject of study. Obsession there presents itself under a new aspect as to its form and as to its determining cause, but which has nothing surprising about it, after what it has been given us to see daily. Saint Benedict has much reason, when he says that we are far from having exhausted all the applications of Spiritism, nor understood all that it can explain to us. Such as it is, it presents to us a rich mine to explore, aided by the laws that it makes known to us. Before saying that it is stationary, let us, then, know how to draw profit from what it teaches us.

[1] Translator's note: In the original, 30 versts, an old Russian itinerary measure equivalent to 1,067 meters.

[2] Translator's note: In the original, 2 toises, a measure equivalent to six feet, about 2 meters.

[3] [see Saint Benedict.]