Tom the blind, natural musician.

One reads in the Spiritual Magazine, of London:

“The celebrity of Tom the Blind, who lately made his appearance in London, had already spread here; some years ago an article in the newspaper All the year round had described his remarkable faculties and the sensation they had produced in America. The manner in which the faculties developed in this Negro, slave and blind, ignorant and wholly illiterate; how, when still a boy, one day surprised by the sounds of music in the house of his master, he ran without ceremony to take his place at the piano, reproducing note for note what had just been played, laughing and writhing with joy at seeing the new world of pleasures he had just discovered, all this has been so often repeated that I deem it useless to mention it again. But a significant and interesting fact was told to me by a friend, who was the first to witness and appreciate Tom’s faculty. One day a work by Handel was played. Immediately Tom repeated it correctly and, on finishing, rubbed his hands with an expression of indefinable joy, exclaiming: “I see him; he is an old man with a great wig; he played first and I afterward.” It is incontestable that Tom had seen Handel and had heard him play. “Tom has exhibited himself several times in public, and the manner in which he executes the most difficult pieces would almost make one doubt his infirmity. He repeats without fault on the piano and, necessarily, from memory, all that is played to him, whether ancient classical sonatas or modern fantasias. Now, we would indeed like to see who could learn in this manner the variations of Thalberg with the eyes closed, as he did.

“This surprising fact of a blind man, ignorant, devoid of any instruction, showing a talent that others are incapable of acquiring, even with all the advantages of study, will probably be explained by a great number, according to the ordinary manner of regarding these things, by saying: he is a genius and an exceptional organization. But only Spiritism can give the key to this phenomenon in a comprehensible and rational manner.”

The reflections we made apropos of the little girl of Toulon naturally apply to Tom the blind. Tom must have been a great musician, for whom it sufficed to hear in order to be on the path of what he had known. What makes the phenomenon more extraordinary is that it presents itself in a Negro, slave and blind, a triple cause that opposed the cultivation of his native aptitudes and in spite of which they manifested themselves at the first favorable occasion, like a grain germinating in the rays of the sun. Now, as the Negro race, in general, and above all in the state of slavery, does not shine by the cultivation of the arts, one is forced to conclude that the Spirit Tom does not belong to this race, but that he will have incarnated in it, whether as an expiation, or as a providential means of rehabilitation of this race in opinion, by showing of what it is capable. Much has been said and written against slavery and the prejudice of color. All that has been said is just and moral; but it was only a philosophical thesis. The law of the plurality of existences and of reincarnation comes to add to this the irrefutable sanction of a law of Nature, which consecrates the fraternity of all men. Tom, the slave, born and acclaimed in America, is a living protest against the prejudices still reigning in that country.

(See the Review of April 1862: Perfectibility of the Negro race. Spiritualist Phrenology). [Reference to the young Tom the blind: Spiritist Review of September 1866.]

[1] Publisher’s note: See “Explanatory Note,” p. 527.