THE recent work on “Death and its Mystery,”[2] by Camille Flammarion, the eminent astronomer, cannot fail to be of supreme interest. The second volume of the series, entitled “At the Moment of Death,” will more especially appeal to medical men, and it is with this volume and with the reminiscences it has aroused that I am at present concerned. About the act or process of dying there is no mystery. The pathologist can explain precisely how death comes to pass, while the physiologist can describe the exact physical and chemical processes that ensue when a living thing ceases to live. Furthermore, he can demonstrate how the material of the body is finally resolved into the elements from which it was formed.
The mystery begins in the moment of death, and that mystery has engaged the thoughts and imaginations of men since the dawn of human existence. It was probably the first problem that158 presented itself to the inquisitive and ingenious mind, and it may be that it will be the last to occupy it. Beyond the barrier of death is “the undiscovered country” where a kindly light falls upon Elysian Fields or happy hunting grounds, or fills with splendour the streets of an eternal city. To some, on the other hand, there is no such country but only an impenetrable void, a blank, a mere ceasing to be. Certain who read these works of the learned astronomer may perhaps feel that he has thrown light upon the great mystery. Others may affirm that he leaves that mystery still unillumined and wholly unsolved, while others again may think that he makes the mystery still more mysterious and more complex.
M. Flammarion deals with the manifestations of the dying, with agencies set in action by the dying, and with events which attend upon the moment of death. He affirms that in addition to the physical body there is an astral body or “psychic element” which is “imponderable and gifted with special, intrinsic faculties, capable of functioning apart from the physical organism, and of manifesting itself at a distance.”
This leads to the theory of bilocation where the actual body (at the point of death) may be in one place and the astral body in another. It is this159 power of bilocation which explains the phantasms and apparitions of which the book gives many detailed records. These apparitions may be objective—that is to say, may be visible to several people at the same time—or they may be subjective or capable of being perceived only by the subject or seer. “These apparitions,” the author states, “are projections emanating from the soul of the dying.” They are astral bodies detached for the moment from the physical body of which they are part. “It is,” the author continues, “at the hour of death that transmissions of images and of sensations are most frequent” (p. 108).
These phantasms appear, either in dreams or in broad daylight, to the friends of dying persons. They may announce in words, “I am dying,” or “I am dead.” They may merely appear with signs upon their faces of alarm or of impending dissolution. They may appear as bodies lying dead upon a couch or in a coffin. They may predict the hour of their death, but more usually their appearance coincides with the exact moment at which their physical bodies ceased to exist.
M. Flammarion gives numerous instances of these apparitions seen under such varying circumstances as have been named. In certain examples the phantom appears to have substance and to be160 capable of making its presence actually felt. Thus in one case the subject saw the apparition of her sister who was dying in a place far away, and at the same time “felt a hand brush lightly against the sheets.” The subject, when questioned, said: “No, no, it wasn’t a dream! I heard her steps; they made the floor creak. I’m sure of it; I wasn’t dreaming; she came; I saw her” (p. 345).
It may be further noted that persons who announce their deaths to others by visions or by spoken words may at the time of such warning be in perfect health. Moreover, the apparition may announce to the dreamer the exact date of the speaker’s own death many days in advance. In one such instance a man—then in sound health—appeared to a friend in a dream on August 2 and informed him that he (the subject of the apparition) would die on August 15. The event happened as foretold. An instance which involved an interval of years is recorded by Robert Browning the poet. Seven years after his wife’s death she appeared in a dream to her sister, Miss Arabel Barrett. Miss Barrett asked the apparition, “When will the day come on which we shall be reunited?” The dead woman answered, “My dear, in five years.” Five years, lacking a161 month, after this vision, Miss Barrett died of heart disease.
In messages or warnings from the dying M. Flammarion affirms that telepathy (or the transmission of thought to a distance) plays an important part. More than this, he says: “It is beyond doubt that at the moment of death a subtle shock, unknown in its nature, at times affects those at a distance who are connected with the dying person in some way. This connexion is not always that of sympathy.” The method in which telepathy acts is explained by the author in the following words: “It is admitted that a kind of radiation emanates from the dying person’s brain, from his spirit, still in his body, and is dispersed into space in ether waves—successive, spherical waves, like those of sound in the atmosphere. When this wave, this emanation, this effluvium, comes into contact with a brain attuned to receive it, as in the case of a wireless-telegraph apparatus, the brain comprehends it—feels, hears, sees” (p. 284).
The manifestations produced by these passages between the living and those who are on the point of death are very varied. They may take the form of warnings, predictions or notifications of death. They may be conveyed vast distances and are162 usually received at the very moment at which the body from which they emanate ceases to be. Warnings or announcements may be conveyed by voices or by visions of various kinds. The voices may be recognized as those of the dying, or the actual death scene, “visioned from a distance,” may be presented complete in every detail. Some of the manifestations may take a physical form, such as knockings upon doors and windows, the sound of footsteps or of gliding feet, the moving of articles of furniture, the falling of portraits from the wall, the opening of doors, the passage of a gust of wind.
Many of the phenomena appear to me to be hardly worthy of being recorded. As illustrations I may quote the movement of a hat on a hat peg used by the deceased, the violent shaking of an iron fender to announce a daughter’s death, the fact that about the time of a relative’s decease a table became “split completely along its whole length,” while on another like occasion a gas jet went out in a room in which a party was sitting, playing cards.
The following circumstance will not commend itself to the reasonable as one that was dependent upon a supernatural agency. “My grandmother,” a student writes, “died in 1913. At the hour of163 her death the clock which hung in her room stopped, and no one could make it go again. Some years afterwards her son died, and the very day of his death the clock again began to go without anyone having touched it.” “It is strange,” comments M. Flammarion, “that the spirit of someone dying or dead should be able to stop a clock or start it again.” Assuredly it is more than strange. The same comment might apply to the following testimony provided by a gardener in Lunéville. “A friend, when one day cleaning vegetables, seated in a chair, was struck on the knee by a turnip which was on the ground, and heard at the same instant two cries: ‘Mother! Mother!’ That same day her son, a soldier, was dying in our colony of Guiana; she did not hear of his death until very much later.”
M. Flammarion’s work is probably the most orderly, temperate and exact that has appeared on the subject of death from the point of view of the spiritualist. It has been the work of many years and its conclusions are based upon hundreds of reports, letters and declarations collected by the writer. To many readers the book will, no doubt, be convincing and inspiring, while possibly to a larger number of people the author’s position will appear to be untenable, and much of the evidence164 upon which his conclusions are based to be either incredible or impossible. With those who may hold this latter opinion I am entirely in accord.
Many of the so-called manifestations, such as the spirit visitants, the visions and the voices, can be as fitly claimed to be illusions and hallucinations as affirmed to be due to the action of the psychic element or astral body. The tricks of the senses are innumerable. The imagination, stimulated and intensified, can effect strange things in sensitive subjects; while, on the other hand, the powers of self-deception are almost beyond belief, as the experience of any physician will attest. Belief in the supernatural and the miraculous has a fascination for many minds, and especially for minds of not too stable an order. Such persons seem to prefer a transcendental explanation to one that is commonplace. Apparitions are not apt to appear to those who are healthy both in body and in mind. Dreams, it will be admitted by all, are more often due to indigestion than to a supernatural or a spiritual agency. Voices are heard and non-existing things are seen by those whose minds are deranged, and it must be allowed that not a few of the men and women upon whose evidence M. Flammarion depends165 exhibit a degree of emotional excitement or exaltation which borders on the abnormal.
I think, moreover, it would not be unjust to suggest that certain of the narratives are exaggerated and that an element of invention is possible and, indeed, probable in many of them. There is an impression also that some of the circumstances detailed have been misinterpreted or misapplied or have been modified by events which have followed later and to which they have been adapted as an afterthought. Above all I am reluctant to believe that the dying, in the solemn and supreme moment of passing away from the earth, can be occupied by the trivialities—and, indeed, I would say by the paltry tricks—which are accredited to their action in this book.
It is only fair to point out that the volume now discussed is written by an eminent man of science who has been trained all his life in methods of precision, in the judicial examination of reported facts and in the close scrutiny of evidence. Further it may be said that the terms “incredible” and “impossible” would have been applied a few years ago to any account of the telephone or of wireless telegraphy, while the same expressions would assuredly be employed by a medical man when told, not so long since, that there was a ray capable166 of making a human body so transparent as to render visible not only the bones but the details of their internal construction.
In common with others who have been for many years on the staff of a large hospital, I have seen much of death and have heard even more from those who have been in attendance on the dying. In this experience of a lifetime I have never met with a single circumstance which would confirm or support the propositions advanced by M. Flammarion. This is obviously no argument. It is merely a record of negative experience. The only two events, within my personal knowledge, which bear even remotely upon the present subject are the following.
I was, as a youth, on a walking tour in the south of England with a cousin. We put up one night at a certain inn. In the morning my companion came down to breakfast much excited and perturbed. He declared that his father was dead, that in a vivid dream he had seen him stretched out dead upon the couch in his familiar bedroom at home. He had awakened suddenly and noted that the hour was 2 A.M. That his father had expired at that moment he was assured, so assured that he proposed to return home at once, since his mother was alone. Inasmuch as the journey167 would have occupied a whole day, I suggested that, before starting, he should telegraph and seek news of his father. With great reluctance he consented to this course and the telegram was dispatched. A reply was received in due course. It was from the father himself expressing surprise at the inquiry and stating that he was never better in his life. Nothing, it transpired, had disturbed the father’s rest at 2 A.M. on this particular night. Nothing untoward happened. My uncle lived for many years, and finally died one afternoon, and not, therefore, at 2 A.M.
The other incident is associated with an actual death and with a strange announcement, but the announcement is not to be explained by any of the theories propounded by M. Flammarion. The facts are these. I was on a steamship which was making a passage along that coast known in old days as the Spanish Main. We put in at Colon, and remained there for about a day and a half. I took advantage of this break in the voyage to cross the Isthmus by train to Panama. The names of those who were travelling by the train had been telegraphed to that city, which will explain how it came about that on reaching the station I was accosted by one of the medical officers of the famous American hospital of the168 place. He begged me to see with him a patient under his care. The sick man was an Englishman who was travelling for pleasure, who was quite alone and who had been taken ill shortly after his arrival on the Pacific. He was the only Englishman, he said, on that side of the Isthmus.
I found the gentleman in a private ward. He was a stranger to me, was very gravely ill, but still perfectly conscious. I had nothing fresh to suggest in the way of treatment. The case was obviously hopeless, and we agreed that his life could not be extended beyond a few days and certainly not for a week. It was a satisfaction to feel that the patient was as well cared for as if he had been in his own home in England. I returned to Colon. Travelling with me was a retired general of the Indian Army. He had remained at Colon during my absence. I told him my experience. He did not know the patient even by name, but was much distressed at the thought of a fellow-countryman dying alone in this somewhat remote part of the world. This idea, I noticed, impressed him greatly.
Two days after my return from Panama we were on the high seas, having touched at no port since leaving Colon. On the third day after my169 visit to the hospital the general made a curious communication to me. The hour for lun............