The Philosophy of Mystery

Ev. You are a most industrious gleaner among the sheaves of history, Astrophel. But why, in all these seeming prophecies, seek to thwart the harmonious course of nature? Leave superstition to the heathen and the savage: be assured, in the words of Principal Robertson, that a vain desire of prying into futurity is the error of the infancy of a people, and a proof of its weakness.

From this weakness proceeded the faith of the Americans in dreams, their observation of omens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of animals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events. And if any one of these prognostics was deemed unfavourable, they instantly abandoned the pursuit of those measures on which they were most eagerly bent.

Thus, on February the thirteenth, the Romans were conquered by the Gauls: henceforward important acts were never undertaken on its anniversary: nor on August the tenth by the Jews, because their first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the other by Titus, long afterwards, on that day of the month.

I am not, however, without some curious stories of very modern date; one anecdote may be recognised on the Stock Exchange. A wealthy Hebrew, who was wont to fling his gold even into the lap of kings, was once standing on a certain stone, at the Post Office, when he received a letter, on which he speculated, and lost 20,000l. On this he cautioned his friends never to stand on that stone, lest a similar ill-fortune should attend them.

The three brothers of his great house were once on their way to Lord Liverpool, in order to the completion of a loan to the Treasury; when, lo! an army of swine met them on their way. There was no more progress to Downing Street that day; but they retired to Stamford Hill, and the Lord Treasurer waited twenty-four hours for the Hebrews’ gold.

I presume you were ashamed to adduce ornithoscopy, or the divination by birds, as an illustration. Do you forget the mystic influence of three crows on man’s destiny? But I will tell you an oriental fable; how an accomplished Jew, named Mosollam, puzzled an augur, by shooting a beautiful bird, from which the augur was about to prophecy on the fate of an expedition. “Why,” said Mosollam, “did not the bird foreknow the fate which awaited it? why did it not fly away—or why come at all?”

I have listened to your legends, and you will now listen to me, while I presume to illustrate my own proofs, searching for my causes in the beautiful eccentricities of nature alone; and a scholar like yourself, Astrophel, with whom I have so often chopped Oxford logic, will grant it is a precept in philosophy not to seek for more causes, than the explanation of the fact requires.

In the first class there is no real or palpable object, or, if there be, it is not what it appears; the illusion is but the reality of romance, depending altogether on excited or disordered conditions of the mind: the source, therefore, either of bright or gloomy phantoms, as the mood may be.

On this scroll I have recorded those moods of mind, which, excited by memory or association, or influenced by such casualties as solitude, moonlight darkness, or localities of interest, or the poring over tales of horror at midnight, may be considered the predisposing causes of illusion. Such are: —