Wild Talents (17 page)

New enlightenments and new dogmas, new progresses, delusions, freedoms, and tyrannies.

I incline to the acceptance of many stories of miracles, but think that these miracles would have occurred, if this earth had been inhabited by atheists.

To me, the Bible is folklore, and therefore is not pure fantasy, but comprises much that will be rehabilitated. But also to me the Bible is non-existent. This is in the sense that, except in my earlier writings, I have drawn a dead-line, for data, at the year 1800. I may, upon rare occasions, dip farther back, but my notes start in the year 1800. I shall probably raise this limit to 1850, or maybe 1900. I take for a principle that our concern is not in marvels. It is in repetitions, or sometimes in almost the commonplace. There is no desirability in going back to antiquity for data, because, unless phenomena be appearing now, they are of only historical interest. At present, there is too much history.

Handwritings on watts—I have several accounts: but, if anybody should be interested enough to look up this phenomenon for himself, he will find the most nearly acceptable record in the case of Esther Cox, of Amherst, Nova Scotia. This case was of wide notoriety, and, of it, it could be said that it was well-investigated if it can be supposed that there ever has been a case of anything that has been more than glanced at, or more than painstakingly and profoundly studied, simply to confirm somebody’s theory.

If I should tell of a woman, who, by mental picturings, not only marked the body of her unborn infant, but transformed herself into the appearance of a tiger, or a lamppost, or became a weretiger, or a werelamppost—or of a magician, who, beginning with depicting forest scenes on window glass, had learned to transform himself into a weredeer, or a weretree—I’d tell of a kind of sorcery that used to be of somewhat common occurrence.

I have a specimen. It is a Ceylon leaf insect. It is a wereleaf. The leaf insect’s likeness to a leaf is too strikingly detailed to permit any explanation of accidental resemblance.

There are butterflies, which, with wings closed, look so much like dried leaves that at a distance of a few feet they are indistinguishable from dried leaves. There are tree hoppers with the appearance of thorns; stick insects, cinder beetles, spiders that look like buds of flowers. In all instances these are highly realistic portraitures, such as the writer, who described the portrait of Dean Liddell, on the church wall, would call the handiwork of a master artist.

There have been so many instances of this miracle that I now have a theory that, of themselves, men never did evolve from lower animals: but that, in early and plastic times, a human being from somewhere else appeared upon this earth, and that many kinds of animals took him for a model, and rudely and grotesquely imitated his appearance, so that, today, though the gorillas of the Congo, and of Chicago, are only caricatures, some of the rest of us are somewhat passable imitations of human beings.

The conventional explanation of the leaf insect, for instance, is that once upon a time a species of insects somewhat resembled leaves of trees, and that the individuals that most closely approximated to this appearance had the best chance to survive, and that in succeeding generations, still higher approximations were still better protected from their deceived enemies.

An intelligence from somewhere else, not well-acquainted with human beings—or whatever we are—but knowing of the picture galleries of this earth, might, in Darwinian terms, just as logically explain the origin of those pictures—that canvases that were daubed on, without purpose, appeared; and that the daubs that more clearly represented something recognizable were protected, and that still higher approximations had a still better chance, and that so appeared, finally, highly realistic pictures, though the painters had been purposeless, and with no consciousness of what they were doing—

Which contrasts with anybody’s experience with painters, who are not only conscious of what they’re doing, but are likely to make everybody else conscious of what they’re so conscious of.

It is not merely that hands of artists have painted pictures upon canvas: it is that, upon canvas, artists have realized their imaginings. But, without hands of artists, strikingly realistic pictures and exquisite modelings have appeared. It may be that for crosses on windowpanes, emblems on hailstones, faces on church walls, pre-natal markings, the stigmata, telepathic transferences of pictures, and leaf insects we shall conceive of one expression.

To the clergyman who told the story of the hailstones of Remiremont, the most important circumstance was that, a few days before the occurrence, the town council had forbidden a religious procession, and that, at the time of the fall of the hailstones, there was much religious excitement in Remiremont.

English Mechanic,
87-436—story told by Abbé Gueniot, of Remiremont:

That, upon the afternoon of the 26th of May, 1907, the Abbé was in his library, aware of a hailstorm, but paying no attention to it, when a woman of his household called to him to see the extraordinary hailstones that were falling. She told him that images of “Our Lady of the Treasures” were printed on them.

“In order to satisfy her, I glanced carelessly at the hailstones, which she held in her hand. But, since I did not want to see anything, and moreover could not do so, without my spectacles, I turned to go back to my book. She urged: ‘I beg of you to put on your glasses.’ I did so, and saw very distinctly on the front of the hailstones, which were slightly convex in the center, although the edges were somewhat worn, the bust of a woman, with a robe that was turned up at the bottom, like a priest’s cope. I should, perhaps, describe it more exactly by saying that it was like the Virgin of the Hermits. The outline of the images was slightly hollow, as if they had been formed with a punch, but were very boldly drawn. Mlle. André asked me to notice certain details of the costume, but I refused to look at it any longer. I was ashamed of my credulity, feeling sure that the Blessed Virgin would hardly concern herself with instantaneous photographs on hailstones. I said: ‘But do you not see that these hailstones have fallen on vegetables, and received these impressions? Take them away: they are no good to me.’ I returned to my book, without giving further thought to what had happened. But my mind was disturbed by the singular formation of these hailstones. I picked up three in order to weigh them, without looking closely. They weighed between six and seven ounces. One of them was perfectly round, like balls with which children play, and had a seam all around it, as though it had been cast in a mold.”

Then the Abbé’s conclusions:

“Savants, though you may try your hardest to explain these facts by natural causes, you will not succeed.” He thinks that the artillery of heaven had been directed against the impious town council. However people with cabbages suffered more than people with impieties.

“What appeared most worthy of notice was that the hailstones, which should have been precipitated to the ground, in accordance with the laws of acceleration of falling bodies, appeared to have fallen from a height of but a few yards.” But other, or unmarked, hailstones, in this storm, did considerable damage. The Abbe says that many persons had seen the images. He collected the signatures of fifty persons who asserted that they had been witnesses.

I notice several details. One is the matter of a hailstone with a seam around it, as if it had been cast in a mold. This looks as if some hoaxer, or pietist—who was all prepared, having prophetic knowledge that an extraordinary shower of big hailstones was coming—had cast printed lumps of ice in a mold. But accounts of big hailstones, ridged or seamed, are common. Another detail is something that I should say Abbé Gueniot had never before heard of. The detail of slow-falling objects is common in stories of occult occurrences, but, though for more than ten years I have had an eye for such reports, in reading of hundreds, or thousands, of hailstorms, I know of only half a dozen records of slow-falling hailstones.

In the
English Mechanic,
87-507, there is more upon this subject. It is said that, according to the newspapers of Remiremont, these “prints” were inside the hailstones, and were found on surfaces of hailstones that had been split: that 107 persons had given testimony to the Bishop of Sainte-Dié; and that several scientists, one of whom was M. de Lapparent, the Secretary of the French Academy, had been consulted. The opinion of M. de Lapparent was that lightning might have struck a medal of the Virgin, and might have reproduced the image upon the hailstones.

I have never come upon any other supposition that there can be manifold reproductions of images, or prints, by lightning. The stories of lightning pictures are mostly unsatisfactory, because most of them are of alleged pictures of leaves of trees, and, when investigated, turn out to be simply forked veinings, not very leaf-like. There is no other record, findable by me, of hailstones said to be pictorially marked by lightning, or by anything else. It would be much of coincidence, if, at a time of religious excitement in Remiremont, lightning should make its only known, or reported, pictures on hailstones, and make those pictures religious emblems. But that the religious excitement did have much to do with the religious pictures on hailstones, is thinkable by me.