CHAPTER II

PREMONITION, PRESCIENCE AND PREDICTION

That the Old Testament writers believed in the phenomenon of prediction is evident from almost every page of the various books. Deuteronomy 18: 22 takes the power of prediction as the true tests of the prophet's genuineness. "When a prophet speaketh in the name of God, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken." Isaiah (48: 6-7) seems to indicate that it was not calculation of future events but actual prediction that characterized the prophet. In fact the belief in the power of prediction is common to all peoples. Says Brinton: "The word from the Gods is clothed under two forms, the Laws and the Prophets, in other terms, Precept and Prediction. In every religion, from the most primitive to the highest, we find these two modes of divine utterance."

"The second form of the Word from God' was when it was uttered as a prophecy, a prediction of the future. In this form it appears throughout the world under the innumerable aspects of divination or oracles, prophetic utterances, forecasts of time to come, secondsight, clairvoyance and the like.”

Cassandra is supposed to have had the power of prediction but no one believed her. Jesus Ananiae,1 "four years before the outbreak of the war, and at a time when as yet undisturbed peace and prosperity prevailed in Jerusalem, appeared there during the Feast of Tabernacles and began of a sudden to cry aloud: 'A voice from sunrise, a voice from sunset, a voice from the four quar1 Quoted from Buttenwieser's article "Essence of Prophecy."

ters of the earth; a voice against Jerusalem and the temple, a voice against bridegroom and against bride, a voice against the whole people!' This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night through all the streets of the city. He was arrested, beaten, and finally taken before Albinus, where he was flogged till his bones were laid bare; all this torture he suffered without a groan, but crying out at every stroke of the scourge, 'Woe to Jerusalem!' He was thought to be a madman and dismissed. But for the remainder of his life he did not associate nor converse with anyone; nor did he curse those who beat him, nor thank those who gave him food. His one reply to everybody was: 'Woe to Jerusalem!' This cry he kept up continually for seven years and five months until, during the siege of the city, a stone hurled from one of the catapults struck him and silenced him forever.

"Similarly, Scipio's foreboding of the later fate of Rome, and Leibnitz's utterance in 1703 to the effect that a great revolution was approaching left no impression whatever on history; they were but the visions of wise men bearing no fruit in the sphere either of politics or religion, whereas the presentiments and predictions of the Israelitish prophets stirred up and went hand in hand with a movement which, for intensity and persistence and widereaching consequences, stands without parallel in the history of mankind."

Queen Louise's prediction in 1808, given at length by Schwartzkopff and compared in every detail with the prophetic predictions, that Prussia will not be destroyed but be finally victorious, is another example to the point. Yet another example of premonitory dream well known among all the hosts of Dr. I. M. Wise's pupils and admirers may be read in "Reminiscences of I. M. Wise," pp. 14-15. And anyone who knows aught of the life work of this great Jewish reformer, the noblest Jewish

spirit of the nineteenth century, knows how true in detail that premonitory dream was. As in Hosea's case, quoted in the last chapter, the interpretation and full import of a previous experience came later, so here the full import and meaning of the dream was not realized until the course of events showed the dream to have been a remarkable premonition.

It might be said that this premonitory dream was the result of his feverish brain, of his agitated soul, which is fundamentally true, because only he could have dreamed such a dream; smaller minds, with less thought of Jewish life, with less interest for the welfare of his people, with less of an indomitable spirit and conquering genius, could never have dreamed that dream. Not only do I admit this, but I emphasize it again and again that all mind phenomena are subjective and individual, and yet the point of interest here is the fact that occasionally, somehow and somewise, some minds can rise to the mountain tops of human history and behold events that are not seen in the vale of humdrum existence.

Premonition on a smaller scale, that is, of less important events than those cited above and those of the prophets, occur almost daily.

Not unconscious of the fact that premonition may be rejected as a psychological phenomenon by some scholars, I nevertheless am forced to accept it as a fact, and I hasten to say that it was just as difficult to accept these so-called "mystical phenomena " as it was to reject some of the most cherished orthodox views of my childhood. No scientist has much respect for the dogmatic certainty of hide-bound theologians and cock-sure thinkers, and yet it never dawns upon half the scientific world that it is equally dogmatic to reject the infinite varieties of mental experiences of countless men and women, and labeling all these experiences "mystic phenomena " and the like,

simply because they have not all been sworn to before a notary public with college degrees. Now, all consciousness is mysterious. Mystic beyond all power of description is to me the mind phenomenon of those who catch sounds and reproduce them on the piano or on the violin. Mystic to the blind are the quibblings about the beauty of the flower and the sublimity of the mountain. Mystic is the whole field of human feeling. Mystic is the supreme emotion of love, and had we not all experienced this mystic feeling of love, we should doubtless confine in the insane asylum all those who spoke of, and tried to make plain, their feelings of love. To deny, therefore, what thousands upon thousands assert as phenomena of their mental life, is, to say the least, unscientific and dogmatic.

From the volumes upon volumes of evidence which I have read, and from the countless greater number which are extant and vouched for by men and women of scientific training and good sense, and from the evidence of personal friends, relatives and acquaintances, whose evidence in all other matters I accept unconditionally, I must conclude, I cannot help but conclude, that premonition as well as many other so-called mystic phenomena are undisputed and indisputable facts of the human mind.

This explanation I offer for my acceptance of the fact of premonition as a mental experience, as well as for the other psychic phenomena with which the rest of this thesis will deal.

To return, therefore, the Psychic Research Society of the United States and England furnishes a vast number of what they consider authentic premonitions. One may be cited here in brief. A mother away to dinner in a neighboring town suddenly grows uneasy and feels that she must go home, that something has gone wrong with her son. She is urged to stay, but to no avail. She

drives home as fast as possible and comes just in time to save her boy from suffocation.

A case of premonition on the occasion of a sad event in my own home is perhaps even more remarkable. A letter reached us one morning from my aunt inquiring anxiously about my brother's health. Nothing was wrong with my brother, and the letter was a mystery. That same day my brother went out swimming and was drowned.

A friend of mine with so-called psychic powers had a number of remarkable experiences, only one of which will be mentioned here. One day she was very strongly impressed that something had happened to her husband who was then in New York. She telegraphed to find out, and received the answer that her husband had fallen from an elevator and had dislocated his shoulder blade.

An example of premonition which I experienced is in every sense similar to the premonitions of the prophets, only, of course, not of so profound a nature, or of any great vital consequence, nor followed by any great awakening of spirit, as in the case of the prophets. When not eleven years old, I was going home towards evening in the little city in Germany in which my parents then lived, and looking across to where the horizon meets the vast expanse of field, dotted with flowers and winding rivers, there came over me a feeling so strange and sublime that the memory of it has remained with me to this day, a feeling that I was to be carried across the expanse of the universe, a premonition, if you will, an assurance, a feeling not of hope or desire only, but of certainty that I would sail on the vast ocean that was somewhere on this earth. And I remember distinctly that when unhoped-for circumstances suddenly prepared a way to the United States, my mind instantly reverted with mingled feelings of awe, religious fear and reverence to the premonition