Temple-sleep, Berlin, 1802). In the temple at Canopus, hung a multitude of votive-tablets, in commemoration of such supposed miraculous cures. At Alexandria, as Strabo assures us, took place "many marvels of healing, in which," says he, "the most distinguished men believe, and have recourse to the temple-sleep for themselves and others."

The history of the Emperor Vespasian is well known, who, as Suetonius and Tacitus both relate, was directed by the "god" in the temple to moisten the eyes of a blind man with his spittle, and to touch a cripple with his foot, which after some hesitation he at last did, and healed them both. Strabo further says that, at Canopus, Serapis gave counsel even to absent persons.

The patients were not suffered at once to have access to the interior of the temple, but first underwent a long preparation both spiritual and bodily. Healthy or uninitiated persons were not permitted to enter at all. Silence was a capital law in the sanctuaries of the oracular gods; no sooner did the worshipper tread the outer porch than the image of silence, the fore-finger placed on the lips, met

his eyes. In the inner chambers the patients were fumigated, anointed, bathed, and particularly stroked and rubbed, to which use particular instruments (Xystra) were at a later period invented. Plutarch informs us that young persons, especially boys, were found the most predisposed to the oracular sleep, for which reason something divine was believed to reside in them.

That the mode of treatment used by the priests was similar to that of modern magnetizers, various mystical figures that have been discovered seem to indicate; such, for instance, as represent hands laid on the head and the stomach, manifestly a mesmeric proceeding; such, also, as the hands of bronze on votive tablets consecrated to Serapis and Isis, which Montfaucon speaks of, of which the first three fingers are stretched out, and directed towards the sick per

son.

Consider also the enigmatical hands in Apuleius, and the mysterious representations upon talismans and mummies according to Montfaucon and Denon, in which standing

figures are seen touching sometimes the feet and head, sometimes the sides and thighs of lying ones.

In Greece, the temple-sleep and the revelations of the somnambule were phenomena no less common than in Egypt. The temple of Esculapius at Epidaurus, as Pausanias describes it, was in a very beautiful and pleasant region, situated on an acclivity, and surrounded with gardens and sacred groves. In its fore-porches

were the images of fortune, of the dream-god and of sleep; behind the temple was the sleeping-house for the patients, and beside this a marble bath. No one was admitted to the interior of the temple, and they who would approach it had to undergo a course of preparation in a temple adjacent. The patients were obliged first to fast and to give a promise that they would do all that should be required of them; at the same time the priests showed them the images of the gods and the votive tablets in the porches, in order to put their expectations on the stretch, and to produce in them an excited state of mind; then prayers were said, and hymns sung, after which a sacrifice, generally a ram, was offered. An indispensable part of the preparatory treatment was bathing, and the drinking of the water was on no account to be omitted. The bath was combined with frictions and a variety of manipulations; then the patients were fumigated with different perfumes, often composed of a great number of ingredients, and after this were conducted into the sleeping-house, where they slept either upon a ram's skin, or in a bed. This, Pausanias says, was done by night in solemn silence and darkness, after all lights had been put out: noise and light disturbed the ancient somnambule as they do the modern. They now dreamed, and prophesied for themselves and others, mostly in rhythmic forms; thus Aelius Aristides reports that he "heard complete rules for the conduct of life in a poetical dialect." In their "lucid" dreams the image of the god was generally presented to them, and from his lips, as it seemed to them, they received their revelations-on which point somewhat hereafter. However, then as now, not all slept who were received as patients, neither did all who slept dream or prophesy.

Arnobius tells us that for phthisical patients no help could be found, though they travelled from oracle to oracle, and visited the temples of all the gods. In this respect modern magnetisers have been more successful. Mr. Townsend, in his "Facts in Mesmerism," reports a most interesting case of mesmeric treatment for pulmonary disease, conducted by himself, and with the happiest effects.

In Daunia existed, at an early period, holy places, dedicated to Podalirius and to Calchas, where those who came to consult the oracles were put to sleep on the skins of beasts offered in sacrifice, and received prophetic revelations. The seers of the Scottish Highlands have, or had, a similar custom; and, no doubt, there is a phychological ground for it, though one that we discern but dimly. Franz Baader, who is so luminous on the magical or magnetic effects wrought by the shedding of blood, were worth hearing on this point; but he has carried his light into Hades, to the great solace of many a groping tenant of that dreary place. The act of divorcing a soul from its corporeal vehicle has, in all cases, a reactive effect on the soul of the agent: it is probable that a rapport is established between the two souls, and, when the disapparelled one is the soul of a brute, this rapport may awaken in the human soul that divinatory sense which, as we have before seen, is quicker and stronger in the brute than in man, that instinct by which the brute forebodes and avoids coming dangers, and, when sick, seeks and recognizes the herb that will heal it. When the rapport is established, the sleeping on the skin, freshly taken from the slain body, will keep it up.

The contortions of the Cumæan Sybil, as described by Virgil, have a striking resemblance to those of Mesmer's early patients, before Puysegur introduced the milder mode of magnetic treatment, which avoided the production of the so-called "crisis:" the Sibylline cave could not have presented a more appalling spectacle when the prophetess, "Phoebi nondum patiens," wrestled with the power that begun to fill her, than did Mesmer's chambres de crise, aptly named by Puysegur chambres d'enfer. The Sibyl herself elsewhere describes her sleep-waking state in

terms exactly expressive of that of the modern clairvoyante.

"I am all rigid, and my body is benumbed, and what I say I know not, but the god commands me to speak, wherefore I must make known this song to every one; and when after the divine hymn my spirit takes rest, then the god bids me prophesy anew."

Pliny relates, that the mother of a soldier who was in Spain saw in a dream, the root of the wood-rose, (rosa silvestris cynarrhodon,) which she was directed to send to her son: the son had been bitten by a dog, and was already seized with hydrophobia, when his mother's letter came, with the command that he should obey the divine direction (ut pareret religioni;) he did so, and was healed.

It is related of Alexander, by Cicero, that, when his friend Ptolemy had been struck by a poisoned arrow, and lay dying of this wound in great torment; Alexander who sat by his side, was overpowered with sleep, and had the following dream. The serpent which his mother Olympias kept in her house appeared to him, holding a certain root in its mouth, and told him where the root was to be found, (which was not far off,) and that its virtue was so great that it would cure the dying man. Alexander awoke, told his friend what he had dreamt, and sent out messengers to look for the root: it was found, and healed not only Ptolemy, but many other soldiers, who had been hurt with similar

arrows.

Aelius Aristides, a writer of the second century, gives us very detailed accounts of different healings which he himself experienced by means of the temple-sleep. In the first of his "Sacred Orations" he says:

"I will now speak of my stomach. In the month of December I had violent pains in this entrail during the night, so that I could neither sleep nor digest On the 12th day

of the month, the god forbad me to bathe; the two following days this prohibition was repeated. In three days the sweating left me, and I found myself better than before: I could go up and down in the house; I even took part in the public games, for the illness, as it happened, befel me about the time of the feast of Neptune. I had a dream, in which it seemed to me

that I sat in a warm bath, and that when I looked upon myself I beheld my abdomen laid hold on by disease. In the evening I took a bath. The pain removed to the right, as far as the flank. The 17th and 18th days the bath was forbidden me. The next night I dreamt I was in a conflict with barbarians, one of whom pressed his finger on my throat. I now got a sore throat, and could not drink. The god told me I must vomit, and discontinue the bath, which I followed, and had relief."

Of another dream in the temple of Aesculapius, he relates the following:

"A bull runs at me: I try to get out of his way, but he wounds me in the knee on awaking, there was a swelling at the knee, and extravasation of blood."

This was a kind of night-mare, and reminds us of the phenomena of stigmatization. In the following dreams, baths, bleeding, vomiting, and fasting, were prescribed to him in rotation. One day he intended to go to Pergamos, where, as he informs us, was a well that "made the dumb speak, and them that had the gift of speech prophesy"-a description which,if true, awakes the suspicion that there was something better in the well than the beverage of teetotallers: he relinquished his intention, however, in consequence of a dream, in which he seemed to himself to be kept at home by a great rain. In the evening came really rain and a violent tempest. Once the god sent him in a dream the physician Theodotus, who ordered him phlebotomy, because his pain had its seat in the kidneys: the fasting he was to continue. On awaking he found that it was just the hour at which, in his dream, Theodotus had seemed to come, and in effect that physician preAristides sently thereupon entered.

told him his dream, and what he had been directed by the god to do, which Theodotus bid him by all means observe: he did so, and with good effect.

In the same oration, he speaks of an ulcer which he had had some years before, and which also was cured by the help of dreams.

"There presented itself (he says) suddenly, without any obvious cause, a swelling, which by degrees increased to a frightful size. The flanks and all the

sick This had

limbs became swelled, and this was accompanied with violent pains and fever. The physicians counselled variously. One was for the knife, another for the actual cautery, a third for plasters and unguents; all declared, that, unless their respective prescriptions were followed, there was no saving my life. The god set himself against all their opinions, and bid me leave the tumor to itself: as for me, I never doubted which I should hearken to, the god or the doctors After I had been fa month in this state, my head and stomach became quite free from disorder Many and strange were the prescriptions now given me. In the midst of winter I was obliged to run barefooted, and even to ride, which occasioned me lamentable inconvenience. When the haven was vehemently agitated by the south wind, and embarkation extremely difficult by reason of the waves, I was ordered to boat over from one end of the shore to the other meanwhile, making myself, by eating honey and acorns. a great effect upon me. At this time the tumor extended up to the hips; but the god showed to me and to my friend the same thing, in the same night, so that I sent to him, to impart to him the words of the god, and he came to me, to tell me what the god had said to him. This was a medicament, the several parts of which I have forgotten, only I know there was salt in it. I rubbed myself with this, and forthwith the greatest part of the tumor disappeared. The next day all my friends congratulated me; they were glad, though not yet rightly satisfied in their minds about it. The doctors left off badgering me, which was a great comfort, for they had alleged that it was nothing but cowardice that kept me from submitting to the knife or the brand now, however, they admired the providence of the god in every particular. But now they had to consider how the healing of the tumor was to be completed, and they were unanimous that there was nothing for it but the knife. 1 was inclined to be of their opinion myself, as I thought I had done enough to fulfil the will of the god; he, however, still opposed this, and, the suppuration being enormous, and the integuments apparently quite destroyed, he healed it by an embrocation of eggs, and caused the wound to close so well, that after three days no one could tell on which leg the ulcer had been."

Aristides had applied to the oracle after having for ten years vainly sought help of all the physicians of Rome and Pergamos. In the tenth year of his

sufferings, as he tells us, a phantom came to him, and said, "I was also a sufferer as thou art, and in the tenth year of my sickness I went, at the command of Aesculapius, to the place where I had lost my health, and there found it again." This induced him to have recourse to the oracle; and he perfectly recovered by the use of the means ordered him in sleep. But he had not experience only of the therapeutic bearing of somnambulism. In his second "Sacred Oration" he says

"The god detained me in Phocæa, and revealed to me wonderful things, such also as did relate not solely to the body. Rufus, my host, as he heard my dreams, was delighted to hear things from me which had happened out of the house, and of which he had himself been witness."

Of the manner of his intercourse with the god he speaks thus:

"I seemed to myself to touch the god, to feel his approach, and I was at the time between waking and sleeping: my spirit was quite light, so as no man can conceive who is not initiated."

This "god" was probably, like the good and evil angels that conversed with Maria Moerl, a creation of his inward sense, for the habitual belief and ways of thinking of the seer exercise a marked influence on the imagery of his visions. Or perhaps it was his own inward man, his higher self, his "Ich," as the Germans call it, that revealed itself to his introverted perceptions. Most persons in the higher clairvoyance seem to themselves to be taken under the guidance of a spiritual being, whom they see and converse with, and of whom they speak as their "guardian" or "leader.' We hold this for no mere figment of the sleeper's imagination. He is under the direction of a higher power than that which moves him in ordinary waking life, but it is a power within him, not without; it is not a strange spirit, a subsistence apart from his own, but it is he, himself, in his inmost and highest personality. Van Helmont, in a "lucid" state, saw his own soul, a little human-like image, of a sapphirine consistence; and we have already cited in these columns what the Upan

ischade of "the immortal person,

says

no bigger than one's thumb, dwelling in the cavity of the heart, in the midst of the spirit, which person is the clear inward light, and lord of the past, present, and future." This is the "guiding spirit" and "guardian" of the clairvoyante, the "god" of the Pagan temple-sleeper, Socrates his "demon," the hysterical witch of the middle ages her "Beelzebub."

It is a remarkable feature in the clairvoyance of Aristides, that he remembered his visions when he awoke ; this was not the case, as we learn from Justin Martyr, with the Sibyls, nor is it, in general, the case with somnambulous persons in our own times, though instances sometimes occur in which these have a clear recollection of what they have seen in their trance.

One more instance of ancient clairvoyance shall conclude this paper. It is related by Nicetas Choniates, in the Life of Isaac Angelus, and is as follows:

"When this emperor was at Rhædestus, he visited a man called Basilacius, who led a wonderful life, and had the repute of knowing the future. The common people held him for a seer, but folks of sound reason accounted him an old fool, a miserable wretch, yea, for a demoniac, possessed by an evil spirit, and to this latter belief I myself am greatly inclined. Basilacius did not receive the emperor with the tokens of reverence which were due to his rank, did not even return his greeting, but ran to and fro like a frantic person, cursed those who approached him, and noticed not the emperor at all. When the violence of his movements at length abated, he went up to the emperor's picture, which was in the room, scratched the eyes out of it with his staff, and smote at the hat as if he would thrust it from the head. This the emperor seeing despised the madman, and went away. But the people, who had seen this, augured nothing good from it, and the event so confirmed this symbolical prophecy, that the gift of the maniac rose in more estimation than ever; for a rebellion shortly after breaking out, the grandees of the empire set Alexius, the brother of Isaac, on the throne, who caused the eyes of the latter to be put out."

There is something, it would seem, in the Mussulman notion, that mad folks are a sort of prophets.