m to follow. He did so, and when they had
reached the sitting-room, the figure lifted the hood of his cloak and
disclosed Shelley's own features, and saying, 'Siete soddisfatto?'
vanished. This vision is accounted for on the ground that Shelley had
been reading a drama attributed to Calderon, named 'El Embozado o El
Encapotado,' in which a mysterious personage who had been haunting and
thwarting the hero all his life, and is at last about to give him
satisfaction in a duel, finally unmasks and proves to be the hero's own
wraith. He also asks, 'Art thou satisfied?' and the haunted man dies of
horror."
On the 29th of June some friends distinctly saw Shelley walk into a
little wood near Lerici, when in fact he was in a wholly different
direction. This was related by Byron to Mr. Cowell.
It is difficult to frame any theory that will account for this double
apparition, except, of course, the hypothesis of downright lying on the
part of the witnesses. But the hypothesis of the duplication of the body
in this extraordinary fashion is one which cannot be accepted until the
immaterial body is photographed under test conditions at the same time
that the material body is under safe custody in another place. Of
course, it is well to bear in mind that to all those who profess to know
anything of occult lore, and also to those who have the gift of
clairvoyance, there is nothing new or strange in the doctrine of the
immaterial body. Many clairvoyants declare that they constantly see the
apparitions of the living mingling with the apparitions of the dead.
They are easily distinguishable. The ghost of a living person is said to
be opaque, whereas the ghost of one from whom life has departed is
diaphanous as gossamer.
All this, of course, only causes the unbeliever to blaspheme. It is to
him every whit as monstrous as the old stories of the witches riding on
broomsticks. But the question is not to be settled by blasphemy on one
side or credulity on the other. There is something behind these
phantasmal apparitions; there is a real substratum of truth, if we could
but get at it. There seems to be some faculty latent in the human mind,
by which it can in some cases impress upon the eye and ear of a person
at almost any distance the image and the voice. We may call it telepathy
or what we please. It is a marvellous power, the mere hint of which
indefinitely expands the horizon of the imagination. The telephone is
but a mere child's toy
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