The Knowledge of the Future : Part 5

The Unknown Guest
by Maurice Maeterlinck

(Page 8 of 20)

This is true; nevertheless, it is well to enquire whether these predictions are as frequent as is loosely stated. In the matter of those which concern the conscription-drawings, for instance, I have had the opportunity of interrogating more than we constant witness of these little dramas of fate; and all admitted that, on the whole, they are much clearer than one would believe. Next, we must not forget that there can be no question here of scientific proofs. We are in the midst of a slippery and nebulous region, where we would not dare to risk a step if we were not allowing ourselves to be guided by our feelings rather than by certainties which we are not forbidden to hope for, but which are not yet in sight.

8

We will abridge our subject still further, referring readers who wish to know the details to the originals, lest we should never have done; or rather, instead of attempting an abridgment, which would still be too long, so plentiful are the materials, we will content ourselves with enumerating a few instances, all taken from Bozzano's Des Phenomenes premonitoires. We read there of a funeral procession seen on a high-road several days before it actually passed that way; or, again, of a young mechanic who, in the beginning of November, dreamt that he came home at half-past five in the afternoon and saw his sister's little girl run over by a tram-car while crossing the street in front of the house. He told his dream, in great distress; and, on the 13th of the same month, in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the child was run over by the tram-car and killed at the hour named. We find the ghost, the phantom animal or the mysterious noise which, in certain families, is the traditional herald of a death or of an imminent catastrophe.

We find the celebrated vision which the painter Segantini had thirteen days before his decease, every detail of which remained in his mind and was represented in his last picture, Death. We find the Messina disaster dearly foreseen, twice over, by a little girl who perished under the ruins of the ill-fated city; and we read of a dream which, three months before the French invasion of Russia, foretold to Countess Toutschkoff that her husband would fall at Borodino, a village so little known at the time that those interested in the dream looked in vain for its name on the maps. Until now we have spoken only of the spontaneous manifestations of the future. It would seem as though coming events, gathered in front of our lives, bear with crushing weight upon the uncertain and deceptive dike of the present, which is no longer able to contain them. They ooze through, they seek a crevice by which to reach us.

But, side by side with these passive, independent and intractable premonitions, which are but so many vagrant and furtive emanations of the unknown, are others which do yield to entreaty, allow themselves to be directed into channels, are more or less obedient to our orders and will sometimes reply to the questions which we put to them. They come from the same inaccessible reservoir, are no less mysterious, but yet appear a little more human than the others; and, without drugging ourselves with puerile or dangerous illusions, we may be permitted to hope that, if we follow them and study them attentively, they will one day open to us the hidden paths that join that which is no more to that which is not yet.

It is true that here, where we must needs mix with the somewhat lawless world of professional mystery-mongers, we have to increase our caution and walk with measured steps on very suspicious ground. But in this region of pitfalls we glean a certain number of facts that cannot reasonably be contested. It will be enough to recall, for instance, the symbolic premonitions of the famous "seeress of Prevorst," Frau Hauffe, whose prophetic spirit was awakened by soap bubbles, crystals and mirrors; the clairvoyant who, eighteen years before the event, foretold the death of a girl by the hand of her rival in 1907, in a written prophecy which was presented to the court by the mother of the murdered girl; A. J. C. Kerner: Die Scherin von Prevorst 141 the gypsy who, also in writing, foretold all the events in Miss Isabel Arundel's life, including the name of her husband, Burton, the famous explorer; the sealed letter addressed to M. Morin, vice-president of the Societe du Mesmerisme, describing the most unexpected circumstances of a death that occurred a month later; the famous "Marmontel prediction," obtained by Mrs. Verrall's cross-correspondences, which gives a vision, two months and a half before their accomplishment, of the most insignificant actions of a traveller in an hotel bedroom; and many others.

9

I will not review the various and very often grotesque methods of interrogating the future that are most frequently practised to-day: cards, palmistry, crystal-gazing, fortune-telling by means of coffee-grounds, tea-leaves, magnetic needles and white of egg, graphology, astrology and the rest. These methods, as I have already said, are worth exactly what the medium who employs them is worth. They have no other object than to arouse the medium's subconsciousness and to bring it into relation with that of the person questioning him. As a matter of fact, all these purely empirical processes are but so many, often puerile forms of self-manifestation adopted by the undeniable gift which is known as intuition, clairvoyance or, in certain cases, psychometry. I have spoken at sufficient length of this last faculty not to linger over it now. All that we have still to do is to consider it for a moment in its relations with the foretelling of the future.

A large number of investigations, notably those conducted by M. Duchatel and Dr. Osty, show that, in psychometry, the notion of time, as Dr. Joseph Maxwell observes, is very loose, that is to say, the past, present and future nearly always overlap. Most of the clairvoyant or psychometric subjects, when they are honest, do not know, "do not feel," as M. Duchatel very ably remarks, "what the future is. They do not distinguish it from the other tenses; and consequently they succeed in being prophets, but unconscious prophets."

In a word - and this is a very important indication from the point of view of the probable coexistence of the three tenses - it appears that they see that which is not yet with the same clearness and on the same plane as that which is no more, but are incapable of separating the two visions and picking out the future which alone interests us. For a still stronger reason, it is impossible for them to state dates with precision. Nevertheless, the fact remains that, when we take the trouble to sift their evidence and have the patience to await the realization of certain events which are sometimes not due for a long time to come, the future is fairly often perceived by some of these strange soothsayers.

About the Author

Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (August 29, 1862 - May 6, 1949) was a Belgian poet, playwright, and essayist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life.