This Classic work is now copyright expired and therefore in the public domain.

The Unknown Guest by Maurice Maeterlinck

III. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE

page 8 of 23 | page 1 | The Unknown Guest - home

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;[1] 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;[1] A. J. C. Kerner: Die Scherin von Prevorst 141 [1] 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;[2] 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;[3] 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;[4] and many others.

[1] Light, 1907, p. 219. The crime was committed in Paris and made a great stir at the time.

[2] Lady Burton: The Life of Captain Sir Richd. F. Burton, K.C.M.G., vol.i., p.253.

[3] Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. ix., p. 15.

[4] Proceedings, vol. xx., p. 331.

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.