Scott wrote Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830) at a time of personal grief and struggle, partly due to his assumption of the debts of a business which he unwisely had associated himself with, and for which he refused the alternative of bankruptcy.
"No tale of physical strife in the battlefield could be as heroic as the story of the close of Scott's life, with five years of a death-struggle against adversity" reads the introduction to this volume. Sir Walter Scott, according to his son-in-law, realized that these adversities removed "the delight of waking in the morning with bright ideas in his mind, [and his habit to] hasten to commit them to paper. " Scott knew though, that "I may work substantial husbandry— i.e., write history, and such concerns."
Thus though he no longer summon the inspiration for his novel writing, he was able to pursue a pedestrian task like this book on what we would call the paranormal. Of course there are plenty of cat references in such a topic. I have, instead of citing the stories of old women and their cats, chosen to excerpt a longer section which both serves our purpose and at the same time allows us to appreciate how the early 19th century viewed such topics. How did they explain instances of eye witness accounts to events that they did not believe actually happened, in this era when reason was honored, and did not have the natural sciences as a crutch?
Thus I will excerpt from Scott's words, which he previews in these terms:
Origin of the general Opinions respecting Demonology among Mankind —The Belief in the Immortality of the Soul is the main inducement to credit its occasional re-appearance—The Philosophical Objections to the Apparition of an Abstract Spirit little understood by the Vulgar and Ignorant—The situations of excited Passion incident to Humanity, which teach Men to wish or apprehend Supernatural Apparitions—They are often presented by the Sleeping Sense—Story of Somnambulism—The Influence of Credulity contagious, so that Individuals will trust the Evidence of others in despite of their own Senses.
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[Regarding] ... the history of a dark chapter in human nature, which the increasing civilization of all well instructed countries has now almost blotted out, ….[that is] the nature of Demonology, [which has as an] … original cause … the almost universal belief in communication betwixt mortals and beings of a power superior to themselves, and of a nature not to be comprehended by human organs.
[Scott must distinguish the valid religious apprehension of non corpeal beings and false assumptions about the equally invisible evil spirits. The stories of the appearance of these spirits in corporeal form, are distinguished from a legitimate religion, because the believers in the former lack a certain philosophical subtlety.]
...The general, or, it may be termed, the universal belief of the inhabitants of the earth, in the existence of spirits separated from the encumbrance and incapacities of the body, is grounded on the consciousness of the divinity that speaks in our bosoms, and demonstrates to all men, except the few who are hardened to the celestial voice, that there is within us a portion of the divine substance, which is not subject to the law of death and dissolution, ....the conviction that such an indestructible essence exists, … must infer the existence of many millions of spirits who have not been annihilated, though they have become invisible to mortals who still see, hear, and perceive, only by means of the imperfect organs of humanity. [The reality of an invisible divine is not consistent with
a world filled with ghosts.]
…The abstract idea of a spirit certainly implies that it has neither substance, form, shape, voice, or anything which can render its presence visible or sensible to human faculties. But these sceptic doubts of philosophers on the possibility of the appearance of such separated spirits, do not arise till a certain degree of information has dawned upon a country, and even then only reach a very small proportion of reflecting and better-informed members of society….
The more numerous part of mankind cannot form in their mind the idea of the
spirit of the deceased existing, without possessing or having the power to
assume the appearance which their acquaintance bore during his life, and do not
push their researches beyond this point.
[The plausibility of these inconsistent thoughts is encouraged by] enthusiastic feelings of an impressive and solemn nature [which] occur both in private and public life, [and] which seem to add ocular testimony to an intercourse betwixt earth and the world beyond it…
[W]ho shall doubt that imagination, favoured by circumstances, has power to summon up to the organ of sight, spectres which only exist in the mind of those by whom their apparition seems to be witnessed? [The experience of dreaming adds to the plausibility of some imaginary accounts of demons or similar stories]
….The number of instances in which such lively dreams
have been quoted, and both asserted and received as spiritual communications,
is very great at all periods, [although]in ignorant times, where the natural
cause of dreaming is misapprehended and confused with an idea of mysticism, it
is much greater.
[Scott also must
explain the instances in which the paranormal has multiple witnesses testifying
to the reality of some apparition. He uses the example of battlefield visions
of some corporeal illusion.]
Even in the field of death, and amid the mortal tug of combat itself, strong belief has wrought the same wonder, which we have hitherto mentioned as occurring in solitude and amid darkness; and those who were themselves on the verge of the world of spirits, or employed in dispatching others to these gloomy regions, conceived they beheld the apparitions of those beings whom their national mythology associated with such scenes…[T]he heathen Scandinavian beheld the Choosers of the slain; and the Catholics were no less easily led to recognize the warlike Saint George… in the very front of the strife, showing them the way…. Such apparitions being generally visible to a multitude, have in all times been supported by the greatest strength of testimony. When the common feeling of danger, and the animating burst of enthusiasm, act on the feelings of many men at once, their minds hold a natural correspondence with each other…. In such cases, the number of persons present, which would otherwise lead to detection of the fallacy, becomes the means of strengthening it. [This is because those who do not see the apparition may attribute their own inability to see what others claim to see, as a failure on their own part, for instance a lack of faith].
This singular phenomenon, in which a multitude believed, although only two-thirds of them saw what must, if real, have been equally obvious to all, may be compared with the exploit of the humourist, who planted himself in an attitude of astonishment, with his eyes riveted on the well known bronze lion that graces the front of Northumberland House in the Strand, and having attracted the attention of those who looked at him by muttering, " By heaven it wags! it wags again !" contrived in a few minutes to blockade the whole street with an immense crowd, some conceiving that they had absolutely seen the lion of Percy wag his tail, others expecting to witness the same phenomenon.
And so the early 19th century applies logic to the power of suggestion, with the wag of a lion's tail..
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