Books and Bookmen [16]
opinion.
Each of us contains within him "somewhat of a shadowy being," like
the spectre described by Dr. Johnson: something like the Egyptian
"Ka," for which the curious may consult the works of Miss Amelia B.
Edwards and other learned Orientalists. The most recent French
student of these matters, the author of 'L'Homme Posthume,' is of
opinion that we do not all possess this double, with its power of
surviving our bodily death. He thinks, too, that our ghost, when it
does survive, has but rarely the energy and enterprise to make
itself visible to or audible by "shadow-casting men." In some
extreme cases the ghost (according to our French authority, that of
a disciple of M. Comte) feeds fearsomely on the bodies of the
living. In no event does he believe that a ghost lasts much longer
than a hundred years. After that it mizzles into spectre, and is
resolved into its elements, whatever they may be.
A somewhat similar and (to my own mind) probably sound theory of
ghosts prevails among savage tribes, and among such peoples as the
ancient Greeks, the modern Hindoos, and other ancestor worshippers.
When feeding, as they all do, or used to do, the ghosts of the
ancestral dead, they gave special attention to the claims of the
dead of the last three generations, leaving ghosts older than the
century to look after their own supplies of meat and drink. The
negligence testifies to a notion that very old ghosts are of little
account, for good or evil. On the other hand, as regards the
longevity of spectres, we must not shut our eyes to the example of
the bogie in ancient armour which appears in Glamis Castle, or to
the Jesuit of Queen Elizabeth's date that haunts the library (and a
very nice place to haunt: I ask no better, as a ghost in the
Pavilion at Lord's might cause a scandal) of an English nobleman.
With these instantiae contradictoriae, as Bacon calls them, present
to our minds, we must not (in the present condition of psychical
research) dogmatise too hastily about the span of life allotted to
the simulacrum vulgare. Very probably his chances of a prolonged
existence are in inverse ratio to the square of the distance of time
which severs him from our modern days. No one has ever even
pretended to see the ghost of an ancient Roman buried in these
islands, still less of a Pict or Scot, or a Palaeolithic man,
welcome as such an apparition would be to many of us. Thus the
evidence does certainly look as if there were a kind of statute of
limitations among ghosts, which, from many points of view, is not an
arrangement at which we should repine.
The Japanese artist expresses his own sense of the casual and
fluctuating nature of ghosts by drawing his spectre in shaky lines,
as if the model had given the artist the horrors. This simulacrum
rises out of the earth like an exhalation, and groups itself into
shape above the spade with which all that is corporeal of its late
owner has been interred. Please remark the uncomforted and dismal
expression of the simulacrum. We must remember that the ghost or
"Ka" is not the "soul," which has other destinies in the future
world, good or evil, but is only a shadowy resemblance, condemned,
as in the Egyptian creed, to dwell in the tomb and hover near it.
The Chinese and Japanese have their own definite theory of the next
world, and we must by no means confuse the eternal fortunes of the
permanent, conscious, and responsible self, already inhabiting other
worlds than ours, with the eccentric vagaries of the semi-material
tomb-haunting larva, which so often develops a noisy and bear-
fighting disposition quite unlike the character of its proprietor in
life.
The next bogie, so limp and washed-out as he seems, with his white,
drooping, dripping arms and hands, reminds us of that horrid French
species of apparition, "la lavandiere de la nuit," who washes dead
men's linen in the moonlit pools and rivers. Whether this
simulacrum be meant for the spirit of the well (for everything has
its spirit in Japan), or whether it
Each of us contains within him "somewhat of a shadowy being," like
the spectre described by Dr. Johnson: something like the Egyptian
"Ka," for which the curious may consult the works of Miss Amelia B.
Edwards and other learned Orientalists. The most recent French
student of these matters, the author of 'L'Homme Posthume,' is of
opinion that we do not all possess this double, with its power of
surviving our bodily death. He thinks, too, that our ghost, when it
does survive, has but rarely the energy and enterprise to make
itself visible to or audible by "shadow-casting men." In some
extreme cases the ghost (according to our French authority, that of
a disciple of M. Comte) feeds fearsomely on the bodies of the
living. In no event does he believe that a ghost lasts much longer
than a hundred years. After that it mizzles into spectre, and is
resolved into its elements, whatever they may be.
A somewhat similar and (to my own mind) probably sound theory of
ghosts prevails among savage tribes, and among such peoples as the
ancient Greeks, the modern Hindoos, and other ancestor worshippers.
When feeding, as they all do, or used to do, the ghosts of the
ancestral dead, they gave special attention to the claims of the
dead of the last three generations, leaving ghosts older than the
century to look after their own supplies of meat and drink. The
negligence testifies to a notion that very old ghosts are of little
account, for good or evil. On the other hand, as regards the
longevity of spectres, we must not shut our eyes to the example of
the bogie in ancient armour which appears in Glamis Castle, or to
the Jesuit of Queen Elizabeth's date that haunts the library (and a
very nice place to haunt: I ask no better, as a ghost in the
Pavilion at Lord's might cause a scandal) of an English nobleman.
With these instantiae contradictoriae, as Bacon calls them, present
to our minds, we must not (in the present condition of psychical
research) dogmatise too hastily about the span of life allotted to
the simulacrum vulgare. Very probably his chances of a prolonged
existence are in inverse ratio to the square of the distance of time
which severs him from our modern days. No one has ever even
pretended to see the ghost of an ancient Roman buried in these
islands, still less of a Pict or Scot, or a Palaeolithic man,
welcome as such an apparition would be to many of us. Thus the
evidence does certainly look as if there were a kind of statute of
limitations among ghosts, which, from many points of view, is not an
arrangement at which we should repine.
The Japanese artist expresses his own sense of the casual and
fluctuating nature of ghosts by drawing his spectre in shaky lines,
as if the model had given the artist the horrors. This simulacrum
rises out of the earth like an exhalation, and groups itself into
shape above the spade with which all that is corporeal of its late
owner has been interred. Please remark the uncomforted and dismal
expression of the simulacrum. We must remember that the ghost or
"Ka" is not the "soul," which has other destinies in the future
world, good or evil, but is only a shadowy resemblance, condemned,
as in the Egyptian creed, to dwell in the tomb and hover near it.
The Chinese and Japanese have their own definite theory of the next
world, and we must by no means confuse the eternal fortunes of the
permanent, conscious, and responsible self, already inhabiting other
worlds than ours, with the eccentric vagaries of the semi-material
tomb-haunting larva, which so often develops a noisy and bear-
fighting disposition quite unlike the character of its proprietor in
life.
The next bogie, so limp and washed-out as he seems, with his white,
drooping, dripping arms and hands, reminds us of that horrid French
species of apparition, "la lavandiere de la nuit," who washes dead
men's linen in the moonlit pools and rivers. Whether this
simulacrum be meant for the spirit of the well (for everything has
its spirit in Japan), or whether it