“What you say, Mr. Merton,” said Jack, “may be very plausible, but you will never convince me that Almighty God, the loving Father of us all, would ever permit his children to be exposed to Satanic invasion. It would impeach either his wisdom and love, or his power.”
“Why more than his permission of the same vexations and afflictions by any other agency?” asked Mr. Merton, very quietly. “The facts, the phenomena themselves are undeniable, and must be produced by some agency, and by Divine permission too. While they remain the same, I cannot see how their production by Satan, any more than their production by some other created or secondary cause, is incompatible with the Divine perfection.”
“I do not pretend to be able to say how that is,” replied Jack, “but I will never believe that God will allow the devil, or any other being subject to his power, to have such influence over the children he loves. It is contrary to common sense. It is nonsense, absurdity, blasphemy.”
“I am very much of Jack’s opinion,” interposed Dr. Corning, who had for a long time ceased to take any part in our conversations. “If there is a God, a God who is Lord Omnipotent, the devil, if devil there be, must be subject to him, and unable to do any thing without his permission. Can any reasonable man believe that God would permit the devil to harass and afflict, besiege and possess his children? Would a human father permit, if he could help it, an enemy to exercise a corresponding power over his own offspring? God is love, and love worketh no ill, and, as far as in its power to prevent, suffers no ill to be worked to any one.”
“All that,” replied Mr. Merton, “would be very conclusive, if the facts or phenomena did not exist to give it a flat denial. Here are the facts, and whatever origin you assign them, they remain, in themselves considered, the same. You assign insanity as their origin. Be it so. But would a God who is love, who is wisdom, who is omnipotence, suffer his children to be afflicted with so grievous a disease as insanity, one so terrible and so humiliating in its effects? Insanity must be subject to his dominion; and why then does he suffer any one to become insane?”
“Many of these facts, as you call them, are the result of mere jugglery and sheer imposture,” answered the Doctor, “and do not deserve a moment’s consideration.”
“Be it so,” replied Mr. Merton. “But how can God permit such jugglery and imposture?”
“They are the works of man, and the results of evil passions,” promptly replied Dr. Corning.
“Very good,” said Mr. Merton; “but whence these evil passions? and how can God, consistently with his perfections, permit them to produce such pernicious effects? You see, my dear Doctor, turn which way you will, take what ground you please, your argument can always be retorted. As far as the Divine perfection is concerned, it makes no difference, since the facts really exist, whether you ascribe them to Satanic invasion or to insanity, to the evil passions of man, or to the elemental forces or inherent laws of nature; for, on any of these suppositions, you ascribe them to a created cause, dependent on God as first cause for its very existence, and therefore a cause that cannot operate without his permission. The whole question resolves itself into the old question, then, of the origin of evil. Evil certainly could not exist without the permission of God; and yet you yourself concede that evil does exist. How can God, consistently with his perfections, permit it? This is the question; and, if he can permit it at all, he can as well permit it when produced by one agent, as when produced by another.”
“But that,” said Dr. Corning, “is a question for you to answer, as well as for me.”
“Not in the case before us,” rejoined Mr. Merton, “because your objection concedes the existence of evil, and only denies it as the work of a particular agent. But let that pass. I can answer the question only in the light of Christian theology. According to that theology, there is no real evil but sin; and sin is always voluntary on the part of the sinner. God chose to create men and angels free moral agents, that they might be capable of virtue, and of meriting the rewards of obedience. He could not so create us without making us capable of abusing our freedom, for obedience is not and cannot be meritorious where there is no power of disobedience, as disobedience is not culpable where there is no power of obedience. Hence the saints in heaven, having no longer the power of disobedience, do not merit by their obedience, and simply enjoy the rewards of their obedience in their state of probation on earth. If any do not obtain the rewards of obedience, the fault is their own, and they have no one to blame but themselves. Their failure is voluntary; they fail only because they choose to fail.
“In regard to the Satanic vexations,” continued Mr. Merton, ”we must bear in mind that Satan has no power to harm us—not even a hair of our head—against our free will or deliberate assent. It is always in our power to resist him, and even to turn his machinations and vexations against him, and to make them occasions of merit. ‘Count it all joy, my brethren,’ says the blessed Apostle St. James, ‘when ye fall into divers temptations,’ that is, trials and afflictions. The evil is not in the temptation even to sin, but in the free, voluntary assent; it is not in the vexations and afflictions, obsessions and possessions, but in our voluntary abuse of them, or failure to turn them to a good account. God suffers no one to be tempted or tried or harassed beyond what he can bear. Always is his grace sufficient for all straits. Always stands firm his promise, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee;’ and this sustains and consoles us in the midst of our greatest distress, our severest trials, and our most perfect abandonment. We may always, if we will, come forth from the furnace of affliction purified as gold tried in the fire. It depends on our own free will whether the vexations of Satan shall do us good or harm. If we choose, we can always prevent his wiles from doing us evil, and derive profit from his malice. This is a sufficient answer to the objection drawn from the perfection of God. It is no impeachment of Divine Love to let loose an enemy against us for our good, or to give us an opportunity to acquire merit, any more than it is to Divine Justice to permit an enemy to harass us as a punishment for our sins. Satanic temptations and invasions are sometimes permitted for the one purpose, and sometimes for the other, and in either case are perfectly compatible with the attributes of God.”
“I think I can understand that,” I remarked, “and I think also I can see in it a manifestation of Divine love. God, in permitting these vexations against the wicked, manifests his justice; but in permitting them against the good, he manifests his love, and turns the malice of Satan against himself. What Satan intends shall work our ruin, by the grace of God is made to work our higher perfection; and thus God overcomes Satan by educing good from evil.”
“Undoubtedly,” added Mr. Merton, “God often permits Satan to afflict the faithful, to prove them,—sometimes to humble them, to chastise their spiritual pride, and to become their occasion of rising to a purer and loftier virtue; and in such cases we may say he educes good from evil, and makes the malice of Satan redound to his own glory. In the cases where he permits Satan to harass by way of penalty, he equally makes the Satanic malice redound to his glory, for God’s glory is no less interested, so to speak, in justice than in love. There is no discrepancy between the Divine attributes; and the manifestation of his justice is no less essential to his glory, or the good of his creatures, than the manifestation of his love or mercy. The beginning of love is the love of justice, equity, right.”
“But be that as it may,” said Jack, “I have heard it contended by theologians that Satan has been bound since the coming of Christ, and has no longer any power, since Christ triumphed over him on the cross, to besiege or to possess men, as it is supposed he had before.”
“I am not answerable,” replied Mr. Merton, “for what you may have heard theologians maintain. I concede that our Lord, on his part, triumphed over Satan on the cross; I also concede, that since the coming of our Lord, and the spread of Christianity, the power of Satan has been greatly curtailed; but I know no authority for saying that he does not continue to go about ‘as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,’ or that he has not power still to besiege men, and literally take possession of them. The Church, whether Catholic or Protestant, has a form of exorcism, and continues to practise it. The faithful are daily winning victories over him, and if God gives them the grace of perseverance, they will finally overcome him, and obtain a triumph; but their warfare with him ceases not so long as they remain in the flesh. Satan, it is true, has no power to harm us against our deliberate consent, and it is far easier to resist him now, than it was before our Lord died on the cross, because grace is more abundant; but still he may besiege and actually possess the holiest of men, the most devoted followers of the Lord, at least so far as it is given to men to judge. He cannot harm us without our own fault; but he may vex, afflict, even possess us, without any blame on our part, as a man may become sick, or even insane, without any fault of his own.
“Out of the Christian society,” continued Mr. Merton, “where there are wanting the means which Christians have to defend themselves against his approaches, and to drive him away, his power is, no doubt, far greater. Among Mahometans, and among the pagan tribes of Asia, Africa, and America, inhabiting a land which has, so to speak, never been baptized, or sprinkled with holy water, his power is still very great; and, if we may credit the well-attested reports of our missionaries, almost as great as ever. He recovers his power, too, in Christian nations in proportion as they recede from the faith and piety of the Gospel, and fall anew into heathenism.”
“But there are some difficulties, under the point of view of jurisprudence, in the way of your doctrine of Satanic invasion,” interposed Jack. “Suppose a man possessed by a devil kills another, or commits some act which the law regards as a crime, is the man guilty, and to be punished?”
“You are a lawyer,” replied Mr. Merton, “and nothing is more natural than that you should ask that question. The difficulties you suggest, however, are no greater on the supposition of Satanic invasion than on any other theory. They are the same, whether we contend that the person is subjected by Satan or by mesmerism, by a primitive or elemental force of nature, or by what some manigraphs call madness without delirium, or instinctive insanity. The question turns on the fact whether the man is involuntarily and completely subjugated, or whether he retains the exercise of his free will; or, in other words, whether the actions are really his, or those of the power that oppresses or subjugates him. For myself, I think our courts are beginning to adopt a very dangerous doctrine with regard to insanity, and are admitting the plea of insanity where it ought not to be entertained. In an Eastern city, not long since, it was gravely contended by counsel, that a man must be held to be insane and irresponsible, because his crimes were so aggravated. Under this lies a dangerous principle, which, in its development, will lead to the conclusion that all great criminals are insane and irresponsible. But in regard to another class of cases, cases in which there obviously is no inebriety, ill health, or delirium, and yet in which the person seems to himself to be irresistibly urged by a foreign power, against his will, to the commission of horrible acts, I think the law, or the practice of the courts, is quite too severe. I take a case cited to my hand by a respectable French writer, that of a father who killed his young son. The father was an honest, temperate, and industrious man, of a mild and affectionate disposition, and it is clear that he loved his son with great tenderness.
“‘The night in which I did the deed,’ says the unhappy father, ‘I was so agitated, that I trembled in my whole body.... I am unable to conceive how I could commit a crime so atrocious. I was so agitated, so troubled in my brain, and felt something within me so irresistible, that I was obliged to commit the deed. I was fasting. I was not sick; and I am wholly unable to explain how it was possible for me to do it. Twice before I had had the horrible inclination to kill my child. The first time was last winter, about six weeks before Easter. I was at work making a sledge, and my boy, as usual, was playing near me. In his playfulness, he climbed upon my back, and clasped me round the neck. My wife, thinking he would hinder me from working, called him away; but I loved him so much, that I patiently endured all his frolicsome tricks. I took him upon my knees to play with him, and in that very moment I thought I heard a voice within me, saying, ‘You cannot help it. Your child must die, and you must kill him.’ I was startled, seized with fear, my heart palpitated, and I instantly set him down, rushed out of the room, and went to the mill, where I stayed till nightfall, till my evil thought passed away.
“‘The second time was one morning a few days before Easter. My wife was busy with the affairs of the house, and I was lying on the bed, with my child near me. He asked me for some bread, and I gave him a cake, which he eat with great pleasure. At that moment, as I was watching him with tender affection, I thought I heard again a voice within me, saying, in a low tone, ‘You must kill him.’ I shuddered at myself, experienced violent palpitations, and felt a heavy oppression within my breast. I instantly jumped from the bed, and ran out of the house. I began saying my prayers, went to the stable, and busied myself with various labors, and did all in my power to drive away the evil thoughts that beset me. I finally succeeded, but not till midday, in regaining the mastery of myself, and in recovering my tranquillity. In neither of these cases was I drunk, or had been for many weeks previous; nor was I at the third access, when I took the life of my child.’
Pneumatalogie des Esprits, p. 186 et seq.
“Now here was a man who was not sick, who was not in liquor, who was not delirious, who was evidently a mild and loving father, and who yet, in consequence of an impression, killed his child, whom evidently he loved with all a father’s fondness. This man the courts condemn as a horrid murderer.”
“And why not?” said Jack. “It is evident his free will remained. Twice he resisted the temptation, and regained the mastery of himself; and nothing proves that he might not have done so the third time, if he had done his best.”
“It is possible,” replied Mr. Merton, “and therefore I do not say the man was absolutely innocent. But we see he did struggle against the evil thought, and twice successfully; and he yielded even at last only from an impression, all but irresistible at the moment, and therefore he cannot be said to have had the full possession of his freedom. In proportion as his power of external resistance was diminished by the impression, or the mysterious influence that acted on him, was diminished his responsibility. He who yields only to a powerful temptation, is less guilty than he who does the same deed under only a slight or feeble temptation. The courts should take cognizance of the strength of the impression under which the man acts, and take into the account the more or less resistance that was possible. If the man succumbs only after a long and severe struggle, that should go to mitigate his guilt.
“Dr. Cazeauvielh relates the case of a woman who attempted to kill her infant sleeping in the cradle. ‘I am,’ said she to the doctor, ‘the most miserable of beings. Never was anybody like me. The other day I approached the cradle, and I looked upon my darling. Fearing I should do him harm, I went away to the house of my neighbor. Then, in spite of myself, I returned, for something seemed to push me. I went near my infant, and attempted to choke it with my hands, but my legs failed me, and I became senseless.’ This woman, Dr. Cazeauvielh tells us, loved her relations and her child, and her intellectual faculties were not injured. It is true he regards her as insane; but how can there be insanity, with the full possession of the intellectual faculties? She struggled against the something that pushed her, and had a horror of the crime; the law ought, therefore, to treat her with indulgence, yet it does not, because there really is here no delirium. In the middle ages, which you regard as so barbarous and cruel, she would not have been held responsible, because her act would have been explained as the result of a foreign power, which for the time being overcame her resistance, and pushed her to do that for which she had a natural horror.
“Yet a difference should no doubt be made between cases like these, where the unhappy person commits a deed for which he has a natural horror, and against which he struggles, and those in which the criminal, so to speak, has a natural relish for his crime, delights, and persists in it. Take the case of Gilles Garnier, which occupied the attention of all France in the reign of Louis the Thirteenth. ‘This man-wolf,’ (loup-garou,) says Bodin, ‘carried away a girl from ten to twelve years of age, killed her with his hands and teeth, and eat the flesh from her thighs and arms. Some time afterwards he strangled a boy ten years old, and eat his flesh. Still later he killed another boy, from twelve to thirteen, with the intention of eating him, but was prevented.’ He was arrested, convicted, and burnt alive. There was here no insanity; the horrid deeds were all avowed with the minutest circumstances, the intention was express, and the crime was repeated and persisted in. I cannot regard this monster as innocent, for I cannot discover that he resisted or struggled against the diabolical impulse.
“Take the case of Leger, a recent case, related by Dr. Cazeauvielh, from the monster’s own confessions. He lived in a cave, and had an unnatural craving to feed on human flesh. One day he perceived a little girl, ran to her, passed a handkerchief around her body, threw her upon his back, plunged into the woods and hastened to his cave, where he killed and buried her. Arrested three days after, he immediately told his name, where he lived, and said that having received a blow on his head, he had left his country and his family. In his prison he related how he had lived in caverns in the rocks. ‘Wretch,’ said the physician to him,‘you have eaten the heart of this little girl. Confess the truth.’ He then answered in trembling, ‘Yes, I did so, but not all at once.’ After that he sought no longer to conceal his crimes, and with great coolness and indifference related a long series of horrible deeds which he had committed. He revealed them, even to the minutest particulars; he produced the proofs, and pointed out to the court the place of the crime, and the manner in which it had been consummated. The judge had no need to question him, for he himself disclosed all of his own accord. On the trial, his features wore a mild and placid aspect. He seemed quite unconcerned and insensible, except his face assumed an air of gayety and satisfaction during the reading of the indictment. After about half an hour’s deliberation, the court rejected the plea of insanity, and declared him guilty of homicide, with premeditation and lying in wait. He heard his sentence with the same placid indifference, and was executed a few days after. This seems to me to prove that the middle ages were not more severe than we are to-day.”
“But Leger,” said Dr. Corning, “was evidently a madman. Georget is right in saying that he was a madman, because none but a madman would say that he had been led to commit murder by a blind and irresistible will.”
“That might do to say, if we were certain of the truth of the materialistic doctrines taught at Paris some forty or fifty years ago, but which are now generally rejected. Dr. Cazeauvielh, however, concedes that persons of this description, without being deprived by their madness of free will, are yet carried away, driven onward by an idea, by something indefinable, which is precisely what theologians mean by obsession. The court decided correctly, I think, in rejecting the plea of insanity in the case of the monster Leger, and in condemning him to death, though evidently under Satanic influence when he committed his horrible and disgusting crimes—crimes which recall the Ghouls of the Arabian Nights—because there was no struggle of the human person against the invading spirit.
“Satan can by Divine permission enter our bodies, compel, as it were, the human person to stand aside, and use our organs himself, and do whatever he pleases with them; but he cannot annihilate the human person, or take from the soul free will. Always is it in the power of the possessed to resist, morally and effectually, the evil intentions of the devil. The possessed retains his own consciousness, his own intellectual and moral faculties unimpaired, and never confounds himself with the spirit that possesses him. Always, then, does he retain the power of internal protest and struggle. Wherever this power is exercised, and there is clearly a struggle, there is no responsibility attaching to him, whatever the crimes the body, through the possession of the devil, is made to commit. But it may often happen that this power to protest is not exercised, and the possessed yields his moral assent to the crimes committed by the demon that possesses him. He then becomes a partaker of their guilt. Wherever it is clear that he has not internally resisted, that he has not struggled against the demon, and protested against his iniquity, the law should punish him for the crimes as severely as if there had been no possession at all. The error of modern jurisprudence is that, not recognizing the fact of possession, it punishes alike both classes, or it lets off both under the plea of insanity. In the latter case justice becomes too lax, and the greater the criminal, the more enormous his crime, the less likely is he to be punished; in the former case justice is too severe, and persons really innocent, and meritorious even, are condemned as the basest of criminals. The law in the middle ages, or before the wonderful progress of intelligence and humanity in modern times, distinguished between the two classes, and knew how to acquit the innocent and to punish the guilty. Now the tendency is either to acquit or to condemn both indiscriminately.”
Dr. Corning and Mr. Merton, after this, revived their former discussion of the question of insanity; but as nothing was really added on either side to what had been previously said, I do not think it necessary to record their conversation. For myself, it seemed to me that the question between the theory which explains the phenomena by insanity, and that which explains them by Satanic invasion, is of immense practical importance. When the old doctrine was rejected, the law became excessively severe, and humanity was shocked. Philosophers and philanthropists sought to mitigate it by asserting the doctrine of necessity, of materialism, of the inherent goodness of the soul, and by ascribing all misdeeds to external influences, to the action of nature, society, government, &c. In other words, they sought to mitigate the law by denying all moral turpitude.
But latterly the older doctrine of spiritualism, as opposed to materialism, and of freedom as opposed to necessity, has revived, and the old severity of the law must return, unless some new way can be discovered of escaping it. This new way is the plea of insanity. The tendency now is to make insanity a plea for every crime of some little magnitude. Our lunatic hospitals are crowded; new ones are constructed, and no inconsiderable portion of our population are likely to become their inmates. Physicians, carried away by their false science and mistaken humanity, discard all the old criteria of lunacy, and the courts, following them, will soon find that all persons brought before them for trial are insane and irresponsible. The guilty will go unwhipt of justice, because no guilt will be recognized. If the phenomena in question are to be explained by insanity, I do not see what crime it will not cover.
The subject deserves serious consideration. For my part, I cannot recognize insanity where the person evidently retains his intellectual powers underanged or unimpaired, where he retains the faculty of reasoning and judging correctly, however he may be driven by foreign influences to this or that crime. When he tells me that he was obliged by something to do this or that, and that when he did it, it seemed to him that it was not he, but some power impelling him, I raise no question of insanity, but simply, as Merton suggests we should, the question of internal resistance, and measure him by the greater or less energy and persistence of that internal resistance.
