FORTUNE-TELLING.
IT is a little difficult to state a perfectly satisfactory reason for punishing fortune-tellers like Madame Zuleika, who on. Friday week was fined £25 at the Marlborough Street Police. Court. We do not now punish such people, as our forefathers did, for an offence akin to witchcraft, and there- fore offensive to God and all right-thinking men. We do not believe enough for that, and have almost completely lost the notion that in sparing such people we are incurring the wrath of a righteous God,—the doctrine by which our ancestors and the early American settlers justified the monstrous punishments they inflicted upon old witches. They believed sincerely that all dealers in occult arts were worshippers or allies of the Devil, and therefore blasphemers in excelsis, toleration for whom was necessarily treason against the Most High. Nor do we suspect the offenders of actual crime, such as poisoning for fees, which was two hundred years ago the offence supposed to be usually con- cealed, and, we fancy, very often practised, under the pretence of divination. It seems a little hard to call the practices of the fortune-tellers frauds, when we do not know that they do not, in part at .least, believe in their own powers, in which case they are rather sellers of information than criminals, like the alchemists, whom we certainly should not now punish, or the tipsters who ply their trade in half the newspapers of the Kingdom. Their belief may have injurious results or be contrary to reason and known facts, but so are many beliefs like theosophy, or Anglo-Israelism, or the faith of the Per- fectionists, which nevertheless we sedulously exempt from magisterial jurisdiction. The best defence for such trials is that fortune-telling and the like when practised upon the ignorant or the simple are practices contrary to the well- being of the, community, and as such punishable like offences against the Sanitary Laws or a refusal to vaccinate children, not on moral but on purely utilitarian grounds. When that is the principle adopted, we are bound, in order to avoid invidious distinctions or impossible investigations into mental condition, to punish all the guilty alike, and so are landed almost without our own consent in prosecutions like that of Madame Zuleika, whose victims can hardly be considered involuntary sufferers. They, unless positively incapacitated by want of ordinary intelligence, are rather participants in the offence the commission of which they in all cases deliberately encourage. We cannot punish "the poor old woman who robs servant girls of their wages by pro- mising them rich lovers or coming legacies, and allow the rich professors of occultism to escape scot-free ; but we confess we think, with the .Magistrate at Marlborough Street, that the penalty most consistent both with justice and expediency is the heavy fine, which if often repeated would soon extinguish the trade by rendering it unprofitahle.
We know of few operations of the human mind which are so difficult to trace to their source as the impulses which induce the fairly intelligent to consult fortune-tellers, astrologers, "prophets," or pretenders to "light," in order to be made acquainted with the future. If they are religious persons, as is not infrequently the case, they must know that, as God alone can control the future, so only those whom he has distinctly inspired can know what that future will be, and that as they do not attribute such inspiration to soothsayers they are idiots for consulting them. If, on the other hand, they deny the supernatural, or, like too many of us, habitually ignore its existence, why do they think that they can call the non-existent into existence or conciliate the neglected for a passing need or a momentary caprice ? If only fools believed in diviners the belief might be explained as a mental aberra- tion, akin to any other liability to delusions in the medical sense, but it is certain that it has in all ages affected some of the sanest and keenest intellects in the world. There probably never existed a man of keener intelligence or greater brain-power than the first Napoleon, yet Mlle. de Courtot, who was Josephine's friend, tells us that he might have divorced his wife before he mounted the throne, but for his belief in the prophecy which foretold that she should be greater than a Queen. That, as the Creole flirt frequently told him, could only be realised through his elevation, and, therefore, if he put her away he would never be crowned as Emperor. And Mlle. de Courtot tells another story so strangely characteristic of its hero, as well as pertinent to our purpose, that we cannot resist the temptation of a rather lengthy extract. Mlle. de Courtot had sought an interview with the First Consul in order to have her estates, which had
been confiscated during the Revolution, restored toper; had been received with great rudeness, and bad vainly recalled to the First Consul's memory a scene at Brienne in which he, as a young cadet, had rescued her, a young child, from a furious bull. She, however, tried again to awaken kindly recollec- tions in his mind, and reminded him how once she had placed on his head, while he was contending for some prize in the Lycee, a wreath of laurel leaves :- "I had got so far in my story when I was suddenly interrupted by a strange sound—half sigh, half exclamation of joy—and the next moment the Consul had sprung forward and clasped both my hands in his. Overwhelming emotion shone in his dark eyes and trembled in his voice when he spoke. "So you were that sweet kind girl, Mademoiselle? Oh, ask what you will of me, I promise you beforehand to grant it—no matter what it is. Will you accept a pension—a post of any kind ? You shall have your property back—I am more than overjoyed to have it in my power to serve you!' You may imagine, my Annaliebe, how startled and amazed I was at this sudden outburst, this rapture of kind- ness, from the man who, but a moment before, had shown himself so stern and unapproachable ! I had no answer ready, all I could do was to falter without reflection, 'Oh, Sire, what have I done to deserve this gratitude ?" What, this too !' broke in Bonaparte in a tone of measureless excitement. The Royal title—for the first time—frcm your lips, my dear, infallible little Prophetess ! —And once more your words will come true,' he continued, with the strange, far-away look of a Seer. 'Yes, I shall one day wear the crown and clasp the Royal mantle round my shoulders—now I know it for certain. You set that laurel wreath on my young head in the far-off days at Brienne—the laurel crown that was to be followed by so many others. You whispered to me then- " May it bring you good luck !" and truly it did, as you very well know.—I am a fatalist, Mademoiselle, and since you have fore- told it me. I feel the Crown of France upon my brow, I see the Sceptre of the great Realm already in my hand! How can I ever thank you enough ?"
Needless to add that she received back her property at once. Now, what made that strong mind believe and pay for that bit of involuntary soothsaying P Napoleon certainly Ilid not believe Mlle. de Courtot to be inspired. Nor is. it
reasonable to think that he was impelled by fear, for he had been relieved of no danger, and had nothing to be afraid of.
He must have been influenced, as we conceive, by a need of guidance in a dangerous and almost hidden path, and have grasped, with a sensation of relief as well as pleasure, at what seemed to him a clue. And that we believe to be also the motive with which the fairly intelligent seek the aid of diviners. All men are aware, consciously or otherwise, of the infinite complexities of this perplexing world, of the multitude
of so-called accidents, happy or unfortunate, of the utter incapacity of the mind to look forward even fur minutes ;
and when this presses till they become irresolute, they seek an aid to decision from any source independent of their own
wills, be it the tossing of a coin, the waiting for an omen, or a visit to a fortune-teller, about whom they believe little
or much, but at all events this much, that she speaks from an impulse not wholly her own, be it obedience to a rule, as in the case of the astrologer or diviner by cards, or while carried out of herself, as in the strange utterances of trance. If she is stupid, what matters it? she is no stupider than a coin. Grant even that she is completely an impostor, and still an impostor may say something that will decide, because it has not sprung from the inquirer's own mind. That is the impulse, which is never good because it has in it no quality of resignation or confidence in the good- ness of God, bat which varies in degree of badness with every temperament and every object sought, and it is so widely distributed that those who gratify it never in any age lack customers, and in any age in which accustomed faiths are strongly disturbed find them by the thousand. Just at
this moment, as just before the Revelation, there is such a disturbance, and in every capital of Europe there are a hundred Madame Zuleikas, and, we see reason to stiTeeP, two or three Cagliostros.
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