Sin,—In support of the statement contained in your most interesting
article in the Spectator of August 7th, that the fear caused by what is supposed to be a supernatural agency seems to have in it some element not found in ordinary fear, may I be allowed to quote an anecdote from Coleridge's "Table-Talk "? "It was, I think, in the University of Cambridge, near Boston, that a certain youth took it into his wise head to convert a Tom-Painish companion of his by appearing as a ghost before him. He accordingly dressed himself up in the usual way, having previously extracted the ball from the pistol which always lay near the head of his friend's bed. Upon first awaking, and seeing the apparition, the youth who was to be frightened. A, very coolly looked his companion, the ghost, in the face, and said, I know you. This is a good joke; but you see I am not frightened. Now you may vanish !' The ghost stood still. 'Come,' said A, that is enough. I shall get angry. Away ! ' Still the ghost moved not. By —,' ejaculated A, if you do not in three minutes go away, I'll shoot you.' He waited the time, deliberately levelled the pistol, fired, and, with a scream at the immobility of the figure, became convulsed, and after- wards died. The very instant he believed it to be a ghost his human nature fell before it."—I am, Sir &c.,
Weston-super-Mare, August 9th. ALLEN BROCKINGTON.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Is not the fear of the supernatural most naturally ex- plained by the horror each human being has of death, death being simply a ceasing to be, as far as tangible evidence is concerned ? I have often been struck by noticing that the weird fear of which you write is equally connected with the dead body as with a bodiless soul. A dead body is not a man, a soul without a body is not a man—we fear both; and I would suggest that this dread is a natural protest against death as a great contradiction to our innate joy of life and to our hope of an eternal life. It is easy to see how much of our conventional but most unreal talk about "heaven," "going to heaven when we die," recognising friends in heaven, and so forth, is corrected by this fear of the supernatural when thus explained. Of course, the Christian doctrine of resurrection, of a soul reclothed with a material body, absolutely assumes knowledge of friends, a preserved identity, memory, and useful activities. In the ghost-like homes of unbodied spirits all such things may be impossible, and certainly must be quite different, and quite vague. It is, no doubt, the loss of the sense of the poverty of an unbodied life which has caused the curious modern Christian habit of ceasing to pray for the dead. Let me remind you of Newman's poem in the "Lyra Apostolica," beginning, "They are at rest," which always seems to me one of the most wonderful things he ever wrote, and which leaves on the mind a weird sense akin to fear in the company of even saved souls. May we not then take the unreasoning and unreasonable fear of the super- natural as a protest against the horror from which Christ has set us free ; and a very true guide towards a fuller knowledge of human existence, and of the mysterious thing each man refers to when he says "I " P—I am, Sir, &c., ANDREWES REEVES. The Rectory, Lambeth, SE., August 7th.
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