Second sight

“ We are accustomed to think seeing without optic is second sight, but this is first sight; even our normal condition of being. He that formed the eye, did He not see? hath not Spirit every faculty of Intelligence? That sight is not in the eye is apparent when the mesmerized subject sees through different portions of the head, leaving this optional with belief. ”

“ And now a few words on the second sight, a few calm, quiet words, in which there is not the slightest wish to display either eccentricity or book-learning.
The second sight is the power of seeing events before they happen, or of seeing events which are happening far beyond the reach of the common sight, or between which and the common sight barriers intervene, which it cannot pierce. The number of those who possess this gift or power is limited, and perhaps no person ever possessed it in a perfect degree: some more frequently see coming events, or what is happening at a distance, than others ”

“ In the second-sight, the vision makes such a lively impression on the seers, that they neither see nor think of anything else but the vision as long as it continues, and then they appear pensive or jovial, according to the object which was presented to them. ”

“ When a novice, or one that has lately obtained the second sight, sees a vision in the night-time without doors, and comes near a fire he presently falls into a swoon.
“Some find themselves as it were in a crowd of people, having a corpse, which they carry along with them; and after such visions the seers come in sweating, and describe the vision that appeared. ”

“ Although, too, of late years the theory of ‘second sight’ has not been so widely preached as formerly, yet it must not be supposed that the stories urged in support of it are less numerous, or that it has ceased to be regarded as great a mystery as in days gone by. ”

“ The Gaelic name da-shealladh does not literally mean “the second sight,” but “the two sights.” The [122] vision of the world of sense is one sight, ordinarily possessed by all, but the world of spirits is visible only to certain persons, and the possession of this additional vision gives them “the two sights,” or what comes to the same thing, “a second sight.” Through this faculty they see the ghosts of the dead revisiting the earth, and the fetches, doubles, or apparitions of the living. ”

“ Persons have been caught hold of by those reputed to have the second sight, and pulled to a side to allow a spectral funeral to pass; and it was universally believed that when the seer saw a procession of the kind, or, indeed, any of his supernatural visions, he could make others see the same sight by putting his foot on theirs and a hand on their shoulder. ”

“ Such guardians may often be seen by clairvoyant vision, and there have even been cases in which one of them has had sufficient strength to materialize and become for the moment visible to physical sight. ”

“ The eye of the sun itself is blind; and for ever, while it dazzles us with its light, blind it must remain. Nay, what need has it for sight at all, if in blindness it be able to fulfil its mission? And yet implicit within its vast energies, there lies the gift of sight. ”

“ The eye, too, forms the centre of emotional expression, and reveals to our fellow-men the subtile variations in mood and passion, as it is to the physician a delicate index of our well-being. There are reasons for believing that it was the function of sight as a distance-sense that led to its supremacy in the lives of our primitive ancestors. ”

“ Now, as the earnest search after this thing call'd Demonstration fill'd me with Desires of seeing every thing, so my Observations of the strange multitude of Mysteries I met with in all Men's Actions here, spurr'd my Curiosity to examine, if the Great Eye of the World had no People to whom he had given a clearer Eye-sight, or at least, that made a better use of it than we had here. ”

“ We are like the blind men by the wayside, and ought to sit and cry, Lord that we may receive our sight! And, when we do receive it, we shall perhaps find that we require no transporting into another world, to become aware of the immediate presence of an Infinite Spirit, and of other lesser ones whom we thought gone. What we require is sight, not change of place, I believe. ”

“ By this sense, or faculty of seeing, they are enabled to bring events which are yet future, as well as those otherwise out of sight, present to their minds; and thus they can behold them with their mental eye, as clearly as we behold objects at a distance. ”

“ All will say no. Then the shadow comes in contact with something. Now what is that something called sight or one of the senses? Is it matter? The natural man cannot answer that question any more than the brute. He says the eye is the sight. ”

“ Presently another look-out, instructed by the first where to direct his eyes, also discovers the man; then another sees him, then another, and so on, till all who are aloft obtain sight of the desired object, and join in pointing with their hands to where it is to be found. ”

“ We know that the point of sight is the eye of the spectator; and if you ask, how is a series of subjects, such as the life of a saint, to be represented, in different compartments on the same wall? I answer, that you are to place the principal event in the largest compartment, and make the point of sight as high as the eye of the spectator. ”

“ What could be more marvelous than the first revealment155 of the sense of sight, what more inconceivable to those who had not experienced it, and what more certain than that the first use of this faculty must have been fraught with delusion and error? Yet there may be an inner vision which again transcends sight, even as far as sight transcends touch. ”

“ But there are, of course, also the two ways of volitional vision. We can see with the endless modern critical sight, analytic, and at last deliberately ugly. Or we can see as the hawk sees the one concentrated spot where beats the life-heart of our prey.
In the four modes of sight we have some choice. We have some choice to refuse tastes or smells or touch. In hearing we have the minimum of choice. ”

“ I for my part noticed by the sense of sight, before I entered your Kingdom, that some of your people are Lines and others Points, and that some of the Lines are larger——" "You speak of an impossibility," interrupted the King; "you must have seen a vision; for to detect the difference between a Line and a Point by the sense of sight is, as every one knows, in the nature of things, impossible; but it can be detected by the sense of hearing, and by the same means my shape can be exactly ascertained. ”

“ Also, human beings shut off sight with peculiar case, by closing their eyes or by the calamity of blindness. The information provided by mere sight is peculiarly barren — namely, external regions disclosed as coloured. ”

“ I will illustrate this matter, to such a diminutive Critick, by a Parallel Instance of Light; which though it does chiefly entertain the Eyes, and is indeed the prime Object of the Sight, yet should it immediately cease, to have a Man left in the Dark by a suddain deficiency of it, would make him stare with his Eyes, and though he could not see, endeavour to look about him. ”

“ If the faculty is retained, it is neither stable nor pronounced. If sight is lost after the seventh year, the sight-centre can, in spite of the loss, maintain its function; and the dreams of such an individual may be hardly distinguishable from those of a seeing person. ”

“ Furthermore, everyone knows how far the sight of the eye extends, namely, to the sun and to the stars, which are so remote; and whoever thinks deeply knows that the internal sight, which is of thought, has a still wider extension, and that a yet more interior sight must extend more widely still. ”

“ At the sight of a vision, the eye-lids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is obvious to others who are by, when the persons happen to see a vision, and occurred more than once to my own observation, and to others that were with me. ”

“ Sight and hearing then exercise themselves more perfectly than in the condition called waking, and possibly without the aid of those organs which are the sheaths for those luminous swords called sight and hearing! ”

“ Whereby the stars are steered, and so to read
The future, even perhaps the destinies
Of men and nations,—only one sure way,
And that's to watch them, watch them, and record
The truth we know, and not the lies we dream.
Dear, while I watch them, though the hills and sea
Divide us, every night our eyes can meet
Among those constant glories. Every night
Your eyes and mine, upraised to that bright realm,
Can, in one moment, speak across the world. ”

“ Wherever I move, whether by rays or waves of light, from the farthest star to the nearest leaf with its complexity of vein and tint, there comes to that pinpoint of space, the eye, a multitudinous vision. ”

“ Assuming as proved or evident that the sight cannot inform us of distance in a direct line outwards, inasmuch as all the points in such a line are projected upon a single point in the retina, he argues that all sight involves foresight ; that an apparently simple perception involved an infererence founded upon association, and that the visual sensations are merely signs of of corresponding tactual sensations. ”

“ If you looked at a man with both the sights in turn, you would see the buttons at the back of his coat in both cases; only if you used etheric sight you would see them through him, and would see the shank-side as nearest to you, but if you looked astrally, you would see it not only like that, but just as if you were standing behind the man as well. ”

“ Seeing and hearing are opposite functions; the first indicates the creation, the latter the return of the creation into chaos.
2911. Through sight we become acquainted with the universe, through hearing with the miniature universe, or man. Sight passes out of us, hearing into us; or through sight Man is posited in the world, through hearing among his fellow-men. Sight is the speech of the world, hearing that of the planet. ”

“ Watch, I say, how a troubled ray, low on life's horizon, at last becomes a star in the world of men, high fixed and resplendent—to be seen by human eyes as long as there shall be human eyes to see anything. ”

“ ‘What’, it will be Question’d, ‘When the sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?’ O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.’ I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. ”

“ But let your sight begin to fail, let your eyes become darkened, and soon you discover that you are one of thousands—that good sight is the exception, that almost everyone has something the matter with his eyes. ”

“ But such inspiration comes not from one object or another, however great or fair, but from the whole “mighty world of eye and ear,” and it must be supported continuously, or it perishes. You may see a thousand sights never before seen by human eye, at every step you take, wherever be your path ”

“ And so the vision came, from above as all good visions do, but it came while walking in the pathway of duty, in the unfolding of a larger experience. He who follows the dawning light will see the vision. ”

“ Carefully disciplined by thought and investigation in the outer world, through a long series of laborious years, the curtain which separated the seen from the unseen was, for him, drawn aside, and his prepared eyes saw in clear sunlight those mysteries of life and spirit, which the best and wisest of men have most ardently desired to see. ”

“ Yet for the sake of the young and inexperienced, who may perchance infer—from the two simple instances I have given above, of the manner in which I should recognize my Father and my Sons—that Recognition by sight is an easy affair, it may be needful to point out that in actual life most of the problems of Sight Recognition are far more subtle and complex. ”

“ There are times, too, when the light breaks through the clouds of uncertainty that hang over his path, and his eye must be open and ready, as was the traveller’s, to discern all that the light may reveal of that which lies before him. ”

“ A thousand ages in Thy sight
⁠Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
⁠Before the rising sun. ”

“ Ah, my dear sir, you began with being very near-sighted, and those near-sighted eyes always wear the best. I want very strong spectacles to read with, but then I think my eyes get better and better for things at a distance. ”

“ We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object.
“A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye, Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, And the heavens espy.” ”