Modern ' Seers '

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 22, 28 May 1903, Page 2

Modern ' Seers '

Samuel Butler poms a fine spray of cold raillery upon the seeis, fortune-tellers, and ' futurists ' 'who ' Make fools believe in their foieseeing Ol things before they are in being, To swallow gudgeons eie they 10 catehed. And count their chickens ci c they're hatched ' He pays the following tnbute to their well-known principle of business caution :—: — ' Hut si ill the best for him that gives Ihe best price lor't, or best believes In the (l;ns of the Puritan retinue in England, Parliament licensed the notorious Booker as its own paiticular t'ortu no-teller, anil gave him a sttut monopoly of the business of piognostication — after the manner of the professional soothsaveis of ancient pagan Home. Nowaday s the business of pretending to piobo the future is

left to private enterprise. Among us in these countries the ' profession * is usually carried on by women who prefix the French title ' Madame ' to common English surnames, and live in dingy, melancholy streets, every house of which (as W. I). Ho wells said of the residence of his Pythoness) ' seems to wince as you go by and button itselT up to the chin for fear you should find out' it had no shirt on — so to speak.'

In one of his works. Young pokes the goad of his sharpest sarcasm into the failures of the prognostications of Sddrophel Vapulans, another famous official ' futurist' of the Puritan days. ' Scarce one of his predictions Were verified,' says Young, ' but a thousand contrariwise. It is hard that a man shooting at rovers so many years together should never hit the mark.' Butler says of the same blundering wight that 'he is excellent at foretelling things past, and calculates the deputy's nativity after he is beheaded.' Prophesying after the event is also a tolerably strong point with present-day ' futiurists ' and mediums. Our readers will recall, for instance, the post-mortem ' predictions ' regarding the death of the late Queen Victoria that were cabled out in solemn earnestness to these countries after her epiiit had flitted. Another instance in point was furnished a few weeks ago by the death of the motorist Count Zborowski. The foolish man tried to ' fly ' his big racing motor-car at the rate of fifty miles an hour round a sharp corner near Monaco. Ho faiksd. The machine was turned into scrapiron and the Count into dead meat. When the incident had got noised about by the newspaper press, forth steps an enterprising ' meejum ' in Nice— one of the school of Sidrophel— and claims to ha\e predicted the %?hole thing. And the cable-grammers speed the portentous news on the wings of the lightning to the ends of the earth ! London ' Truth,' in its latest issue to hand, reads the world at large the following homily on the subject which we in New Zealand may well take to heart :—: —

' Nothing will cure a vast number of persons of a credulity that seems to be inherent in our nature. Mesmerists, hypnotisers, manifestation-mongers ha\e been exposed time out of mind. Yet a woman or man has only to offer to re\oal the future, or make a table move, or produce sounds in the air, or materialise Shakespeare or a bunch of flowers in order to get fools to pay money to witness these " wonders," anyone of which can be, and has been, done equally well by Mr. Maskelyno by cleverly contrived machinery. If this Nice " seer' really can reveal tho future, all that she has to do in order to becomo rich enough not to require to give seances, is to call her spirits to her and learn whether black or red will be the winning color at the Monte Carlo tables. Then why does she not do it ? '