Letters on the truths contained in popular superstitions / By Herbert Mayo, M. D.
- Herbert Mayo
- Date:
- 1849
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Letters on the truths contained in popular superstitions / By Herbert Mayo, M. D. Source: Wellcome Collection.
56/160 page 52
![reasonable they should. I see them always under the same forms, and have never found in their discourse any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the other, and distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by their salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when they do not come, | pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and never have I needed them but they have visited me.” Such is part of the defence of the heroic Joan of Arc, who was taken prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23 of May 1430 — sold by him for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a heretic, idolatress, and magician — condemned and finally burned alive the 30 of May 1431! Her innocence, simplicity and courage incense one sadly against her judges; but it is likely there were at the time many good and sensible persons who approved of her sentence and never suspected its cruelty and injus- tice. Making allowance for the ignorance and barbarity of the age her treatment was perhaps not worse than that of Abdel Kader now. Her visions; — they were palpably the productions of her own fancy, the figures of saints and angels which she had seen in missals pro- jected before her mental sight; and their cause; — the instinctive workings, unknown to herself, of her young high couraged and enthusiastic heart, shaping its sugges- tions into holy prophecyings; the leading facts of which her resolute will realized while their actual discrepancies with subsequent events, she pardonably forgot. ] will present yet another and less pleasing picture, where the subject of sensorial illusions was of infirm mind, and they struck upon the insane cord, and reason jangled harshly out of tune. It would be a curious question whether such a sensorial illusion, as overthrew the young seer’s judgment in the following case, could have occurred](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33486670_0056.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
