Things Distant Are
Seen At The Instant When They Happen.
Of things future I know not
that there is any rule for determining the time between the Sight
and the event.
This receptive faculty, for power it cannot be called, is neither
voluntary nor constant. The appearances have no dependence upon
choice: they cannot be summoned, detained, or recalled. The
impression is sudden, and the effect often painful.
By the term Second Sight, seems to be meant a mode of seeing,
superadded to that which Nature generally bestows. In the Earse it
is called Taisch; which signifies likewise a spectre, or a vision.
I know not, nor is it likely that the Highlanders ever examined,
whether by Taisch, used for Second Sight, they mean the power of
seeing, or the thing seen.
I do not find it to be true, as it is reported, that to the Second
Sight nothing is presented but phantoms of evil. Good seems to
have the same proportions in those visionary scenes, as it obtains
in real life: almost all remarkable events have evil for their
basis; and are either miseries incurred, or miseries escaped. Our
sense is so much stronger of what we suffer, than of what we enjoy,
that the ideas of pain predominate in almost every mind. What is
recollection but a revival of vexations, or history but a record of
wars, treasons, and calamities? Death, which is considered as the
greatest evil, happens to all. The greatest good, be it what it
will, is the lot but of a part.
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