They have no temptation to feign;
and their hearers have no motive to encourage the imposture.
To talk with any of these seers is not easy. There is one living
in Sky, with whom we would have gladly conversed; but he was very
gross and ignorant, and knew no English. The proportion in these
countries of the poor to the rich is such, that if we suppose the
quality to be accidental, it can very rarely happen to a man of
education; and yet on such men it has sometimes fallen. There is
now a Second Sighted gentleman in the Highlands, who complains of
the terrors to which he is exposed.
The foresight of the Seers is not always prescience; they are
impressed with images, of which the event only shews them the
meaning. They tell what they have seen to others, who are at that
time not more knowing than themselves, but may become at last very
adequate witnesses, by comparing the narrative with its
verification.
To collect sufficient testimonies for the satisfaction of the
publick, or of ourselves, would have required more time than we
could bestow. There is, against it, the seeming analogy of things
confusedly seen, and little understood, and for it, the indistinct
cry of national persuasion, which may be perhaps resolved at last
into prejudice and tradition. I never could advance my curiosity
to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe.
As there subsists no longer in the Islands much of that peculiar
and discriminative form of life, of which the idea had delighted
our imagination, we were willing to listen to such accounts of past
times as would be given us. But we soon found what memorials were
to be expected from an illiterate people, whose whole time is a
series of distress; where every morning is labouring with
expedients for the evening; and where all mental pains or pleasure
arose from the dread of winter, the expectation of spring, the
caprices of their Chiefs, and the motions of the neighbouring
clans; where there was neither shame from ignorance, nor pride in
knowledge; neither curiosity to inquire, nor vanity to communicate.
The Chiefs indeed were exempt from urgent penury, and daily
difficulties; and in their houses were preserved what accounts
remained of past ages. But the Chiefs were sometimes ignorant and
careless, and sometimes kept busy by turbulence and contention; and
one generation of ignorance effaces the whole series of unwritten
history. Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while
neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again
impart their instruction: memory, once interrupted, is not to be
recalled. Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the
cloud that had hidden it has past away, is again bright in its
proper station.
