'To open the Gates of Distance' is the poetical Zulu phrase for what is
called clairvoyance, or _vue à distance_. This, if it exists, is the
result of a faculty of undetermined nature, whereby knowledge of remote
events may be acquired, not through normal channels of sense. As the Zulus
say: '_Isiyezi_ is a state in which a man becomes slightly insensible. He
is awake, but still sees things which he would not see if he were not in a
state of ecstasy (_nasiyesi_).'[1] The Zulu description of _isiyezi_
includes what is technically styled 'dissociation.' No psychologist or
pathologist will deny that visions of an hallucinatory sort may occur in
dissociated states, say in the _petit mal_ of epilepsy. The question,
however, is whether any such visions convey actual information not
otherwise to be acquired, beyond the reach of chance coincidence to
explain.

A Scottish example, from the records of a court of law, exactly
illustrates the Zulu theory. At the moment when the husband of Jonka
Dyneis was in danger six miles from her house in his boat, Jonka 'was
found, and seen standing at her own house wall in a trance, and being
taken, she could not give answer, but stood as bereft of her senses, and
when she was asked why she was so moved, she answered, "If our boat be not
lost, she was in great hazard."' (October 2, 1616.)[2]

The belief in opening the Gates of Distance is, of course, very widely
diffused. The gift is attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, to Plotinus, to
many Saints, to Catherine de' Medici, to the Rev. Mr. Peden,[3] and to
Jeanne d'Arc, while the faculty is the stock in trade of savage seers in
all regions.[4]

The question, however, on which Mr. Tylor does not touch, is, _Are any of