Pythagoras is said to have had the same power, or rather the same faculty
came upon him. He was lifted up, with no will or conscious exertion of
his own. Now, our evidence as to the power of Pythagoras to be "like a
bird, in two places at once," is exactly as valuable as that about
Abaris. It rests on the tradition repeated by superstitious philosophers
who lived eight hundred years after his death. "To Pythagoras,
therefore," as Herodotus has it, "we now say farewell," with no further
knowledge than that vague tradition says he was "levitated." The writer
now leaves classical antiquity behind him--he does not repeat a saying of
Plotinus, the mystic of Alexandria, who lived in the third century of our
era. The best known anecdote of him is that his disciples asked him if
he were not sometimes levitated, and he laughed, and said, "No; but he
was no fool who persuaded you of this." Instead of Plotinus, we are
referred to a mass of Jewish and anti-Christian apocryphal traditions,
which have the same common point--the assertion of the existence of the
phenomenon of levitation. Apollonius of Tyana is also said to have been
a highly accomplished medium. We are next presented with a list of forty
"levitated" persons, canonized or beatified by the Church of Rome. Their
dates range from the ninth to the seventeenth century, and their
histories go to prove that levitation runs in families. Perhaps the best
known of the collection is St. Theresa (1515-1582), and it is only fair
to say that the stories about St. Theresa are very like those repeated
about our lady mediums. One of these, Mrs. Guppy, as every one knows,
can scatter flowers all over a room, "flowers of Paradise," unknown to
botanists. Fauna, rather than flora, was St. Theresa's province, and she
kept a charming pet, a little white animal of no recognized species.
Still, about her, and about her friend St John of the Cross, the legend
runs that they used to be raised off the ground, chairs and all, and
float about in the most soothing way. Poor Peter of Alcantara was
levitated in a less pleasant manner; "he uttered a frightful cry, and