to by Houdin in Algeria. He prepared balls himself of tallow,
blackened with soot, and by sleight of hand exchanged them for the
real bullets, which the Arab sheiks supposed they were placing in the
pistols. The simple-minded natives, knowing nothing but real magic,
which they had inherited from their ancestors, and which consists in
each case of some one thing that they can do without knowing why or
how, and seeing Houdin, as they thought, accomplish the same results
in a more impressive manner, fancied that he was a greater magician
than themselves. Many travellers, the writer included, have witnessed
instances of this invulnerability where deception was impossible. A
few years ago, there lived in an African village, an Abyssinian who
passed for a sorcerer. Upon one occasion a party of Europeans, going
to Soudan, amused themselves for an hour or two in firing at him with
their own pistols and muskets, a privilege which he gave them for a
trifling fee. As many as five shots were fired simultaneously, by
a Frenchman named Langlois, and the muzzles of the pieces were not
above two yards distant from the sorcerer’s breast. In each case,
simultaneously with the flash, the bullet would appear just beyond
the muzzle, quivering in the air, and then, after describing a short
parabola, fall harmlessly to the ground. A German of the party, who was
going in search of ostrich feathers, offered the magician a five-franc
piece if he would allow him to fire his gun with the muzzle touching
his body. The man at first refused; but, finally, after appearing to
hold conversation with somebody inside the ground, consented. The
experimenter carefully loaded, and pressing the muzzle of the weapon
against the sorcerer’s body, after a moment’s hesitation, fired ...
the barrel burst into fragments as far down as the stock, and the man
walked off unhurt.
This quality of invulnerability can be imparted to persons both by
living adepts and by spirits. In our own time several well-known
mediums have frequently, in the presence of the most respectable
witnesses, not only handled blazing coals and actually placed their
face upon a fire without singeing a hair, but even laid flaming coals
upon the heads and hands of by-standers, as in the case of Lord Lindsay
and Lord Adair. The well-known story of the Indian chief, who confessed
to Washington that at Braddock’s defeat he had fired his rifle at him
seventeen times at short range without being able to touch him, will
recur to the reader in this connection. In fact, many great commanders
have been believed by their soldiers to bear what is called “a charmed {380}
life;” and Prince Emile von Sayn-Wittgenstein, a general of the
Russian army, is said to be one of these.
This same power which enables one to compress the astral fluid so
as to form an impenetrable shell around one, can be used to direct,
so to speak, a bolt of the fluid against a given object, with fatal
force. Many a dark revenge has been taken in that way; and in such
cases the coroner’s inquest will never disclose anything but sudden
death, apparently resulting from heart-disease, an apoplectic fit, or
some other natural, but still not veritable cause. Many persons firmly
believe that certain individuals possess the power of the evil eye. The
_mal’occhio_, or _jettatura_ is a belief which is prevalent throughout
Italy and Southern Europe. The Pope is held to be possessed—perchance
unconsciously—of that disagreeable gift. There are persons who can
kill toads by merely looking at them, and can even slay individuals.
The malignance of their desire brings evil forces to a focus, and the
death-dealing bolt is projected, as though it were a bullet from a
rifle.
In 1864, in the French province of Le Var, near the little village of
Brignoles, lived a peasant named Jacques Pelissier, who made a living
by killing birds by simple _will-power_. His case is reported by the
well-known Dr. d’Alger, at whose request the singular hunter gave
exhibitions to several scientific men, of his method of proceeding. The
story is told as follows: “At about fifteen or twenty paces from us,
I saw a charming little meadow-lark which I showed to Jacques. ‘Watch
him well, monsieur,’ said he, ‘he is mine.’ Instantly stretching his
right hand toward the bird, he approached him gently. The meadow-lark
stops, raises and lowers his pretty head, spreads his wings, but cannot
fly; at last he cannot make a step further and suffers himself to
be taken, only moving his wings with a feeble fluttering. I examine
the bird; his eyes are tightly closed and his body has a corpse-like
stiffness, although the pulsations of the heart are very distinct; it
is a true cataleptic sleep, and all the phenomena incontestably prove a
magnetic action. Fourteen little birds were taken in this way, within
the space of an hour; none could resist the power of Master Jacques,
and all presented the same cataleptic sleep; a sleep which, moreover,
terminates at the will of the hunter, whose humble slaves these little
birds have become.
“A hundred times, perhaps, I asked Jacques to restore life and movement
to his prisoners, to charm them only half way, so that they might hop
along the ground, and then again bring them completely under the charm.
All my requests were exactly complied with, and not one single failure
was made by this remarkable Nimrod, who finally said to me: ‘If you
wish it, I will kill those which you designate without touching them.’
I pointed out two for the experiment, and, at twenty-five or thirty {381}
paces distance, he accomplished in less than five minutes what he had
promised.”[610]
A most curious feature of the above case is, that Jacques had complete
power only over sparrows, robins, goldfinches, and meadow-larks; he
could sometimes charm skylarks, but, as he says, “they often escape me.”
This same power is exercised with greater force by persons known as
wild beast tamers. On the banks of the Nile, some of the natives can
charm the crocodiles out of the water, with a peculiarly melodious,
low whistle, and handle them with impunity; while others possess such
powers over the most deadly snakes. Travellers tell of seeing the
charmers surrounded by multitudes of the reptiles which they dispatch
at their leisure.
Bruce, Hasselquist, and Lemprière,[611] testify to the fact that they
have seen in Egypt, Morocco, Arabia, and especially in the Senaar,
some natives utterly disregarding the bites of the most poisonous
vipers, as well as the stings of scorpions. They handle and play with
them, and throw them at will into a state of stupor.“In vain do the
Latin and Greek writers,” says Salverte, “assure us that the gift of
charming venomous reptiles was hereditary in certain families from time
immemorial, that in Africa the same gift was enjoyed by the Psylli;
that the Marses in Italy, and the Ophiozenes in Cyprus possessed it.”
The skeptics forget that, in Italy, even at the commencement of the
sixteenth century, men, claiming to be descended from the family of
Saint Paul, braved, like the Marses, the bites of serpents.”[612]
“Doubts upon this subject,” he goes on to say, “were removed forever at
the time of the expedition of the French into Egypt, and the following
relation is attested by thousands of eye-witnesses. The Psylli, who
pretended, as Bruce had related, to possess that faculty ... went
from house to house to destroy serpents of every kind.... A wonderful
instinct drew them at first toward the place in which the serpents
were hidden; furious, howling, and foaming, they seized and tore them
asunder with their nails and teeth.”
“Let us place,” says Salverte, inveterate skeptic himself, “to the
account of charlatanism, the howling and the fury; still, the instinct
which warned the Psylli of the presence of the serpents, has in it {382}
something more real.” In the Antilles, the negroes discover, by its
odor, a serpent which they do not see.[613] “In Egypt, the same tact,
formerly possessed, is still enjoyed by men brought up to it from
infancy, and born as with an assumed hereditary gift to hunt serpents,
and to discover them even at a distance too great for the effluvia to
be perceptible to the dull organs of a European. The principal fact
above all others, the faculty of rendering dangerous animals powerless,
merely by touching them, remains well verified, and we shall, perhaps,
never understand better the nature of this secret, celebrated in
antiquity, and preserved to our time by the most ignorant of men.”[614]
Music is delightful to every person. Low whistling, a melodious
chant, or the sounds of a flute will invariably attract reptiles in
countries where they are found. We have witnessed and verified the
fact repeatedly. In Upper Egypt, whenever our caravan stopped, a
young traveller, who believed he excelled on the flute, amused the
company by playing. The camel-drivers and other Arabs invariably
checked him, having been several times annoyed by the unexpected
appearance of various families of the reptile tribe, which generally
shirk an encounter with men. Finally, our caravan met with a party,
among whom were professional serpent-charmers, and the virtuoso was
then invited, for experiment’s sake, to display his skill. No sooner
had he commenced, than a slight rustling was heard, and the musician
was horrified at suddenly seeing a large snake appear in dangerous
proximity with his legs. The serpent, with uplifted head and eyes fixed
on him, slowly, and, as if unconsciously, crawled, softly undulating
its body, and following his every movement. Then appeared at a distance
another one, then a third, and a fourth, which were speedily followed
by others, until we found ourselves quite in a select company. Several
of the travellers made for the backs of their camels, while others
sought refuge in the _cantinier’s_ tent. But it was a vain alarm. The
charmers, three in number, began their chants and incantations, and,
attracting the reptiles, were very soon covered with them from head
to foot. As soon as the serpents approached the men, they exhibited
signs of torpor, and were soon plunged in a deep catalepsy. Their eyes
were half closed and glazed, and their heads drooping. There remained
but one recalcitrant, a large and glossy black fellow, with a spotted
skin. This _meloman_ of the desert went on gracefully nodding and
leaping, as if it had danced on its tail all its life, and keeping
time to the notes of the flute. This snake would not be enticed by the
“charming” of the Arabs, but kept slowly moving in the direction of {383}
the flute-player, who at last took to his heels. The modern Psyllian
then took out of his bag a half-withered plant, which he kept waving
in the direction of the serpent. It had a strong smell of mint, and as
soon as the reptile caught its odor, it followed the Arab, still erect
upon its tail, but now approaching the plant. A few more seconds, and
the “traditional enemy” of man was seen entwined around the arm of his
charmer, became torpid in its turn, and the whole lot were then thrown
together in a pool, after having their heads cut off.
Many believe that all such snakes are prepared and trained for the
purpose, and that they are either deprived of their fangs, or have
their mouths sewed up. There may be, doubtless, some inferior jugglers,
whose trickery has given rise to such an idea. But the _genuine_
serpent-charmer has too well established his claims in the East, to
resort to any such cheap fraud. They have the testimony on this subject
of too many trustworthy travellers, including some scientists, to be
accused of any such charlatanism. That the snakes, which are charmed
to dance and to become harmless, are still poisonous, is verified by
Forbes. “On the music stopping too suddenly,” says he, “or from some
other cause, the serpent, who had been dancing within a circle of
country-people, darted among the spectators, and inflicted a wound
in the throat of a young woman, who died in agony, in half an hour
afterward.”[615]
According to the accounts of many travellers the negro women of Dutch
Guiana, the Obeah women, excel in taming very large snakes called
_amodites_, or _papa_; they make them descend from the trees, follow,
and obey them by merely speaking to them.[616]
We have seen in India a small brotherhood of fakirs settled round a
little lake, or rather a deep pool of water, the bottom of which was
literally carpeted with enormous alligators. These amphibious monsters
crawl out, and warm themselves in the sun, a few feet from the fakirs,
some of whom may be motionless, lost in prayer and contemplation. So
long as one of these holy beggars remains in view, the crocodiles are
as harmless as kittens. But we would never advise a foreigner to risk
himself alone within a few yards of these monsters. The poor Frenchman
Pradin found an untimely grave in one of these terrible Saurians,
commonly called by the Hindus _Moudela_.[617] (This word should be
_nihang_ or _ghariyāl_.)
When Iamblichus, Herodotus, Pliny, or some other ancient writer tells
us of priests who caused asps to come forth from the altar of Isis,
or of thaumaturgists taming with a glance the most ferocious animals, {384}
they are considered liars and ignorant imbeciles. When modern
travellers tell us of the same wonders performed in the East, they are
set down as enthusiastic jabberers, or _untrustworthy_ writers.
But, despite materialistic skepticism, man does possess such a power,
as we see manifested in the above instances. When psychology and
physiology become worthy of the name of sciences, Europeans will be
convinced of the weird and formidable potency existing in the human
will and imagination, whether exercised consciously or otherwise. And
yet, how easy to realize such power in _spirit_, if we only think of
that grand truism in nature that every most insignificant atom in it
is moved by _spirit_, which is _one_ in its essence, for the least
particle of it represents the _whole_; and that matter is but the
concrete copy of the abstract idea, after all. In this connection, let
us cite a few instances of the imperial power of even the _unconscious_
will, to create according to the imagination or rather the faculty of
discerning images in the astral light.
We have but to recall the very familiar phenomenon of _stigmata_, or
birth-marks, where effects are produced by the involuntary agency of
the maternal imagination under a state of excitement. The fact that
the mother can control the appearance of her unborn child was so well
known among the ancients, that it was the custom among wealthy Greeks
to place fine statues near the bed, so that she might have a perfect
model constantly before her eyes. The cunning trick by which the
Hebrew patriarch Jacob caused ring-streaked and speckled calves to be
dropped, is an illustration of the law among animals; and Aricante
tells “of four successive litters of puppies, born of healthy parents,
some of which, in each litter, were well formed, whilst the remainder
were without anterior extremities and had hair lip.” The works of
Geoffroi St. Hilaire, Burdach, and Elam, contain accounts of great
numbers of such cases, and in Dr. Prosper Lucas’s important volume,
_Sur l’Heredité Naturelle_, there are many. Elam quotes from Prichard
an instance where the child of a negro and white was marked with black
and white color upon separate parts of the body. He adds, with laudable
sincerity, “These are singularities of which, in the present state
of science, no explanation can be given.”[618] It is a pity that his
example was not more generally imitated. Among the ancients Empedocles,
Aristotle, Pliny, Hippocrates, Galen, Marcus Damascenus, and others
give us accounts quite as wonderful as our contemporary authors.
In a work published in London, in 1659,[619] a powerful argument is {385}
made in refutation of the materialists by showing the potency of
the human mind upon the subtile forces of nature. The author, Dr.
More, views the fœtus as if it were a plastic substance, which can
be fashioned by the mother to an agreeable or disagreeable shape, to
resemble some person or in part several persons, and to be stamped
with the effigies, or as we might more properly call it, _astrograph_,
of some object vividly presented to her imagination. These effects
may be produced by her voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or
unconsciously, feebly or forcibly, as the case may be. It depends upon
her ignorance or knowledge of the profound mysteries of nature. Taking
women in the mass, the marking of the embryo may be considered more
accidental than the result of design; and as each person’s atmosphere
in the astral light is peopled with the images of his or her immediate
family, the sensitive surface of the fœtus, which may almost be likened
to the collodionized plate of a photograph, is as likely as not to be
stamped with the image of a near or remote ancestor, whom the mother
never saw, but which, at some critical moment, came as it were into the
focus of nature’s camera. Says Dr. Elam, “Near me is seated a visitor
from a distant continent, where she was born and educated. The portrait
of a remote ancestress, far back in the last century, hangs upon the
wall. In every feature, one is an accurate presentment of the other,
although the one never left England, and the other was an American by
birth and half parentage.”
The power of the imagination upon our physical condition, even after
we arrive at maturity, is evinced in many familiar ways. In medicine,
the intelligent physician does not hesitate to accord to it a curative
or morbific potency greater than his pills and potions. He calls it
the _vis medicatrix naturæ_, and his first endeavor is to gain the
confidence of his patient so completely, that he can cause nature
to extirpate the disease. Fear often kills; and grief has such a
power over the subtile fluids of the body as not only to derange the
internal organs but even to turn the hair white. Ficinus mentions the
_signature_ of the fœtus with the marks of cherries and various fruits,
colors, hairs, and excrescences, and acknowledges that the imagination
of the mother may transform it into a resemblance of an ape, pig, or
dog, or any such animal. Marcus Damascenus tells of a girl covered with
hair and, like our modern Julia Pastrana, furnished with a full beard;
Gulielmus Paradinus, of a child whose skin and nails resembled those of
a bear; Balduinus Ronsæus of one born with a turkey’s wattles; Pareus,
of one with a head like a frog; and Avicenna, of chickens with hawks’
heads. In this latter case, which perfectly exemplifies the power of
the same imagination in animals, the embryo must have been stamped at
the instant of conception when the hen’s imagination saw a hawk either {386}
in fact or in fancy. This is evident, for Dr. More, who quotes this
case on the authority of Avicenna, remarks very appropriately that, as
the egg in question might have been hatched a hundred miles distant
from the hen, the microscopic picture of the hawk impressed upon the
embryo must have enlarged and perfected itself with the growth of the
chicken quite independently of any subsequent influence from the hen.
Cornelius Gemma tells of a child that was born with his forehead
wounded and running with blood, the result of his father’s threats
toward his mother “... with a drawn sword which he directed toward her
forehead;” Sennertius records the case of a pregnant woman who, seeing
a butcher divide a swine’s head with his cleaver, brought forth her
child with his face cloven in the upper jaw, the palate, and upper lip
to the very nose. In Van Helmont’s _De Injectis Materialibus_, some
very astonishing cases are reported: The wife of a tailor at Mechlin
was standing at her door and saw a soldier’s hand cut off in a quarrel,
which so impressed her as to bring on premature labor, and her child
was born with only one hand, the other arm bleeding. In 1602, the wife
of Marcus Devogeler, a merchant of Antwerp, seeing a soldier who had
just lost his arm, was taken in labor and brought forth a daughter
with one arm struck off and bleeding as in the first case. Van Helmont
gives a third example of another woman who witnessed the beheading of
thirteen men by order of the Duc d’Alva. The horror of the spectacle
was so overpowering that she “suddainly fell into labour and brought
forth a perfectly-formed infant, onely the head was wanting, but the
neck bloody as their bodies she beheld that had their heads cut off.
And that which does still advance the wonder is, that the _hand_,
_arme_, and _head_ of these infants were none of them to be found.”[620]
If it was possible to conceive of such a thing as a miracle in nature,
the above cases of the sudden disappearance of portions of the unborn
human body might be designated. We have looked in vain through the
latest authorities upon human physiology for any sufficient theory
to account for the least remarkable of fœtal signatures. The most
they can do is to record instances of what they call “spontaneous
varieties of type,” and then fall back either upon Mr. Proctor’s
“curious coincidences” or upon such candid confessions of ignorance
as are to be found in authors not entirely satisfied with the sum
of human knowledge. Magendie acknowledges that, despite scientific
researches, comparatively little is known of fœtal life. At page 518
of the American edition of his _Precis Elementaire de Physiologie_
he instances “a case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and {387}
perfectly cicatrized;” and asks “How was the circulation carried on
in this organ?” On the next page, he says: “Nothing is at present
known respecting the use of digestion in the fœtus;” and respecting
its nutrition, propounds this query: “What, then, can we say of the
nutrition of the fœtus? Physiological works contain only _vague
conjectures_ on this point.” On page 520, the following language
occurs: “In consequence of some _unknown cause_, the different parts of
the fœtus sometimes develop themselves in a preternatural manner.” With
singular inconsistency with his previous admissions of the ignorance of
science upon all these points which we have quoted, he adds: “_There
is no reason for believing that the imagination of the mother can have
any influence in the formation of these monsters_; besides, productions
of this kind are daily observed in the offspring of other animals and
even in plants.” How perfect an illustration is this of the methods of
scientific men!—the moment they pass beyond their circle of observed
facts, their judgment seems to become entirely perverted. Their
deductions from their own researches are often greatly inferior to
those made by others who have to take the facts at second hand.
The literature of science is constantly furnishing examples of this
truth; and when we consider the reasoning of materialistic observers
upon psychological phenomena, the rule is strikingly manifest.
Those who are _soul-blind_ are as constitutionally incapable of
distinguishing psychological causes from material effects as the
color-blind are to select scarlet from black.
Elam, without being in the least a spiritualist, nay, though an enemy
to it, represents the belief of honest scientists in the following
expressions: “it is certainly inexplicable how matter and mind can act
and react one upon the other; the mystery is acknowledged by all to be
insoluble, and will probably ever remain so.”
The great English authority upon the subject of malformation is _The
Science and Practice of Medicine_, by Wm. Aitken, M.D., Edinburgh,
and Professor of Pathology in the Army Medical School; the American
edition of which, by Professor Meredith Clymer, M.D., of the University
of Pennsylvania, has equal weight in the United States. At page 233
of vol. i. we find the subject treated at length. The author says,
“The superstition, absurd notions, and strange causes assigned to the
occurrence of such malformations, are now fast disappearing before
the lucid expositions of those famous anatomists who have made the
development and growth of the ovum a subject of special study. It is
sufficient to mention here the names, J. Muller, Rathke, Bischoff,
St. Hilaire, Burdach, Allen Thompson, G. & W. Vrolick, Wolff, Meckel,
Simpson, Rokitansky, and Von Ammon as sufficient evidence that the
truths of science will in time dispel the mists of ignorance and {388}
superstition.” One would think, from the complacent tone adopted by
this eminent writer that we were in possession if not of the means of
readily solving this intricate problem at least of a clew to guide us
through the maze of our difficulties. But, in 1872, after profiting
by all the labors and ingenuity of the illustrious pathologists above
enumerated, we find him making the same confession of ignorance as that
expressed by Magendie in 1838. “Nevertheless,” says he, “much mystery
still enshrouds the origin of malformation; the origin of them may be
considered in two main issues, namely: 1, are they due to original
malformation of the germ? 2, or, are they due to subsequent deformities
of the embryo by causes operating on its development? With regard
to the first issue, it is believed that the germ may be originally
malformed, or defective, owing to _some influence proceeding either
from the female, or from the male_, as in case of repeated procreation
of the same kind of malformation by the same parents, deformities on
either side being transmitted as an inheritance.”
Being unsupplied with any philosophy of their own to account for the
lesions, the pathologists, true to professional instinct, resort to
negation. “That such deformity may be produced by mental impressions
on pregnant women there is an absence of positive proof,” they say.
“Moles, mothers’ marks, and cutaneous spots as ascribed to morbid
states of the coats of the ovum.... A very generally-recognized
cause of malformation consists in impeded development of the fœtus,
_the cause of which is not always obvious, but is for the most part
concealed.... Transient forms of the human fœtus are comparable to
persistent forms of many lower animals._” Can the learned professor
explain why? “_Hence malformations resulting from arrest of development
often acquire an animal-like appearance._”
Exactly; but why do not pathologists inform us why it is so? Any
anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo and
fœtus “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much brain-work,
what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz.:
that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a fac-simile of a
young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn—a tadpole. But
no physiologist or anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying
to the development of the human being—from the first instant of its
physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth—the
Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously
interpreted by critics. The meaning of the kabalistic axiom: “A stone
becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man, etc.,” was mentioned
in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of
man on this earth. We will now add a few words more to make the idea
clearer.
What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, {389}
say some physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others.
If it could be analyzed—by the spectroscope or otherwise—of what ought
we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a
nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the
germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In
other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed
of the same elements as a stone—of the same elements as the earth,
which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the kabalists
as authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make a
living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.
At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant-like
appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the other
tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be composed,
like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats, enclosing a liquid.
The laminæ approach each other at the lower end, and the embryo hangs
from the root of the umbilicus almost like a fruit from the bough. The
stone has now become changed, by metempsychosis, into a plant. Then the
embryonic creature begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its
limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black
dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of
a pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into
an animal-like fœtus—the shape of a tadpole—and like an amphibious
reptile lives in water, and develops from it. Its monad has not yet
become either human or immortal, for the kabalists tell us that that
only comes at the “fourth hour.” One by one the fœtus assumes the
characteristics of the human being, the first flutter of the immortal
breath passes through his being; he moves; nature opens the way for
him; ushers him into the world; and the divine essence settles in the
infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment of physical death,
when man becomes a spirit.
This mysterious process of a nine-months formation the kabalists
call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.” As the
fœtus develops from the _liquor amnii_ in the womb, so the earths
germinate from the universal ether, or astral fluid, in the womb of
the universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are
first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming mothers
in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms.
From centre to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the
uttermost conceivable bounds of the cosmos, these glorious thinkers,
the kabalists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained
in an endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre-natal sphere,
the individual in his family, the family in the state, the state in {390}
mankind, the earth in our system, that system in its central universe,
the universe in the cosmos, and the cosmos in the First Cause:—the
Boundless and Endless. So runs their philosophy of evolution:
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is; and God the Soul.”
“Worlds without number
Lie in this bosom like children.”
While unanimously agreeing that physical causes, such as blows,
accidents, and bad quality of food for the mother, effect the fœtus
in a way which endangers its life; and while admitting again that
moral causes, such as fear, sudden terror, violent grief, or even
extreme joy, may retard the growth of the fœtus or even kill it, many
physiologists agree with Magendie in saying, “there is no reason for
believing that the imagination of the mother can have any influence
in the formation of monsters;” and only because “productions of this
kind are daily observed in the production of other animals and even in
plants.”
In this opinion he is supported by the leading teratologists of our
day. Although Geoffroi St. Hilaire gave its name to the new science,
its facts are based upon the exhaustive experiments of Bichat, who, in
1802, was recognized as the founder of analytical and philosophical
anatomy. One of the most important contributions to teratological
literature is the monograph of G. J. Fisher, M. D., of Sing Sing, N.
Y., entitled _Diploteratology; an Essay on Compound Human Monsters_.
This writer classifies monstrous fœtal growths into their genera and
species, accompanying the cases with reflections suggested by their
peculiarities. Following St. Hilaire, he divides the history of the
subject into the fabulous, the positive, and the scientific periods.
It suffices for our purpose to say that in the present state of
scientific opinion two points are considered as established: 1, that
the maternal, mental condition has no influence in the production of
monstrosities; 2, that most varieties of monstrosity may be accounted
for on the theory of _arrest_ and _retardation_ of development. Says
Fisher, “By a careful study of the laws of development and the order
in which the various organs are evolved in the embryo, it has been
observed that monsters by defect or arrest of development, are, to a
certain extent, permanent embryos. The abnormal organs merely represent
the primitive condition of formation as it existed in an early stage of
embryonic or fœtal life.”[621]
With physiology in so confessedly chaotic a state as it is at present, {391}
it seems a little like hardihood in any teratologist, however great his
achievements in anatomy, histology, or embryology, to take so dangerous
a position as that the mother has no influence upon her offspring.
While the microscopes of Haller and Prolik, Dareste and Laraboulet have
disclosed to us many interesting facts concerning the single or double
primitive traces on the vitelline membrane, what remains undiscovered
about embryology by modern science appears greater still. If we grant
that monstrosities are the result of an arrest of development—nay, if
we go farther, and concede that the fœtal future may be prognosticated
from the vitelline tracings, where will the teratologists take us
to learn the _antecedent_ psychological cause of either? Dr. Fisher
may have carefully studied some hundreds of cases, and feel himself
authorized to construct a new classification of their genera and
species; but facts are facts, and outside the field of his observation
it appears, even if we judge but by our own personal experience, in
various countries, that there are abundant attainable proofs that the
violent maternal emotions are often reflected in tangible, visible,
and permanent disfigurements of the child. And the cases in question
seem, moreover, to contradict Dr. Fisher’s assertion that monstrous
growths are due to causes traceable to “the early stages of embryonic
or fœtal life.” One case was that of a Judge of an Imperial Court at
Saratow, Russia, who always wore a bandage to cover a mouse-mark on
the left side of his face. It was a perfectly-formed mouse, whose body
was represented in high relief upon the cheek, and the tail ran upward
across the temple and was lost in his hair. The body seemed glossy,
gray, and quite natural. According to his own account, his mother had
an unconquerable repugnance to mice, and her labor was prematurely
brought on by seeing a mouse jump out from her workbox.
In another instance, of which the writer was a witness, a pregnant
lady, within two or three weeks of her accouchement, saw a bowl of
raspberries, and was seized with an irresistible longing for some, but
denied. She excitedly clasped her right hand to her neck in a somewhat
theatrical manner, and exclaimed that she _must_ have them. The child
born under our eyes, three weeks later, had a perfectly-defined
raspberry on the right side of his neck; to this day, when that fruit
ripens, his birth-mark becomes of a deep crimson, while, during the
winter, it is quite pale.
Such cases as these, which are familiar to many mothers of families,
either in their personal experience or that of friends, carry
conviction, despite the theories of all the teratologists of Europe and
America. Because, forsooth, animals and plants are observed to produce
malformations of their species as well as human beings, Magendie and
his school infer that the human malformations of an identical character {392}
are not at all due to maternal imagination, _since the former are
not_. If physical causes produce physical effects in the subordinate
kingdoms, the inference is that the same rule must hold with ourselves.
But an entirely original theory was broached by Professor Armor,
of the Long Island Medical College, in the course of a discussion
recently held in the Detroit Academy of Medicine. In opposition to
the orthodox views which Dr. Fisher represents, Professor Armor
says that malformations result from either one of two causes—1, a
deficiency or abnormal condition in the generative matter from which
the fœtus is developed, or 2, morbid influences acting on the _fœtus
in utero_. He maintains that the generative matter represents in its
composition every tissue, structure, and form, and that there may be
such a transmission of _acquired_ structural peculiarities as would
make the generative matter incapable of producing a healthy and
equally-developed offspring. On the other hand, the generative matter
may be perfect in itself, but being subjected to morbid influences
during the process of gestation, the offspring will, of necessity, be
monstrous.
To be consistent, this theory must account for diploteratological cases
(double-headed or double-membered monsters), which seems difficult. We
might, perhaps, admit that in defective generative matter, the head
of the embryo might not be represented, or any other part of the body
be deficient; but, it hardly seems as if there could be two, three,
or more representatives of a single member. Again, if the generative
matter have hereditary taint, it seems as if _all_ the resulting
progeny should be equally monstrous; whereas the fact is that in many
cases the mother has given birth to a number of healthy children before
the monster made its appearance, all being the progeny of one father.
Numerous cases of this kind are quoted by Dr. Fisher; among others
he cites the case of Catherine Corcoran,[622] a “very healthy woman,
thirty years of age and who, previously to giving birth to this monster
had born five well-formed children, no two of which were twins ... it
had a head at either extremity, two chests, with arms complete, two
abdominal and two pelvic cavities united end to end, with four legs
placed two at either side, where the union between the two occurred.”
Certain parts of the body, however, were not duplicated, and therefore
this cannot be claimed as a case of the growing together of twins.
Another instance is that of Maria Teresa Parodi.[623] This woman, who
had previously given birth to eight well-formed children, was delivered
of a female infant the upper part of which only was double. Instances {393}
in which _before_ and _after_ the production of a monster the children
were perfectly healthy are numerous, and if, on the other hand, the
fact that monstrosities are as common with animals as they are with
mankind is a generally-accepted argument against the popular theory
that these malformations are due to the imagination of the mother; and
that other fact—that there is no difference between the ovarian cell of
a mammifer and a man, be admitted, what becomes of Professor Armor’s
theory? In such a case an instance of an animal-malformation is as good
as that of a human monster; and this is what we read in Dr. Samuel L.
Mitchell’s paper _On two-headed Serpents_: “A female snake was killed,
together with her whole brood of young ones, amounting to 120, of these
_three were monsters_. One with two distinct heads; one with a double
head and only three eyes; and one with a double skull, furnished with
three eyes, and a single lower jaw; this last had two bodies.”[624]
Surely the _generative matter_ which produced these _three monsters_
was identical with that which produced the other 117? Thus the _Armor_
theory is as imperfect as all the rest.
The trouble proceeds from the defective method of reasoning usually
adopted—_Induction_; a method which claims to collect by _experiment_
and observation all the facts _within_ its reach, the former being
rather that of collecting and examining experiments and drawing
conclusions therefrom; and, according to the author of _Philosophical
Inquiry_, “as this conclusion cannot be extended beyond what is
warranted by the experiments, the Induction is an instrument of proof
and _limitation_.” Notwithstanding this limitation is to be found in
every scientific inquiry, it is rarely confessed, but hypotheses are
constructed for us as though the experimenters had found them to be
mathematically-proved theorems, while they are, to say the most, simple
approximations.
For a student of occult philosophy, who rejects in his turn the method
of induction on account of these perpetual limitations, and fully
adopts the Platonic division of causes—namely, the Efficient, the
Formal, the Material, and the Final, as well as the Eleatic method of
examining any given proposition, it is but natural to reason from the
following standpoint of the Neo-platonic school: 1. The subject either
_is_ as it is supposed or _is not_. Therefore, we will inquire: Does
the universal ether, known by the kabalists as the “astral light,”
contain electricity and magnetism, or does it not? The answer must
be in the affirmative, for “exact science” herself teaches us that
these two convertible agents saturating both the air and the earth,
there is a constant interchange of electricity and magnetism between {394}
them. The question No. 1 being settled, we will have now to examine
_what happens_—1st. To _it_ with respect to _itself_. 2d. To _it_
with respect to _all other_ things. 3d. With all _other things_,
with respect _to it_. 4th. To all _other things_ with respect to
_themselves_.
ANSWERS: 1st. With respect to _itself_. That inherent properties
previously latent in electricity, become active under favoring
conditions; and that at one time the form of magnetic force is assumed
by the subtile, all-pervading agent; at another, the form of electric
force is assumed.
2d. With respect to all other things. By all other things for which it
has an affinity, it is attracted, by all others repelled.
3d. With all other things with respect to it. It happens that whenever
they come in contact with electricity, they receive its impress in
proportion to their conductivity.
4th. To all other things with respect to themselves. That under the
impulse received from the electric force, and in proportion to its
intensity, their molecules change their relations with each other; that
either they are wrenched asunder, so as to destroy the object—organic
or inorganic—which they formed, or, if previously disturbed, are
brought into equilibrium (as in cases of disease); or the disturbance
may be but superficial, and the object may be stamped with the image of
some other object encountered by the fluid before reaching them.
To apply the above propositions to the case in point: There are
several well-recognized principles of science, as, for instance, that
a pregnant woman is physically and mentally in a highly impressible
state. Physiology tells us that her intellectual faculties are
weakened, and that she is affected to an unusual degree by the most
trifling events. Her pores are opened, and she exudes a peculiar
cutaneous perspiration; she seems to be in a receptive condition for
all the influences in nature. Reichenbach’s disciples assert that her
_odic_ condition is very intense. Du Potet warns against incautiously
mesmerizing her, for fear of affecting the offspring. Her diseases
are imparted to it, and often it absorbs them entirely to itself; her
pains and pleasures react upon its temperament as well as its health;
great men proverbially have great mothers, and _vice versa_. “_It is
true that her imagination has an influence upon the fœtus_,” admits
Magendie, thus contradicting what he asserts in another place; and he
adds that “sudden terror may cause the death of the fœtus, _or retard
its growth_.”[625]
In the case recently reported in the American papers, of a boy who
was killed by a stroke of lightning, upon stripping the body, there
was found imprinted upon his breast the faithful picture of a tree {395}
which grew near the window which he was facing at the time of the
catastrophe, and which was also felled by the lightning. Now, this
electrical photography, which was accomplished by the blind forces
of nature, furnishes an analogy by which we may understand how the
mental images of the mother are transmitted to the unborn child. Her
_pores_ are opened; she exudes an _odic_ emanation which is but another
form of the _akasa_, the electricity, or life-principle, and which,
according to Reichenbach, produces mesmeric sleep, and consequently
is _magnetism_. Magnetic currents develop themselves into electricity
upon their exit from the body. An object making a violent impression
on the mother’s mind, its image is instantly projected into the astral
light, or the universal ether, which Jevons and Babbage, as well as
the authors of the _Unseen Universe_, tell us is the repository of the
_spiritual_ images of all forms, and even human thoughts. Her magnetic
emanations attract and unite themselves with the descending current
which already bears the image upon it. It rebounds, and re-percussing
more or less violently, impresses itself upon the fœtus, according to
the very formula of physiology which shows how every maternal feeling
reacts on the offspring. Is this kabalistic theory more _hypothetical_
or incomprehensible than the teratological doctrine taught by the
disciples of Geoffroi St. Hilaire? The doctrine, of which Magendie so
justly observes, “is found convenient and easy from its _vagueness_
and obscurity,” and which “pretends to nothing less than the creation
of a new science, the theory of which reposes on certain laws not very
intelligible, as that of _arresting_, that of _retarding_, that of
_similar_ or _eccentric_ position, especially the _great law_, as it is
called, of _self for self_.”[626]
Eliphas Levi, who is certainly one of the best authorities on certain
points among kabalists, says: “Pregnant women are, more than others,
under the influence of the astral light, which assists in the formation
of their child, and constantly presents to them the reminiscences of
forms with which it is filled. It is thus that very virtuous women
deceive the malignity of observers by equivocal resemblances. They
often impress upon the fruit of their marriage an image which has
struck them in a dream, and thus are the same physiognomies perpetuated
from age to age.”
“The kabalistic use of the pentagram can therefore determine the
countenance of unborn infants, and an initiated woman might give to her
son the features of Nereus or Achilles, as well as those of Louis XV.
or Napoleon.”[627]
If it should confirm another theory than that of Dr. Fisher, he should
be the last to complain, for as he himself makes the confession, which {396}
his own example verifies:[628] “One of the most formidable obstacles
to the advancement of science ... has ever been a _blind submission
to authority_.... To untrammel the mind from the influence of mere
authority, that it may have free scope in the investigation of facts
and laws which exist and are established in nature, is the grand
antecedent necessary to scientific discovery and permanent progress.”
If the maternal imagination can stunt the growth or destroy the
life of the fœtus, why cannot it influence its physical appearance?
There are some surgeons who have devoted their lives and fortunes to
find the cause for these malformations, but have only reached the
opinion that they are mere “coincidences.” It would be also highly
unphilosophical to say that animals are not endowed with imagination;
and, while it might be considered the acme of metaphysical speculation
to even formulate the idea that members of the vegetable kingdom—say
the _mimosas_ and the group of insect-catchers—have an instinct and
even rudimentary imagination of their own, yet the idea is not without
its advocates. If great physicists like Tyndall are forced to confess
that even in the case of intelligent and speaking man they are unable
to bridge the chasm between mind and matter, and define the powers of
the imagination, how much greater must be the mystery about what takes
place in the brain of a dumb animal.
What is imagination? _Psychologists tell us that it is the plastic or
creative power of the soul_; but materialists confound it with fancy.
The radical difference between the two, was however, so thoroughly
indicated by Wordsworth, in the preface to his _Lyrical Ballads_,
that it is no longer excusable to interchange the words. Imagination,
Pythagoras maintained to be the remembrance of precedent spiritual,
mental, and physical states, while fancy is the disorderly production
of the material brain.
From whatever aspect we view and question matter, the world-old
philosophy that it was vivified and fructified by the eternal idea,
or imagination—the abstract outlining and preparing the model for the
concrete form—is unavoidable. If we reject this doctrine, the theory
of a cosmos evolving gradually out of its chaotic disorder becomes an
absurdity; for it is highly unphilosophical to imagine inert matter,
solely moved by blind force, and directed by intelligence, forming
itself spontaneously into a universe of such admirable harmony. If the
soul of man is really an outcome of the essence of this universal soul,
an infinitesimal fragment of this first creative principle, it must
of necessity partake in degree of all the attributes of the demiurgic
power. As the creator, breaking up the chaotic mass of dead, inactive {397}
matter, shaped it into form, so man, if he knew his powers, could,
to a degree, do the same. As Pheidias, gathering together the loose
particles of clay and moistening them with water, could give plastic
shape to the sublime idea evoked by his creative faculty, so the mother
who knows her power can fashion the coming child into whatever form she
likes. Ignorant of his powers, the sculptor produces only an inanimate
though ravishing figure of inert matter; while the soul of the mother,
violently affected by her imagination, blindly projects into the astral
light an image of the object which impressed it, and, by re-percussion,
that is stamped upon the fœtus. Science tells us that the law of
gravitation assures us that any displacement which takes place in the
very heart of the earth will be felt throughout the universe, “and we
may even imagine that the same thing will hold true of those molecular
motions which accompany thought.”[629] Speaking of the transmission
of energy throughout the universal ether or astral light, the same
authority says: “Continual photographs of all occurrences are thus
produced and retained. A large portion of the energy of the universe
may thus be said to be invested in such pictures.”
Dr. Fournié, of the National Deaf and Dumb Institute of France, in
chapter ii. of his work,[630] in discussing the question of the fœtus,
says that the most powerful microscope is unable to show us the
slightest difference between the ovarian cell of a mammifer and a man;
and, respecting the first or last movement of the ovule, asks: “What is
it? has it particular characters which distinguish it from every other
ovule?” and justly answers thus: “Until now, science has not replied to
these questions, and, without being a pessimist, I do not think _that
she ever will reply_; from the day when her methods of investigation
will permit her to surprise the hidden mechanism of the conflict of
the principle of life with matter, she will know life itself, and
be able to produce it.” If our author had read the sermon of Père
Felix, how appropriately he might utter his Amen! to the priest’s
exclamation—MYSTERY! MYSTERY!
Let us consider the assertion of Magendie in the light of recorded
instances of the power of imagination in producing monstrous
deformities, where the question does not involve pregnant women. He
admits that these occur daily in the offspring of the lower animals;
how does he account for the hatching of chickens with hawk-heads,
except upon the theory that the appearance of the hereditary enemy
acted upon the hen’s imagination, which, in its turn, imparted to the
matter composing the germ a certain motion which, before expanding
itself, produced the monstrous chicks? We know of an analogous case, {398}
where a tame dove, belonging to a lady of our acquaintance, was
frightened daily by a parrot, and in her next brood of young there
were two squabs with parrots’ heads, the resemblance even extending to
the color of the feathers. We might also cite Columella, Youatt, and
other authorities, together with the experience of all animal breeders,
to show that by exciting the imagination of the mother, the external
appearance of the offspring can be largely controlled. These instances
in no degree affect the question of heredity, for they are simply
special variations of type artificially caused.
Catherine Crowe discusses at considerable length the question of the
power of the mind over matter, and relates, in illustration, many
well-authenticated instances of the same.[631] Among others, that most
curious phenomenon called the _stigmata_ have a decided bearing upon
this point. These marks come upon the bodies of persons of all ages,
and always as the result of exalted imagination. In the cases of the
Tyrolese ecstatic, Catherine Emmerich, and many others, the wounds of
the crucifixion are said to be as perfect as nature. A certain Mme. B.
von N. dreamed one night that a person offered her a red and a white
rose, and that she chose the latter. On awaking, she felt a burning
pain in her arm, and by degrees there appeared the figure of a rose,
perfect in form and color; it was rather raised above the skin. The
mark increased in intensity till the eighth day, after which it faded
away, and by the fourteenth, was no longer perceptible. Two young
ladies, in Poland, were standing by an open window during a storm; a
flash of lightning fell near them, and the gold necklace on the neck of
one of them was melted. A perfect image of it was impressed upon the
skin, and remained throughout life. The other girl, appalled by the
accident to her companion, stood transfixed with horror for several
minutes, and then fainted away. Little by little the same mark of a
necklace as had been instantaneously imprinted upon her friend’s body,
appeared upon her own, and remained there for several years, when it
gradually disappeared.
Dr. Justinus Kerner, the distinguished German author, relates a still
more extraordinary case. “At the time of the French invasion, a Cossack
having pursued a Frenchman into a _cul-de-sac_, an alley without an
outlet, there ensued a terrible conflict between them, in which the
latter was severely wounded. A person who had taken refuge in this
close, and could not get away, was so dreadfully frightened, that when
he reached home there broke out on his body the very same wounds that
the Cossack had inflicted on his enemy!”
In this case, as in those where organic disorders, and even physical {399}
death result from a sudden excitement of the mind reacting upon the
body, Magendie would find it difficult to attribute the effect to
any other cause than the imagination; and if he were an occultist,
like Paracelsus, or Van Helmont, the question would be stripped of
its mystery. He would understand the power of the human will and
imagination—the former conscious, the latter involuntary—on the
universal agent to inflict injury, physical and mental, not only
upon chosen victims, but also, by reflex action, upon one’s self and
unconsciously. It is one of the fundamental principles of magic, that
if a current of this subtile fluid is not impelled with sufficient
force to reach the objective point, it will react upon the individual
sending it, as an India-rubber ball rebounds to the thrower’s hand from
the wall against which it strikes without being able to penetrate it.
There are many cases instanced where _would-be sorcerers_ fell victims
themselves. Van Helmont says: “The imaginative power of a woman vividly
excited produces an idea, which is the connecting medium between the
body and spirit. This transfers itself to the being with whom the woman
stands in the most immediate relation, and impresses upon it that image
which the most agitated herself.”
Deleuze has collected, in his _Bibliothèque du Magnétisme_ Animal, a
number of remarkable facts taken from Van Helmont, among which we will
content ourselves with quoting the following as pendants to the case
of the bird-hunter, Jacques Pelissier. He says that “men by looking
steadfastly at animals _oculis intentis_ for a quarter of an hour may
cause their death; which Rousseau confirms from his own experience in
Egypt and the East, as having killed several toads in this manner. But
when he at last tried this at Lyons, the toad, finding it could not
escape from his eye, turned round, blew itself up, and stared at him so
fiercely, without moving its eyes, that a weakness came over him even
to fainting, and he was for some time thought to be dead.”
But to return to the question of teratology. Wierus tells, in his _De
Prœstigiis Demonum_, of a child born of a woman who not long before
its birth was threatened by her husband, he saying that she had the
devil in her and that he would kill him. The mother’s fright was such
that her offspring appeared “well-shaped from the middle downward, but
upward spotted with blackened red spots, with eyes in his forehead, a
mouth like a Satyr, ears like a dog, and bended horns on its head like
a goat.” In a demonological work by Peramatus, there is a story of a
monster born at St. Lawrence, in the West Indies, in the year 1573, the
genuineness of which is certified to by the Duke of Medina-Sidonia.
The child, “besides the horrible deformity of its mouth, ears, and
nose, had two horns on the head, like those of young goats, long hair
on his body, a fleshy girdle about his middle, double, from whence {400}
hung a piece of flesh like a purse, and a bell of flesh in his left
hand like those the Indians use when they dance, white boots of flesh
on his legs, doubled down. In brief, the whole shape was horrid and
diabolical, and conceived to proceed from some fright the mother had
taken from the antic dances of the Indians.”[632] Dr. Fisher rejects
all such instances as unauthenticated and fabulous.
But we will not weary the reader with further selections from the
multitude of teratological cases to be found recorded in the works
of standard authors; the above suffice to show that there is reason
to attribute these aberrations of physiological type to the mutual
reaction of the maternal mind and the universal ether upon each other.
Lest some should question the authority of Van Helmont, as a man of
science, we will refer them to the work of Fournié, the well-known
physiologist, where (at page 717) the following estimate of his
character will be found: “Van Helmont was a highly distinguished
chemist; he had particularly studied aëriform fluids, and gave them
the name of _gaz_; at the same time he pushed his piety to mysticism,
abandoning himself exclusively to a contemplation of the divinity....
Van Helmont is distinguished above all his predecessors by connecting
_the principle of life_, directly and in some sort experimentally, as
he tells us, with the most minute movements of the body. It is the
incessant action of this entity, in no way associated by him with the
material elements, but forming a distinct individuality, that we cannot
understand. Nevertheless, it is upon this entity that a famous school
has laid its principal foundation.”
Van Helmont’s “principle of life,” or _archæus_, is neither more nor
less than the astral light of all the kabalists, and the universal
ether of modern science. If the more unimportant signatures of the
fœtus are not due to the imaginations of the mother, to what other
cause would Magendie attribute the formation of horny scales, the horns
of goats and the hairy coats of animals, which we have seen in the
above instances marking monstrous progeny? Surely there were no latent
germs of these distinguishing features of the animal kingdom capable of
being developed under a sudden impulse of the maternal fancy. In short,
the only possible explanation is the one offered by the adepts in the
occult sciences.
Before leaving the subject, we wish to say a few words more respecting
the cases where the head, arm, and hand were instantly dissolved,
though it was evident that in each instance the entire body of the
child had been perfectly formed. Of what is a child’s body composed at
its birth? The chemists will tell us that it comprises a dozen pounds
of solidified gas, and a few ounces of ashy residuum, some water, {401}
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, a little lime, magnesia,
phosphorus, and a few other minerals; that is all! Whence came they?
How were they gathered together? How were these particles which Mr.
Proctor tells us are drawn in from “the depths of space surrounding
us on all sides,” formed and fashioned into the human being? We have
seen that it is useless to ask the dominant school of which Magendie
is an illustrious representative; for he confesses that they know
nothing of the nutrition, digestion, or circulation of the fœtus; and
physiology teaches us that while the ovule is enclosed in the Graafian
vesicle it participates—forms an integral part of the general structure
of the mother. Upon the rupture of the vesicle, it becomes almost as
independent of her for what is to build up the body of the future
being as the germ in a bird’s egg after the mother has dropped it in
the nest. There certainly is very little in the demonstrated facts of
science to contradict the idea that the relation of the embryonic child
to the mother is much different from that of the tenant to the house,
upon whose shelter he depends for health, warmth, and comfort.
According to Demokritus, the soul[633] results from the aggregation of
atoms, and Plutarch describes his philosophy as follows: “That there
are substances infinite in number, indivisible, undisturbed, which are
without differences, without qualities, and which move in space, where
they are disseminated; that when they approach each other, they unite,
interlock, and form by their aggregation water, fire, a plant, or a
man.” That all these substances, which he calls _atoms_ by reason of
their solidity, can experience neither change nor alteration. “But,”
adds Plutarch, “we cannot make a color of that which is colorless, nor
a substance or soul of that which is without soul and without quality.”
Professor Balfour Stewart says that this doctrine, in the hands of
John Dalton, “has enabled the human mind to lay hold of the laws which
regulate chemical changes, as well as to picture to itself what is
there taking place.” After quoting, with approbation, Bacon’s idea that
men are perpetually investigating the extreme limits of nature, he then
erects a standard which he and his brother philosophers would do well
to measure their behavior by. “Surely we ought,” says he, “to be very
cautious before we dismiss any branch of knowledge or train of thought
as essentially unprofitable.”[634]
Brave words, these. But how many are the men of science who put them
into practice?
Demokritus of Abdera shows us space crammed with atoms, and our {402}
contemporary astronomers allow us to see how these atoms form into
worlds, and afterward into the races, our own included, which people
them. Since we have indicated the existence of a power in the human
will, which, by concentrating currents of those atoms upon an objective
point, can create a child corresponding to the mother’s fancy, why is
it not perfectly credible that this same power put forth by the mother,
can, by an intense, albeit unconscious reversal of those currents,
dissipate and obliterate any portion or even the whole of the body of
her unborn child? And here comes in the question of false pregnancies,
which have so often completely puzzled both physician and patient.
If the head, arm, and hand of the three children mentioned by Van
Helmont could disappear, as a result of the emotion of horror, why
might not the same or some other emotion, excited in a like degree,
cause the entire extinction of the fœtus in so-called false pregnancy?
Such cases are rare, but they do occur, and moreover baffle science
completely. There certainly is no chemical solvent in the mother’s
circulation powerful enough to dissolve her child, without destroying
herself. We commend the subject to the medical profession, hoping that
as a class they will not adopt the conclusion of Fournié, who says:
“In this succession of phenomena we must confine ourselves _to the
office of historian_, as we have not even tried to explain the whys and
wherefores of these things, for there lie the inscrutable mysteries of
life, and in proportion as we advance in our exposition, we will be
obliged to recognize that this is to us _forbidden ground_.”[635]
Within the limits of his intellectual capabilities the true philosopher
knows no forbidden ground, and should be content to accept no mystery
of nature as inscrutable or inviolable.
No student of Hermetic philosophy, nor any spiritualist, will object
to the abstract principle laid down by Hume that a _miracle_ is
impossible; for to suppose such a possibility would make the universe
governed through special instead of general laws. This is one of the
fundamental contradictions between science and theology. The former,
reasoning upon universal experience, maintains that there is a general
uniformity of the course of nature, while the latter assumes that the
Governing Mind can be invoked to suspend general law to suit special
emergencies. Says John Stuart Mill,[636] “If we do not already believe
in supernatural agencies, no miracle can prove to us their existence.
The miracle itself, considered merely as an extraordinary fact, may be
satisfactorily certified by our senses or by testimony; but nothing {403}
can ever prove that it is a miracle. There is still another possible
hypothesis, that of its being the result of some unknown natural cause;
and this possibility cannot be so completely shut out as to leave no
alternative but that of admitting the existence and intervention of a
being superior to nature.”
This is the very point which we have sought to bring home to our
logicians and physicists. As Mr. Mill himself says, “We cannot admit
a proposition as a law of nature, and yet believe a fact in real
contradiction to it. We must disbelieve the alleged fact, or believe
that we were mistaken in admitting the supposed law.” Mr. Hume cites
the “firm and _unalterable_ experience” of mankind, as establishing
the laws whose operation _ipso facto_ makes miracles impossible. The
difficulty lies in his use of the adjective which is Italicized, for
this is an assumption that our experience will never change, and
that, as a consequence, we will always have the same experiments and
observations upon which to base our judgment. It also assumes that
all philosophers will have the same facts to reflect upon. It also
entirely ignores such collected accounts of philosophical experiment
and scientific discovery as we may have been temporarily deprived of.
Thus, by the burning of the Alexandrian Library and the destruction of
Nineveh, the world has been for many centuries without the necessary
data upon which to estimate the real knowledge, esoteric and exoteric,
of the ancients. But, within the past few years, the discovery of the
Rosetta stone, the Ebers, d’Aubigney, Anastasi, and other _papyri_,
and the exhumation of the tile-libraries, have opened a field of
archæological research which is likely to lead to radical changes in
this “firm and unalterable experience.” The author of _Supernatural
Religion_ justly observes that “a person who believes anything
contradictory to a complete induction, merely on the strength of an
assumption which is incapable of proof, is simply credulous; but such
an assumption cannot affect the real evidence for that thing.”
In a lecture delivered by Mr. Hiram Corson, Professor of Anglo-Saxon
Literature at the Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., before the alumni
of St. John’s College, Annapolis, in July, 1875, the lecturer thus
deservedly rebukes science:
“There are things,” he says, “which Science can never do, and which
it is arrogant in attempting to do. There was a time when Religion
and the Church went beyond their legitimate domain, and invaded and
harried that of Science, and imposed a burdensome tribute upon the
latter; but it would seem that their former relations to each other are
undergoing an entire change, and Science has crossed its frontiers and
is invading the domain of Religion and the Church, and instead of a
Religious Papacy, we are in danger of being brought under a Scientific
Papacy—we are in fact already brought under such a Papacy; and as {404}
in the sixteenth century a protest was made, in the interests of
intellectual freedom, against a religious and ecclesiastical despotism,
so, in this nineteenth century, the spiritual and eternal interests of
man demand that a protest should be made against a rapidly-developing
scientific despotism, and that Scientists should not only keep within
their legitimate domain of the phenomenal and the conditioned, but
should ‘reëxamine their stock in trade, so that we may make sure how
far the stock of bullion in the cellar—on the faith of whose existence
so much paper has been circulating—is really the solid gold of Truth.’
“If this is not done in science as well as in ordinary business,
scientists are apt to put their capital at too high a figure, and
accordingly carry on a dangerously-inflated business. Even since Prof.
Tyndall delivered his Belfast Address, it has been shown, by the many
replies it has elicited, that the capital of the Evolution-School of
Philosophy to which he belongs, is not near so great as it was before
vaguely supposed to be by many of the non-scientific but intelligent
portion of the world. It is quite surprising to a non-scientific
person to be made aware of the large purely hypothetical domain which
surrounds that of established science, and of which scientists often
boast, as a part of their settled and available conquests.”
Exactly; and at the same time denying the same privilege to others.
They protest against the “miracles” of the Church, and repudiate, with
as much logic, modern phenomena. In view of the admission of such
scientific authorities as Dr. Youmans and others that modern science is
passing through a transitional period, it would seem that it is time
that people should cease to consider certain things incredible only
because they are marvellous, and because they seem to oppose themselves
to what we are accustomed to consider universal laws. There are not a
few well-meaning men in the present century who, desiring to avenge
the memory of such martyrs of science as Agrippa, Palissy, and Cardan,
nevertheless fail, through lack of means, to understand their ideas
rightly. They erroneously believe that the Neo-platonists gave more
attention to transcendental philosophy than to exact science.
“The failures that Aristotle himself so often exhibits,” remarks
Professor Draper, “are no proof of the unreliability of his method, but
rather of its trustworthiness. They are failures arising from want of a
sufficiency of facts.”[637]
What facts? we might inquire. A man of science cannot be expected
to admit that these facts can be furnished by occult science, since
he does not believe in the latter. Nevertheless, the future may {405}
demonstrate this verity. Aristotle has bequeathed his inductive method
to our scientists; but until they supplement it with “the universals
of Plato,” they will experience still more “failures” than the great
tutor of Alexander. The universals are a matter of faith only so long
as they cannot be demonstrated by reason and based on uninterrupted
experience. Who of our present-day philosophers can prove by this
same inductive method that the ancients did _not_ possess such
demonstrations as a consequence of their esoteric studies? Their own
negations, unsupported as they are by proof, sufficiently attest that
they do not always pursue the inductive method they so much boast of.
Obliged as they are to base their theories, _nolens volens_, on the
groundwork of the ancient philosophers, their modern discoveries are
but the shoots put forth by the germs planted by the former. And yet
even these discoveries are generally incomplete, if not abortive. Their
cause is involved in obscurity and their ultimate effect unforeseen.“
We are not,” says Professor Youmans, “to regard past theories as mere
exploded errors, nor present theories as final. The living and growing
body of truth has only mantled its old integuments in the progress
to a higher and more vigorous state.”[638] This language, applied to
modern chemistry by one of the first philosophical chemists and most
enthusiastic scientific writers of the day, shows the transitional
state in which we find modern science; but what is true of chemistry is
true of all its sister sciences.
Since the advent of spiritualism, physicians and pathologists are
more ready than ever to treat great philosophers like Paracelsus and
Van Helmont as superstitious quacks and charlatans, and to ridicule
their notions about the _archæus_, or _anima mundi_, as well as the
importance they gave to a knowledge of the machinery of the stars. And
yet, how much of substantial progress has medicine effected since the
days when Lord Bacon classed it among the _conjectural_ sciences?
Such philosophers as Demokritus, Aristotle, Euripides, Epicurus, or
rather his biographer, Lucretius, Æschylus, and other ancient writers,
whom the materialists so willingly quote as authoritative opponents of
the dreamy Platonists, were only theorists, not adepts. The latter,
when they did write, either had their works burned by Christian mobs
or they worded them in a way to be intelligible only to the initiated.
Who of their modern detractors can warrant that he knows _all_ about
what they knew? Diocletian alone burned whole libraries of works upon
the “secret arts;” not a manuscript treating on the art of making
gold and silver escaped the wrath of this unpolished tyrant. Arts and
civilization had attained such a development at what is now termed {406}
the archaic ages that we learn, through Champollion, that Athothi,
the _second_ king of the _first_ dynasty, wrote a work on anatomy,
and the king Necho on astrology and astronomy. Blantasus and Cynchrus
were two learned geographers of those pre-Mosaic days. Ælian speaks of
the Egyptian Iachus, whose memory was venerated for centuries for his
wonderful achievements in medicine. He stopped the progress of several
epidemics, merely with certain _fumigations_. A work of Apollonides,
surnamed Orapios, is mentioned by Theophilus, patriarch of Antioch,
entitled the _Divine Book_, and giving the secret biography and origin
of all the gods of Egypt; and Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of a secret
work in which was noted the _precise age of the bull Apis_—a key to
many a mystery and cyclic calculation. What has become of all these
books, and who knows the treasures of learning they may have contained?
We know but one thing for a certainty, and that is, that Pagan and
Christian Vandals destroyed such literary treasures _wherever they
could find them_; and that the emperor Alexander Severus went all over
Egypt to collect the sacred books on mysticism and mythology, pillaging
every temple; and that the Ethiopians—old as were the Egyptians in
arts and sciences—claimed a priority of antiquity as well as of
learning over them; as well they might, for they were known in India
at the earliest dawn of history. We also know that Plato learned more
secrets in Egypt than he was allowed to mention; and that, according
to Champollion, all that is really good and scientific in Aristotle’s
works—so prized in our day by our modern inductionists—is due to his
_divine_ Master; and that, as a logical sequence, Plato having imparted
the profound secrets he had learned from the priests of Egypt to
his initiated disciples orally—who in their turn passed it from one
generation to another of adepts—the latter _know more_ of the occult
powers of nature than our philosophers of the present day.
And here we may as well mention the works of Hermes Trismegistus.
Who, or how many have had the opportunity to read them as they were
in the Egyptian sanctuaries? In his _Egyptian Mysteries_, Iamblichus
attributes to Hermes 1,100 books, and Seleucus reckons no less than
20,000 of his works before the period of Menes. Eusebius saw but
forty-two of these “in his time,” he says, and the last of the six
books on medicine treated on that art as practiced in the darkest {407}
ages;[639] and Diodorus says that it was the oldest of the legislators
Mnevis, the third successor of _Menes_, who received them from Hermes.
Of such manuscripts as have descended to us, most are but Latin
retranslations of Greek translations, made principally by the
Neo-platonists from the original books preserved by some adepts.
Marcilius Ficinus, who was the first to publish them in Venice, in
1488, has given us mere extracts, and the most important portions
seemed to have been either overlooked, or purposely omitted as too
dangerous to publish in those days of _Auto da fé_. And so it happens
now, that when a kabalist who has devoted his whole life to studying
occultism, and has conquered the great secret, ventures to remark
that the _Kabala_ alone leads to the knowledge of the Absolute in
the Infinite, and the Indefinite in the Finite, he is laughed at by
those who because they know the impossibility of squaring the circle
as a physical problem, deny the possibility of its being done in the
metaphysical sense.
Psychology, according to the greatest authorities on the subject, is a
department of science hitherto almost unknown. Physiology, according
to Fournié, one of its French authorities, is in so bad a condition as
to warrant his saying in the preface to his erudite work _Physiologie
du Système Nerveux_, that “we perceive at last that not only is the
physiology of the brain not worked out, but also that _no physiology
whatever of the nervous system exists_.” Chemistry has been entirely
remodelled within the past few years; therefore, like all new sciences,
the infant cannot be considered as very firm on its legs. Geology
has not yet been able to tell anthropology how long man has existed.
Astronomy, the most exact of sciences, is still speculating and
bewildered about cosmic energy, and many other things as important.
In anthropology, Mr. Wallace tells us, there exists a wide difference
of opinion on some of the most vital questions respecting the nature
and origin of man. Medicine has been pronounced by various eminent
physicians to be nothing better than scientific guess-work. Everywhere
incompleteness, nowhere perfection. When we look at these earnest men
groping around in the dark to find the missing links of their broken
chains, they seem to us like persons starting from a common, fathomless
abyss by divergent paths. Each of these ends at the brink of a chasm {408}
which they cannot explore. On the one hand they lack the means to
descend into its hidden depths, and on the other they are repulsed at
each attempt by jealous sentries, who will not let them pass. And so
they go on watching the lower forces of nature and from time to time
initiating the public into their _great_ discoveries. Did they not
actually pounce upon vital force and catch her playing in her game of
correlation with chemical and physical forces? Indeed they did. But if
we ask them whence this vital force? How is it that they who had so
firmly believed, but a short time since, that matter was destructible
and passed out of existence, and now have learned to believe as firmly
that it does not, are unable to tell us more about it? Why are they
forced in this case as in many others to return to a doctrine taught
by Demokritus twenty-four centuries ago?[640] Ask them, and they will
answer: “Creation or destruction of matter, increase or diminution
of matter, lies _beyond the domain of science_ ... her domain is
confined entirely to the changes of matter ... the domain of science
lies within the limits of these changes—creation and annihilation lie
outside of her domain.”[641] Ah! no, they lie only outside the grasp of
materialistic _scientists_. But why affirm the same of science? And if
they say that “force is incapable of destruction, except by the same
power which created it,” then they tacitly admit the existence of such
a _power_, and have therefore _no right_ to throw obstacles in the way
of those who, bolder than themselves, try to penetrate _beyond_, and
find that they can only do so by _lifting the Veil of Isis_.
But, surely among all these inchoate branches of science, there must
be some one at least complete! It seems to us that we heard a great
clamor of applause, “as the voice of many waters,” over the discovery
of protoplasm. But, alas! when we turned to read Mr. Huxley, the
learned parent of the new-born infant is found saying: “In perfect
strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us _little_
or _nothing_, directly, of the composition of living matter, and ... it
is also in strictness, true, that WE KNOW NOTHING about the composition
of any body whatever, as it is!”
This is a sad confession, indeed. It appears, then, that the
Aristotelian method of induction is a failure in some cases, after all.
This also seems to account for the fact that this model philosopher,
with all his careful study of particulars before rising to universals,
taught that the earth was _in the centre_ of the universe; while Plato, {409}
who lost himself in the maze of Pythagorean “vagaries,” and started
from general principles, was perfectly versed in the heliocentric
system. We can easily prove the fact, by availing ourselves of the
said inductive method for Plato’s benefit. We know that the _Sodalian_
oath of the initiate into the Mysteries prevented his imparting his
knowledge to the world in so many plain words. “It was the dream of his
life,” says Champollion, “to write a work and record in it in full the
doctrines taught by the Egyptian hierophants; he often talked of it,
but found himself compelled to abstain on account of the ‘solemn oath.’”
And now, judging our modern-day philosophers on the _vice versa_
method—namely, arguing from _universals_ to _particulars_, and laying
aside scientists as individuals to merely give our opinion of them,
viewed as a whole—we are forced to suspect this highly respectable
association of extremely petty feelings toward their elder, ancient,
and archaic brothers. It really seems as if they bore always in mind
the adage, “Put out the _sun_, and the _stars_ will shine.”
We have heard a French Academician, a man of profound learning, remark,
that he would gladly sacrifice his own reputation to have the record of
the many ridiculous mistakes and failures of his colleagues obliterated
from the public memory. But these failures cannot be recalled _too_
often in considering our claims and the subject we advocate. The time
will come when the children of men of science, unless they inherit
the soul-blindness of their skeptical parents, will be ashamed of the
degrading materialism and narrow-mindedness of their fathers. To use an
expression of the venerable William Howitt, “They hate new truths as
the owl and the thief hate the sun.... Mere intellectual enlightenment
cannot recognize the spiritual. As the sun puts out a fire, so spirit
puts out the eyes of mere intellect.”
It is an old, old story. From the days when the preacher wrote, “the
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,”
scientists have deported themselves as if the saying were written to
describe their own mental condition. How faithfully Lecky, himself a
rationalist, unconsciously depicts this propensity in men of science
to deride all new things, in his description of the manner in which
“educated men” receive an account of a miracle having taken place!
“They receive it,” says he, “with an absolute and even derisive
incredulity, which dispenses with all examination of the evidences!”
Moreover, so saturated do they become with the fashionable skepticism
after once having fought their way into the Academy, that they turn
about and enact the role of persecutors in their turn. “It is a
curiosity of science,” says Howitt, “that Benjamin Franklin, who had
himself experienced the ridicule of his countrymen for his attempts {410}
to identify lightning and electricity, should have been one of the
Committee of Savants, in Paris, in 1778, who examined the claims of
mesmerism, and condemned it as absolute quackery!”[642]
If men of science would confine themselves to the discrediting of new
discoveries, there might be some little excuse for them on the score
of their tendency to a conservatism begotten of long habits of patient
scrutiny; but they not only set up claims to originality not warranted
by fact, but contemptuously dismiss all allegations that the people of
ancient times knew as much and even more than themselves. Pity that
in each of their laboratories there is not suspended this text from
_Ecclesiastes_: “Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this
_is_ new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.”[643]
In the verse which follows the one here quoted, the wise man says,
“There is no remembrance of former things;” so that this utterance
may account for every new denial. Mr. Meldrum may exact praise for
his meteorological observation of Cyclones in the Mauritius, and Mr.
Baxendell, of Manchester, talk learnedly of the convection-currents of
the earth, and Dr. Carpenter and Commander Maury map out for us the
equatorial current, and Professor Henry show us how the moist wind
deposits its burden to form rivulets and rivers, only to be again
rescued from the ocean and returned to the hill-tops—but hear what
Koheleth says: “The wind goeth toward the south, and _turneth about_
unto the north; it _whirleth about_ continually, and the wind returneth
again according to his circuits.”[644]
“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the
place from whence the rivers come, _thither they return again_.”[645]
The philosophy of the distribution of heat and moisture by means of
ascending and descending currents between the equator and the poles,
has a very recent origin; but here has the hint been lying unnoticed
in our most familiar book, for nearly three thousand years. And even
now, in quoting it, we are obliged to recall the fact that Solomon was
a kabalist, and in the above texts, simply repeats what was written
thousands of years before his time.
Cut off as they are from the accumulation of facts in one-half of the
universe, and that the most important, modern scholars are naturally
unable to construct a system of philosophy which will satisfy
themselves, let alone others. They are like men in a coal mine,
who work all day and emerge only at night, being thereby unable to
appreciate or understand the beauty and glory of the sunshine. Life to
them measures the term of human activity, and the future presents to {411}
their intellectual perception only an abyss of darkness. No hope of an
eternity of research, achievement, and consequent pleasure, softens the
asperities of present existence; and no reward is offered for exertion
but the bread-earning of to-day, and the shadowy and profitless fancy
that their names may not be forgotten for some years after the grave
has closed over their remains. Death to them means extinction of the
flame of life, and the dispersion of the fragments of the lamp over
boundless space. Said Berzelius, the great chemist, at his last hour,
as he burst into tears: “Do not wonder that I weep. You will not
believe me a weak man, nor think I am alarmed by what the doctor has to
announce to me. I am prepared for all. But I have _to bid farewell to
science_; and you ought not to wonder that it costs me dear.”[646]
How bitter must be the reflections of such a great student of nature
as this, to find himself forcibly interrupted midway toward the
accomplishment of some great study, the construction of some great
system, the discovery of some mystery which had baffled mankind for
ages, but which the dying philosopher had dared hope that he might
solve! Look at the world of science to-day, and see the atomic
theorists, patching the tattered robes which expose the imperfections
of their separate specialties! See them mending the pedestals upon
which to set up again the idols which had fallen from the places where
they had been worshipped before this revolutionary theory had been
exhumed from the tomb of Demokritus by John Dalton! In the ocean of
material science they cast their nets, only to have the meshes broken
when some unexpected and monstrous problem comes their way. Its water
is like the Dead Sea—bitter to the taste; so dense, that they can
scarcely immerse themselves in it, much less dive to its bottom, having
no outlet, and no life beneath its waves, or along its margin. It is a
dark, forbidding, trackless waste; yielding nothing worth the having,
because what it yields is without life and without soul.
There was a period of time when the learned Academics made themselves
particularly merry at the simple enunciation of some marvels which the
ancients gave as having occurred under their own observations. What
poor dolts—perhaps liars, these appeared in the eyes of an enlightened
century! Did not they actually describe horses and other animals, the
feet of which presented some resemblance to the hands and feet of
men? And in A.D. 1876, we hear Mr. Huxley giving learned lectures in
which the _protohippus_, rejoicing in a quasi-human fore-arm, and the
_orohippus_ with his four toes and Eocene origin, and the hypothetical
_pedactyl equus_, maternal grand-uncle of the present horse, play {412}
the most important part. The marvel is corroborated! Materialistic
Pyrrhonists of the nineteenth century avenge the assertions of
superstitious Platonists; the antediluvian _gobe-mouches_. And before
Mr. Huxley, Geoffroi St. Hilaire has shown an instance of a horse which
positively had fingers separated by membranes.[647] When the ancients
spoke of a pigmy race in Africa, they were taxed with falsehood. And
yet, pigmies like these were seen and examined by a French scientist
during his voyage in the Tenda Maia, on the banks of the Rio Grande in
1840;[648] by Bayard Taylor at Cairo, in 1874; and by M. Bond, of the
Indian Trigonometrical Survey, who discovered a wild dwarfish race,
living in the hill-jungles of the western Galitz, to the southwest
of the Palini Hills, a race, though often heard of, no trace of
which had previously been found by the survey. “This is a new pigmy
race, resembling the African Obongos of du Chaillu, the Akkas of
Schweinfurth, and the Dokos of Dr. Krapf, in their size, appearance,
and habits.”[649]
Herodotus was regarded as a lunatic for speaking of a people _who he
was told_ slept during a night which lasted six months. If we explain
the word “slept” by an easy misunderstanding it will be more than
easy to account for the rest as an allusion to the night of the Polar
Regions.[650] Pliny has an abundance of facts in his work, which until
very recently, were rejected as fables. Among others, he mentions a
race of small animals, the _males_ of which _suckle their young ones_.
This assertion afforded much merriment among our _savants_. In his
_Report of the Geological Survey of the Territories_, for 1872, Mr. C.
H. Merriam describes a rare and wonderful species of rabbit (_Lepus
Bairdi_) inhabiting the pine-regions about the head-waters of the Wind
and Yellowstone Rivers, in Wyoming.[651] Mr. Merriam secured five
specimens of this animal, “which ... are _the first individuals of the
species that have been brought before the scientific world_. One very
curious fact is that _all the males have teats_, and _take part in
suckling their young_! ... Adult males had large teats full of milk,
and the hair around the nipple of one was wet, and stuck to it, showing
that, when taken, he had been engaged in nursing his young.” In the
Carthaginian account of the early voyages of Hanno,[652] was found a
long description of “savage people ... whose bodies were hairy and whom
the interpreters called _gorillæ_;” ἄνθρωποι ἄγριοι, as the text reads, {413}
clearly implying thereby that these wild men were monkeys. Until
our present century, the statement was considered an idle story, and
Dodwell rejected altogether the authenticity of the manuscript and its
contents.[653] The celebrated _Atlantis_ is attributed by the latest
modern commentator and translator of Plato’s works to one of Plato’s
“noble lies.”[654] Even the frank admission of the philosopher, in the
_Timæus_, that “_they say_, that in their time ... the inhabitants
of this island (Poseidon) preserved _a tradition_ handed down by
their ancestors concerning the existence of the Atlantic island of a
prodigious magnitude ... etc.”[655] does not save the great teacher
from the imputation of falsehood, by the “infallible modern school.”
Among the great mass of peoples plunged deep in the superstitious
ignorance of the mediæval ages, there were but a few students of the
Hermetic philosophy of old, who, profiting by what it had taught them,
were enabled to forecast discoveries which are the boast of our present
age; while at the same time the ancestors of our modern high-priests of
the temple of the Holy Molecule, were yet discovering the hoof-tracks
of Satan in the simplest natural phenomenon. Says Professor A. Wilder:
“Roger Bacon (sixteenth century), in his treatise on the _Admirable
Force of Art and Nature_, devotes the first part of his work to
natural facts. He gives us hints of gunpowder and predicts the use of
steam as a propelling power. The hydraulic press, the diving bell and
kaleidoscope are all described.”[656]
The ancients speak of waters metamorphosed _into blood_; of blood-rain,
of snow-storms during which the earth was covered to the extent of
many miles with snow _of blood_. This fall of crimson particles has
been proved, like everything else, to be but a natural phenomenon. It
has occurred at different epochs, but the cause of it remains a puzzle
until the present day.
De Candolle, one of the most distinguished botanists of this century,
sought to prove in 1825, at the time when the waters of the lake of
Morat had apparently turned into a thick blood, that the phenomenon
could be easily accounted for. He attributed it to the development of
myriads of those half vegetable, half-infusory animals which he terms
_Oscellatoria rubescens_, and which form the link between animal and
vegetable organisms.[657] Elsewhere we give an account of the red snow {414}
which Captain Ross observed in the Arctic regions. Many memoirs have
been written on the subject by the most eminent naturalists, but no two
of them agree in their hypotheses. Some call it “pollen powder of a
species of pine;” others, small insects; and Professor Agardt confesses
very frankly that he is at a loss to either account for the cause of
such phenomena, or to explain the nature of the red substance.[658]
The unanimous testimony of mankind is said to be an irrefutable proof
of truth; and about what was ever testimony more unanimous than
that for thousands of ages among civilized people as among the most
barbarous, there has existed a firm and unwavering belief in magic?
The latter implies a contravention of the laws of nature only in
the minds of the ignorant; and if such ignorance is to be deplored
in the ancient uneducated nations, why do not our civilized and
_highly_-educated classes of fervent Christians, deplore it also in
themselves? The mysteries of the Christian religion have been no more
able to stand a crucial test than biblical miracles. Magic alone, in
the true sense of the word, affords a clew to the wonders of Aaron’s
rod, and the feats of the magi of Pharaoh, who opposed Moses; and it
does that without either impairing the general truthfulness of the
authors of the _Exodus_, or claiming more for the prophet of Israel
than for others, or allowing the possibility of a single instance in
which a “miracle” can happen in contravention of the laws of nature.
Out of many “miracles,” we may select for our illustration that of the
“river turned into blood.” The text says: “Take thy _rod_ and stretch
out thine hand (with the _rod_ in it) upon the waters, streams, etc....
that they may become blood.”
We do not hesitate to say that we have seen the same thing repeatedly
done on a small scale, the experiment not having been applied to
a river in these cases. From the time of Van Helmont, who, in the
seventeenth century, despite the ridicule to which he exposed
himself, was willing to give the true directions for the so-called
production of eels, frogs, and infusoria of various kinds, down to
the champions of spontaneous generation of our own century, it has
been known that such a quickening of germs is possible without calling
in the aid of miracle to contravene natural law. The experiments of
Pasteur and Spallanzani, and the controversy of the panspermists
with the heterogenists—disciples of Buffon, among them Needham—have
too long occupied public attention to permit us to doubt that beings
may be called into existence whenever there is air and favorable
conditions of moisture and temperature. The records of the official
meetings of the Academy of Sciences of Paris[659] contain accounts {415}
of frequent appearances of such showers of blood-red snow and water.
These blood-spots were called _lepra vestuum_, and were but these
lichen-infusoria. They were first observed in 786 and 959, in both
of which years occurred great plagues. Whether these _zoöcarps_ were
plants or animals is undetermined to this day, and no naturalist would
risk stating as a certainty to what division of the organic kingdom
of nature they belong. No more can modern chemists deny that such
germs can be quickened, in a congenial element, in an incredibly short
space of time. Now, if chemistry has, on the one hand, found means of
depriving the air of its floating germs, and under opposite conditions
can develop, or allow these organisms to develop, why could not the
magicians of Egypt do so “with their _enchantments_?” It is far easier
to imagine that Moses, who, on the authority of Manetho, had been
an Egyptian priest, and had learned all the secrets of the land of
_Chemia_, produced “miracles” according to natural laws, than that God
Himself violated the established order of His universe. We repeat that
we have seen this sanguification of water produced by Eastern adepts.
It can be done in either of two ways: In one case the experimenter
employed a magnetic _rod_ strongly electrified, which he passed over a
quantity of water in a metallic basin, following a prescribed process,
which we have no right to describe more fully at present; the water
threw up in about ten hours a sort of reddish froth, which after two
hours more became a kind of lichen, like the _lepraria kermasina_ of
Baron Wrangel. It then changed into a blood-red jelly, which made of
the water a crimson liquid that, twenty-four hours later, swarmed with
living organisms. The second experiment consisted in thickly strowing
the surface of a sluggish brook, having a muddy bottom, with the powder
of a plant that had been dried in the sun and subsequently pulverized.
Although this powder was seemingly carried off by the stream, some
of it must have settled to the bottom, for on the following morning
the water thickened at the surface and appeared covered with what de
Candolle describes as _Oscellatoria rubescens_, of a crimson-red color,
and which he believes to be the connecting link between vegetable and
animal life.
Taking the above into consideration, we do not see why the learned
alchemists and physicists—_physicists_, we say—of the Mosaic period
should not also have possessed the natural secret of developing in a
few hours myriads of a kind of these bacteria, whose spores are found
in the air, the water, and most vegetable and animal tissues. The _rod_
plays as important a part in the hands of Aaron and Moses as it did in
all so-called “magic mummeries” of kabalist-magicians in the middle
ages, that are now considered superstitious foolery and charlatanism.
The rod of Paracelsus (his kabalistic trident) and the famous wands of {416}
Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Henry Kunrath, are no more to be
ridiculed than the graduating-rod of our electro-magnetic physicians.
Things which appeared preposterous and impossible to the ignorant
quacks and even learned scientists of the last century, now begin to
assume the shadowy outlines of probability, and in many cases are
accomplished facts. Nay, some learned quacks and ignorant scientists
even begin to admit this truth.
In a fragment preserved by Eusebius, Porphyry, in his _Letter to
Anebo_, appeals to Chœremon, the “hierogrammatist,” to prove that
the doctrine of the magic arts, whose adepts “could terrify even the
gods,” was really countenanced by Egyptian sages.[660] Now, bearing
in mind the rule of historical evidence propounded by Mr. Huxley,
in his Nashville address, two conclusions present themselves with
irresistible force: First, Porphyry, being in such unquestioned repute
as a highly moral and honorable man, not given to exaggeration in his
statements, was incapable of telling a lie about this matter, and
_did not_ lie; and second, that being so learned in every department
of human knowledge about which he treats,[661] it was most unlikely
that he should be imposed upon as regards the magic “arts,” and he was
_not_ imposed upon. Therefore, the doctrine of chances supporting the
theory of Professor Huxley, compels us to believe, 1, That there was
really such a thing as magic “arts;” and, 2, That they were known and
practiced by the Egyptian magicians and priests, whom even Sir David
Brewster concedes to have been men of profound scientific attainments.
CHAPTER XII. {417}
“You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the
doctrine of uniformity speaking of _impossibilities_ in
nature. They never say what they are constantly charged with
saying, that it is impossible for the Builder of the universe
to alter his work.... No theory upsets them (the English
clergy).... Let the most destructive hypothesis be stated _only
in the language current among gentlemen_, and they look it
in the face.”—TYNDALL: _Lecture on the Scientific Use of the
Imagination_.
“The world will have a religion of some kind, even though
it should fly for it to the intellectual _whoredom of
Spiritualism_.”—TYNDALL: _Fragments of Science_.
“But first on earth as vampire sent
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent, ...
And suck the blood of all thy race.”—LORD BYRON: _Giaour_.
We are now approaching the hallowed precincts of that Janus-god—the
molecular Tyndall. Let us enter them barefoot. As we pass the sacred
adyta of the temple of learning, we are nearing the blazing sun of the
Huxleyocentric system. Let us cast down our eyes, lest we be blinded.
We have discussed the various matters contained in this book, with
such moderation as we could command in view of the attitude which the
scientific and theological world have maintained for centuries toward
those from whom they have inherited the broad foundations of all the
actual knowledge which they possess. When we stand at one side, and, as
a spectator, see how much the ancients knew, and how much the moderns
think they know, we are amazed that the unfairness of our contemporary
schoolmen should pass undetected.
Every day brings new admissions of scientists themselves, and the
criticisms of well-informed lay observers. We find the following
illustrative paragraph in a daily paper:
“It is curious to note the various opinions which prevail among
scientific men in regard to some of the most ordinary natural
phenomena. The aurora is a notable case in point. Descartes considered
it a meteor falling from the upper regions of the atmosphere. Halley
attributed it to the magnetism of the terrestrial globe, and Dalton
agreed with this opinion. Coates supposed that the aurora was derived
from the fermentation of a matter emanating from the earth. Marion
held it to be a consequence of a contact between the bright atmosphere
of the sun and the atmosphere of our planet. Euler thought the aurora
proceeded from the vibrations of the ether among the particles of the
terrestrial atmosphere. Canton and Franklin regarded it as a purely {418}
electrical phenomenon, and Parrot attributed it to the conflagration
of hydrogen-carbonide escaping from the earth in consequence of the
putrefaction of vegetable substances, and considered the shooting
stars as the initial cause of such conflagration. De la Rive and
Oersted concluded it to be an electro-magnetic phenomenon, but purely
terrestrial. Olmsted suspected that a certain nebulous body revolved
around the sun in a certain time, and that when this body came into the
neighborhood of the earth, a part of its gaseous material mixed with
our atmosphere, and that this was the origin of the phenomenon of the
aurora.” And so we might say of every branch of science.
Thus, it would seem that even as to the most ordinary natural
phenomena, scientific opinion is far from being unanimous. There is
not an experimentalist or theologian, who, in dealing with the subtile
relations between mind and matter, their genesis and ultimate, does not
draw a magical circle, the plane of which he calls _forbidden ground_.
Where faith permits a clergyman to go, he goes; for, as Tyndall says,
“they do not lack the positive element—namely, the love of truth;
but the negative element, the fear of error, preponderates.” But the
trouble is, that their dogmatic creed weighs down the nimble feet
of their intellect, as the ball and chain does the prisoner in the
trenches.
As to the advance of scientists, their very learning, moreover,
is impeded by these two causes—their constitutional incapacity to
understand the spiritual side of nature, and their dread of public
opinion. No one has said a sharper thing against them than Professor
Tyndall, when he remarks, “in fact, the greatest cowards of the
present day are not to be found among the clergy, but within the pale
of science itself.”[662] If there had been the slightest doubt of the
applicability of this degrading epithet, it was removed by the conduct
of Professor Tyndall himself; for, in his Belfast address, as President
of the British Association, he not only discerned in matter “_the
promise and potency_ of every form and quality of life,” but pictured
science as “wresting from theology the entire domain of cosmological
theory;” and then, when confronted with an angry public opinion,
issued a revised edition of the address in which he had modified his
expression, substituting for the words “_every form and quality of
life_,” _all terrestrial life_. This is more than cowardly—it is an
ignominious surrender of his professed principles. At the time of
the Belfast meeting, Mr. Tyndall had two pet aversions—Theology and
Spiritualism. What he thought of the former has been shown; the latter
he called “a degrading belief.” When hard pressed by the Church for
alleged atheism, he made haste to disclaim the imputation, and sue for {419}
peace; but, as his agitated “nervous centres” and “cerebral molecules”
had to equilibrate by expanding their force in some direction, he turns
upon the helpless, because pusillanimous, spiritualists, and in his
_Fragments of Science_ insults their belief after this fashion: “The
world will have a religion of some kind, even though it should fly for
it to the intellectual _whoredom of Spiritualism_.” What a monstrous
anomaly, that some millions of intelligent persons should permit
themselves to be thus reviled by a leader in science, who, himself, has
told us that “the thing to be repressed both in science and out of it
is ‘dogmatism!’”
We will not encroach upon space by discussing the etymological value
of the epithet. While expressing the hope that it may not be adopted
in future ages by science as a _Tyndallism_, we will simply remind
the benevolent gentleman of a very characteristic feature in himself.
One of our most intelligent, honorable, and erudite spiritualists,
an author of no small renown,[663] has pointedly termed this feature
as “his (Tyndall’s) simultaneous coquetry with opposite opinions.”
If we are to accept the epithet of Mr. Tyndall in all its coarse
signification, it applies less to spiritualists, who are faithful to
their belief, than to the atheistical scientist who quits the loving
embraces of materialism to fling himself in the arms of a despised
theism; only because he finds his profit in it.
We have seen how Magendie frankly confesses the ignorance of
physiologists as to some of the most important problems of life,
and how Fournié agrees with him. Professor Tyndall admits that the
evolution-hypothesis does not solve, does not profess to solve, the
ultimate mystery.
We have also given as much thought as our natural powers will permit to
Professor Huxley’s celebrated lecture _On the Physical Basis of Life_,
so that what we may say in this volume as to the tendency of modern
scientific thought may be free from ignorant misstatement. Compressing
his theory within the closest possible limits, it may be formulated
thus: Out of cosmic matter all things are created; dissimilar forms
result from different permutations and combinations of this matter;
matter has “devoured spirit,” hence spirit does not exist; thought is
a property of matter; existing forms die that others may take their
place; the dissimilarity in organism is due only to varying chemical
action in the same life-matter—all protoplasm being identical.
As far as chemistry and microscopy goes, Professor Huxley’s system may
be faultless, and the profound sensation caused throughout the world
by its enunciation can be readily understood. But its defect is that
the thread of his logic begins nowhere, and ends in a void. He has
made the best possible use of the available material. Given a universe {420}
crowded with molecules, endowed with active force, and containing in
themselves the principle of life, and all the rest is easy; one set of
inherent forces impel to aggregate into worlds, and another to evolve
the various forms of plant and animal organism. But what gave the
first impulse to those molecules and endowed them with that mysterious
faculty of life? What is this occult property which causes the
protoplasms of man, beast, reptile, fish, or plant, to differentiate,
each ever evolving its own kind, and never any other? And after the
physical body gives up its constituents to the soil and air, “whether
fungus or oak, worm or man,” what becomes of the life which once
animated the frame?
Is the law of evolution, so imperative in its application to the method
of nature, from the time when cosmic molecules are floating, to the
time when they form a human brain, to be cut short at that point, and
not allowed to develop more perfect entities out of this “preëxistent
law of form?” Is Mr. Huxley prepared to assert the impossibility of
man’s attainment to a state of existence after physical death, in
which he will be surrounded with new forms of plant and animal life,
the result of new arrangements of now sublimated matter?[664] He
acknowledges that he knows nothing about the phenomena of gravitation;
except that, in all human experience, as “stones, unsupported, have
fallen to the ground, there is no reason for believing that any stone
so circumstanced will not fall to the ground.” But, he utterly repels
any attempt to change this probability into a necessity, and in fact
says: “I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Facts I
know, and Law I know; but what is this necessity, save an empty shadow
of my own mind’s throwing?” It is this, only, that everything which
happens in nature is the result of necessity, and a law once operative
will continue to so operate indefinitely until it is neutralized by
an opposing law of equal potency. Thus, it is natural that the stone
should fall to the ground in obedience to one force, and it is equally
natural that it should not fall, or that having fallen, it should
rise again, in obedience to another force equally potent; which Mr.
Huxley may, or may not, be familiar with. It is natural that a chair
should rest upon the floor when once placed there, and it is equally
natural (as the testimony of hundreds of competent witnesses shows) {421}
that it should rise in the air, untouched by any visible, mortal hand.
Is it not Mr. Huxley’s duty to first ascertain the reality of this
phenomenon, and then invent a new scientific name for the force behind
it?
“Facts I know,” says Mr. Huxley, “and Law I know.” Now, by what means
did he become acquainted with Fact and Law? Through his own senses,
no doubt; and these vigilant servants enabled him to discover enough
of what he considers truth to construct a system which he himself
confesses “appears almost shocking to common sense.” If his testimony
is to be accepted as the basis for a general reconstruction of
religious belief, when they have produced only a theory after all,
why is not the cumulative testimony of millions of people as to the
occurrence of phenomena which undermine its very foundations, worthy
of a like respectful consideration? Mr. Huxley is _not interested_
in these phenomena, but these millions are; and while he has been
digesting his “bread and mutton-protoplasms,” to gain strength for
still bolder metaphysical flights, they have been recognizing the
familiar handwriting of those they loved the best, traced by spiritual
hands, and discerning the shadowy simulacra of those who, having lived
here, and passed through the change of death, give the lie to his pet
theory.
So long as science will confess that her domain lies _within_ the
limits of these changes of matter; and that chemistry will certify that
matter, by changing its form “from the solid or liquid, to the gaseous
condition,” only changes from the visible to the _invisible_; and
that, amid all these changes, the same quantity of matter remains, she
has _no right_ to dogmatize. She is incompetent to say either yea or
nay, and must abandon the ground to persons more intuitional than her
representatives.
High above all other names in his Pantheon of Nihilism, Mr. Huxley
writes that of David Hume. He esteems that philosopher’s great service
to humanity to be his irrefragable demonstration of “the limits of
philosophical inquiry,” outside which lie the fundamental doctrines “of
spiritualism,” and other “_isms_.” It is true that the tenth chapter of
Hume’s _Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_ was so highly esteemed
by its author, that he considered that “with the wise and learned” it
would be an “everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion,”
which with him was simply a convertible term to represent a belief in
some phenomena previously unfamiliar and by him arbitrarily classified
as miracle. But, as Mr. Wallace justly observes, Hume’s apothegm, that
“a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature,” is imperfect; for in
the first place it assumes that we know all the laws of nature; and,
second, that an unusual phenomenon is a miracle. Mr. Wallace proposes
that a miracle should be defined as: “any act or event necessarily {422}
implying the existence and agency of superhuman intelligences.” Now
Hume himself says that “a uniform experience amounts to a proof,” and
Huxley, in this famous essay of his, admits that all we can know of
the existence of the law of gravitation is that since, in all human
experience, stones unsupported have fallen to the ground, there is no
reason for believing that the same thing will not occur again, under
the same circumstances, but, on the contrary, every reason to believe
that it will.
If it were certain that the limits of human experience could never be
enlarged, then there might be some justice in Hume’s assumption that
he was familiar with all that could happen under natural law, and some
decent excuse for the contemptuous tone which marks all of Huxley’s
allusions to spiritualism. But, as it is evident from the writings of
both these philosophers, that they are ignorant of the possibilities of
psychological phenomena, too much caution cannot be used in according
weight to their dogmatic assertions. One would really suppose that
a person who should permit himself such rudeness of criticism upon
spiritualistic manifestations had qualified himself for the office of
censor by an adequate course of study; but, in a letter addressed to
the London Dialectical Society, Mr. Huxley, after saying that he had no
time to devote to the subject, and that it does not interest him, makes
the following confession, which shows us upon what slight foundation
modern scientists sometimes form very positive opinions. “_The only
case of spiritualism_,” he writes, “_I ever had the opportunity of
examining into_ for myself, was as gross an imposture as ever came
under my notice.”
What would this protoplasmic philosopher think of a spiritualist who,
having had but one opportunity to look through a telescope, and upon
that sole occasion had had some deception played upon him by a tricky
assistant at the observatory, should forthwith denounce astronomy as
a “degrading belief?” This fact shows that scientists, as a rule, are
useful only as collectors of physical facts; their generalizations from
them are often feebler and far more illogical than those of their lay
critics. And this also is why they misrepresent ancient doctrines.
Professor Balfour Stewart pays a very high tribute to the philosophical
intuition of Herakleitus, the Ephesian, who lived five centuries before
our era: the “crying” philosopher who declared that “fire was the
great cause, and that all things were in a perpetual flux.” “It seems
clear,” says the professor, “that Herakleitus must have had a vivid
conception of the innate restlessness and energy of the universe, a
conception allied in character to, and _only less precise_ than that
of modern philosophers who regard matter as essentially dynamical.” He
considers the expression _fire_ as very vague; and quite naturally, for
the evidence is wanting to show that either Prof. Balfour Stewart (who {423}
seems less inclined to materialism than some of his colleagues) or any
of his contemporaries understand in what sense the word fire was used.
His opinions about the origin of things were the same as those of
Hippocrates. Both entertained the same views of a supreme power,[665]
and, therefore, if their notions of primordial fire, regarded as a
material force, in short, as one akin to Leibnitz’s _dynamism_, were
“less precise” than those of modern philosophers, a question which
remains to be settled yet, on the other hand their metaphysical views
of it were far more philosophical and rational than the one-sided
theories of our present-day scholars. Their ideas of fire were
precisely those of the later “fire-philosophers,” the Rosicrucians,
and the earlier Zoroastrians. They affirmed that the world was created
of fire, the _divine spirit_ of which was an omnipotent and omniscient
GOD. Science has condescended to corroborate their claims as to the
physical question.
Fire, in the ancient philosophy of all times and countries, including
our own, has been regarded as a triple principle. As water comprises a
visible fluid with invisible gases lurking within, and, behind all the
spiritual principle of nature, which gives them their dynamic energy,
so, in fire, they recognized: 1st. Visible flame; 2d. Invisible, or
astral fire—invisible when inert, but when active producing heat,
light, chemical force, and electricity, the molecular powers; 3d.
Spirit. They applied the same rule to each of the elements; and
everything evolved from their combinations and correlations, man
included, was held by them to be triune. Fire, in the opinion of the
Rosicrucians, who were but the successors of the theurgists, was the
source, not only of the material atoms, but also of the forces which
energize them. When a visible flame is extinguished it has disappeared,
not only from the sight but also from the conception of the
materialist, forever. But the Hermetic philosopher follows it through
the “partition-world of the knowable, across and out on the other side
into the unknowable,” as he traces the disembodied human spirit, “vital
spark of heavenly flame,” into the Æthereum, beyond the grave.[666]
This point is too important to be passed by without a few words of
comment. The attitude of physical science toward the spiritual half of
the cosmos is perfectly exemplified in her gross conception of fire.
In this, as in every other branch of science, their philosophy does
not contain one sound plank: every one is honeycombed and weak. The
works of their own authorities teeming with humiliating confessions, {424}
give us the right to say that the floor upon which they stand is
so unstable, that at any moment some new discovery, by one of their
own number, may knock away the props and let them all fall in a heap
together. They are so anxious to drive spirit out of their conceptions
that, as Balfour Stewart says: “There is a tendency to rush into the
opposite extreme, and to work physical conceptions to an excess.”
He utters a timely warning in adding: “Let us be cautious that, in
avoiding Scylla, we do not rush into Charybdis. For the universe has
more than one point of view, and there are possibly regions which will
not yield their treasures to the most determined physicists, armed only
with kilogrammes and meters and standard clocks.”[667] In another place
he confesses: “We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the ultimate
structure and properties of matter, whether organic or inorganic.”
As to the other great question—we find in Macaulay, a still more
unreserved declaration: “The question what becomes of man after
death—we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his
unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot
Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the
Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on the state of the soul
after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers,
ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation,
to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to
us to have failed deplorably.”
There are revelations of the spiritual senses of man which may be
trusted far more than all the sophistries of materialism. What was a
demonstration and a success in the eyes of Plato and his disciples is
now considered the overflow of a spurious philosophy and a failure.
The scientific methods are reversed. The testimony of the men of
old, who were nearer to truth, for they were nearer to the spirit
of nature—the only aspect under which the Deity will allow itself
to be viewed and understood—and their demonstrations, are rejected.
Their speculations—if we must believe the modern thinkers—are but
the expression of a redundance of the unsystematic opinions of men
unacquainted with the scientific method of the present century. They
foolishly based the little they knew of physiology on well-demonstrated
psychology, while the scholar of our day bases psychology—of which
he confesses himself utterly ignorant—on physiology, which to him
is as yet a closed book, and has not even a method of its own, as
Fournié tells us. As to the last objection in Macaulay’s argument, it
was answered by Hippocrates centuries ago: “All knowledge, all arts {425}
are to be found in nature,” he says; “if we question her _properly_
she will reveal to us the truths to pertain to each of these and to
ourselves. What is nature in operation but the very divinity itself
manifesting its presence? How are we to interrogate her; and how is she
to answer us? We must proceed with _faith_, with the firm assurance
of discovering at last the whole of the truth; and nature will let us
know her answer, through our _inner_ sense, which with the help of our
knowledge of a certain _art_ or _science_, reveals to us the truth so
clearly that further doubt becomes impossible.”[668]
Thus, in the case in hand, the instinct of Macaulay’s Blackfoot Indian
is more to be trusted than the most instructed and developed reason,
as regards man’s _inner_ sense which assures him of his immortality.
Instinct is the universal endowment of nature by the Spirit of the
Deity itself; reason the slow development of our physical constitution,
an evolution of our adult material brain. Instinct, as a divine spark,
lurks in the unconscious nerve-centre of the ascidian mollusk, and
manifests itself at the first stage of action of its nervous system
as what the physiologist terms the reflex action. It exists in the
lowest classes of the acephalous animals as well as in those that have
distinct heads; it grows and develops according to the law of the
double evolution, physically and spiritually; and entering upon its
conscious stage of development and progress in the cephalous species
already endowed with a sensorium and symmetrically-arranged ganglia,
this reflex action, whether men of science term it _automatic_, as in
the lowest species, or _instinctive_, as in the more complex organisms
which act under the guidance of the sensorium and the stimulus
originating in distinct sensation, is still one and the same thing.
It is the _divine instinct_ in its ceaseless progress of development.
This instinct of the animals, which act from the moment of their birth
each in the confines prescribed to them by nature, and which know how,
save in accident proceeding from a higher instinct than their own, to
take care of themselves unerringly—this instinct may, for the sake of
exact definition, be termed automatic; but it must have either within
the animal which possesses it or _without_, something’s or some one’s
_intelligence_ to guide it.
This belief, instead of clashing with the doctrine of evolution and
gradual development held by eminent men of our day, simplifies and
completes it, on the contrary. It can readily dispense with special
creation for each species; for, where the first place must be allowed
to formless spirit, form and material substance are of a secondary
importance. Each perfected species in the physical evolution only
affords more scope to the directing intelligence to act within the {426}
improved nervous system. The artist will display his waves of harmony
better on a royal Erard than he could have done on a spinet of the
sixteenth century. Therefore whether this _instinctive_ impulse was
directly impressed upon the nervous system of the first insect, or
each species has gradually had it developed in itself by instinctively
mimicking the acts of its like, as the more perfected doctrine of
Herbert Spencer has it, is immaterial to the present subject. The
question concerns _spiritual_ evolution only. And if we reject this
hypothesis as unscientific and undemonstrated, then will the physical
aspect of evolution have to follow it to the ground in its turn,
because the one is as undemonstrated as the other, and the spiritual
intuition of man is not allowed to dovetail the two, under the pretext
that it is “unphilosophical.” Whether we wish it or not, we will have
to fall back on the old query of Plutarch’s _Symposiacs_, whether it
was the bird or the egg which first made its appearance.
Now that the Aristotelean authority is shaken to its foundations with
that of Plato; and our men of science reject every authority—nay hate
it, except each his own; and the general estimate of human collective
wisdom is at the lowest discount, mankind, headed by science itself, is
still irrepressibly drawing back to the starting-point of the oldest
philosophies. We find our idea perfectly expressed by a writer in the
_Popular Science Monthly_. “The gods of sects and specialities,” says
Osgood Mason, “may perhaps be failing of their accustomed reverence,
but, in the mean time, there is dawning on the world, with a softer and
serener light, the conception, imperfect though it still may be, of a
conscious, originating, all-pervading active soul—the ‘Over-Soul,’ the
Cause, the Deity; unrevealed through human form or speech, but filling
and inspiring every living soul in the wide universe according to its
measure: _whose temple is Nature_, and whose worship is admiration.”
This is pure Platonism, Buddhism, and the exalted but just views of
the earliest Aryans in their deification of nature. And such is the
expression of the ground-thought of every theosophist, kabalist, and
occultist in general; and if we compare it with the quotation from
Hippocrates, which precedes the above, we will find in it exactly the
same thought and spirit.
To return to our subject. The child lacks reason, it being as yet
latent in him; and meanwhile he is inferior to the animal as to
instinct proper. He will burn or drown himself before he learns that
fire and water destroy and are dangerous for him; while the kitten will
avoid both instinctively. The little instinct the child possesses fades
away as reason, step by step, develops itself. It may be objected,
perhaps, that instinct cannot be a spiritual gift, because animals
possess it in a higher degree than man, and animals have _no souls_.
Such a belief is erroneous and based upon very insecure foundations.
It came from the fact that the inner nature of the animal could be {427}
fathomed still less than that of man, who is endowed with speech and
can display to us his psychological powers.
But what proofs other than negative have we that the animal is without
a surviving, if not immortal, soul? On strictly scientific grounds
we can adduce as many arguments _pro_ as _contra_. To express it
clearer, neither man nor animal can offer either proof or disproof of
the survival of their souls after death. And from the point of view
of scientific experience, it is impossible to bring that which has no
objective existence under the cognizance of any exact law of science.
But Descartes and Bois-Raymond have exhausted their imaginations on
the subject, and Agassiz could not realize such a thing as a future
existence not shared by the animals we loved, and even the vegetable
kingdom which surrounds us. And it is enough to make one’s feelings
revolt against the claimed justice of the First Cause to believe that
while a heartless, cold-blooded villain has been endowed with an
immortal spirit, the noble, honest dog, often self-denying unto death;
that protects the child or master he loves at the peril of his life;
that never forgets him, but starves himself on his grave; the animal in
whom the sense of justice and generosity are sometimes developed to an
amazing degree, will be annihilated! No, away with the civilized reason
which suggests such heartless partiality. Better, far better to cling
to one’s _instinct_ in such a case, and believe with the Indian of
Pope, whose “untutored mind” can only picture to himself a heaven where
“ ... admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.”
Space fails us to present the speculative views of certain ancient and
mediæval occultists upon this subject. Suffice it that they antedated
Darwin, embraced more or less all his theories on natural selection and
the evolution of species, and largely extended the chain at both ends.
Moreover, these philosophers were explorers as daring in psychology as
in physiology and anthropology. They never turned aside from the double
parallel-path traced for them by their great master Hermes. “As above,
so below,” was ever their axiom; and their physical evolution was
traced out simultaneously with the spiritual one.
On one point, at least, our modern biologists are quite consistent:
unable, as yet, to demonstrate the existence of a distinct individual
soul in animals, they deny it to man. Reason has brought them to
the brink of Tyndall’s “impassable chasm,” between mind and matter;
instinct alone can teach them to bridge it. When in their despair of {428}
ever being able to fathom the mystery of life, they will have come to
a dead stop, their instinct may reässert itself, and take them across
the hitherto fathomless abyss. This is the point which Professor John
Fiske and the authors of the _Unseen Universe_ seem to have reached;
and Wallace, the anthropologist and ex-materialist, to have been the
first to courageously step over. Let them push boldly on till they
discover that it is not spirit that dwells in matter, but _matter_
which clings temporarily to spirit; and that the latter alone is an
eternal, imperishable abode for all things visible and invisible.
Esoteric philosophers held that everything in nature is but a
materialization of spirit. The Eternal First Cause is latent spirit,
they said, and matter from the beginning. “In the beginning was the
word ... and the word was God.” While conceding the idea of such a God
to be an unthinkable abstraction to human reason, they claimed that
the unerring human instinct grasped it as a reminiscence of something
concrete to it though intangible to our physical senses. With the
first idea, which emanated from the double-sexed and hitherto-inactive
Deity, the first motion was communicated to the whole universe, and
the electric thrill was instantaneously felt throughout the boundless
space. Spirit begat force, and force matter; and thus the latent deity
manifested itself as a creative energy.
When; at what point of the eternity; or how? the question must always
remain unanswered, for human reason is unable to grasp the great
mystery. But, though spirit-matter was from all eternity, it was in the
latent state; the evolution of our visible universe must have had a
beginning. To our feeble intellect, this beginning may seem so remote
as to appear to us eternity itself—a period inexpressible in figures
or language. Aristotle argued that the world was eternal, and that it
will always be the same; that one generation of men has always produced
another, without ever having had a beginning that could be determined
by our intellect. In this, his teaching, in its exoteric sense, clashed
with that of Plato, who taught that “there was a time when mankind did
not perpetuate itself;” but in spirit both the doctrines agreed, as
Plato adds immediately: “This was followed by the _earthly human_ race,
in which the primitive history was gradually forgotten and man sank
deeper and deeper;” and Aristotle says: “If there has been a first man
he must have been born without father or mother—which is repugnant to
nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning
to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning
to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg.” The same he held good for all
species, believing, with Plato, that everything before it appeared on
earth had first its being in spirit.
This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of science, {429}
is unfathomable, unless we accept the doctrine of the Hermetists.
Though matter is coëternal with spirit, that matter is certainly
not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme
sublimation. Pure spirit is but one remove higher. Unless we allow man
to have been evolved out of this primordial spirit-matter, how can we
ever come to any reasonable hypothesis as to the genesis of animate
beings? Darwin begins his evolution of species at the lowest point and
traces upward. His only mistake may be that he applies his system at
the wrong end. Could he remove his quest from the visible universe into
the invisible, he might find himself on the right path. But then, he
would be following in the footsteps of the Hermetists.
That our philosophers—positivists—even the most learned among them,
never understood the spirit of the mystic doctrines taught by the old
philosophers—Platonists—is evident from that most eminent modern work,
_Conflict between Religion and Science_. Professor Draper begins his
fifth chapter by saying that “the Pagan Greeks and Romans believed that
the _spirit_ of man resembles his bodily form, varying its appearance
with his variations, and growing with his growth.” What the ignorant
masses thought is a matter of little consequence, though even they
could never have indulged in such speculations taken _à la lettre_. As
to Greek and Roman philosophers of the Platonic school, they believed
no such thing of the _spirit_ of man, but applied the above doctrine to
his soul, or psychical nature, which, as we have previously shown, is
not the divine spirit.
Aristotle, in his philosophical deduction _On Dreams_, shows this
doctrine of the two-fold soul, or soul and spirit, very plainly. “It
is necessary for us to ascertain _in what portion_ of the soul dreams
appear,” he says. All the ancient Greeks believed not only a double,
but even a _triple_ soul to exist in man. And even Homer we find
terming the animal soul, or the astral soul, called by Mr. Draper
“spirit,” θύμος, and the _divine_ one νοὺς—the name by which Plato also
designated the higher spirit.
The Hindu Jainas conceive the soul, which they call _Jiva_, to have
been united from all eternity to even two sublimated ethereal bodies,
one of which is invariable and consists of the divine powers of the
_higher_ mind; the other variable and composed of the grosser passions
of man, his sensual affections, and terrestrial attributes. When the
soul becomes purified after death it joins its _Vaycarica_, or divine
spirit, and becomes a god. The followers of the _Vedas_, the learned
Brahmins, explain the same doctrine in the _Vedanta_. The soul,
according to their teaching, as a portion of the divine universal
spirit or immaterial mind, is capable of uniting itself with the {430}
essence of its highest Entity. The teaching is explicit; the _Vedanta_
affirms that whoever attains the thorough _knowledge of his god_
becomes a god while yet in his mortal body, and acquires supremacy over
all things.
Quoting from the Vedaic theology the verse which says: “There is in
truth but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit; he is of the same nature as
the soul of man,” Mr. Draper shows the Buddhistic doctrines as reaching
Eastern Europe through Aristotle. We believe the assertion unwarranted,
for Pythagoras, and after him Plato, taught them long before Aristotle.
If subsequently the later Platonists accepted in their dialectics the
Aristotelean arguments on emanation, it was merely because his views
coincided in some respect with those of the Oriental philosophers.
The Pythagorean number of harmony and Plato’s esoteric doctrines on
creation are inseparable from the Buddhistic doctrine of emanation; and
the great aim of the Pythagorean philosophy, namely, to free the astral
soul from the fetters of matter and sense, and make it thereby fit for
an eternal contemplation of spiritual things, is a theory identical
with the Buddhistic doctrine of final absorption. It is the Nirvana,
interpreted in its right sense; a metaphysical tenet that just begins
to be suspected now by our latest Sanscrit scholars.