This dispersion must be death, if it is possible to conceive such a

thing as death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an

intense vital energy. If death is but the stoppage of a digesting,

locomotive, and thought-grinding machine, how can death be actual

and not relative, before that machine is thoroughly broken up and

its particles dispersed? So long as any of them cling together, the

centripetal vital force may overmatch the dispersive centrifugal

action. Says Eliphas Levi: “Change attests movement, and movement only

reveals life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the

molecules which compose it are living and struggle to separate. And

would you think that the spirit frees itself first of all to exist no

more? That thought and love can die when the grossest forms of matter

do not die? If the change should be called death, we die and are born

again every day, for every day our forms undergo change.”[727]

The kabalists say that a man is not dead when his body is entombed.

Death is never sudden; for, according to Hermes, nothing goes in nature

by violent transitions. Everything is gradual, and as it required a

long and gradual development to produce the living human being, so time

is required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass.“ Death

can no more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning. Birth

proves the preëxistence of the being, as death proves immortality,”

says the same French kabalist.

While implicitly believing in the restoration of the daughter of

Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, and in other Bible-miracles,

well-educated Christians, who otherwise would feel indignant at being

called superstitious, meet all such cases as that of Apollonius and the

girl said by his biographer to have been recalled to life by him, with

scornful skepticism. Diogenes Laërtius, who mentions a woman restored

to life by Empedocles, is treated with no more respect; and the name of

Pagan thaumaturgist, in the eyes of Christians, is but a synonym for

impostor. Our scientists are at least one degree more rational; they

embrace all Bible prophets and apostles, and the heathen miracle-doers

in two categories of hallucinated fools and deceitful tricksters.

But Christians and materialists might, with a very little effort {481}

on their part, show themselves fair and logical at the same time.

To produce such a miracle, they have but to consent to understand

what they read, and submit it to the unprejudiced criticism of their

best judgment. Let us see how far it is possible. Setting aside the

incredible fiction of Lazarus, we will select two cases: the ruler’s

daughter, recalled to life by Jesus, and the Corinthian bride,

resuscitated by Apollonius. In the former case, totally disregarding

the significant expression of Jesus—“_She is not dead but sleepeth_,”

the clergy force their god to become a breaker of his own laws and

grant unjustly to one what he denies to all others, and with no better

object in view than to produce a useless miracle. In the second case,

notwithstanding the words of the biographer of Apollonius, so plain

and precise that there is not the slightest cause to misunderstand

them, they charge Philostratus with deliberate imposture. Who could be

fairer than he, who less open to the charge of mystification, when, in

describing the resuscitation of the young girl by the Tyanian sage, in

the presence of a large concourse of people, the biographer says, “she

had _seemed_ to die.”

In other words, he very clearly indicates a case of suspended

animation; and then adds immediately, “as the rain fell very fast on

the young girl,” while she was being carried to the pile, “with her

face turned upwards, this, _also_, might have excited her senses.”[728]

Does this not show most plainly that Philostratus saw _no_ miracle in

that resuscitation? Does it not rather imply, if anything, the great

learning and skill of Apollonius, “who like Asclepiades had the merit

of distinguishing at a glance between real and apparent death?”[729]

A resuscitation, after the soul and spirit have entirely separated from

the body, and the last electric thread is severed, is as impossible as

for a once disembodied spirit to reïncarnate itself once more on this

earth, except as described in previous chapters. “A leaf, once fallen

off, does not reättach itself to the branch,” says Eliphas Levi. “The

caterpillar becomes a butterfly, but the butterfly does not again

return to the grub. Nature closes the door behind all that passes, and

pushes life forward. Forms pass, thought remains, and does not recall

that which it has once exhausted.”[730]

Why should it be imagined that Asclepiades and Apollonius enjoyed

exceptional powers for the discernment of actual death? Has any modern

school of medicine this knowledge to impart to its students? Let their

authorities answer for them. These prodigies of Jesus and Apollonius {482}

are so well attested that they appear authentic. Whether in either or

both cases life was simply suspended or not, the important fact remains

that by some power, peculiar to themselves, both the wonder-workers

recalled the _seemingly dead_ to life in an instant.[731]

Is it because the modern physician has not yet found the secret which

the theurgists evidently possessed that its possibility is denied?

Neglected as psychology now is, and with the strangely chaotic state

in which physiology is confessed to be by its most fair students,

certainly it is not very likely that our men of science will soon

rediscover the lost knowledge of the ancients. In the days of old,

when prophets were not treated as charlatans, nor thaumaturgists as

impostors, there were colleges instituted for teaching prophecy and

occult sciences in general. Samuel is recorded as the chief of such an

institution at Ramah; Elisha, also, at Jericho. The schools of _hazim_,

prophets or seers, were celebrated throughout the country. Hillel had a

regular academy, and Socrates is well known to have sent away several

of his disciples to study _manticism_. The study of magic, or wisdom,

included every branch of science, the metaphysical as well as the

physical, psychology and physiology in their common and occult phases,

and the study of alchemy was universal, for it was both a physical and

a spiritual science. Therefore why doubt or wonder that the ancients,

who studied nature under its double aspect, achieved discoveries which

to our modern physicists, who study but its dead letter, are a closed

book?

Thus, the question at issue is not whether a _dead_ body can be

resuscitated—for, to assert that would be to assume the possibility

of a miracle, which is absurd—but, to assure ourselves whether the

medical authorities pretend to determine the precise moment of death.

The kabalists say that death occurs at the instant when both the astral

body, or life-principle, and the spirit part forever with the corporeal

body. The scientific physician who denies both astral body and spirit,

and admits the existence of nothing more than the life-principle,

judges death to occur when life is apparently extinct. When the beating

of the heart and the action of the lungs cease, and _rigor mortis_ is

manifested, and especially when decomposition begins, they pronounce

the patient dead. But the annals of medicine teem with examples of {483}

“suspended animation” as the result of asphyxia by drowning, the

inhalation of gases and other causes; life being restored in the case

of drowning persons even after they had been apparently dead for twelve

hours.

In cases of somnambulic trance, none of the ordinary signs of death

are lacking; breathing and the pulse are extinct; animal-heat has

disappeared; the muscles are rigid, the eye glazed, and the body is

colorless. In the celebrated case of Colonel Townshend, he threw

himself into this state in the presence of three medical men; who,

after a time, were persuaded that he was really dead, and were about

leaving the room, when he slowly revived. He describes his peculiar

gift by saying that he “could die or expire when he pleased, and yet,

by an effort, or _somehow_, he could come to life again.”

There occurred in Moscow, a few years since, a remarkable instance of

apparent death. The wife of a wealthy merchant lay in the cataleptic

state seventeen days, during which the authorities made several

attempts to bury her; but, as decomposition had not set in, the family

averted the ceremony, and at the end of that time she was restored to

life.

The above instances show that the most learned men in the medical

profession are unable to be certain when a person is dead. What they

call “suspended animation,” is that state from which the patient

spontaneously recovers, through an effort of his own spirit, which

may be provoked by any one of many causes. In these cases, the astral

body has not parted from the physical body; its external functions

are simply suspended; the subject is in a state of torpor, and the

restoration is nothing but a recovery from it.

But, in the case of what physiologists would call “real death,” but

which is not actually so, the astral body has withdrawn; perhaps local

decomposition has set in. How shall the man be brought to life again?

The answer is, the interior body must be forced back into the exterior

one, and vitality reawakened in the latter. The clock has run down,

it must be wound. If death is absolute; if the organs have not only

ceased to act, but have lost the susceptibility of renewed action, then

the whole universe would have to be thrown into chaos to resuscitate

the corpse—a miracle would be demanded. But, as we said before, the

man is not dead when he is cold, stiff, pulseless, breathless, and

even showing signs of decomposition; he is not dead when buried, nor

afterward, until a certain point is reached. That point is, _when

the vital organs have become so decomposed, that if reänimated, they

could not perform their customary functions_; when the mainspring and

cogs of the machine, so to speak, are so eaten away by rust, that

they would snap upon the turning of the key. Until that point is

reached, the astral body may be caused, without miracle, to reënter {484}

its former tabernacle, either by an effort of its own will, or under

the resistless impulse of the will of one who knows the potencies of

nature and how to direct them. The spark is not extinguished, but only

latent—latent as the fire in the flint, or the heat in the cold iron.

In cases of the most profound cataleptic clairvoyance, such as obtained

by Du Potet, and described very graphically by the late Prof. William

Gregory, in his _Letters on Animal Magnetism_, the spirit is so

far disengaged from the body that it would be impossible for it to

re-enter it without an effort of the mesmerizer’s will. The subject

is practically dead, and, if left to itself, the spirit would escape

forever. Although independent of the torpid physical casing, the

half-freed spirit is still tied to it by a magnetic cord, which is

described by clairvoyants as appearing dark and smoky by contrast with

the ineffable brightness of the astral atmosphere through which they

look. Plutarch, relating the story of Thespesius, who fell from a great

height, and lay three days apparently dead, gives us the experience

of the latter during his state of partial decease. “Thespesius,” says

he, “then observed that he was different from the dead by whom he was

surrounded.... They were transparent and environed by a radiance, but

he seemed to trail after him a dark radiation or line of shadow.” His

whole description, minute and circumstantial in its details, appears

to be corroborated by the clairvoyants of every period, and, so far as

this class of testimony can be taken, is important. The kabalists, as

we find them interpreted by Eliphas Levi, in his _Science des Esprits_,

say that, “When a man falls into the last sleep, he is plunged at first

into a sort of dream, before gaining consciousness in the other side

of life. He sees, then, either in a beautiful vision, or in a terrible

nightmare, the paradise or hell, in which he believed during his mortal

existence. This is why it often happens, that the affrighted soul

breaks violently back into the terrestrial life it has just left, and

why some who were really dead, _i. e._, who, if left alone and quiet,

would have peaceably passed away forever in a state of unconscious

lethargy, when entombed too soon, reäwake to life in the grave.”

In this connection, the reader may perhaps recall the well-known case

of the old man who had left some generous gifts in his will to his

orphaned nieces; which document, just before his death, he had confided

to his rich son, with injunctions to carry out his wishes. But, he had

not been dead more than a few hours before the son, finding himself

alone with the corpse, tore the will and burned it. The sight of this

impious deed apparently recalled the hovering spirit, and the old man,

rising from his couch of death, uttered a fierce malediction upon the

horror-stricken wretch, and then fell back again, and yielded up his

spirit—this time forever. Dion Boucicault makes use of an incident of {485}

this kind in his powerful drama _Louis XI._; and Charles Kean created

a profound impression in the character of the French monarch, when

the dead man revives for an instant and clutches the crown as the

heir-apparent approaches it.

Levi says that resuscitation is not impossible while the vital

organism remains undestroyed, and the astral spirit is yet within

reach. “Nature,” he says, “accomplishes nothing by sudden jerks, and

eternal death is always preceded by a state which partakes somewhat

of the nature of lethargy. It is a torpor which a great shock or the

magnetism of a powerful will can overcome.” He accounts in this manner

for the resuscitation of the dead man thrown upon the bones of Elisha.

He explains it by saying that the soul was hovering at that moment

near the body; the burial party, according to tradition, were attacked

by robbers; and their fright communicating itself sympathetically to

it, the soul was seized with horror at the idea of its remains being

desecrated, and “reëntered violently into its body to raise and save

it.” Those who believe in the survival of the soul can see in this

incident nothing of a supernatural character—it is only a perfect

manifestation of natural law. To narrate to the materialist such a

case, however well attested, would be but an idle talk; the theologian,

always looking beyond nature for a special providence, regards it as a

prodigy. Eliphas Levi says: “They attributed the resuscitation to the

contact with the bones of Elisha; and worship of relics dates logically

from his epoch.”

Balfour Stewart is right—scientists “know nothing, or next to nothing,

of the ultimate structure and properties of matter, whether organic or

inorganic.”

We are now on such firm ground, that we will take another step in

advance. _The same knowledge and control of the occult forces,

including the vital force which enabled the fakir temporarily to leave

and then reënter his body, and Jesus, Apollonius, and Elisha to recall

their several subjects to life, made it possible for the ancient

hierophants to animate statues, and cause them to act and speak like

living creatures._ It is the same knowledge and power which made it

possible for Paracelsus to create his homunculi; for Aaron to change

his rod into a serpent and a budding branch; Moses to cover Egypt with

frogs and other pests; and the Egyptian theurgist of our day to vivify

his pigmy Mandragora, which has physical life but no soul. It was no

more wonderful that upon presenting the necessary conditions Moses

should call into life large reptiles and insects, than that, under like

favoring conditions, the physical scientist should call into life the

small ones which he names bacteria.

And now, in connection with ancient miracle-doers and prophets, let us

bring forward the claims of the modern mediums. Nearly every form of

phenomena recorded in the sacred and profane histories of the world {486}

we find them claiming to reproduce in our days. Selecting, among

the variety of seeming wonders, levitation of ponderable inanimate

objects as well as of human bodies, we will give our attention to the

conditions under which the phenomenon is manifested. History records

the names of Pagan theurgists, Christian saints, Hindu fakirs, and

spiritual mediums who have been thus levitated, and who remained

suspended in the air, sometimes for a considerable time. The phenomenon

has not been confined to one country or epoch, but almost invariably

the subjects have been religious ecstatics, adepts in magic, or, as

now, spiritual mediums.

We assume the fact to be so well established as to require no labored

effort on our part at this time to furnish proof that unconscious

manifestations of spirit-power, as well as conscious feats of

high magic, have happened in all countries, in all ages, and with

hierophants as well as through irresponsible mediums. When the present

perfected European civilization was yet in an inchoate state, occult

philosophy, already hoary with age, speculated upon the attributes of

man by analogy with those of his Creator. Individuals later, whose

names will remain forever immortal, inscribed on the portal of the

spiritual history of man, have afforded in their persons examples of

how far could be developed the godlike powers of the _microcosmos_.

Describing the _Doctrines and Principal Teachers of the Alexandrian

School_, Professor A. Wilder says: “Plotinus taught that there was in

the soul a returning impulse, love, which attracted it inward toward

its origin and centre, the eternal good. While the person who does not

understand how the soul contains the beautiful within itself will seek

by laborious effort to realize beauty without, the wise man recognizes

it within himself, develops the idea by withdrawal into himself,

concentrating his attention, and so floating upward toward the divine

fountain, the stream of which flows within him. The infinite is not

known through the reason ... but by a faculty superior to reason, by

entering upon a state in which the individual, so to speak, ceases to

be his finite self, in which state divine essence is communicated to

him. This is ECSTASY.”

Of Apollonius, who asserted that he could see “the present and the

future in a clear mirror,” on account of his abstemious mode of life,

the professor very beautifully observes: “This is what may be termed

_spiritual photography_. The soul is the camera in which facts and

events, future, past, and present, are alike fixed; and the mind

becomes conscious of them. Beyond our every-day world of limits, all is

as one day or state, the past and future comprised in the present.”[732]

Were these God-like men “mediums,” as the orthodox spiritualists {487}

will have it? By no means, if by the term we understand those

“sick-sensitives” who are born with a peculiar organization, and who in

proportion as their powers are developed become more and more subject

to the irresistible influence of miscellaneous spirits, purely human,

elementary, or elemental. Unquestionably so, if we consider every

individual a medium in whose magnetic atmosphere the denizens of higher

invisible spheres can move, and act, and live. In such a sense every

person is a medium. Mediumship may be either 1st, self-developed; 2d,

by extraneous influences; or 3d, may remain latent throughout life.

_The reader must bear in mind the definition of the term, for, unless

this is clearly understood, confusion will be inevitable._ Mediumship

of this kind may be either active or passive, repellent or receptive,

positive or negative. Mediumship is measured by the quality of the aura

with which the individual is surrounded. This may be dense, cloudy,

noisome, mephitic, nauseating to the pure spirit, and attract only

those foul beings who delight in it, as the eel does in turbid waters,

or, it may be pure, crystalline, limpid, opalescent as the morning dew.

All depends upon the moral character of the medium.

About such men as Apollonius, Iamblichus, Plotinus, and Porphyry, there

gathered this heavenly nimbus. It was evolved by the power of their own

souls in close unison with their spirits; by the superhuman morality

and sanctity of their lives, and aided by frequent interior ecstatic

contemplation. Such holy men pure spiritual influences could approach.

Radiating around an atmosphere of divine beneficence, they caused evil

spirits to flee before them. Not only is it not possible for such to

exist in their aura, but they cannot even remain in that of obsessed

persons, if the thaumaturgist exercises his will, or even approaches

them. This is MEDIATORSHIP, not _mediumship_. Such persons are temples

in which dwells the spirit of the living God; but if the temple is

defiled by the admission of an evil passion, thought or desire, the

mediator falls into the sphere of sorcery. The door is opened; the pure

spirits retire and the evil ones rush in. This is still mediatorship,

evil as it is; the sorcerer, like the pure magician, forms his own aura

and subjects to his will congenial inferior spirits.

But mediumship, as now understood and manifested, is a different

thing. Circumstances, independent of his own volition, may, either

at birth or subsequently, modify a person’s aura, so that strange

manifestations, physical or mental, diabolical or angelic, may take

place. Such mediumship, as well as the above-mentioned mediatorship,

has existed on earth since the first appearance here of living man.

The former is the yielding of weak, mortal flesh to the control

and suggestions of spirits and intelligences other than one’s own {488}

immortal demon. It is literally _obsession_ and _possession_; and

mediums who pride themselves on being the faithful slaves of their

“guides,” and who repudiate with indignation the idea of “controlling”

the manifestations, “could not very well deny the fact without

inconsistency. This mediumship is typified in the story of Eve

succumbing to the reasonings of the serpent; of Pandora peeping in the

forbidden casket and letting loose on the world, sorrow and evil, and

by Mary Magdalene, who from having been obsessed by ‘seven devils’ was

finally redeemed by the triumphant struggle of her immortal spirit,

touched by the presence of a holy mediator, against the dweller.” This

mediumship, whether beneficent or maleficent, is always _passive_.

Happy are the pure in heart, who repel unconsciously, by that very

cleanness of their inner nature, the dark spirits of evil. For verily

they have no other weapons of defense but that inborn goodness and

purity. Mediumism, as practiced in our days, is a more undesirable gift

than the robe of Nessus.

“The tree is known by its fruits.” Side by side with passive mediums

in the progress of the world’s history, appear active mediators. We

designate them by this name for lack of a better one. The ancient

witches and wizards, and those who had a “familiar spirit,” generally

made of their gifts a trade; and the Obeah woman of En-Dor, so well

defined by Henry More, though she may have killed her calf for Saul,

accepted hire from other visitors. In India, the jugglers, who by

the way are less so than many a modern medium, and the _Essaoua_ or

sorcerers and serpent-charmers of Asia and Africa, all exercise their

gifts for money. Not so with the mediators, or hierophants. Buddha was

a mendicant and refused his father’s throne. The “Son of Man had not

where to lay his head;” the chosen apostles provided “neither gold, nor

silver, nor brass in their purses.” Apollonius gave one half of his

fortune to his relatives, the other half to the poor; Iamblichus and

Plotinus were renowned for charity and self-denial; the fakirs, or holy

mendicants, of India are fairly described by Jacolliot; the Pythagorean

Essenes and Therapeutæ believed their hands defiled by the contact of

money. When the apostles were offered money to impart their spiritual

powers, Peter, notwithstanding that the Bible shows him a coward and

thrice a renegade, still indignantly spurned the offer, saying: “Thy

money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God

may be purchased with money.” These men were mediators, guided merely

by their own personal spirit, or divine soul, and availing themselves

of the help of spirits but so far as these remain in the right path.

Far from us be the thought of casting an unjust slur on physical

mediums. Harassed by various intelligences, reduced by the {489}

overpowering influence—which their weak and nervous natures are unable

to shake off—to a morbid state, which at last becomes chronic, they

are impeded by these “influences” from undertaking other occupation.

They become mentally and physically unfit for any other. Who can judge

them harshly when, driven to the last extremity, they are constrained

to accept mediumship as a business? And heaven knows, as recent events

have too well proved, whether the calling is one to be envied by any

one! It is not mediums, real, _true_, and genuine mediums that we would

ever blame, but their patrons, the spiritualists.

Plotinus, when asked to attend public worship of the gods, is said

to have proudly answered: “It is for them (the spirits) to come to

me.” Iamblichus asserted and proved in his own case, that our soul

can attain communion with the highest intelligences, with “natures

loftier than itself,” and carefully drove away from his theurgical

ceremonies[733] every inferior spirit, or bad dæmon, which he taught

his disciples to recognize. Proclus, who “elaborated the entire

theosophy and theurgy of his predecessors into a complete system,”[734]

according to Professor Wilder, “believed with Iamblichus in the

attaining of a divine power, which, overcoming the mundane life,

rendered the individual an organ of the Deity.” He even taught that

there was a “mystic password that would carry a person from one order

of spiritual beings to another, higher and higher, till he arrived at

the absolute divine.” Apollonius spurned the sorcerers and “common

soothsayers,” and declared that it was his “peculiar abstemious mode

of life” which “produced such an acuteness of the senses and created

other faculties, so that the greatest and most remarkable things can

take place.” Jesus declared man _the lord of the Sabbath_, and at

his command the terrestrial and elementary spirits fled from their

temporary abodes; a power which was shared by Apollonius and many of

the Brotherhood of the Essenes of Judea and Mount Carmel.

It is undeniable that there must have been some good reasons why the

ancients persecuted _unregulated_ mediums. Otherwise why, at the time

of Moses and David and Samuel, should they have encouraged prophecy

and divination, astrology and soothsaying, and maintained schools and

colleges in which these natural gifts were strengthened and developed,

while witches and those who divined by the spirit of _Ob_ were put to

death? Even at the time of Christ, the poor oppressed mediums were

driven to the tombs and waste places without the city walls. Why this

apparent gross injustice? Why should banishment, persecution, and

death be the portion of the physical mediums of those days, and whole {490}

communities of thaumaturgists—like the Essenes—be not merely tolerated

but revered? It is because the ancients, unlike ourselves, could “try”

the spirits and discern the difference between the good and the evil

ones, the human and the elemental. They also knew that unregulated

spirit intercourse brought ruin upon the individual and disaster to the

community.

This view of mediumship may be novel and perhaps repugnant to many

modern spiritualists; but still it is the view taught in the ancient

philosophy, and supported by the experience of mankind from time

immemorial.

It is erroneous to speak of a medium having _powers_ developed. A

passive medium has no power. He has a certain moral and physical

condition which induces emanations, or an aura, in which his

controlling intelligences can live, and by which they manifest

themselves. He is only the vehicle through which _they_ display their

power. This aura varies day by day, and, as would appear from Mr.

Crookes’ experiments, even hour by hour. It is an external effect

resulting from interior causes. The medium’s moral state determines

the kind of spirits that come; and the spirits that come reciprocally

influence the medium, intellectually, physically, and morally.

The perfection of his mediumship is in ratio to his passivity,

and the danger he incurs is in equal degree. When he is fully

“developed” perfectly passive—his own astral spirit may be benumbed, and

even crowded out of his body, which is then occupied by an elemental,

or, what is worse, by a human fiend of the eighth sphere, who proceeds

to use it as his own. But too often the cause of the most celebrated

crime is to be sought in such possessions.

Physical mediumship depending upon passivity, its antidote suggests

itself naturally; _let the medium cease being passive_. Spirits never

control persons of positive character who are determined to resist

all extraneous influences. The weak and feeble-minded whom they can

make their victims they drive into vice. If these miracle-making

elementals and disembodied devils called elementary were indeed the

guardian angels that they have passed for, these last thirty years,

why have they not given their faithful mediums at least good health

and domestic happiness? Why do they desert them at the most critical

moments of trial when under accusations of fraud? It is notorious

that the best physical mediums are either sickly or, sometimes, what

is still worse, inclined to some abnormal vice or other. Why do not

these healing “guides,” who make their mediums play the therapeutists

and thaumaturgists to others, give them the boon of robust physical

vigor? The ancient thaumaturgist and apostle, generally, if not

invariably, enjoyed good health; their magnetism never conveyed to the

sick patient any physical or moral taint; and they never were accused {491}

of VAMPIRISM, which a spiritual paper very justly charges upon some

medium-healers.[735]

If we apply the above law of mediumship and mediatorship to the subject

of levitation, with which we opened our present discussion, what

shall we find? Here we have a medium and one of the mediator-class

levitated—the former at a seance, the latter at prayer, or in ecstatic

contemplation. The medium being passive must _be lifted_ up; the

ecstatic being active must levitate himself. The former is elevated by

his familiar spirits—whoever or whatever they may be—the latter, by the

power of his own aspiring soul. Can both be indiscriminately termed

_mediums_?

But nevertheless we may be answered that the same phenomena are

produced in the presence of a modern medium as of an ancient saint.

Undoubtedly; and so it was in the days of Moses; for we believe that

the triumph claimed for him in _Exodus_ over Pharaoh’s magicians is

simply a national boast on the part of the “chosen people.” That the

power which produced his phenomena produced that of the magicians also,

who were moreover the first tutors of Moses and instructed him in their

“wisdom,” is most probable. But even in those days they seemed to have

well appreciated the difference between phenomena apparently identical.

The tutelar national deity of the Hebrews (who is _not_ the Highest

Father)[736] forbids expressly, in _Deuteronomy_,[737] his people

“to learn to do after the abominations of other nations.... To pass

through _the fire_, or use _divination_, or be an observer of times or

an enchanter, or a witch, or a consulter _with familiar spirits_, or a

necromancer.”

What difference was there then between all the above-enumerated

phenomena as performed by the “other nations” and when enacted by the

prophets? Evidently, there was some good reason for it; and we find

it in John’s _First Epistle_, iv., which says: “believe not _every_

spirit, but _try_ the spirits, whether they are of God, because many

false prophets are gone out into the world.”

The only standard within the reach of spiritualists and present-day {492}

mediums by which they can _try_ the spirits, is to judge 1, by their

actions and speech; 2, by their readiness to manifest themselves;

and 3, whether the object in view is worthy of the apparition of a

“_disembodied_” spirit, or can excuse any one for disturbing _the

dead_. Saul was on the eve of destruction, himself and his sons, yet

Samuel inquired of him: “Why hast thou _disquieted_ me, to bring me

up?”[738] But the “intelligences” that visit the circle-rooms, come at

the beck of every trifler who would while away a tedious hour.

In the number of the _London Spiritualist_ for July 14th, we find a

long article, in which the author seeks to prove that “the marvellous

wonders of the present day, which belong to so-called modern

spiritualism, are identical in character with the experiences of the

patriarchs and apostles of old.”

We are forced to contradict, point-blank, such an assertion. They

are identical only so far that the same forces and occult powers of

nature produce them. But though these powers and forces may be, and

most assuredly are, all directed by unseen intelligences, the latter

differ more in essence, character, and purposes than mankind itself,

composed, as it now stands, of white, black, brown, red, and yellow

men, and numbering saints and criminals, geniuses and idiots. The

writer may avail himself of the services of a tame orang-outang or a

South Sea islander; but the fact alone that he has a servant makes

neither the latter nor himself identical with Aristotle and Alexander.

The writer compares Ezekiel “lifted up” and taken into the “east gate

of the Lord’s house,”[739] with the levitations of certain mediums,

and the three Hebrew youths in the “burning fiery furnace,” with other

_fire-proof_ mediums; the John King “spirit-light” is assimilated

with the “burning lamp” of Abraham; and finally, after many such

comparisons, the case of the Davenport Brothers, released from the jail

of Oswego, is confronted with that of Peter delivered from prison by

the “angel of the Lord!”

Now, except the story of Saul and Samuel, there is not a case

instanced in the _Bible_ of the “_evocation_ of the dead.” As to being

lawful, the assertion is contradicted by every prophet. Moses issues

a decree of death against those who raise the spirits of the dead,

the “necromancers.” Nowhere throughout the _Old Testament_, nor in

Homer, nor Virgil is communion with the dead termed otherwise than {493}

necromancy. Philo Judæus makes Saul say, that if he banishes from the

land every diviner and necromancer his name will survive him.

One of the greatest reasons for it was the doctrine of the ancients,

that no soul from the “abode of the blessed” will return to earth,

unless, indeed, upon rare occasions its apparition might be required

to accomplish some great object in view, and so bring benefit upon

humanity. In this latter instance the “soul” has no need to be

_evoked_. It sent its portentous message either by an evanescent

_simulacrum_ of itself, or through _messengers_, who could appear in

_material_ form, and personate faithfully the departed. The souls

that could so easily be evoked were deemed neither safe nor useful to

commune with. They were the souls, or _larvæ_ rather, from the infernal

region of the limbo—the _sheol_, the region known by the kabalists as

the eighth sphere, but far different from the orthodox Hell or Hades

of the ancient mythologists. Horace describes this evocation and the

ceremonial accompanying it, and Maimonides gives us particulars of the

Jewish rite. Every necromantic ceremony was performed on high places

and hills, and blood was used for the purpose of placating these human

_ghouls_.[740]

“I cannot prevent the witches from picking up their bones,” says the

poet. “See the blood they pour in the ditch to allure the _souls_ that

will utter their oracles!”[741] “_Cruor in fossam confusus, ut inde

manes elicirent, animas responsa daturas._”

“The _souls_,” says Porphyry, “prefer, to everything else,

_freshly-spilt blood_, which seems for a short time to restore to them

some of the faculties of life.”[742]

As for materializations, they are many and various in the sacred

records. But, were they effected under the same conditions as at modern

seances? Darkness, it appears, was not required in those days of

patriarchs and magic powers. The three angels who appeared to Abraham

drank in the full blaze of the sun, for “he sat in the tent-door _in

the heat of the day_,”[743] says the book of _Genesis_. The spirits of

Elias and Moses appeared equally in daytime, as it is not probable that

Christ and the Apostles would be climbing a high mountain during the

night. Jesus is represented as having appeared to Mary Magdalene in the

garden in the early morning; to the Apostles, at three distinct times,

and generally by day; once “when the morning was come” (_John_ xxi. 4).

Even when the ass of Balaam saw the “materialized” angel, it was in the

full light of noon.

We are fully prepared to agree with the writer in question, that we

find in the life of Christ—and we may add in the _Old Testament_, too— {494}

too—“an uninterrupted record of spiritualistic manifestations,” but

nothing _mediumistic_, of a physical character though, if we except

the visit of Saul to Sedecla, the Obeah woman of En-Dor. This is a

distinction of vital importance.

True, the promise of the Master was clearly stated: “Aye, and greater

works than these shall ye do” works of mediatorship. According to Joel,

the time would come when there would be an outpouring of the divine

spirit: “Your sons and your daughters,” says he, “shall prophesy, your

old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” The

time has come and they do all these things now; Spiritualism has its

seers and martyrs, its prophets and healers. Like Moses, and David,

and Jehoram, there are mediums who have direct writings from genuine

planetary and human spirits; and the best of it brings the mediums

no pecuniary recompense. The greatest friend of the cause in France,

Leymarie, now languishes in a prison-cell, and, as he says with

touching pathos, is “no longer a man, but a _number_” on the prison

register.

There are a few, a very few, orators on the spiritualistic platform

who speak by inspiration, and if they know what is said at all they

are in the condition described by Daniel: “And I retained no strength.

Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his

words, then was I in a deep sleep.”[744] And there are mediums, these

whom we have spoken of, for whom the prophecy in Samuel might have

been written: “The spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, thou shalt

prophesy with them, and shalt be _turned into another man_.”[745]

But where, in the long line of Bible-wonders, do we read of flying

guitars, and tinkling tambourines, and jangling bells being offered in

pitch-dark rooms as evidences of immortality?

When Christ was accused of casting out devils by the power of

Beelzebub, he denied it, and sharply retorted by asking, “By whom do

your sons or disciples cast them out?” Again, spiritualists affirm that

Jesus was a medium, that he was controlled by one or many spirits; but

when the charge was made to him direct he said that he was nothing

of the kind. “Say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a

devil?” daimonion, an Obeah, or familiar spirit in the Hebrew text.

Jesus answered, “I have not a devil.”[746]

The writer from whom we have above quoted, attempts also a parallel

between the aerial flights of Philip and Ezekiel and of Mrs. Guppy and

other modern mediums. He is ignorant or oblivious of the fact that {495}

while levitation occurred as an effect in both classes of cases, the

producing causes were totally dissimilar. The nature of this difference

we have adverted to already. Levitation may be produced consciously

or unconsciously to the subject. The juggler determines beforehand

that he will be levitated, for how long a time, and to what height;

he regulates the occult forces accordingly. The fakir produces the

same effect by the power of his aspiration and will, and, except when

in the ecstatic state, keeps control over his movements. So does the

priest of Siam, when, in the sacred pagoda, he mounts fifty feet in the

air with taper in hand, and flits from idol to idol, lighting up the

niches, self-supported, and stepping as confidently as though he were

upon solid ground. This, persons have seen and testify to. The officers

of the Russian squadron which recently circumnavigated the globe, and

was stationed for a long time in Japanese waters, relate the fact that,

besides many other marvels, they saw jugglers walk in mid-air from

tree-top to tree-top, without the slightest support.[747] They also

saw the pole and tape-climbing feats, described by Colonel Olcott in

his _People from the Other World_, and which have been so much called

in question by certain spiritualists and mediums whose zeal is greater

than their learning. The quotations from Col. Yule and other writers,

elsewhere given in this work, seem to place the matter beyond doubt

that these effects are produced.

Such phenomena, when occurring apart from religious rites, in India,

Japan, Thibet, Siam, and other “heathen” countries, phenomena a hundred

times more various and astounding than ever seen in civilized Europe

or America, are never attributed to the spirits of the departed. The

Pitris have naught to do with such public exhibitions. And we have but

to consult the list of the principal demons or elemental spirits to

find that their very names indicate their professions, or, to express

it clearly, the tricks to which each variety is best adapted. So we

have the Mâdan, a generic name indicating wicked elemental spirits,

half brutes, half monsters, for Mâdan signifies one that looks like

a cow. He is the friend of the malicious sorcerers and helps them to

effect their evil purposes of revenge by striking men and cattle with

sudden illness and death.

The _Shudâla-Mâdan_, or graveyard fiend, answers to our ghouls. He

delights where crime and murder were committed, near burial-spots and

places of execution. He helps the juggler in all the fire-phenomena as

well as Kutti Shâttan, the little juggling imps. Shudâla, they say, is

a half-fire, half-water demon, for he received from Siva permission to

assume any shape he chose, transform one thing into another; and when {496}

he is not in fire, he is in water. It is he who blinds people “to see

that which _they do not_ see.” _Shûla Mâdan_, is another mischievous

spook. He is the _furnace_-demon, skilled in pottery and baking. If

you keep friends with him, he will not injure you; but woe to him who

incurs his wrath. Shûla likes compliments and flattery, and as he

generally keeps underground it is to him that a juggler must look to

help him raise a tree from a seed in a quarter of an hour and ripen its

fruit.

_Kumil-Mâdan_, is the _undine_ proper. He is an elemental spirit of the

water, and his name means _blowing like a bubble_. He is a very merry

imp; and will help a friend in anything relative to his department; he

will shower rain and show the future and the present to those who will

resort to hydromancy or divination by water.

_Poruthû Mâdan_, is the “wrestling” demon; he is the strongest of all;

and whenever there are feats shown in which physical force is required,

such as _levitations_, or taming of wild animals, he will help the

performer by keeping him above the soil or will overpower a wild beast

before the tamer has time to utter his incantation. So, every “physical

manifestation” has its own class of elemental spirits to superintend

them.

Returning now to levitations of human bodies and inanimate bodies,

in modern circle-rooms, we must refer the reader to the Introductory

chapter of this work. (See “Æthrobasy.”) In connection with the story

of Simon the Magician, we have shown the explanation of the ancients as

to how the levitation and transport of heavy bodies could be produced.

We will now try and suggest a hypothesis for the same in relation to

_mediums, i. e._, persons supposed to be unconscious at the moment of

the phenomena, which the believers claim to be produced by disembodied

“spirits.” We need not repeat that which has been sufficiently

explained before. Conscious æthrobasy under magneto-electrical

conditions is possible only to _adepts_ who can never be overpowered by

an influence foreign to themselves, but remain sole masters of their

WILL.

Thus levitation, we will say, must always occur in obedience to law—a

law as inexorable as that which makes a body unaffected by it remain

upon the ground. And where should we seek for that law outside of the

theory of molecular attraction? It is a scientific hypothesis that the

form of force which first brings nebulous or star matter together into

a whirling vortex is electricity; and modern chemistry is being totally

reconstructed upon the theory of electric polarities of atoms. The

waterspout, the tornado, the whirlwind, the cyclone, and the hurricane,

are all doubtless the result of electrical action. This phenomenon has

been studied from above as well as from below, observations having been

made both upon the ground and from a balloon floating above the vortex

of a thunder-storm.

Observe now, that this force, under the conditions of a dry and warm {497}

atmosphere at the earth’s surface, can accumulate a dynamic energy

capable of lifting enormous bodies of water, of compressing the

particles of atmosphere, and of sweeping across a country, tearing

up forests, lifting rocks, and scattering buildings in fragments

over the ground. Wild’s electric machine causes induced currents of

magneto-electricity so enormously powerful as to produce light by which

small print may be read, on a dark night, at a distance of two miles

from the place where it is operating.

As long ago as the year 1600, Gilbert, in his _De Magnete_, enunciated

the principle that the globe itself is one vast magnet, and some of

our advanced electricians are now beginning to realize that man,

too, possesses this property, and that the mutual attractions and

repulsions of individuals toward each other may at least in part find

their explanation in this fact. The experience of attendants upon

spiritualistic circles corroborates this opinion. Says Professor

Nicholas Wagner, of the University of St. Petersburg: “Heat, or

_perhaps the electricity of the investigators_ sitting in the circle,

must concentrate itself in the table and gradually develop into

motions. At the same time, or a little afterward, the psychical force

unites to assist the two other powers. By _psychical force_, I mean

that which evolves itself out of all the other forces of our organism.

The combination into one general something of several separate forces,

and capable, when combined, of manifesting itself in degree, according

to the individuality.” The progress of the phenomena he considers

to be affected by the cold or the dryness of the atmosphere. Now,

remembering what has been said as to the subtler forms of energy which

the Hermetists have proved to exist in nature, and accepting the

hypothesis enunciated by Mr. Wagner that “the power which calls out

these manifestations is centred in the mediums,” may not the medium,

by furnishing in himself a nucleus as perfect in its way as the system

of permanent steel magnets in Wild’s battery, produce astral currents

sufficiently strong to lift in their vortex a body even as ponderable

as a human form? It is not necessary that the object lifted should

assume a gyratory motion, for the phenomenon we are observing, unlike

the whirlwind, is directed by an intelligence, which is capable

of keeping the body to be raised within the ascending current and

preventing its rotation.

Levitation in this case would be a purely mechanical phenomenon. The

inert body of the passive medium is lifted by a vortex created either

by the elemental spirits—possibly, in some cases, by human ones, and

sometimes through purely morbific causes, as in the cases of Professor

Perty’s sick somnambules. The levitation of the adept is, on the

contrary, a magneto-electric effect, as we have just stated. He has {498}

made the polarity of his body opposite to that of the atmosphere, and

identical with that of the earth; hence, attractable by the former,

retaining his consciousness the while. A like phenomenal levitation is

possible, also, when disease has changed the corporeal polarity of a

patient, as disease always does in a greater or lesser degree. But, in

such case, the lifted person would not be likely to remain conscious.

In one series of observations upon whirlwinds, made in 1859, in the

basin of the Rocky Mountains, “a newspaper was caught up ... to a

height of some two hundred feet; and there it oscillated to and fro

across the track for some considerable time, whilst accompanying the

onward motion.”[748] Of course scientists will say that a parallel

cannot be instituted between this case and that of human levitation;

that no vortex can be formed in a room by which a medium could be

raised; but this is a question of astral light and spirit, which have

their own peculiar dynamical laws. Those who understand the latter,

affirm that a concourse of people laboring under mental excitement,

which reäcts upon the physical system, throw off electro-magnetic

emanations, which, when sufficiently intense, can throw the whole

circumambient atmosphere into perturbation. Force enough may actually

be generated to create an electrical vortex, sufficiently powerful to

produce many a strange phenomenon. With this hint, the whirling of

the dervishes, and the wild dances, swayings, gesticulations, music,

and shouts of devotees will be understood as all having a common

object in view—namely, the creation of such astral conditions as favor

psychological and physical phenomena. The _rationale_ of religious

revivals will also be better understood if this principle is borne in

mind.

But there is still another point to be considered. If the medium is

a nucleus of magnetism and a conductor of that force, he would be

subject to the same laws as a metallic conductor, and be attracted to

his magnet. If, therefore, a magnetic centre of the requisite power

was formed directly over him by the unseen powers presiding over the

manifestations, why should not his body be lifted toward it, despite

terrestrial gravity? We know that, in the case of a medium who is

unconscious of the progress of the operation, it is necessary to first

admit the fact of such an intelligence, and next, the possibility

of the experiment being conducted as described; but, in view of the {499}

multifarious evidences offered, not only in our own researches, which

claim no authority, but also in those of Mr. Crookes, and a great

number of others, in many lands and at different epochs, we shall not

turn aside from the main object of offering this hypothesis in the

profitless endeavor to strengthen a case which scientific men will not

consider with patience, even when sanctioned by the most distinguished

of their own body.

As early as 1836, the public was apprised of certain phenomena which

were as extraordinary, if not more so than all the manifestations

which are produced in our days. The famous correspondence between two

well-known mesmerizers, Deleuze and Billot, was published in France,

and the wonders discussed for a time in every society. Billot firmly

believed in the apparition of spirits, for, as he says, he has both

seen, heard, and felt them. Deleuze was as much convinced of this truth

as Billot, and declared that man’s immortality and the return of the

dead, or rather of their shadows, was the best demonstrated fact in his

opinion. Material objects were brought to him from distant places by

invisible hands, and he communicated on most important subjects with

the invisible intelligences. “In regard to this,” he remarks, “I cannot

conceive how spiritual beings are able to carry material objects.” More

skeptical, less intuitional than Billot, nevertheless, he agreed with

the latter that “the question of spiritualism is not one of opinions,

but _of facts_.”

Such is precisely the conclusion to which Professor Wagner, of St.

Petersburg, was finally driven. In the second pamphlet on _Mediumistic

Phenomena_, issued by him in December, 1875, he administers the

following rebuke to Mr. Shkliarevsky, one of his materialistic critics:

“So long as the spiritual manifestations were weak and sporadic, we

men of science could afford to deceive ourselves with theories of

unconscious muscular action, or unconscious cerebrations of our brains,

and tumble the rest into one heap as juggleries.... But now these

wonders have grown too striking; the spirits show themselves in the

shape of tangible, materialized forms, which can be touched and handled

at will by any learned skeptic like yourself, and even be weighed and

measured. We can struggle no longer, for every resistance becomes

absurd—it threatens lunacy. Try then to realize this, and to humble

yourself before the possibility of impossible facts.”

Iron is only magnetized temporarily, but steel permanently, by contact

with the lodestone. Now steel is but iron which has passed through a

carbonizing process, and yet that process has quite changed the nature

of the metal, so far as its relations to the lodestone are concerned.

In like manner, it may be said that the medium is but an ordinary

person who is magnetized by influx from the astral light; and as the {500}

permanence of the magnetic property in the metal is measured by its

more or less steel-like character, so may we not say that the intensity

and permanency of mediumistic power is in proportion to the saturation

of the medium with the magnetic or astral force?

This condition of saturation may be congenital, or brought about in

any one of these ways:—by the mesmeric process; by spirit-agency; or

by self-will. Moreover, the condition seems hereditable, like any

other physical or mental peculiarity; many, and we may even say most

great mediums having had mediumship exhibited in some form by one or

more progenitors. Mesmeric subjects easily pass into the higher forms

of clairvoyance and mediumship (now so called), as Gregory, Deleuze,

Puysegur, Du Potet, and other authorities inform us. As to the process

of self-saturation, we have only to turn to the account of the priestly

devotees of Japan, Siam, China, India, Thibet, and Egypt, as well as of

European countries, to be satisfied of its reality. Long persistence

in a fixed determination to subjugate matter, brings about a condition

in which not only is one insensible to external impressions, but even

death itself may be simulated, as we have already seen. The ecstatic so

enormously reïnforces his will-power, as to draw into himself, as into

a vortex, the potencies resident in the astral light to supplement his

own natural store.

The phenomena of mesmerism are explicable upon no other hypothesis

than the projection of a current of force from the operator into

the subject. If a man can project this force by an exercise of the

will, what prevents his attracting it toward himself by reversing the

current? Unless, indeed, it be urged that the force is generated within

his body and cannot be attracted from any supply without. But even

under such an hypothesis, if he can generate a superabundant supply to

saturate another person, or even an inanimate object by his will, why

cannot he generate it in excess for self-saturation?

In his work on _Anthropology_, Professor J. R. Buchanan notes the

tendency of the natural gestures to follow the direction of the

phrenological organs; the attitude of combativeness being downward and

backward; that of hope and spirituality upward and forward; that of

firmness upward and backward; and so on. The adepts of Hermetic science

know this principle so well that they explain the levitation of their

own bodies, whenever it happens unawares, by saying that the thought

is so intently fixed upon a point above them, that when the body is

thoroughly imbued with the astral influence, it follows the mental

aspiration and rises into the air as easily as a cork held beneath

the water rises to the surface when its buoyancy is allowed to assert

itself. The giddiness felt by certain persons when standing upon the

brink of a chasm is explained upon the same principle. Young children, {501}

who have little or no active imagination, and in whom experience has

not had sufficient time to develop fear, are seldom, if ever, giddy;

but the adult of a certain mental temperament, seeing the chasm and

picturing in his imaginative fancy the consequences of a fall, allows

himself to be drawn by the attraction of the earth, and _unless the

spell of fascination_ be broken, his body will follow his thought to

the foot of the precipice.

That this giddiness is purely a temperamental affair, is shown in the

fact that some persons never experience the sensation, and inquiry will

probably reveal the fact that such are deficient in the imaginative

faculty. We have a case in view—a gentleman who, in 1858, had so firm

a nerve that he horrified the witnesses by standing upon the coping of

the _Arc de Triomphe_, in Paris, with folded arms, and his feet half

over the edge; but, having since become short-sighted, was taken with

a panic upon attempting to cross a plank-walk over the courtyard of a

hotel, where the footway was more than two feet and a half wide, and

there was no danger. He looked at the flagging below, gave his fancy

free play, and would have fallen had he not quickly sat down.

It is a dogma of science that perpetual motion is impossible; it is

another dogma, that the allegation that the Hermetists discovered

the elixir of life, and that certain of them, by partaking of it,

prolonged their existence far beyond the usual term, is a superstitious

absurdity. And the claim that the baser metals have been transmuted

into gold, and that the universal solvent was discovered, excites

only contemptuous derision in a century which has crowned the edifice

of philosophy with a copestone of protoplasm. The first is declared

a _physical impossibility_; as much so, according to Babinet, the

astronomer, as the “levitation of an object without contact;”[749]

the second, a physiological vagary begotten of a disordered mind; the

third, a chemical absurdity.

Balfour Stewart says that while the man of science cannot assert that

“he is intimately acquainted with all the forces of nature, and cannot

prove that perpetual motion is impossible; for, in truth, he knows very

little of these forces ... he does think _that he has entered into

the spirit and design of nature_, and therefore he denies at once the

possibility of such a machine.”[750] If he has discovered the design of

nature, he certainly has not _the spirit_, for he denies its existence

in one sense; and denying spirit he prevents that perfect understanding

of universal law which would redeem modern philosophy from its thousand

mortifying dilemmas and mistakes. If Professor B. Stewart’s negation is {502}

founded upon no better analogy than that of his French contemporary,

Babinet, he is in danger of a like humiliating catastrophe. The

universe itself illustrates the actuality of perpetual motion; and the

atomic theory, which has proved such a balm to the exhausted minds of

our cosmic explorers, is based upon it. The telescope searching through

space, and the microscope probing the mysteries of the little world in

a drop of water, reveal the same law in operation; and, as everything

below is like everything above, who would presume to say that when the

conservation of energy is better understood, and the two additional

forces of the kabalists are added to the catalogue of orthodox science,

it may not be discovered how to construct a machine which shall run

without friction and supply itself with energy in proportion to its

wastes? “Fifty years ago,” says the venerable Mr. de Lara, “a Hamburg

paper, quoting from an English one an account of the opening of the

Manchester and Liverpool Railway, pronounced it a gross fabrication;

capping the climax by saying, ‘even so far extends the credulity of the

English;’” the moral is apparent. The recent discovery of the compound

called METALLINE, by an American chemist, makes it appear probable that

friction can, in a large degree, be overcome. One thing is certain,

when a man shall have discovered the perpetual motion he will be able

to understand by analogy all the secrets of nature; progress in direct

ratio with resistance.

We may say the same of the elixir of life, by which is understood

physical life, the soul being of course deathless only by reason of

its divine immortal union with spirit. But _continual_ or _perpetual_

does not mean endless. The kabalists have never claimed that either

an endless physical life or unending motion is possible. The Hermetic

axiom maintains that only the First Cause and its direct emanations,

our spirits (scintillas from the eternal central sun which will be

reäbsorbed by it at the end of time) are incorruptible and eternal.

But, in possession of a knowledge of occult natural forces, yet

undiscovered by the materialists, they asserted that both physical

life and mechanical motion could be prolonged indefinitely. The

philosophers’ stone had more than one meaning attached to its

mysterious origin. Says Professor Wilder: “The study of alchemy was

even more universal than the several writers upon it appear to have

known, and was always the auxiliary, if not identical with, the occult

sciences of magic, necromancy, and astrology; probably from the same

fact that they were originally but forms of a spiritualism which was

generally extant in all ages of human history.”

Our greatest wonder is, that the very men who view the human body

simply as a “digesting machine,” should object to the idea that if

some equivalent for metalline could be applied between its molecules, {503}

it should run without friction. Man’s body is taken from the earth,

or dust, according to _Genesis_; which allegory bars the claims of

modern analysts to original discovery of the nature of the inorganic

constituents of human body. If the author of _Genesis_ knew this, and

Aristotle taught the identity between the life-principle of plants,

animals, and men, our affiliation with mother earth seems to have been

settled long ago.

Elie de Beaumont has recently reasserted the old doctrine of Hermes

that there is a terrestrial circulation comparable to that of the blood

of man. Now, since it is a doctrine as old as time, that nature is

continually renewing her wasted energies by absorption from the source

of energy, why should the child differ from the parent? Why may not

man, by discovering the source and nature of this recuperative energy,

extract from the earth herself the juice or quintessence with which to

replenish his own forces? This _may_ have been the great secret of the

alchemists. Stop the circulation of the terrestrial fluids and we have

stagnation, putrefaction, death; stop the circulation of the fluids in

man, and stagnation, absorption, calcification from old age, and death

ensue. If the alchemists had simply discovered some chemical compound

capable of keeping the channels of our circulation unclogged, would

not all the rest easily follow? And why, we ask, if the surface-waters

of certain mineral springs have such virtue in the cure of disease and

the restoration of physical vigor, is it illogical to say that if we

could get the first runnings from the alembic of nature in the bowels

of the earth, we might, perhaps, find that the fountain of youth was no

myth after all. Jennings asserts that the elixir was produced out of

the secret chemical laboratories of nature by some adepts; and Robert

Boyle, the chemist, mentions a medicated wine or cordial which Dr.

Lefevre tried with wonderful effect upon an old woman.

_Alchemy is as old as tradition itself._ “The first authentic record

on this subject,” says William Godwin, “is an edict of Diocletian,

about 300 years after Christ, ordering a diligent search to be made

in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art of making

gold and silver, that they might be consigned to the flames. This

edict necessarily presumes a certain antiquity to the pursuit; and

_fabulous_ history has recorded Solomon, Pythagoras, and Hermes among

its distinguished votaries.”

And this question of transmutation—this alkahest or universal solvent,

which comes next after the elixir vitæ in the order of the three

alchemical agents? Is the idea so absurd as to be totally unworthy of

consideration in this age of chemical discovery? How shall we dispose

of the historical anecdotes of men who actually made gold and gave it

away, and of those who testify to having seen them do it? Libavius, {504}

Geberus, Arnoldus, Thomas Aquinas, Bernardus Comes, Joannes Penotus,

Quercetanus Geber, the Arabian father of European alchemy, Eugenius

Philalethes, Baptista Porta, Rubeus, Dornesius, Vogelius, Irenæus

Philaletha Cosmopolita, and many mediæval alchemists and Hermetic

philosophers assert the fact. Must we believe them all visionaries

and lunatics, these otherwise great and learned scholars? Francesco

Picus, in his work _De Auro_, gives eighteen instances of gold being

produced in his presence by artificial means; and Thomas Vaughan,[751]

going to a goldsmith to sell 1,200 marks worth of gold, when the man

suspiciously remarked that the gold was too pure to have ever come

out of a mine, ran away, leaving the money behind him. In a preceding

chapter we have brought forward the testimony of a number of authors to

this effect.

Marco Polo tells us that in some mountains of Thibet, which he

calls _Chingintalas_, there are veins of the substance from which

_Salamander_ is made: “For the real truth is, that the salamander is

no beast, as they allege in our parts of the world, but is a substance

found in the earth.”[752] Then he adds that a Turk of the name of

Zurficar, told him that he had been procuring salamanders for the Great

Khan, in those regions, for the space of three years. “He said that

the way they got them was by digging in that mountain till they found

a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed,

and, when so treated, it divides, as it were, into fibres of wool,

which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded and

washed, so as to leave only the fibres, like fibres of wool. These were

then spun.... When first made, these napkins are not very white, but,

by putting them into the fire for a while, they come out as white as

snow.”

Therefore, as several authorities testify, this mineral substance

is the famous _Asbestos_,[753] which the Rev. A. Williamson says is

found in Shantung. But, it is not only incombustible thread which is

made from it. An oil, having several most extraordinary properties,

is extracted from it, and the secret of its virtues remains with

certain lamas and Hindu adepts. When rubbed into the body, it leaves no

external stain or mark, but, nevertheless, after having been so rubbed,

the part can be scrubbed with soap and hot or cold water, without

the virtue of the ointment being affected in the least. The person

so rubbed may boldly step into the hottest fire; unless suffocated,

he will remain uninjured. Another property of the oil is that, when

combined with _another substance_, that we are not at liberty to {505}

name, and left stagnant under the rays of the moon, on certain nights

indicated by native astrologers, it will breed strange creatures.

Infusoria we may call them in one sense, but then these grow and

develop. Speaking of Kashmere, Marco Polo observes that they have an

astonishing acquaintance with the _devilries_ of enchantment, insomuch

that they _make their idols to speak_.

To this day, the greatest magian mystics of these regions may be found

in Kashmere. The various religious sects of this country were always

credited with preternatural powers, and were the resort of adepts and

sages. As Colonel Yule remarks, “Vambery tells us that even in our day,

the Kasmiri dervishes are preëminent among their Mahometan brethren for

_cunning_, secret arts, skill in exorcisms and magic.”[754]

But, all modern chemists are not equally dogmatic in their negation of

the possibility of such a transmutation. Dr. Peisse, Desprez, and even

the all-denying Louis Figuier, of Paris, seem to be far from rejecting

the idea. Dr. Wilder says: “The possibility of reducing the elements to

their primal form, as they are supposed to have existed in the igneous

mass from which the earth-crust is believed to have been formed, is not

considered by physicists to be so absurd an idea as has been intimated.

There is a relationship between metals, often so close as to indicate

an original identity. Persons called alchemists may, therefore, have

devoted their energies to investigations into these matters, as

Lavoisier, Davy, Faraday, and others of our day have explained the

mysteries of chemistry.”[755] A learned Theosophist, a practicing

physician of this country, one who has studied the occult sciences and

alchemy for over thirty years, has succeeded in reducing the elements

to their primal form, and made what is termed “the pre-Adamite earth.”

It appears in the form of an earthy precipitate from pure water, which,

on being disturbed, presents the most opalescent and vivid colors.

“The secret,” say the alchemists, as if enjoying the ignorance of the

uninitiated, “is an amalgamation of the salt, sulphur, and mercury

combined three times in Azoth, by a triple sublimation and a triple

fixation.”

“How ridiculously absurd!” will exclaim a learned modern chemist. Well,

the disciples of the great Hermes understand the above as well as a

graduate of Harvard University comprehends the meaning of his Professor

of Chemistry, when the latter says: “With one hydroxyl group we can

only produce monatomic compounds; use two hydroxyl groups, and we can

form around the same skeleton a number of diatomic compounds. ... {506}

Attach to the nucleus three hydroxyl groups, and there result triatomic

compounds, among which is a very familiar substance—

H H H

| | |

H-O-C-C-C-O-H

| | |

H H H

|

H

_Glycerine_.”

“Attach thyself,” says the alchemist, “to the four letters of the

tetragram disposed in the following manner: The letters of the

ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at

first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein,

and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.” The

arcanum—the fourth emanation of the Akâsa, the principle of LIFE, which

is represented in its third transmutation by the fiery sun, the eye of

the world, or of Osiris, as the Egyptians termed it. An eye tenderly

watching its youngest daughter, wife, and sister—Isis, our mother

earth. See what Hermes, the thrice-great master, says of her: “Her

father is the sun, her mother is the moon.” It attracts and caresses,

and then repulses her by a projectile power. It is for the Hermetic

student to watch its motions, to catch its subtile currents, to guide

and direct them with the help of the _athanor_, the Archimedean lever

of the alchemist. What is this mysterious athanor? Can the physicist

tell us—he who sees and examines it daily? Aye, he sees; but does he

comprehend the secret-ciphered characters traced by the divine finger

on every sea-shell in the ocean’s deep; on every leaf that trembles in

the breeze; in the bright star, whose stellar lines are in his sight

but so many more or less luminous lines of hydrogen?

[Illustration: Three geometrical shapes]

“God _geometrizes_,” said Plato.[756] “The laws of nature are the {507}

thoughts of God;” exclaimed Oërsted, 2,000 years later. “His

thoughts are immutable,” repeated the solitary student of Hermetic

lore, “therefore it is in the perfect harmony and equilibrium of all

things that we must seek the truth.” And thus, proceeding from the

indivisible unity, he found emanating from it two contrary forces,

each acting through the other and producing equilibrium, and the

three were but one, the Pythagorean Eternal Monad. The primordial

point is a circle; the circle squaring itself from the four cardinal

points becomes a quaternary, the perfect square, having at each of

its four angles a letter of the mirific name, the sacred TETRAGRAM.

It is the four Buddhas who came and have passed away; the Pythagorean

_tetractys_—absorbed and resolved by the one eternal NO-BEING.

Tradition declares that on the dead body of Hermes, at Hebron, was

found by an Isarim, an initiate, the tablet known as the _Smaragdine_.

It contains, in a few sentences, the essence of the Hermetic wisdom. To

those who read but with their bodily eyes, the precepts will suggest

nothing new or extraordinary, for it merely begins by saying that it

speaks not fictitious things, but that which is true and most certain.

“What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is

similar to that which is below to accomplish the wonders of one thing.

“As all things were produced by the mediation of one being, so all

things were produced from this one _by adaptation_.

“Its father is the sun, its mother is the moon.

“It is the cause of all perfection throughout the whole earth.

“Its power is perfect _if it is changed into earth_.

“Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross, acting

prudently and with judgment.

“Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then

descend again to earth, and unite together the power of things inferior

and superior; thus you will possess the light of the whole world, and

all obscurity will fly away from you.

“This thing has more fortitude than fortitude itself, because _it will

overcome every subtile thing_ and _penetrate every solid thing_.

“By it the world was formed.”

This mysterious thing is the universal, magical agent, the astral

light, which in the correlations of its forces furnishes the alkahest, {508}

the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of life. Hermetic philosophy

names it Azoth, the soul of the world, the celestial virgin, the

great Magnes, etc., etc. Physical science knows it as “heat, light,

electricity, and magnetism;” but ignoring its spiritual properties and

the occult potency contained in ether, rejects everything it ignores.

It explains and depicts the crystalline forms of the snow-flakes, their

modifications of an hexagonal prism which shoot out an infinity of

delicate needles. It has studied them so perfectly that it has even

calculated, with the most wondrous mathematical precision, that all

these needles diverge from each other at an angle of 60°. Can it tell

us as well the cause of this “endless variety of the most exquisite

forms,”[757] each of which is a most perfect geometrical figure in

itself? These frozen, star-like and flower-like blossoms, may be,

for all materialistic science knows, a shower of messages snowed by

spiritual hands from the worlds above for spiritual eyes below to read.

The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions,

the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which

the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting point, and which

forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is

inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of the occultist.

Within its mystical precinct lies the master-key which opens the door

of every science, physical as well as spiritual. It symbolizes our

human existence, for the circle of life circumscribes the four points

of the cross, which represent in succession birth, life, death, and

IMMORTALITY. Everything in this world is a trinity completed by the

quaternary,[758] and every element is divisible on this same principle.

Physiology can divide man _ad infinitum_, as physical science has

divided the four primal and principal elements in several dozens of

others; she will not succeed in changing either. Birth, life, and death

will ever be a trinity completed only at the cyclic end. Even were

science to change the longed-for immortality into annihilation, it

still will ever be a quaternary; for God “geometrizes!”

Therefore, perhaps alchemy will one day be allowed to talk of her salt,

mercury, sulphur, and azoth, her symbols and mirific letters, and

repeat, with the exponent of the _Synthesis of Organic Compounds_, that

“it must be remembered that the grouping is _no play of fancy_, and

that a good reason can be given for the position of every letter.”[759]

Dr. Peisse, of Paris, wrote in 1863, the following:

“One word, _a propos_, of alchemy. What must we think of the Hermetic {509}

art? Is it lawful to believe that we can transmute metals, make

gold? Well, positive men, _esprits forts_ of the nineteenth century,

know that Mr. Figuier, doctor of science and medicine, chemical

analyst in the School of Pharmacy, of Paris, does not wish to express

himself upon the subject. He doubts, he hesitates. He knows several

alchemists (for there are such) who, basing themselves upon modern

chemical discoveries, and especially on the singular circumstance of

the equivalents demonstrated by M. Dumas, pretend that metals are

not simple bodies, true elements in the absolute sense, and that in

consequence they may be produced by the process of decomposition....

This encourages me to take a step further, and candidly avow that I

would be only moderately surprised to see some one make gold. I have

only one reason to give, but sufficient it seems; which is, that gold

has not always existed; it has been made by some chemical travail or

other in the bosom of the fused matter of our globe;[760] perhaps some

of it may be even now in process of formation. The pretended simple

bodies of our chemistry are very probably secondary products, in the

formation of the terrestrial mass. It has been proved so with water,

one of the most respectable elements of ancient physics. To-day, we

create water. Why should we not make gold? An eminent experimentalist,

Mr. Desprez, has made the diamond. True, this diamond is only _a

scientific diamond_, a philosophical diamond, which would be worth

nothing; but, no matter, my position holds good. Besides, we are not

left to simple conjectures. There is a man living, who, in a paper

addressed to the scientific bodies, in 1853, has underscored these

words—I have discovered the method of producing artificial gold, I

have made gold. This adept is Mr. Theodore Tiffereau, ex-preparator of

chemistry in the _École Professionelle et Supérieure_ of Nantes.”[761]

Cardinal de Rohan, the famous victim of the diamond necklace

conspiracy, testified that he had seen the Count Cagliostro make both

gold and diamonds. We presume that those who agree with Professor T.

Sterry Hunt, F.R.S., will have no patience with the theory of Dr.

Peisse, for they believe that all of our metalliferous deposits are

due to the action of organic life. And so, until they do come to some

composition of their differences, so as to let us know for a certainty

the nature of gold, and whether it is the product of interior volcanic

alchemy or surface segregation and filtration; we will leave them to

settle their quarrel between themselves, and give credit meanwhile to

the old philosophers.

Professor Balfour Stewart, whom no one would think of classing among {510}

illiberal minds; who, with far more fairness and more frequently than

any of his colleagues admits the failings of modern science, shows

himself, nevertheless, as biassed as other scientists on this question.

Perpetual light being only another name for perpetual motion, he

tells us, and the latter being impossible because we have no means of

equilibrating the waste of combustible material, a Hermetic light is,

therefore, an impossibility.[762] Noting the fact that a “perpetual

light was supposed to result from _magical_ powers,” and remarking

further that such a light is “certainly not of this earth, where light

and all other forms of superior energy are essentially evanescent,”

this gentleman argues as though the Hermetic philosophers had always

claimed that the flame under discussion was an ordinary earthly flame,

resulting from the combustion of luminiferous material. In this the

philosophers have been constantly misunderstood and misrepresented.

How many great minds—unbelievers from the start—after having studied

the “secret doctrine,” have changed their opinions and found out how

mistaken they were. And how contradictory it seems to find one moment

Balfour Stewart quoting some philosophical morals of Bacon—whom he

terms the father of experimental science—and saying “ ... surely we

ought to learn a lesson from these remarks ... and be very cautious

_before we dismiss any branch of knowledge_ or train of thought as

essentially unprofitable,” and then dismissing the next moment, as

_utterly impossible_, the claims of the alchemists! He shows Aristotle

as “entertaining the idea that light is not any body, or the emanation

of any body, and that therefore light is an energy or act;” and yet,

although the ancients were the first to show, through Demokritus, to

John Dalton the doctrine of atoms, and through Pythagoras and even the

oldest of the Chaldean oracles, that of ether as a universal agent,

their ideas, says Stewart, “were not prolific.” He admits that they

“possessed great genius and intellectual power,” but adds that “they

were deficient in physical conceptions, and, in consequence, their

ideas were not prolific.”[763]

The whole of the present work is a protest against such a loose way

of judging the ancients. To be thoroughly competent to criticise

their ideas, and assure one’s self whether their ideas were distinct

and “appropriate to the facts,” one must have sifted these ideas to

the very bottom. It is idle to repeat that which we have frequently

said, and that which every scholar ought to know; namely, that the

quintessence of their knowledge was in the hands of the priests, who

never wrote them, and in those of the “initiates” who, like Plato, {511}

_did not dare_ write them. Therefore, those few speculations on the

material and spiritual universes, which they did put in writing, could

not enable posterity to judge them rightly, even had not the early

Christian Vandals, the later crusaders, and the fanatics of the middle

ages destroyed three parts of that which remained of the Alexandrian

library and its later schools. Professor Draper shows that the Cardinal

Ximenes alone “delivered to the flames in the squares of Granada,

80,000 Arabic manuscripts, many of them translations of classical

authors.” In the Vatican libraries, whole passages in the most rare and

precious treatises of the ancients were found erased and blotted out,

for the sake of interlining them with absurd psalmodies!

Who then, of those who turn away from the “secret doctrine” as being

“unphilosophical” and, therefore, unworthy of a scientific thought,

has a right to say that he studied the ancients; that he is aware of

all that they knew, and knowing now far more, knows also that they

knew little, if anything. This “secret doctrine” contains the alpha

and the omega of universal science; therein lies the corner and the

keystone of all the ancient and modern knowledge; and alone in this

“unphilosophical” doctrine remains buried the _absolute_ in the

philosophy of the dark problems of life and death.

“The great energies of Nature are known to us only by their effects,”

said Paley. Paraphrasing the sentence, we will say that the great

achievements of the days of old are known to posterity only by

their effects. If one takes a book on alchemy, and sees in it the

speculations on gold and light by the brothers of the Rosie Cross, he

will find himself certainly startled, for the simple reason that he

will not understand them at all. “The Hermetic gold,” he may read,

“is the outflow of the sunbeam, or of light suffused invisibly and

magically into the body of the world. Light is sublimated gold, rescued

magically by invisible stellar attraction, out of material depths.

Gold is thus the deposit of light, which of itself generates. Light in

the celestial world is subtile, vaporous, magically exalted gold, or

‘_spirit of flame_.’ Gold draws inferior natures in the metals, and

intensifying and multiplying, converts into itself.”[764]

Nevertheless, facts are facts; and, as Billot says of spiritualism,

we will remark of occultism generally and of alchemy in particular—it

is not a matter of opinion but of _facts_, men of science call an

inextinguishable lamp an _impossibility_, but nevertheless persons

in our own age as well as in the days of ignorance and superstition

have found them burning bright in old vaults shut up for centuries; {512}

and other persons there are who possess the secret of keeping such

fires for several ages. Men of science say that ancient and modern

spiritualism, magic, and mesmerism, are charlatanry or delusion; but

there are 800 millions on the face of the globe, of perfectly sane men

and women, who believe in all these. Whom are we to credit?

“Demokritus,” says Lucian,[765] “believed in no (miracles) ... he

applied himself to discover the method by which the theurgists could

produce them; in a word, his philosophy brought him to the conclusion

that magic was entirely confined to the application and _the imitation_

of the laws and the works of nature.”

Now, the opinion of the “laughing philosopher” is of the greatest

importance to us, since the Magi left by Xerxes, at Abdera, were his

instructors, and he had studied magic, moreover, for a considerably

long time with the Egyptian priests.[766] For nearly ninety years

of the one hundred and nine of his life, this great philosopher had

made experiments, and noted them down in a book, which, according

to Petronius,[767] _treated of nature_—facts that he had verified

himself. And we find him not only disbelieving in and utterly

rejecting _miracles_, but asserting that every one of those that were

authenticated by eye-witnesses, had, and could have taken place; for

all, even the most _incredible_, was produced according to the “_hidden

laws of nature_.”[768]

“The day will never come, when any one of the propositions of Euclid

will be denied,”[769] says Professor Draper, exalting the Aristoteleans

at the expense of the Pythagoreans and Platonists. Shall we, in such a

case, disbelieve a number of well-informed authorities (Lemprière among

others), who assert that the fifteen books of the _Elements_ are not

to be wholly attributed to Euclid; and that many of the most valuable

truths and demonstrations contained in them owe their existence to

Pythagoras, Thales, and Eudoxus? That Euclid, notwithstanding his

genius, was _the first_ who reduced them to order, and only interwove

theories of his own to render the whole a complete and connected system

of geometry? And if these authorities are right, then it is again to

that central sun of metaphysical science—Pythagoras and his school,

that the moderns are indebted directly for such men as Eratosthenes,

the world-famous geometer and cosmographer, Archimedes, and even

Ptolemy, notwithstanding his obstinate errors. Were it not for the

exact science of such men, and for fragments of their works that they

left us to base Galilean speculations upon, the great priests of the {513}

nineteenth century might find themselves, perhaps, still in the

bondage of the Church; and philosophizing, in 1876, on the Augustine

and Bedean cosmogony, the rotation of the canopy of heaven round the

earth, and the majestic flatness of the latter.

The nineteenth century seems positively doomed to humiliating

confessions. Feltre (Italy) erects a public statue “to _Panfilo

Castaldi, the illustrious inventor of movable printing types_,” and

adds in its inscription the generous confession that Italy renders to

him “_this tribute of honor too long deferred_.” But no sooner is the

statue placed, than the Feltreians are advised by Colonel Yule to “burn

it _in honest lime_.” He proves that many a traveller beside Marco

Polo had brought home from China movable wooden types and specimens of

Chinese books, the entire text of which was printed with such wooden

blocks.[770] We have seen in several Thibetan lamaseries, where they

have printing-offices, such blocks preserved as curiosities. They

are known to be of the greatest antiquity, inasmuch as types were

perfected, and the old ones abandoned contemporaneously with the

earliest records of Buddhistic lamaism. Therefore, they must have

existed in China before the Christian era.

Let every one ponder over the wise words of Professor Roscoe, in his

lecture on _Spectrum Analysis_. “The infant truths must be made useful.

Neither you nor I, perhaps, can see the _how_ or the _when_, but that

the time may come at any moment, when the most obscure of nature’s

secrets shall at once be employed for the benefit of mankind, no one

who knows anything of science, can for one instant doubt. Who could

have foretold that the discovery that a dead frog’s legs jump when they

are touched by two different metals, should have led in a few short

years to the discovery of the electric telegraph?”

Professor Roscoe, visiting Kirchhoff and Bunsen when they were making

their great discoveries of the nature of the Fraunhoffer lines,

says that it _flashed_ upon his mind at once that there is iron in

the sun; therein presenting one more evidence to add to a million

predecessors, that great discoveries usually come with a _flash_,

and not by induction. There are many more flashes in store for us.

It may be found, perhaps, that one of the last sparkles of modern

science—the beautiful green spectrum of silver—is nothing new, but was,

notwithstanding the paucity “and great inferiority of their optical

instruments,” well known to the ancient chemists and physicists. Silver

and green were associated together as far back as the days of Hermes.

Luna, or Astartè (the Hermetic silver), is one of the two chief symbols

of the Rosicrucians. It is a Hermetic axiom, that “the cause of the {514}

splendor and variety of colors lies deep in the affinities of nature;

and that there is a singular and mysterious alliance between color and

sound.” The kabalists place their “middle nature” in direct relation

with the moon; and the green ray occupies the centre point between

the others, being placed in the middle of the spectrum. The Egyptian

priests chanted the _seven_ vowels as a hymn addressed to Serapis;[771]

and at the sound of the _seventh_ vowel, as at the “_seventh_ ray” of

the rising sun, the statue of Memnon responded. Recent discoveries have

proved the wonderful properties of the blue-violet light—the _seventh_

ray of the prismatic spectrum, the most powerfully chemical of all,

which corresponds with the highest note in the musical scale. The

Rosicrucian theory, that the whole universe is a musical instrument,

is the Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres. Sounds and

colors are all spiritual numerals; as the seven prismatic rays proceed

from one spot in heaven, so the seven powers of nature, each of them a

number, are the seven radiations of the Unity, the central, spiritual

SUN.

“Happy is he who comprehends the spiritual numerals, and perceives

their mighty influence!” exclaims Plato. And happy, we may add, is he

who, treading the maze of force-correlations, does not neglect to trace

them to this invisible Sun!

Future experimenters will reap the honor of demonstrating that musical

tones have a wonderful effect upon the growth of vegetation. And

with the enunciation of this unscientific fallacy, we will close the

chapter, and proceed to remind the patient reader of certain things

that the ancients knew, and the moderns _think_ they know.

CHAPTER XIV. {515}

“The transactions of this our city of Saïs, are recorded in our

sacred writings during a period of 8,000 years.”—PLATO: _Timæus_.

“The Egyptians assert that from the reign of Heracles to that

of Amasis, 17,000 years elapsed.”—HERODOTUS, lib. ii., c. 43.

“Can the theologian derive no light from the pure, primeval

faith that glimmers from Egyptian hieroglyphics, to illustrate

the immortality of the soul? Will not the historian deign to

notice the prior origin of every art and science in Egypt, a

thousand years before the Pelasgians studded the isles and

capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples?”—GLIDDON.

How came Egypt by her knowledge? When broke the dawn of that

civilization whose wondrous perfection is suggested by the bits and

fragments supplied to us by the archæologists? Alas! the lips of Memnon

are silent, and no longer utter oracles; the Sphinx has become a

greater riddle in her speechlessness than was the enigma propounded to

Œdipus.

What Egypt taught to others she certainly did not acquire by the

international exchange of ideas and discoveries with her Semitic

neighbors, nor from them did she receive her stimulus. “The more we

learn of the Egyptians,” observes the writer of a recent article,

“the more marvellous they seem!” From whom could she have learned

her wondrous arts, the secrets of which died with her? She sent no

agents throughout the world to learn what others knew; but to her

the wise men of neighboring nations resorted for knowledge. Proudly

secluding herself within her enchanted domain, the fair queen of the

desert created wonders as if by the sway of a magic staff. “Nothing,”

remarks the same writer, whom we have elsewhere quoted, “proves that

civilization and knowledge then rise and progress with her as in the

case of other peoples, but everything seems to be referable, in the

same perfection, _to the earliest dates_. That no nation knew as much

as herself, is a fact demonstrated by history.”

May we not assign as a reason for this remark the fact that until

very recently nothing was known of Old India? That these two nations,

India and Egypt, were akin? That they were the oldest in the group of

nations; and that the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—had come

from India as a matured people, bringing their civilization with them, {516}

and colonizing the perhaps unoccupied Egyptian territory? But we defer

a more complete elaboration of this theme for our second volume.[772]

“Mechanism,” says Eusebe Salverte, “was carried by the ancients to

a point of perfection that has never been attained in modern times.

We would inquire if their inventions have been surpassed in our age?

Certainly not; and at the present day, with all the means that the

progress of science and modern discovery have placed in the hands

of the mechanic, have we not been assailed by numerous difficulties

in striving to place on a pedestal one of those monoliths that the

Egyptians forty centuries ago erected in such numbers before their

sacred edifices.”

As far back as we can glance into history, to the reign of Menes, the

most ancient of the kings that we know anything about, we find proofs

that the Egyptians were far better acquainted with hydrostatics and

hydraulic engineering than ourselves. The gigantic work of turning

the course of the Nile—or rather of its three principal branches—and

bringing it to Memphis, was accomplished during the reign of that

monarch, who appears to us as distant in the abyss of time as a

far-glimmering star in the heavenly vault. Says Wilkinson: “Menes

took accurately the measure of the power which he had to oppose, and

he constructed a dyke whose lofty mounds and enormous embankments

turned the water eastward, and since that time the river is contained

in its new bed.” Herodotus has left us a poetical, but still accurate

description of the lake Mœris, so called after the Pharaoh who caused

this artificial sheet of water to be formed.

The historian has described this lake as measuring 450 miles in

circumference, and 300 feet in depth. It was fed through artificial

channels by the Nile, and made to store a portion of the annual

overflow for the irrigation of the country, for many miles round.

Its numerous flood gates, dams, locks, and convenient engines were

constructed with the greatest skill. The Romans, at a far later period,

got their notions on hydraulic constructions from the Egyptians, but

our latest progress in the science of hydrostatics has demonstrated

the fact of a great deficiency on their part in some branches of that

knowledge. Thus, for instance, if they were acquainted with that which

is called in hydrostatics the great law, they seem to have been less

familiar with what our modern engineers know as water tight joints.

Their ignorance is sufficiently proved by their conveying the water

through large level aqueducts, instead of doing it at a less expense by

iron pipes beneath the surface. But the Egyptians evidently employed

a far superior method in their channels and artificial water-works.

Notwithstanding this, the modern engineers employed by Lesseps for the {517}

Suez Canal, who had learned from the ancient Romans all their art could

teach them, deriving, in their turn, their knowledge from Egypt—scoffed

at the suggestion that they should seek a remedy for some imperfections

in their work by studying the contents of the various Egyptian museums.

Nevertheless, the engineers succeeded in giving to the banks of that

“long and ugly ditch,” as Professor Carpenter calls the Suez Canal,

sufficient strength to make it a navigable water-way, instead of a

mud-trap for vessels as it was at first.

The alluvial deposits of the Nile, during the past thirty centuries,

have completely altered the area of the Delta, so that it is

continually growing seaward, and adding to the territory of the

Khedive. In ancient times, the principal mouth of the river was called

Pelusian; and the canal cut by one of the kings—the canal of Necho—led

from Suez to this branch. After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra,

at Actium, it was proposed that a portion of the fleet should pass

through the canal to the Red Sea, which shows the depth of water that

those early engineers had secured. Settlers in Colorado and Arizona

have recently reclaimed large tracts of barren land by a system of

irrigation; receiving from the journals of the day no little praise

for their ingenuity. But, for a distance of 500 miles above Cairo,

there stretches a strip of land reclaimed from the desert, and made,

according to Professor Carpenter, “the most fertile on the face of

the earth.” He says, “for thousands of years these branch canals have

conveyed fresh water from the Nile, to fertilize the land of this long

narrow strip, as well as of the Delta.” He describes “the net-work of

canals over the Delta, which dates from an early period of the Egyptian

monarchs.”

The French province of Artois has given its name to the Artesian well,

as though that form of engineering had been first applied in that

district; but, if we consult the Chinese records, we find such wells to

have been in common use ages before the Christian era.

If we now turn to architecture, we find displayed before our eyes,

wonders which baffle all description. Referring to the temples of

Philoe, Abu Simbel, Dendera, Edfu, and Karnak, Professor Carpenter

remarks that “these stupendous and beautiful erections ... these

gigantic pyramids and temples” have a “vastness and beauty” which are

“still impressive after the lapse of thousands of years.” He is amazed

at “the admirable character of the workmanship; the stones in most

cases being fitted together with astonishing nicety, so that a knife

could hardly be thrust between the joints.” He noticed in his amateur

archæological pilgrimage, another of those “curious coincidences”

which his Holiness, the Pope, may feel some interest in learning. He

is speaking of the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, sculptured on the old

monuments, and the ancient belief in the immortality of the soul.

“Now, it is most remarkable,” says the professor, “to see that not only

this belief, but the language in which it was expressed in the ancient

Egyptian times, anticipated that of the Christian Revelation. For, in

this _Book of the Dead_, there are used the very phrases we find in the {518}

_New Testament_, in connection with the day of judgment;” and he admits

that this hierogram was “engraved, probably, 2,000 years before the

time of Christ.”

According to Bunsen, who is considered to have made the most exact

calculations, the mass of masonry in the great Pyramid of Cheops

measures 82,111,000 feet, and would weigh 6,316,000 tons. The immense

numbers of squared stones show us the unparalleled skill of the

Egyptian quarrymen. Speaking of the great pyramid, Kenrick says: “The

joints are scarcely perceptible, not wider than the thickness of

silver paper, and the cement is so tenacious, that fragments of the

casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwithstanding

the lapse of many centuries, and the violence by which they were

detached.” Who, of our modern architects and chemists, will rediscover

the indestructible cement of the oldest Egyptian buildings?

“The skill of the ancients in quarrying,” says Bunsen, “is displayed

the most in the extracting of the huge blocks, out of which obelisks

and colossal statues were hewn—obelisks ninety feet high, and statues

forty feet high, made out of one stone!” There are many such. They did

not blast out the blocks for these monuments, but adopted the following

scientific method: Instead of using huge iron wedges, which would have

split the stone, they cut a small groove for the whole length of,

perhaps, 100 feet, and inserted in it, close to each other, a great

number of dry wooden wedges; after which they poured water into the

groove, and the wedges swelling and bursting simultaneously, with a

tremendous force, broke out the huge stone, as neatly as a diamond cuts

a pane of glass.

Modern geographers and geologists have demonstrated that these

monoliths were brought from a prodigious distance, and have been at

a loss to conjecture how the transport was effected. Old manuscripts

say that it was done by the help of portable rails. These rested upon

inflated bags of hide, rendered indestructible by the same process as

that used for preserving the mummies. These ingenious air-cushions

prevented the rails from sinking in the deep sand. Manetho mentions

them, and remarks that they were so well prepared that they would

endure wear and tear for centuries.

The date of the hundreds of pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is

impossible to fix by any of the rules of modern science; but Herodotus

informs us that each successive king erected one to commemorate his {519}

reign, and serve as his sepulchre. But, Herodotus did not tell all,

although he knew that the _real_ purpose of the pyramid was very

different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his

religious scruples, he might have added that, externally, it symbolized

the creative principle of nature, and illustrated also the principles

of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was

a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries,

and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes of members

of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi

Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the

_baptismal font_, upon emerging from which, the neophyte was “born

again,” and became an _adept_.

Herodotus gives us, however, a just idea of the enormous labor expended

in transporting one of these gigantic blocks of granite. It measured

thirty-two feet in length, twenty-one feet in width, and twelve feet in

height. Its weight he estimates to be rising 300 tons, and it occupied

2,000 men for three years to move it from Syene to the Delta, down the

Nile. Gliddon, in his _Ancient Egypt_, quotes from Pliny a description

of the arrangements for moving the obelisk erected at Alexandria by

Ptolemæus Philadelphus. A canal was dug from the Nile to the place

where the obelisk lay. Two boats were floated under it; they were

weighted with stones containing one cubic foot each, and the weight

of the obelisk having been calculated by the engineers, the cargo

of the boats was exactly proportioned to it, so that they should be

sufficiently submerged to pass under the monolith as it lay across the

canal. Then, the stones were gradually removed, the boats rose, lifted

the obelisk, and it was floated down the river.

In the Egyptian section of the Dresden, or Berlin Museum, we forget

which, is a drawing which represents a workman ascending an unfinished

pyramid, with a basket of sand upon his back. This has suggested to

certain Egyptologists the idea that the blocks of the pyramids were

chemically manufactured _in loco_. Some modern engineers believe

that Portland cement, a double silicate of lime and alumina, is

the imperishable cement of the ancients. But, on the other hand,

Professor Carpenter asserts that the pyramids, with the exception of

their granite casing, is formed of what “geologists call _nummulitic_

limestone. This is newer than the old chalk, and is made of the shells

of animals called nummulites—like little pieces of money about the size

of a shilling.” However this moot question may be decided, no one, from

Herodotus and Pliny down to the last wandering engineer who has gazed

upon these imperial monuments of long-crumbled dynasties, has been

able to tell us how the gigantic masses were transported and set up {520}

in place. Bunsen concedes to Egypt an antiquity of 20,000 years. But

even in this matter we would be left to conjecture if we depended upon

modern authorities. They can neither tell us for what the pyramids were

constructed, under what dynasty the first was raised, nor the material

of which they are built. All is conjecture with them.

Professor Smyth has given us by far the most accurate mathematical

description of the great pyramid to be found in literature. But after

showing the astronomical bearings of the structure, he so little

appreciates ancient Egyptian thought that he actually maintains

that the porphyry sarcophagus of the king’s chamber is the unit of

measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth—“England

and America.” One of the _books_ of _Hermes_ describes certain of the

pyramids as standing upon the sea-shore, “the waves of which dashed in

powerless fury against its base.” This implies that the geographical

features of the country have been changed, and may indicate that

we must accord to these ancient “granaries,” “magico-astrological

observatories,” and “royal sepulchres,” an origin antedating the

upheaval of the Sahara and other deserts. This would imply rather more

of an antiquity than the poor few thousands of years, so generously

accorded to them by Egyptologists.

Dr. Rebold, a French archæologist of some renown, gives his readers a

glimpse of the culture which prevailed 5,000 (?) years b. c., by saying

that there were at that time no less than “thirty or forty colleges of

the priests who studied occult sciences and practical magic.”

A writer in the _National Quarterly Review_ (Vol. xxxii., No. lxiii.,

December, 1875) says that, “The recent excavations made among the

ruins of Carthage have brought to light traces of a civilization, a

refinement of art and luxury, which must even have outshone that of

ancient Rome; and when the fiat went forth, _Delenda est Carthago_,

the mistress of the world well knew that she was about to destroy a

greater than herself, for, while one empire swayed the world by force

of arms alone, the other was the last and most perfect representative

of a race who had, for centuries before Rome was dreamed of, directed

the civilization, the learning, and the intelligence of mankind.” This

Carthage is the one which, according to Appian, was standing as early

as B. C. 1234, or fifty years before the taking of Troy, and not the

one popularly supposed to have been built by Dido (Elissa or Astartè)

four centuries later.

Here we have still another illustration of the truth of the doctrine

of cycles. Draper’s admissions as to the astronomical erudition of

the ancient Egyptians are singularly supported by an interesting fact

quoted by Mr. J. M. Peebles, from a lecture delivered in Philadelphia,

by the late Professor O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer. Upon the coffin

of a mummy, now in the British Museum, was delineated the zodiac {521}

with the exact positions of the planets at the time of the autumnal

equinox, in the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell calculated the exact

position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system at the

time indicated. “The result,” says Mr. Peebles, “I give in his own

words: ‘To my astonishment ... it was found that on the 7th of October,

1722 B.C., the moon and planets had occupied the exact points in the

heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum.’”[773]

Professor John Fiske, in his onslaught on Dr. Draper’s _History of

the Intellectual Development of Europe_, sets his pen against the

doctrine of cyclical progression, remarking that “we have never

known the beginning or the end of an historic cycle, and have no

inductive warrant for believing that we are now traversing one.”[774]

He chides the author of that eloquent and thoughtful work for the

“odd disposition exhibited throughout his work, not only to refer the

best part of Greek culture to an Egyptian source, but uniformly to

exalt the non-European civilization at the expense of the European.”

We believe that this “odd disposition” might be directly sanctioned

by the confessions of great Grecian historians themselves. Professor

Fiske might, with profit, read Herodotus over again. The “Father of

History” confesses more than once that Greece owes everything to Egypt.

As to his assertion that the world has never known the beginning or

the end of an historical cycle, we have but to cast a retrospective

glance on the many glorious nations which have passed away, _i.e._,

reached the end of their great national cycle. Compare the Egypt of

that day, with its perfection of art, science, and religion, its

glorious cities and monuments, and its swarming population, with the

Egypt of to-day, peopled with strangers; its ruins the abode of bats

and snakes, and a few Copts the sole surviving heirs to all this

grandeur—and see whether the cyclical theory does not reässert itself.

Says Gliddon, who is now contradicted by Mr. Fiske: “Philologists,

astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians, must return

to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing; of the calendar

and solar motion; of the art of cutting granite with a copper chisel,

and of giving elasticity to a copper sword; of making glass with the

variegated hues of the rainbow; of moving single blocks of polished

syenite, _nine hundred tons_ in weight, for any distance, by land

and water; of building arches, rounded and pointed, with masonic

precision unsurpassed at the present day, and antecedent by 2,000 years

to the ‘Cloaca Magna’ of Rome; of sculpturing a Doric column 1,000 {522}

years before the Dorians are known in history; of fresco painting

in imperishable colors; of practical knowledge in anatomy; and of

time-defying pyramid-building.”

“Every craftsman can behold, in Egyptian monuments, the progress of

his art 4,000 years ago; and whether it be a wheelwright building a

chariot, a shoemaker drawing his twine, a leather-cutter using the

self-same form of knife of old as is considered the best form now,

a weaver throwing the same hand-shuttle, a whitesmith using that

identical form of blow-pipe but lately recognized to be the most

efficient, the seal-engraver cutting, in hieroglyphics, such names as

Schooho’s, above 4,300 years ago—_all these_, and many more astounding

evidences of Egyptian priority, now require but a glance at the plates

of Rossellini.”

“Truly,” exclaims Mr. Peebles, “these Ramsean temples and tombs were as

much a marvel to the Grecian Herodotus as they are to us!”[775]

But, even then, the merciless hand of time had left its traces upon

their structures, and some of them, whose very memory would be lost

were it not for the _Books of Hermes_, had been swept away into the

oblivion of the ages. King after king, and dynasty after dynasty

had passed in a glittering pageant before the eyes of succeeding

generations and their renown had filled the habitable globe. The same

pall of forgetfulness had fallen upon them and their monuments alike,

before the first of our historical authorities, Herodotus, preserved

for posterity the remembrance of that wonder of the world, the great

Labyrinth. The long accepted Biblical chronology has so cramped

the minds of not only the clergy, but even our scarce-unfettered

scientists, that in treating of prehistoric remains in different parts

of the world, a constant fear is manifested on their part to trespass

beyond the period of 6,000 years, hitherto allowed by theology as the

age of the world.

Herodotus found the Labyrinth already in ruins; but nevertheless his

admiration for the genius of its builders knew no bounds. He regarded

it as far more marvellous than the pyramids themselves, and, as an

eye-witness, minutely describes it. The French and Prussian savants,

as well as other Egyptologists, agree as to the emplacement, and

identified its noble ruins. Moreover, they confirm the account given

of it by the old historian. Herodotus says that he found therein

3,000 chambers; half subterranean and the other half above-ground.

“The upper chambers,” he says, “I myself passed through and examined

in detail. In the underground ones (which _may exist till now_, for

all the archæologists know), the keepers of the building would not

let me in, for they contain the sepulchres of the kings who built the

Labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. The upper chambers {523}

I saw and examined with my own eyes, and found them to excel all other

human productions.” In Rawlinson’s translation, Herodotus is made to

say: “The passages through the houses and the varied windings of the

paths across the courts, excited in me infinite admiration as I passed

from the courts into the chambers, and from thence into colonnades,

and from colonnades into other houses, and again into courts unseen

before. The roof was throughout of stone like the walls, and both were

exquisitely carved all over with figures. Every court was surrounded

with a colonnade, which was built of white stones, sculptured most

exquisitely. At the corner of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid forty

fathoms high, with large figures engraved on it, and it is entered by a

vast subterranean passage.”

If such was the Labyrinth, when viewed by Herodotus, what, in such

a case, was ancient Thebes, the city destroyed far earlier than

the period of Psammeticus, who himself reigned 530 years after the

destruction of Troy? We find that in his time Memphis was the capital,

while of the glorious Thebes there remained but _ruins_. Now, if we,

who are enabled to form our estimate only by the ruins of what was

already ruins so many ages before our era—are stupefied in their

contemplation, what must have been the general aspect of Thebes in

the days of its glory? Karnak—temple, palace, ruins, or whatsoever

the archæologists may term it—is now its only representative. But

solitary and alone as it stands, fit emblem of majestic empire, as if

forgotten by time in the onward march of the centuries, it testifies

to the art and skill of the ancients. He must be indeed devoid of the

spiritual perception of genius, who fails to feel as well as to see the

intellectual grandeur of the race that planned and built it.

Champollion, who passed almost his entire life in the exploration of

archæological remains, gives vent to his emotions in the following

descriptions of Karnak: “The ground covered by the mass of remaining

buildings is square; and each side measures 1,800 feet. One is

astounded and _overcome by the grandeur_ of the sublime remnants, the

prodigality and magnificence of workmanship to be seen everywhere.” No

people of ancient or modern times has conceived the art of architecture

upon a scale so sublime, so grandiose as it existed among the ancient

Egyptians; and the imagination, which in Europe soars far above our

porticos, arrests itself _and falls powerless_ at the foot of the

hundred and forty columns of the hypostyle of Karnak! In one of its

halls, the Cathedral of Notre Dame might stand and not touch the

ceiling, but be considered as a small ornament in the centre of the

hall.

A writer in a number of an English periodical, of 1870, evidently

speaking with the authority of a traveller who describes what he has

seen, expresses himself as follows: “Courts, halls, gateways, pillars {524}

obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, long rows of sphinxes, are

found in such profusion at Karnak, that the sight is too much for

modern comprehension.”

Says Denon, the French traveller: “It is hardly possible to believe,

after seeing it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings

collected together on a single point, in their dimensions, in the

resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the

incalculable expenses of so much magnificence! It is necessary that the

reader should fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who views

the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt whether he be

perfectly awake.... There are lakes and mountains _within the periphery

of the sanctuary_. These two edifices are selected as examples from a

list _next to inexhaustible_. The whole valley and delta of the Nile,

from the cataracts to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces,

tombs, pyramids, obelisks, and pillars. The execution of the sculptures

is beyond praise. The mechanical perfection with which artists wrought

in granite, serpentine, breccia, and basalt, is wonderful, according

to all the experts ... animals and plants look as good as natural, and

artificial objects are beautifully sculptured; battles by sea and land,

and scenes of domestic life are to be found in all their _bas-reliefs_.”

“The monuments,” says an English author, “which there strike the

traveller, fill his mind with great ideas. At the sight of the

colossuses and superb obelisks, which seem to surpass the limits of

human nature, he cannot help exclaiming, ‘This was the work of man,’

and this sentiment seems to ennoble his existence.”[776]

In his turn, Dr. Richardson, speaking of the Temple of Dendera, says:

“The female figures are so extremely well executed, that they do all

but speak; they have a mildness of feature and expression that never

was surpassed.”

_Every one of these stones is covered with hieroglyphics, and the more

ancient they are, the more beautifully we find them chiselled._ Does

not this furnish a new proof that history got its first glimpse of the

ancients when the arts were already fast degenerating among them? The

obelisks have their inscriptions cut two inches, and sometimes more,

in depth, and they are cut with the highest degree of perfection.

Some idea may be formed of their depth, from the fact that the

Arabs, for a small fee, will climb sometimes to the very top of an

obelisk, by inserting their toes and fingers in the excavations of the

hieroglyphics. That all of these works, in which solidity rivals the

beauty of their execution, were done before the days of the Exodus,

there remains no historical doubt whatever. (All the archæologists now {525}

agree in saying that, the further back we go in history, the better and

finer become these arts.) These views clash again with the individual

opinion of Mr. Fiske, who would have us believe that “the sculptures

upon these monuments (of Egypt, Hindustan, and Assyria), moreover,

betoken a very _undeveloped_ condition of the artistic faculties.”[777]

Nay, the learned gentleman goes farther. Joining his voice in the

opposition against the claims of learning—which belongs by right to

the sacerdotal castes of antiquity—to that of Lewis, he contemptuously

remarks that “the extravagant theory of a profound science possessed

by the Egyptian priesthood from a remote antiquity, and imparted to

itinerant Greek philosophers, has been utterly destroyed (?) by Sir G.

C. Lewis[778] ... while, with regard to Egypt and Hindustan, as well as

Assyria, it may be said that the colossal monuments which have adorned

these countries since prehistoric times, bear witness to the former

prevalence of a barbaric despotism, totally incompatible with social

nobility, and, therefore, with well sustained progress.”[779]

A curious argument, indeed. If the size and grandeur of public

monuments are to serve to our posterity as a standard by which to

approximately estimate the “progress of civilization” attained by

their builders, it may be prudent, perhaps, for America, so proud

of her alleged progress and freedom, to dwarf her buildings at once

to one story. Otherwise, according to Professor Fiske’s theory, the

archæologists of A.D. 3877 will be applying to the “Ancient America”

of 1877, the rule of Lewis—and say the _ancient_ United States “may

be considered as a great _latifundium_, or plantation, cultivated by

the entire population, as the king’s (president’s) slaves.” Is it

because the white-skinned Aryan races were never born “builders,”

like the Eastern Æthiopians, or dark-skinned Caucasians,[780] and,

therefore, never able to compete with the latter in such colossal

structures, that we must jump at the conclusion that these grandiose

temples and pyramids could only have been erected under the whip of

a merciless despot? Strange logic! It would really seem more prudent

to hold to the “rigorous canons of criticism” laid down by Lewis and

Grote, and honestly confess at once, that we really know little about

these ancient nations, and that, except so far as purely hypothetical

speculations go, unless we study in the same direction as the ancient

priests did, we have as little chance in the future. We only know what

they allowed the uninitiated to know, but the little we do learn of {526}

them by deduction, ought to be sufficient to assure us that, even in

the nineteenth century, with all our claims to supremacy in arts and

sciences, we are totally unable, we will not say to build anything like

the monuments of Egypt, Hindustan, or Assyria, but even to rediscover

the least of the ancient “_lost_ arts.” Besides, Sir Gardner Wilkinson

gives forcible expression to this view of the exhumed treasures of old,

by adding that, “he can trace no _primitive mode_ of life, no barbarous

customs, but a sort of stationary civilization _from the most remote

periods_.” Thus far, archæology disagrees with geology, which affirms

that the further they trace the remains of men, the more barbarous they

find them. It is doubtful if geology has even yet exhausted the field

of research afforded her in the caves, and the views of geologists,

which are based upon present experience, may be radically modified,

when they come to discover the remains of the ancestors of the people

whom they now style the cave-dwellers.

What better illustrates the theory of cycles than the following fact?

Nearly 700 years B.C., in the schools of Thales and Pythagoras was

taught the doctrine of the true motion of the earth, its form, and the

whole heliocentric system. And in 317 A.D., we find Lactantius, the

preceptor of Crispus Cæsar, son of Constantine the Great, teaching

his pupil that the earth was a plane surrounded by the sky, which is

composed of fire and water, and warning him against the heretical

doctrine of the earth’s globular form!

Whenever, in the pride of some new discovery, we throw a look into

the past, we find, to our dismay, certain vestiges which indicate the

possibility, if not certainty, that the alleged discovery was not

totally unknown to the ancients.

It is generally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the

Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the Ptolemaic

period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in

this opinion, it is not for lack of proofs to the contrary. We may

disdain to search for a profounder meaning in some characteristic

sentences of Servius, and other writers; we cannot so obliterate them

but that, at some future day, that meaning will appear to us in all

its significant truths. “The first inhabitants of the earth,” says he,

“never carried fire to their altars, but by their prayers they brought

down the heavenly fire.”[781] “Prometheus discovered and revealed to

man the art of bringing down lightning; and by the method which he

taught to them, they brought down fire from the region above.”

If, after pondering these words, we are still willing to attribute {527}

them to the phraseology of mythological fables, we may turn to the

days of Numa, the king-philosopher, so renowned for his esoteric

learning, and find ourselves more embarrassed to deal with his case.

We can neither accuse him of ignorance, superstition, nor credulity;

for, if history can be believed at all, he was intently bent on

destroying polytheism and idol-worship. He had so well dissuaded the

Romans from idolatry that for nearly two centuries neither statues nor

images appeared in their temples. On the other hand old historians

tell us that the knowledge which Numa possessed in natural physics was

remarkable. Tradition says that he was initiated by the priests of the

Etruscan divinities, and instructed by them in the secret of forcing

Jupiter, the Thunderer, to descend upon earth.[782] Ovid shows that

Jupiter Elicius began to be worshipped by the Romans from that time.

Salverte is of the opinion that before Franklin discovered his refined

electricity, Numa had experimented with it most successfully, and

that Tullus Hostilius was the first victim of the dangerous “heavenly

guest” recorded in history. Titus Livy and Pliny narrate that this

prince, having found in the _Books of Numa_, instructions on the

secret sacrifices offered to Jupiter Elicius, made a mistake, and, in

consequence of it, “he was struck by lightning and consumed in his own

palace.”[783]

Salverte remarks that Pliny, in the exposition of Numa’s scientific

secrets, “makes use of expressions which seem to indicate two distinct

processes;” the one obtained thunder (_impetrare_), the other forced

it to lightning (_cogere_).[784] “Guided by Numa’s book,” says Lucius,

quoted by Pliny, “Tullus undertook to invoke the aid of Jupiter....

But having performed the rite imperfectly, he perished, struck by

thunder.”[785]

Tracing back the knowledge of thunder and lightning possessed by the

Etruscan priests, we find that Tarchon, the founder of the theurgism of

the former, desiring to preserve his house from lightning, surrounded

it by a hedge of the white bryony,[786] a climbing plant which has

the property of averting thunderbolts. Tarchon the theurgist was much

anterior to the siege of Troy. The pointed metallic lightning-rod,

for which we are seemingly indebted to Franklin, is probably a

_re-discovery_ after all. There are many medals which seem to strongly

indicate that the principle was anciently known. The temple of Juno had

its roof covered with a quantity of pointed blades of swords.[787]

If we possess but little proof of the ancients having had any clear {528}

notions as to _all_ the effects of electricity, there is very strong

evidence, at all events, of their having been perfectly acquainted

with electricity itself. “Ben David,” says the author of _The Occult

Sciences_, “has asserted that Moses possessed some knowledge of the

phenomena of electricity.” Professor Hirt, of Berlin, is of this

opinion. Michaelis, remarks—_firstly_: “that there is no indication

that lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem, during a thousand

years. _Secondly_, that according to Josephus,[788] a forest of points

... of gold, and very sharp, covered the roof of the temple. _Thirdly_,

that this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill upon which the

temple was situated, by means of pipes in connection with the gilding

which covered all the exterior of the building; in consequence of which

the points would act as conductors.”[789]

Ammianus Marcellinus, a famous historian of the fourth century, a

writer generally esteemed for the fairness and correctness of his

statements, tells that “The magii, preserved perpetually in their

furnaces fire that they miraculously got from heaven.”[790] There is

a sentence in the Hindu _Oupnek-hat_, which runs thus: “To know fire,

the sun, the moon, and lightning, is three-fourths of the science of

God.”[791]

Finally, Salverte shows that in the days of Ktesias, “India was

acquainted with the use of conductors of lightning.” This historian

plainly states that “iron placed at the bottom of a fountain ... and

made in the form of a sword, _with the point upward_, possessed, as

soon as it was thus fixed in the ground, the property of averting

storms and lightnings.”[792] What can be plainer?

Some modern writers deny the fact that a great mirror was placed in the

light-house of the Alexandrian port, for the purpose of discovering

vessels at a distance at sea. But the renowned Buffon believed in

it; for he honestly confesses that “If the mirror really existed,

as I firmly believe it did, to the ancients belong the honor of the

invention _of the telescope_.”[793]

Stevens, in his work on the East, asserts that he found railroads

in Upper Egypt whose grooves were coated with iron. Canova, Powers,

and other celebrated sculptors of our modern age deem it an honor to

be compared with Pheidias of old, and strict truth would, perhaps,

hesitate at such a flattery.

Professor Jowett discredits the story of the Atlantis, in the _Timæus_; {529}

and the records of 8,000 and 9,000 years appear to him an ancient

swindle. But Bunsen remarks: “There is nothing improbable in itself

in reminiscences and records of great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.

C., for ... the Origines of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium

before Christ.[794] Then how about the primitive Cyclopean fortresses

of ancient Greece? Can the walls of Tiryns, about which, according to

archæological accounts, “even among the ancients it was reported to

have been the work of the Cyclops,”[795] be deemed posterior to the

pyramids? Masses of rock, some equal to a cube of six feet, and the

smallest of which, Pausanias says, could never be moved by a yoke of

oxen, laid up in walls of solid masonry twenty-five feet thick and over

forty feet high, still believed to be the work of men of the races

known to our history!

Wilkinson’s researches have brought to light the fact that many

inventions of what we term modern, and upon which we plume ourselves,

were perfected by the ancient Egyptians. The newly-discovered papyrus

of Ebers, the German archæologist, proves that neither our modern

chignons, skin-beautifying pearl powders, nor _eaux dentifrices_ were

secrets to them. More than one modern physician—even among those

who advertise themselves as having “made a speciality of nervous

disorders” may find his advantage in consulting the _Medical Books of

Hermes_, which contain prescriptions of real therapeutic value.

The Egyptians, as we have seen, excelled in all arts. They made paper

so excellent in quality as to be timeproof. “They took out the pith

of the papyrus,” says our anonymous writer, previously mentioned,

“dissected and opened the fibre, and flattening it by a process

known to them, made it as thin as our foolscap paper, but far more

durable.... They sometimes cut it into strips and glued it together;

many of such written documents are yet in existence.” The papyrus

found in the tomb of the queen’s mummy, and another one found in the

sarcophagus of the “Chambre de la Reine,” at Ghizeh, present the

appearance of the finest glossy white muslin, while it possesses the

durability of the best calf-parchment. “For a long time the _savants_

believed the papyrus to have been introduced by Alexander the Great—as

they erroneously imagined a good many more things—but Lepsius found

rolls of papyri in tombs and monuments of the twelfth dynasty;

sculptured pictures of papyri were found later, on monuments of the

fourth dynasty, and now it is proved that the art of writing was known

and used as early as the days of Menes, the protomonarch;” and thus it {530}

was finally discovered that the art and their system of writing were

perfect and complete _from the very first_.

It is to Champollion that we owe the first interpretation of their

weird writing; and, but for his life-long labor, we would till now

remain uninformed as to the meaning of all these pictured letters,

and the ancients would still be considered ignorant by the moderns

whom they so greatly excelled in some arts and sciences. “He was the

first to find out what wondrous tale the Egyptians had to tell, for

one who could read their endless manuscripts and records. They left

them on every spot and object capable of receiving characters....

They engraved, and chiselled, and sculptured them on monuments; they

traced them on furniture, rocks, stones, walls, coffins, and tombs,

as on the papyrus.... The pictures of their daily lives, in their

smallest details, are being now unravelled before our dazzled eyes in

the most wondrous way.... Nothing, of what we know, seems to have been

overlooked by the ancient Egyptians.... The history of ‘Sesostris’

shows us how well he and his people were versed in the art and

practice of war.... The pictures show how formidable they were when

encountered in battle. They constructed war-engines.... Homer says that

through each of the 100 gates of Thebes issued 200 men with horses

and chariots; the latter were magnificently constructed, and very

light in comparison with our modern heavy, clumsy, and uncomfortable

artillery wagons.” Kenrick describes them in the following terms: “In

short, as all the essential principles which regulate the construction

and draught of carriages are exemplified in the war-chariots of the

Pharaohs, so there is nothing which modern taste and luxury have

devised for their decoration to which we do not find a prototype

in the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty.” Springs—_metallic_

springs—have been found in them, and, notwithstanding Wilkinson’s

superficial investigation in that direction, and description of these

in his studies, we find proofs that such were used to prevent the

jolting in the chariots in their too rapid course. The bas-reliefs

show us certain melées and battles in which we can find and trace

their uses and customs to the smallest details. The heavily-armed men

fought in coats of mail, the infantry had quilted tunics and felt

helmets, with metallic coverings to protect them the better. Muratori,

the modern Italian inventor who, some ten years ago, introduced his

“impenetrable cuirasse,” has but followed in his invention what he

could make out of the ancient method which suggested to him the

idea. The process of rendering such objects as card-board, felt, and

other tissues, impenetrable to the cuts and thrusts of any sharp

weapon, is now numbered among the lost arts. Muratori succeeded but

imperfectly in preparing such felt cuirasses, and, notwithstanding the

boasted achievements of modern chemistry he could derive from it no {531}

preparation adequate to effect his object, and failed.

To what perfection chemistry had reached in ancient times, may be

inferred from a fact mentioned by Virey. In his dissertations, he shows

that Asclepiadotus, a general of Mithradates, reproduced chemically the

deleterious exhalations of the sacred grotto. These vapors, like those

of Cumæ, threw the Pythoness into the mantic frenzy.