The intellectual editor of the _Kansas City Journal_ has made some
very philosophic remarks on the materialistic philosophy of
fashionable Scientists, which with some abridgment are here presented:
"As an illustration of its methods of dealing with so subtle a
thing as human intelligence, we have a recent singular example
in Paris, by the eminent physician Charcot, and others, which
illustrates how great men in special departments walk blindfold
over things that afford no mystery to common minds. We allude to
certain experiments in hypnotism--the professional name for
mesmerism. The medical profession for more than half a century
sneered at the discoveries of Mesmer, until now compelled to
recognize them, they have not the manliness to acknowledge the
fact, but invent a new and inaccurate nomenclature to conceal
their change of front. To make a long story short these
gentlemen have put a subject under the influence one day,
enjoined him to commit a theft or a murder at a given hour the
next day, and despite every effort of will on the part of the
subject, the crimes have been attempted, and the victim only
saved from himself by the interposition of the operator, who was
present to remove the influence--or through the understanding of
the party against whom the offence was to be committed, in the
form of the robbery actually carried out.
"But what does science do with this fact? Nothing but announce
it, and then proceed to dig among molecules and their related
agitations for the solution of the mystery."
[This is what certain scientists do, but their follies are not
chargeable to _Science_, nor to the whole body of Scientists. The
ablest thinkers to-day, the deepest inquirers, look to the powers of
the soul, and the new anthropology traces these powers to their
localities in the brain.--ED. OF JOURNAL.]
"How old is this fact? As old as the race. At one time it was
called necromancy, at another witchcraft, at another the
inspiration of God, at a subsequent time animal magnetism, at
another called after one of its more modern
discoverers,--mesmerism--now hypnotism--which is only another
name for magnetic sleep--if anybody knows what that is--or for
somnambulism. Common sense tells common people that it is only
an abnormal manifestation of the power that gives one person
control over another, or enables one person to influence
another. The simple every-day habit of exacting a promise from
your neighbor to do a certain thing, or for you to make a like
promise, and execute it. Sickness is a partial compliance with
the conditions of mortality--death being the complete process.
So the hypnotic experiences are the completed illustrations of
the common power which we call personal influence. That is all.
But that is not mysterious enough for learned people--it is not
scientific enough--as everybody can understand it.
"Then, too, it suggests another thing that is fatal to it in the
estimation of the teacher--it suggests that what we call the
human mind or soul is a potential thing, that acts through the
every-day machinery of our bodies, and may be more or less
within the grasp of the common mind. There is a higher plane of
knowledge than that of mere physical science, and if the
theologian mistook its teaching, it is no reason why the pursuit
of that knowledge on this higher plane should be ignored. Hence
it is that this discovery by Charcot and others, to which we
allude, has as yet been barren of fruit, because the methods of
science to which the discoverers are wedded forbid the admission
of the psychic problem that underlies the remarkable phenomena.
"And just here, it may as well be said first as last,--that the
profession to which these eminent men belong, nor any one school
of applied science, will ever read the lesson of these
experiments, nor will any of the so-called regular schools of
learning. The riddle will be read by some thinker outside, and
when the bread-and-butter purveyors of theology, science and the
schools have become indoctrinated, and prefer to pay their money
for the new instead of the old--then these self-constituted
teachers of humanity will all know that the cow was to eat the
grindstone--and teach the fact. We simply state a fact, known to
history, that the progress of the world is due to the inventor
and discoverer, and not to the schools. Every single thing, from
the advent of modern astronomy to the electric light, has been
from the ranks of the people by discovery or invention, and had
to fight its way against the teaching class, from time
immemorial. The circulation of the blood, which every
pig-sticker knew since knives were invented, had to be forced
upon medical science by a quack. And now, although the phenomena
we refer to have been before the teaching class since history
records anything, and although Mesmer taught it experimentally
eighty years ago, science has now only got so far as to admit
the existence of the phenomena.
"Why have not the professions given these things more attention,
and why have they in these modern days for three quarters of a
century practically denied their existence? That question is a
legitimate one. And at the risk of being charged with
unfriendliness, it must be said that it was either from an
inability to think or from a narrow creedism that will not
accept a truth from outside discovery. The effect of this, and
what constitutes a crime in the teaching class, is, that it has
for all these long years shut out this now accepted knowledge
from the masses of humanity who look to this teaching class as
authority,--and to use a business form of speech,--pay them for
finding and teaching the truth. And so the learning of the world
and the common mass of mind has, after nearly a century, to
begin where the ostracised Mesmer left off--a long, dark, weary
denial of the truth by the simple refusal to investigate. This
is a serious arraignment, but it is admitted to-day by the
scientific world to be but the simple truth.
"And what do we find now? Why, these same men who, for more than
eighty years, have been denying this truth, now whistle down the
wind as fanatics, dreamers and cranks, those who all the time
have recognized the truth, and been seeking the law underlying
its remarkable phenomena."
[This strictly just arraignment applies to the entire body of the
old-fashioned and so-called regular medical and clerical professions,
all of whom have been educated into ignorance on these subjects by the
colleges, which are the chief criminals in this warfare against
science and progress. It was impossible to teach the true science of
man in any college but the one of which I was one of the founders and
the presiding officer; to obtain the necessary freedom in teaching the
highest forms of science, I have been compelled to establish the
College of Therapeutics in Boston.--ED. OF JOURNAL.]
And this class holds simply that the human being is a living soul,
that, for the time being, acts through the organism we call the human
body, and that these living beings have an affinity of conditions by
which they act and react one upon another, the manifestation of which
we call society or social life. That is all there is to this seeming
mystery when reduced to simple terms. It is a question that chemistry
cannot deal with because analysis is not the method. Molecules, to use
a homely phrase, are a good thing, but molecules don't think, and this
thing we are considering does think. Molecules are amenable to
chemical affinities, and their condition one instant is not and cannot
be their condition the next instant. So, if to-day at twelve o'clock
the molecules are in combination, chemically, to suggest a theft, they
may undergo, and we see do undergo, billions of changes before the
hour of meridian arrives to-morrow--and not at all likely at that
exact moment to be in the stealing combination again. Or, if so, it is
not likely to be for stealing exactly the same article it was combined
on the day previous. Yet this infinite series of impossibilities must
be possible to have the experiments we refer to come true--on the
theory of molecular action. This is one of those absurdities that men
call the marvellous discoveries of science. _No crank in Christendom
ever conceived anything so utterly absurd._
Common sense comes to our help here, and tells us that this power is
from an intelligence that controls molecules, and that this molecular
activity is but the motor force which this intelligence uses to
execute its purpose; that this purpose is, or may be, continuous,
because this intelligence is continuous. And as it is thus paramount,
and controlling as to this motor force, which to us is the phenomena
of what we call life, it must be thus paramount, be persistent--or in
other words, immortal. And it must be immortal because it has been the
agent of conception and growth--or antecedent. And if it had the
antecedent potency, its potentiality cannot cease when it becomes
consequent--or when the machinery which is propelled by this motor
force is worn out, or broken, and its use destroyed.