passage from the former’s “Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch
Träume der Metaphysik” (1766, Collected Works, Vol. VII, page 32 et
seqq.): “I confess that I am very much inclined to assert the existence
of immaterial beings in the world, and to rank my own soul as one of
such a class. It appears, there is a spiritual essence existent which is
intimately bound up with matter but which does not act on those forces of
the elements by which the latter are connected, but upon some internal
principle of its own condition. It will, in the time to come—I know not
when or where—be proved, that the human soul, even in this life, exists
in a state of uninterrupted connection with all the immaterial natures
of the spiritual world; that it alternately acts on them and receives
impressions from them, of which, as a human soul, it is not, in the
normal state of things, conscious. It would be a great thing, if some
such systematic constitution of the spiritual world, as we conceive it,
could be deduced, not exclusively from our general notion of spiritual
nature, which is altogether too hypothetical, but from some real and
universally admitted observations,—or, for that matter, if it could even
be shown to be probable.”
What Kant really asserts here is, first, the partly independent and
partly dependent existence of the soul, and of spiritual beings
generally, on matter, and, second, that spiritual beings have some
common connection with and mutually influence one another. This
contention, which is that of very many thinkers, does not, however,
entail the consequence that the “transcendental subject of Kant” must be
four-dimensional, as Zöllner asserts it does. Kant never even hinted at
the theory that the psychical features of the world owe their connection
with the material features to the fact that they are four-dimensional
and, therefore, include the three-dimensional. Is it a necessary
conclusion that if a thing exists and is not three-dimensional, as is
the case with the soul, that it is therefore four-dimensional? Can it
not in fact be so constituted that it is wholly meaningless to speak of
dimensions at all in connection with it?
Yet still more strongly than the words of Plato and Kant do certain
utterances of the mathematicians Gauss and Riemann speak in favor of
Zöllner’s hypothesis. S. v. Waltershausen relates of Gauss in his “Gruss
zum Gedächtnis,” (Leipsic, 1856,) that Gauss had often remarked that the
three dimensions of space were only a specific peculiarity of the human
mind. We can think ourselves, he said, into beings who are only conscious
of two dimensions; similarly, perhaps, beings who are above and outside
our world may look down upon us; and there were, he continued, in a
jesting tone, a number of problems which he had here indefinitely laid
aside, but hoped to treat in a superior state by superior geometrical
methods. Leaving aside this jest, which quite naturally suggested itself,
the remarks of Gauss are quite correct. We possess the power to abstract
and can think, therefore, what kind of geometry a being that is only
acquainted with a two-dimensional world would have; for instance, we can
imagine that such a being could not conceive of the possibility of making
two triangles coincide which were congruent in the sense above explained,
and so on. So, also, we can understand that a being who has control of
four dimensions can only conceive of a geometry of four-dimensional
space, yet may have the capacity of thinking itself into spaces of other
dimensions. But it does not follow from this that a four-dimensional
space exists, let alone that it is inhabited by reasonable beings.
Riemann, on the other hand, speaks directly of a world of spirits. In
his “Neue mathematische Principien der Naturphilosophie” he puts forth
the hypothesis that the space of the world is filled with a material
that is constantly pouring into the ponderable atoms, there to disappear
from the phenomenal world. In every ponderable atom, he says, at every
moment of time, there enters and appears a determinate amount of matter,
proportional to the force of gravitation. The ponderable bodies,
according to this theory, are the place at which the spiritual world
enters and acts on the material world. Riemann’s world of spirits, the
sole office of which is to explain the phenomenon of gravitation as
a force governing matter, is, though, essentially different from the
spiritual world of Zöllner, the function of which is to explain supposed
supersensuous phenomena which stand in the most glaring contradiction
with the established known laws of the material world.
Besides this appeal to the testimony of eminent men like Plato, Kant,
Gauss, and Riemann, the scientific prophet of modern spiritualism also
bases his theory on the belief, which has obtained at all times and
appeared in various forms among all peoples, that there exist in the
world forces which at times are competent to evoke phenomena that are
exempt from the ordinary laws of nature. We have but to think of the
phenomena of table-turning which once excited the Chinese as much as
it has aroused, during the last few decades, the European and American
worlds; or of the divining-rod, by whose help our forefathers sought for
water, in fact, as we do now in parts of Europe and America.
Cranz, in his essay on the subject, divides spiritualistic phenomena
into physical and intellectual. Of the first class he enumerates
the following: the moving of chairs and tables; the animation of
walking-sticks, slippers, and broomsticks; the miraculous throwing of
objects; spirit-rappings (Luther heard a sound in the Wartburg, “as if
three score casks were hurled down the stairs”); the ecstatic suspension
of persons above the floor; the diminution of the forces of gravity; the
ordeals of witches; the fetching of wished-for objects; the declination
of the magnetic needle by persons at a distance; the untying of knots
in a closed string; insensibility to injury and exemption therefrom
when tortured, as in handling red-hot coals, carrying hot irons, etc.;
the music of invisible spirits; the materialisations of spirits or of
individual parts of spirits (the footprints in the experiments of Slade,
photographed by Zöllner); the double appearance of the same person;
the penetration of matter (of closed doors, windows, and so forth).
As numerous also is the selection presented by Cranz of intellectual
phenomena, namely: spirit-writing (Have’s instrument for the facilitation
of intercourse with spirits), the clairvoyance and divination of
somnambulists, of visionary, ecstatic, and hypnotised persons, prompted
or controlled by narcotic medicines, by sleeping in temples, by music and
dancing, by ascetic modes of life and residence in barren localities, by
the exudations of the soil and of water, by the contemplation of jewels,
mirrors, and crystal-pure water, and by anointing the finger-nails with
consecrated oil. Also the following additional intellectual phenomena
are cited: increased eloquence or suddenly acquired power of speaking
in foreign languages; spirit-effects at a distance; inability to move,
transferences of the will, and so forth.
All these phenomena, presented with the aspect of truth, and associated
more or less with trickery, self-deception, and humbug, are adduced
by the spiritualists to substantiate the belief in a world of spirits
which consciously and purposely take part in the events of the material
world, and that these phenomena may be sufficiently and consistently
explained by the effects of the activity of such a world. It is
impossible for us to discuss and put to the test here the explanations
of all these supersensuous phenomena. Anything and everything can be
explained by spirits who act at will upon the world. There are only a
few of these phenomena, namely, clairvoyance and Slade’s experiments,
whose explanations are so intimately connected with our main theme, the
so-called fourth dimension, that they cannot be passed over.
First, with respect to clairvoyance, the American visionary Davis
describes the experiences which he claims to have made in this condition,
induced by “magnetic sleep,” as follows:[81] “The sphere of my vision
now began to expand. At first, I could only clearly discern the walls of
the house. At the start they seemed to me dark and gloomy; but they soon
became brighter and finally transparent. I could now see the objects,
the utensils, and the persons in the adjoining house as easily as those
in the room in which I sat. But my perceptions extended further still;
before my wandering glance, which seemed to control a great semi-circle,
the broad surface of the earth, for hundreds of miles about me, grew as
transparent as water, and I saw the brains, the entrails, and the entire
anatomy of the beasts that wandered about in the forests of the eastern
hemisphere, hundreds and thousands of miles from the room in which I
sat.” The belief in the possibility of such states of clairvoyance is
by no means new. Alexander Dumas made use of it, for example, in his
“Mémoires d’un médicin,” in which Count Balsamo, afterwards called
Cagliostro, is said to possess the power of transforming suitable persons
into this wonderful condition and thus to find out what other persons at
distant places are doing. Zöllner explains clairvoyance by means of the
fourth dimension thus:
A man who is accustomed to viewing things on a plain is supposed to
ascend to a considerable height in a balloon. He will there enjoy a
much more extended prospect than if he had remained on the plain below,
and will also be able to signal to greater distances. The plain,
that is, the two-dimensioned space, is accordingly viewed by him from
points outside of the plain as “open” in all directions. Exactly so,
in Zöllner’s theory, must three-dimensioned spaces appear, when viewed
from points in four-dimensioned space, namely, as “open”; and the more
so in proportion as the point in question is situated at a greater
distance from the place of our body, or in proportion as the soul ascends
to a greater height in this fourth dimension. Zöllner thus explains
clairvoyance as a condition in which the soul has displaced itself out
of its three-dimensioned space and reached a point which with respect
to this space is four-dimensionally situated and whence it is able to
contemplate the three-dimensional world without the interference of
intervening obstacles.
The following remark is to be made to this explanation. The reason why
we have a better and more extended view from a balloon than from places
on the earth is simply this, that between the suspended balloon and the
objects seen at a distance nothing intervenes but the air, and air allows
the transmission of light, whereas, at the places below on the earth
there are all kinds of material things about the observer which prevent
the transmission of light and either render difficult or absolutely
impossible the sight of things which lie far away. In the same way,
also, from a point in four-dimensioned space, a three-dimensional object
will be visible only provided there are no obstacles intervening. If,
therefore, this awareness of a distant object is a real, actual vision by
means of a luminous ray which strikes the eye, there is contained in the
explanation of Zöllner the tacit assumption that the medium with which
the four-dimensional world is filled is also pervious to light exactly as
the atmosphere is.
The theory that there are four-dimensional spirits who produce the
phenomena cited by the spiritualists received special support from the
experiments which the prestidigitateur Slade, who claimed he was a
spiritualistic medium, performed before Zöllner. Of these experiments
we will speak of the two most important, the experiment with the glass
sphere and the experiment with the knots. To explain the connection
of the glass sphere experiment with the fourth dimension, we must
first conceive of two-dimensional reasoning beings, or, let us say,
two-dimensional worms, living and moving in a plane. For a creature of
this kind it will be self-evident that there are no other paths between
two points of its plane than such as lie within the plane. It must,
accordingly, be beyond the range of conception of this worm, how any
two-dimensional object which lies within a circle in its space can be
brought to any other position in its space outside the circle without the
object passing through the barriers formed by the circle’s circumference.
But if this worm could procure the services of a three-dimensional being,
the transportation of the object from a position within the circle to
any position outside it could be effected by the three-dimensional being
simply taking the object _out of_ the plane and placing it at the desired
point. This object, therefore, would, in an inexplicable manner, suddenly
disappear before the eyes of the worms who were assembled as spectators,
and after the lapse of an interval of time would again appear outside
the circle without having passed at any point through the circle’s
circumference. If now we add another dimension, we shall derive from this
trick, which is wholly removed from the sense-perception of the flattened
worms, the following experiment, which is wholly beyond the perception
of us human beings. Inside a glass sphere, which is closed all around,
a grain of corn is placed; the problem is to transport the corn to some
place outside the sphere without passing through the glass surface. Now
we should be able to perform this trick if some four-dimensional being
would render us the same aid that we before rendered the two-dimensional
worm. For the four-dimensional being could take the grain of corn into
his four-dimensional space and then replace it in our space in the
desired spot outside of the glass sphere. Slade performed this trick
before Zöllner. Its mere performance sufficed to convince this latter
investigator that Slade had here made use of a four-dimensional agent,
who, in respect of power of motion, controlled his four-dimensional space
as we do our three-dimensional space. It never occurred to Zöllner that
this experiment was the cleverly executed trick of a prestidigitateur,
or, as it would at once occur to us, that the whole thing was a sensory
illusion. The fact that we cannot explain a trick easily and naturally
does not irrevocably prove that it is accomplished by other means than
those which the world of matter presents.
Still better known than this last performance is Slade’s experiments
with knots. To explain this in connection with the fourth dimension, we
must resort again to the plane and the flat worm inhabiting it. To two
parallel lines in a plane let the two ends of a third line, which has a
double point, that is, intersects itself once, be attached. Our flat worm
would not be able to untie the loop formed by the doubled third line,
which we will call a string, because it cannot execute motions in three
dimensions. If, therefore, a two-dimensional prestidigitateur should
appear and accomplish the trick of untying this loop without removing the
two ends of the string from the parallel lines, he will have accomplished
for our flat worm a supersensuous experiment. A human being engaged in
the service of the prestidigitateur could execute for him the experiment
by simply lifting the string a little out of the plane, pulling it
taut, and placing it back again. This suggests the following analogous
experiment for three-dimensional beings. The two ends of a string in
which a common knot has been made are sealed to the opposite walls of a
room. The problem is to untie this knot without breaking the seals at the
two ends of the string. Everybody knows that this problem is not soluble,
but it may be calculated mathematically that the knot in the string can
be untied as easily by motions in a fourth dimension of space as in the
experiment above described the knot in the two-dimensional string was
untied by a three-dimensional motion. Now as Slade untied the knot before
Zöllner’s eyes without apparently making any use of the ends fastened in
the walls, Zöllner was still more strongly confirmed in the view that
Slade had power over spirits who performed the experiments for him.
Still more far-reaching is the theory of Carl du Prel concerning the
relations of the material and the four-dimensional world. (Compare his
numerous essays in the spiritualistic magazine _Sphinx_.) Just as the
shadows of three-dimensional objects cast on a wall are controlled
in their movements by the things whose projections they are, in the
same way it is claimed does there exist back of everything of this
sense-perceptible world a real transcendental and four-dimensional
“thing-in itself” whose projection in the space of experience is what we
falsely regard as the independent thing. Thus every man besides existing
in his terrestrial self also exists in a spiritual or astral self which
constantly accompanies him in his walks through life and whose existence
is especially proclaimed in states of profound sleep, of somnambulism,
and in the conditions of mediums. In this way Du Prel explains the
wonderful feats of somnambulists, and the aerial journeys of sorcerers
and witches. Whereas, ordinarily the separation of the material body from
the astral body is only effected at the moment of death; in the case of
somnambulists this separation may take place at any time, or, as Du Prel
says: “the threshold of feeling may be permanently displaced.”
In view of the natural relations of such theories to the dogmas of
Christianity it is explainable that theologians also have raised their
voices for or against spiritualism. While the _Protestant Church Times_
beheld in the “repulsive thaumaturgic performances which these coryphæi
of modern science offer, a lack of comprehension of real philosophy,” the
magazine _The Proof of Faith_, expresses its delight at the discovery
of spiritualism in the following manner: “Every Christian will surely
rejoice at the deep and perhaps mortal wound which these new discoveries
have in all probability administered to modern materialism.”
We shall pass by the childish opinion that the Bible also speaks of
four dimensions, as both in Job (xi, 8-9) and in the Epistle to the
Ephesians (iii, 18) only breadth, length, depth, and height, that is,
four directions of extension, are mentioned. Yet we will still add, as
Cranz has done, the reflections which Zöllner, as the most prominent
representative of modern spiritualism, has put forward respecting its
relation to the doctrines of Christianity (_Wissensch. Abhandl._,
Vol. III). By the foundation of transcendental physics on the basis
of spiritualistic phenomena, the “new light” has arisen which is
spoken of in the New Testament. The rending of the veil of the Temple
on the crucifixion of Christ, the resurrection, the ascension, the
transfiguration, the speaking with many tongues on the giving out of the
Holy Ghost, all these are in Zöllner’s view spiritualistic phenomena.
Similarly, he sees a reference to the four-dimensional world of spirits
in all those sayings of Christ in which the latter speaks to his Apostles
of the impossibility of their having any image or notion of the place to
which when he disappeared he would go and whence he would return. (Gospel
of St. John, xiii, 33, 36; xiv, 2, 3, 28; xvi, 5, 13).
Ulrici, however, goes furthest in the mingling of spiritualistic and
Christian beliefs; for he sees in the doctrine of spiritualism a means
of strengthening belief in a supreme moral world-order and in the
immortality of the soul. In answer to Ulrici’s tract “Spiritualism
So-called, a Question of Science” (1889) Wundt wrote an annihilating
reply bearing the title “Spiritualism, a Question of Science So-called.”
Wundt criticises the future condition of our souls according to
spiritualistic hypotheses in the following sarcastic yet pertinent words,
which Cranz also quotes: “(1) Physically, the souls of the dead come
into the thraldom of certain living beings who are called mediums. These
mediums are, for the present, at least, a not widely diffused class and
they appear to be almost exclusively Americans. At the command of these
mediums, departed souls perform mechanical feats which possess throughout
the character of absolute aimlessness. They rap, they lift tables and
chairs, they move beds, they play on the harmonica, and do other similar
things. (2) Intellectually, the souls of the dead enter a condition
which, if we are to judge from the productions which they deposit on
the slates of the mediums, must be termed a very lamentable one. These
slate-writings belong throughout in the category of imbecility; they
are totally bereft of any contents. (3) The most favored, apparently,
is the moral condition of the soul. According to the testimony which
we have, its character cannot be said to be anything else than that of
utter harmlessness. From brutal performances, such, for instance, as the
destruction of bed-canopies, the spirits most politely refrain.” Wundt
then laments the demoralising effect which spiritualism exercises on
people who have hitherto devoted their powers to some serious pursuit or
even to the service of science. In fact it is a presumptuous and flagrant
procedure to forsake the path of exact research, which slow as it is,
yet always leads to a sure extension of knowledge, in the hope that
some aimless, foolhardy venture into the realm of uncertainty will carry
us further than the path of slow toil, and that we can ever thus easily
lift the veil which hides from man the problems of the world that are yet
unsolved.
* * * * *