observation, the instruments and methods of former times having been
notably crude and unreliable. This fact, taken in connection with the
wild theories upon which the natural sciences of the middle ages were
based, is a sufficient explanation of some of the extraordinary
statements made by Kircher, Schott, Digby, and others.
By palingenesy these writers meant a certain chemical process by means
of which a plant or an animal might be revived from its ashes. In other
words a sort of material resurrection. Most of the accounts given by the
old authors go no further than to assert that by proper methods the
ashes of plants, when treated with water, produce small forests of ferns
and pines. Thus, an English chemist, named Coxe, asserts that having
extracted and dissolved the essential salts of fern, and then filtered
the liquor, he observed, after leaving it at rest for five or six weeks,
a vegetation of small ferns adhering to the bottom of the vessel. The
same chemist, having mixed northern potash with an equal quantity of sal
ammoniac, saw, some time after, a small forest of pines and other trees,
with which he was not acquainted, rising from the bottom of the vessel.
And Kircher tells us in his "Ars Magnetica" that he had a long-necked
phial, hermetically sealed, containing the ashes of a plant which he
could revive at pleasure by means of heat; and that he showed this
wonderful phenomenon to Christina, Queen of Sweden, who was highly
delighted with it. Unfortunately he left this valuable curiosity one
cold day in his window and it was entirely destroyed by the frost.
Father Schott also asserts that he saw this chemical wonder which,
according to his account, was a rose revived from its ashes. And he adds
that a certain prince having requested Kircher to make him one of the
same kind, he chose rather to give up his own than to repeat the
operation.
Even the celebrated Boyle, though not very favorable to palingenesy,
relates that having dissolved in water some verdigris, which, as is well
known, is produced by combining copper with the acid of vinegar, and
having caused this water to congeal, by means of artificial cold, he
observed, at the surface of the ice, small figures which had an exact
resemblance to vines.
In this connection it is well to bear in mind that in Boyle's time
almost all vinegar was really what its name implies--_sour wine_ (_vin
aigre_)--and verdigris or copper acetate was generally prepared by
exposing copper plates to the action of refuse grapes which had been
allowed to ferment and become sour. Therefore to him it might not have
seemed so very improbable that the green crystals which appeared on the
surface of the ice were, in reality, minute resuscitated grape-vines.
The explanation of these facts given by Father Kircher is worthy of the
science of the times. He tells us that the seminal virtue of each
mixture is contained in its salts and these salts, unalterable by their
nature, when put in motion by heat, rise in the vessel through the
liquor in which they are diffused. Being then at liberty to arrange
themselves at pleasure, they place themselves in that order in which
they would be placed by the effect of vegetation, or the same as they
occupied before the body to which they belonged had been decomposed by
the fire; in short, they form a plant, or the phantom of a plant, which
has a perfect resemblance to the one destroyed.
That the operators have here mistaken for true vegetable growth the
fern-like crystals of the salts which exist in the ashes of all plants
is very obvious. Their knowledge of plant structure was exceedingly
limited and their microscopes were so imperfect that imagination had
free scope. As seen under our modern microscopes, there are few prettier
sights than the crystallization of such salts as sal ammoniac, potassic
nitrate, barium chloride, etc. The crystals are actually seen to grow
and it would not require a very great stretch of the imagination to
convince one that the growth is due to a living organism. Indeed, this
view has actually been taken in an article which recently appeared in a
prominent magazine. The writer of that article sees no difference
between the mere aggregation of inorganic particles brought together by
voltaic action and the building up of vital structures under the
influence of organic forces. This is simply materialism run mad.
Perhaps the finest illustration of such crystallization is to be found
in the deposition of silver from a solution of the nitrate as seen under
the microscope. A drop of the solution is placed on a glass slide and
while the observer watches it through a low power, a piece of copper
wire or, preferably, a minute quantity of the amalgam of tin and
mercury, such as is used for "silvering" cheap looking glasses, is
brought into contact with it. Chemical decomposition at once sets in and
then the silver thus deposited forms one element of a very minute
voltaic couple and fresh crystals of silver are deposited upon the
silver already thrown down. When the illumination of this object under
the microscope is properly managed, the appearance, which resembles that
shown in Fig. 18, is exceedingly brilliant, and beautiful beyond
description.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
That imagination played strange pranks in the observations of the older
microscopists is shown by some of the engravings found in their books. I
have now before me a thick, dumpy quarto in which the so-called seminal
animalcules are depicted as little men and women, and I have no doubt
that, to the eye of this early observer, they had that appearance. But
the microscopists of to-day know better.
Sir Kenelm Digby, whose name is associated with the Sympathetic Powder,
tells us that he took the ashes of burnt crabs, dissolved them in water
and, after subjecting the whole to a tedious process, small crabs were
produced in the liquor. These were nourished with blood from the ox,
and, after a time, left to themselves in some stream where they throve
and grew large.
Now, although Evelyn, in his diary, declares that "Sir Kenelm was an
errant mountebank," it is quite possible that he was honest in his
account of his experiments and that he was merely led astray by the
imperfection of his instruments of observation. It is more than likely
that the creatures which Digby saw were entomostraca introduced in the
form of ova which, unless a good microscope be used, are quite
invisible. These would develop rapidly and might easily be mistaken for
some species of crab, though, when examined with proper instruments, all
resemblance vanishes. When let loose in a running stream it would
evidently be impossible to trace their identity and follow their growth.
But while some of these stories may have originated in errors of
observation this will hardly explain some of the statements made by
those who have advocated this strange doctrine. Father Schott, in his
"Physica Curiosa," gives an account of the resurrection of a sparrow and
actually gives an engraving in which the bird is shown in a bottle
revived!
Although the subject, of itself, is not worthy of a moment's
consideration, it deserves attention as an illustration of the
extraordinary vagaries into which the human mind is liable to fall.
THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY
This curious occult method of curing wounds is indissolubly associated
with the name of Sir Kenelm Digby (born 1603, died 1665), though it was
undoubtedly in use long before his time. He himself tells us that he
learned to make and apply the drug from a Carmelite, who had traveled in
the east, and whom he met in Florence, in 1622. The descendants of Digby
are still prominent in England, and O. W. Holmes, in his "One Hundred
Days in Europe," tells us that he had met a Sir Kenelm Digby, a
descendant of the famous Sir Kenelm of the seventeenth century, and that
he could hardly refrain from asking him if he had any of his ancestor's
famous powder in his pocket.
Digby was a student of chemistry, or at least of the chemistry of those
days, and wrote books of Recipes and the making of "Methington
[metheglin or mead?] Syder, etc." He was, as we have seen in the
previous article, a believer in palingenesy and made experiments with a
view to substantiate that strange doctrine. Evelyn calls him an "errant
quack," and he may have been given to quackery, but then the loose
scientific ideas of those days allowed a wide range in drawing
conclusions which, though they seem absurd to us, may have appeared to
be quite reasonable to the men of that time.
From his book on the subject,[3] we learn that the wound was never to
be brought into contact with the powder. A bandage was to be taken from
the wound, immersed in the powder, and kept there until the wound
healed.
This beats the absent treatment of Christian Science!
The powder was simply pulverized vitriol, that is, ferric sulphate, or
sulphate of iron.
There was another and probably an older method of using sympathetic
powders and salves; this was to apply the supposed curative to the
weapon which caused the wound, instead of the wound itself. In the "Lay
of the Last Minstrel," Scott gives an account of the way in which the
Lady of Buccleuch applied this occult surgery to the wound of William of
Deloraine:
"She drew the splinter from the wound,
And with a charm she stanched the blood.
She bade the gash be cleansed and bound:
No longer by his couch she stood;
But she has ta'en the broken lance.
And washed it from the clotted gore,
And salved the splinter o'er and o'er.
William of Deloraine, in trance,
Whene'er she turned it round and round
Twisted as if she galled his wound.
Then to her maidens she did say,
That he should be whole man and sound,
Within the course of a night and day.
Full long she toiled, for she did rue
Mishap to friend so stout and true."[4]
That no direct benefit could have been derived from such a mode of
treatment must be obvious, but De Morgan very plausibly claims that in
the then state of surgical and medical knowledge, it was really the very
best that could have been adopted. His argument is as follows: "The
sympathetic powder was that which cured by anointing the weapon with its
salve instead of the wound. I have been long convinced that it was
efficacious. The directions were to keep the wound clean and cool, and
to take care of diet, rubbing the salve on the knife or sword. If we
remember the dreadful notions upon drugs which prevailed, both as to
quantity and quality, we shall readily see that any way of _not_
dressing the wound, would have been useful. If the physicians had taken
the hint, had been careful of diet, etc., and had poured the little
barrels of medicine down the throat of a practicable doll, _they_ would
have had their magical cures as well as the surgeons. Matters are much
improved now; the quantity of medicine given, even by orthodox
physicians, would have been called infinitesimal by their professional
ancestors. Accordingly, the College of Physicians has a right to abandon
its motto, which is, _Ars longa, vita brevis_, meaning, _Practice is
long, so life is short_."
As set forth by Digby and others, the use of the Powder of Sympathy is
free from all taint of witchcraft or magic, but, in another form, it was
wholly dependent upon incantations and other magical performances. This
idea of sympathetic action was even carried so far as to lead to
attempts to destroy or injure those whom the operator disliked. In some
cases this was done by moulding an image in wax which, when formed under
proper occult influences, was supposed to have the power of transferring
to the victim any injuries inflicted on the image. Into such images pins
and knives were thrust in the hope that the living original would suffer
the same pains and mutilations that would be inflicted if the knives or
pins were thrust into him, and sometimes the waxen form was held before
the fire and allowed to melt away slowly in the hope that the prototype
would also waste away, and ultimately die. Shakespeare alludes to this
in the play of King John. In Act v., Scene 4, line 24, Melun says:
"A quantity of life
Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax,
Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire?"
And Hollinshed tells us that "it was alleged against Dame Eleanor Cobham
and her confederates that they had devised an image of wax, representing
the king, which, by their sorcerie, by little and little consumed,
intending thereby, in conclusion, to waste and destroy the king's
person."
In these cases, however, the operator always depended upon certain
occult or demoniacal influences, or, in other words, upon the art of
magic, and therefore examples of this kind do not come within the scope
of the present volume. In the case of the Powder of Sympathy the results
were supposed to be due entirely to natural causes.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy. With
Instructions how to make the said Powder. Rendered faithfully out of
French into English by R. White, Gent. London, 1658.
[4] Canto III. Stanza 23.
A SMALL BUDGET OF PARADOXES, ILLUSIONS, AND MARVELS
THE FOURTH DIMENSION AND THE POSSIBILITY OF A NEW SENSE AND NEW
SENSE-ORGAN
This subject has now found its way not only into semi-scientific works
but into our general literature and magazines. Even our novel-writers
have used suggestions from this hypothesis as part of the machinery of
their plots so that it properly finds a place amongst the subjects
discussed in this volume.
Various attempts have been made to explain what is meant by "the fourth
dimension," but it would seem that thus far the explanations which have
been offered are, to most minds, vague and incomprehensible, this latter
condition arising from the fact that the ordinary mind is utterly unable
to conceive of any such thing as a dimension which cannot be defined in
terms of the three with which we are already familiar. And I confess at
the start that I labor under the superlative difficulty of not being
able to form any conception of a fourth dimension, and for this
incapacity my only consolation is, that in this respect I am not alone.
I have conversed upon the subject with many able mathematicians and
physicists, and in every case I found that they were in the same
predicament as myself, and where I have met men who professed to think
it easy to form a conception of a fourth dimension, I have found their
ideas, not only in regard to the new hypothesis, but to its
correlations with generally accepted physical facts, to be nebulous and
inaccurate.
It does not follow, however, that because myself and some others cannot
form such a clear conception of a fourth dimension as we can of the
third, that, therefore, the theory is erroneous and the alleged
conditions non-existent. Some minds of great power and acuteness have
been incapable of mastering certain branches of science. Thus Diderot,
who was associated with d'Alembert, the famous mathematician, in the
production of "L'Encyclopedie," and who was not only a man of
acknowledged ability, but who, at one time, taught mathematics and wrote
upon several mathematical subjects, seems to have been unable to master
the elements of algebra. The following anecdote regarding his deficiency
in this respect is given by Thiebault and indorsed by Professor De
Morgan: At the invitation of the Empress, Catherine II, Diderot paid a
visit to the Russian court. He was a brilliant conversationalist and
being quite free with his opinions, he gave the younger members of the
court circle a good deal of lively atheism. The Empress herself was very
much amused, but some of her councillors suggested that it might be
desirable to check these expositions of strange doctrines. As Catherine
did not like to put a direct muzzle on her guest's tongue, the following
plot was contrived. Diderot was informed that a learned mathematician
was in possession of an algebraical demonstration of the existence of
God and would give it to him before all the court if he desired to hear
it. Diderot gladly consented, and although the name of the mathematician
is not given, it is well known to have been Euler. He advanced toward
Diderot, and said in French, gravely, and in a tone of perfect
conviction: "_Monsieur, (a + b^n) / n = x, therefore, God exists;
reply!_" Diderot, to whom algebra was Hebrew, was embarrassed and
disconcerted, while peals of laughter rose on all sides. He asked
permission to return to France at once, which was granted.
Even such a mind as that of Buckle, who was generally acknowledged to be
a keen-sighted thinker, could not form any idea of a geometrical
line--that is, of a line without breadth or thickness, a conception
which has been grasped clearly and accurately by thousands of
school-boys. He therefore asserts, positively, that there are no lines
without breadth, and comes to the following extraordinary conclusions:
"Since, however, the breadth of the faintest line is so slight as to
be incapable of measurement, except by an instrument under the
microscope, it follows that the assumption that there can be lines
without breadth is so nearly true that our senses, when unassisted
by art, can not detect the error. Formerly, and until the invention
of the micrometer, in the seventeenth century, it was impossible to
detect it at all. Hence, the conclusions of the geometrician
approximate so closely to truth that we are justified in accepting
them as true. The flaw is too minute to be perceived. But that there
is a flaw appears to me certain. It appears certain that, whenever
something is kept back in the premises, something must be wanting in
the conclusion. In all such cases, the field of inquiry has not been
entirely covered; and part of the preliminary facts being
suppressed, it must, I think, be admitted that complete truth be
unattainable, and that no problem in geometry has been exhaustively
solved."[5]
The fallacy which underlies Mr. Buckle's contention is thus clearly
exposed by the author of "The Natural History of Hell."
"If it be conceded that lines have breadth, then all we have to do
is to assign some definite breadth to each line--say the
one-thousandth of an inch--and allow for it. But the lines of the
geometer have no breadth. All the micrometers of which Mr. Buckle
speaks depend, either directly or indirectly, upon lines for their
graduations, and the positions of these lines are indicated by
rulings or scratches. Now, in even the finest of these rulings, as,
for example, those of Nobert or Fasoldt, where the ruling or
scratching, together with its accompanying space, amounts to no more
than the one hundred and fifty thousandth part of an inch, the
scratch has a perceptible breadth. But this broad scratch is not the
line recognized by the microscopist, to say nothing of the geometer.
The true line is a line which lies in the very center of this
scratch and it is certain that this central line has absolutely no
breadth at all."[6]
It must be very evident that if Mr. Buckle's contention that geometrical
lines have breadth were true, then some of the fundamental axioms of
geometry must be false. It could no longer hold true that "the whole is
equal to all its parts taken together," for if we divide a square or a
circle into two parts by means of a line which has breadth, the two
parts cannot be equal to the whole as it formerly was. As a matter of
fact, Mr. Buckle's lines are saw-cuts, not geometrical lines.
Geometrical points, lines, and surfaces, have no material existence and
can have none. An ideal conception and a material existence are two very
different things.
A very interesting book[7] has been written on the movements and
feelings of the inhabitants of a world of two dimensions. Nevertheless,
if we know anything at all, we know that such a world could not have any
actual existence and when we attempt to form any mental conception of
it and its inhabitants, we are compelled to adopt, to a certain extent,
the idea of the third dimension.
But at the same time we must remember that since the ordinary mechanic
and the school-boy who has studied geometry, find no difficulty in
conceiving of points without magnitude, lines without breadth, and
surfaces without thickness--conceptions which seem to have been
impossible to Buckle, a man of acknowledged ability--it may be possible
that minds constituted slightly differently from that of myself and some
others, might, perhaps, be able to form a conception of a fourth
dimension.
Leaving out of consideration the speculations of those who have woven
this idea into romances and day-dreams we find that the hypothesis of a
fourth dimension has been presented by two very different classes of
thinkers, and the discussion has been carried on from two very different
standpoints.
The first suggestion of this hypothesis seems to have come from Kant and
Gauss and to have had a purely metaphysical origin, for, although
attempts have been made to trace the idea back to the famous phantoms of
Plato, it is evident that the ideas then advanced had nothing in common
with the modern theory of the existence of a fourth dimension. The first
hint seems to have been a purely mathematical one and did not attract
any very general attention. It was, however, seized upon by a certain
branch of the transcendentalists, closely allied to the spiritualists,
and was exploited by them as a possible explanation of some curious and
mysterious phenomena and feats exhibited by certain Indian and European
devotees. This may have been done merely for the purpose of mystifying
and confounding their adversaries by bringing forward a striking
illustration of Hamlet's famous dictum--
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
A very fair statement of this view is thus given by Edward Carpenter:[8]
"There is another idea which modern science has been familiarizing
us with, and which is bringing us towards the same conception--that,
namely, of the fourth dimension. The supposition that the actual
world has four space-dimensions instead of three makes many things
conceivable which otherwise would be incredible. It makes it
conceivable that apparently separate objects, e. g., distinct
people, are really physically united; that things apparently
sundered by enormous distances of space are really quite together;
that a person or other object might pass in and out of a closed room
without disturbance of walls, doors or windows, etc., and if this
fourth dimension were to become a factor of our consciousness it is
obvious that we should have means of knowledge which, to the
ordinary sense, would appear simply miraculous. There is much,
apparently, to suggest that the consciousness attained to by the
Indian gnanis in their degree, and by hypnotic subjects in theirs,
is of this fourth dimensional order.
"As a solid is related to its own surface, so, it would appear, is
the cosmic consciousness related to the ordinary consciousness. The
phases of the personal consciousness are but different facets of the
other consciousness; and experiences which seem remote from each
other in the individual are perhaps all equally near in the
universal. Space itself, as we know it, may be practically
annihilated in the consciousness of a larger space, of which it is
but the superficies; and a person living in London may not unlikely
find that he has a back door opening quite simply and
unceremoniously out in Bombay."
On the other hand, the mathematicians, looking at it as a purely
speculative idea, have endeavored to arrive at definite conclusions in
regard to what would be the condition of things if the universe really
exists in a fourth, or even in some higher dimension. Professor W. W. R.
Ball tells us that