Dr. B. Cyriax, editor of the _Spiritualistische Blätter_, published at
Liepsic, Ger., has given in the issue of March 31st the following
communications from Dr. Hahnemann and Dr. Spurzheim, delivered through
a trance medium. They are valuable essays, whatever may be their
source, and the reader will not fail to observe their general
coincidence with the doctrine presented by myself in the May number of
the JOURNAL OF MAN in the article on the "Genesis of the Brain."
Wishing to have a psychometric test, I placed in the hands of Mrs.
Buchanan a portion of the manuscript of Spurzheim, who died fifty-five
years ago, to see if her conception of his thought would coincide with
the report from the trance medium. Her nervous system being somewhat
disturbed at the time, she was unable to go as far as I wished, but
she gave the following impressions:
"This has been written sixty or seventy years ago, written by a
person of very broad, elevated mind, progressive, a teacher or
writer--perhaps both. He had a great deal of will power, strong,
and decisive, was very independent, not afraid to give his
views, but had a great deal of opposition to his sentiments. He
was of a scientific cast of mind, was acquainted with medical
science, and was more interested in the brain than anything
else. He would talk, lecture, and write about the brain, and had
very correct views in advance of others. He is in spirit life
now. There is a warmth and nearness in the impression as though
he would be attracted to the science you are engaged in. His
mind broadens out into different lines of thought in spirit
life--things appertaining to what he was interested in here, and
kindred subjects. He thinks you are developing in the right
direction. I think he has communicated with you. I think he has
an overshadowing approval of your work. He feels that you are in
an original line of thought, not dominated by any other minds.
There seems an overshadowing influence that stimulates you."
As to his having communicated with me, it is true that over thirty
years ago I received some remarkable communications from him, through
a rapping medium, the messages being spelled out by the alphabet, and
his suggestions entirely in consonance with my teachings.
I then asked, "What views does he have of the process of creation and
development of life on the globe?" Which was answered "His views are
such as have been expressed by the believers in evolution, from the
lower to the higher orders of creation. I feel a pressure of
intellectual conceptions, but my nervous system is not in a state to
express it."
I then read through the statement of Spurzheim's views (his name being
still unknown to Mrs. B.), and asked how they coincided with the
sentiments she perceived in the person she described. She replied, "I
think he accepts or approves it generally. He would certainly sanction
such ideas. I think he has communicated, and that he would, in control
of a medium, express such ideas."
The messages of Hahnemann and Spurzheim have been so well translated
by a correspondent of the _Golden Gate_, that I reproduce them as
given in that journal, as follows:
"If you consider the high development of the Caucasian race, it
is repulsive to your sentiments to believe that man belongs to
the animal kingdom as its highest link, and springs from this
kingdom. Yet this feeling is false, and must be destroyed, since
it originates only in self-conceit and it is not so very
difficult to arrive at a juster view. Only go back to the time
of Charlemagne or to that of Augustus, and observe the great
mass of your forefathers, and you will find so great a
difference, that you will be as much alarmed as if in the
presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought
before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic
times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of
life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and
tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated
from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the
uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these
cave-dwellers and pile-builders had already reached a high
degree of culture in comparison with those who had preceded them
by thousands of years; and if we thus join link to link in the
chain backwards, we must come to the conclusion that the
original men were but little distinguished in form and bodily
structure, as well as in intellectual capacity, and at first
hardly at all, from the animals standing next them, the
four-handed ones.
"The assumption that God has created man perfect, _i. e._, in
body, but without power of judgment, and that he obtained this
only by transgressing a command and a prohibition, and thus by a
crime, so that he first began to degenerate upon the awakening
in him of the divine intellect and reason, we leave wholly one
side as absolutely contradicted by positive science, and only
inquire, how, then, did man originate in so low a form? There
are but two answers to this question. The one is, that man was
placed upon the earth by an outside power in full size, rudeness
and stupidity, in order to be left to his fate there in an
unknown land, and to struggle for his existence with unknown
animals. Or, on the other hand, that man was developed in a
quite natural way, according to the law of evolution, out of the
class of animals standing next below him. You are aware that we
do not favor the first view, but so much the more earnestly
embrace the latter. According to the law of evolution and
adaptation the talents and capacities of animals were steadily
changed in the course of thousands of years, following the
changed relations of climate and soil, so as to fit themselves
for the new conditions of sustenance and existence. In
proportion as all nature became changed, so that at the end of a
so-called geological period no comparison could be made with the
beginning of the next preceding one, in that same proportion and
measure the plants and animals had also changed, so that
scarcely any more resemblance existed between these and those
from which they originated. It is self-evident that amid such
changes only those specimens continued to exist, which had
adapted themselves in their progressive development in their
organs and capacities in the best way to the new conditions of
their existence. All those which had not thus changed lost the
conditions of their existence and died out. But where did these
organs and capacities, fitted to the newer relations, gain their
form and development? In the mother-pouch of the female,
undoubtedly! And of course this improvement advanced with each
succeeding generation, so that animals which originally only
lived in water, through gradual efforts to go on dry land also,
to which, perhaps, they were forced to preserve their species,
thereby changed the original fins into legs and later into
web-feet by which they were adapted to live in water as well as
on land (amphibia).
"Now likewise there was developed in the gigantic four-handed
Saurians such a change in the mother-pouch of the female animals
as the ever finer organized brain created, so that in the course
of thousands of years, a creature was gradually developed which
overstepped the last stage of the sense-developed understanding
and comprehension, and was in a position, through the putting
into activity of the upper and front brain, to distinguish evil
from good and to think independently. Of these creatures,
likewise, only those survive that had in themselves the capacity
for further development, while the rest perished. The survivors
were the original men; those that perished formed the
intermediate link between man and the brute. Thus, out of the
infinite efforts of nature to create a finer organized species
from the four-handed Saurians, came forth not only men, but the
failures, the apes. So man does not descend from the ape, but
both have only one stock, which is the four-handed animals
sprung from the flesh-devouring Saurians.
"Thus we can settle whence man comes and how he arose, but that
does not solve the problem whence comes life or how it arose,
yet on this point I will give place to friend Spurzheim.
"Dr. Spurzheim then took control and spoke over half an hour in
his peculiarly striking, logical and convincing way, yet it is
quite impossible to repeat this discourse as it was given. It
ran about as follows:
"Worthy friends, friend Hahnemann has just given you an
explanation of the origin of man to which I have nothing to add.
The question whether the egg existed before the hen or the hen
before the egg has often been called an idle one, and yet it
obtrudes itself upon everybody. Our eyesight teaches that the
egg comes from the hen, but at the same time also that the hen
is developed from the egg, and if we go farther back we are lost
in infinity. The theological view that God put into the world
all that exists, all animals from the smallest seen by the
microscope to the largest gigantic creatures in pairs and fully
grown, seems to solve the problem of the egg and the hen, but
has long since been refuted by science, so that we need not
further meddle with it, and so much the less as thereby the
question of the origin of life is not even touched. Let us now
make a violent leap from man out into infinite space and back
millions of years before the origin of man upon the earth. What
do we see there? Unnumbered worlds, all which, like the sun,
have brought forth other worlds dependent on them, and these by
their development taking place according to like uniform laws in
their infinite differences in size and specific gravity, yet
ever striving after the same great end, the production of beings
endowed with reason, offer the most glorious picture of Godlike
power and harmony. The worlds born of these suns (planets) all
originated in like manner, since the parts lying along the
circumference of the suns, by their motion in space cooled off
the sooner, broke away in irregular masses, and while
contracting into globular shapes and revolving upon their own
axis, yet by the force of attraction and their original motion
bound to the bodies, whirl around these and with these move on
in space. And though these balls of glowing gas, as the earth
for example in its origin, in contrast with the mother-body
(sun) are somewhat cooled off, yet is the heat of the same still
so great (some reckoning it at two or six thousand degrees while
others hold it incomputable) that absolutely no life can exist
within such balls of fire. But after the more solid parts are
formed (granite, porphyry, etc.,) gradually by cooling off and
contracting, and these are fused together into larger masses,
then begin the ribs of the earth-structure, the rocky
foundations of the super-structure, and as soon as the
development of the earth is so far advanced that oxygen and
hydrogen can be formed into water, which falls down in frightful
masses upon the hot rocks and dissolves them on the surface,
then begins the condition productive of cells and carbon
entering into the connection, and the first plants are brought
forth; the algæ first, then the lichens and ferns, which are
developed into gigantic dimensions. Prior to and simultaneous
with the formation of cells went on the production of crystals
and the mineral as well as the vegetable kingdoms were further
and further developed. Contemporary with the first plant-cells
the conditions were plainly offered for the formation of the
first life-cells. And now the question arises, What is life?
Whence comes it? Although it is certain that in the process of
development of the earth after its separation from the sun no
life was present.
"It is asserted that life is motion and is an attribute of
matter; yet that is something wholly different from what is
understood by the term. Thus far science has pointed out no
distinction between dead and living protoplasm, and the
affirmation that the primordial cells are the source of life is
not tenable, since the cell is an organization that presupposes
life, and so, at most, the original cell could be designated as
but the first expression of life. For a short time it was
assumed that life came to the earth through meteors or parts of
worlds that had gone to pieces, but this idea was soon given up,
because neither the manifold nature of life nor the origin of
the same could thereby be explained or determined, and thus the
question was only pushed farther back, since what was desired to
be known, was, how life originated on the world that was
destroyed.
"When, and under what circumstances, life began on the earth can
not be accurately fixed, yet it is clear that at the time when
the ocean still covered nearly all the earth and was so hot that
not a single one of the now existing plants and living beings
could then exist, the life in that ocean and on its bottom was
so infinitely grand in its proportions that men can now form no
adequate conception of the same. The force of growth as well as
of decay was immense, and all that was grown or made by its
decay only increased the mass of life-producing substance.
"There are three theories as to the origin of living beings:
"1. God made all animals, including man, in pairs and of full
size.
"2. The elements of physical nature and the forces dwelling in
matter by a lucky arrangement of atoms developing living organs
out of matter.
"3. An intelligent, intellectual force permeates matter, and
wherever this in its development attains the conditions for the
maintenance of life (and so a higher manifestation of force than
in the mineral) it brings forth the intellectual life in the
protoplasmic germ for the finest organism. Through the laws of
inheritance, of change, of the multiplication of progressive
development, of natural selection and of the persistence of the
most gifted individuals, living beings are developed through all
classes and species up to man.
"With the first theory we need not concern ourselves further, as
we have already branded it as hostile to reason and knowledge,
although theologians have sought to maintain that Almighty God
has made the earth with all that is in it and upon it, just as
it now exists, and have even gone so far as to affirm in
opposition to the effect of geological discoveries, that God
himself had created or deposited the fossil remains of animals
found under the bed of the Euphrates (the spot where paradise is
said to have been) exactly there and in a petrified condition.
"The second theory seems more probable; it assumes that force
and matter are one and the same, matter possessing force as a
quality; but overlooks the fact that what is called matter first
came forth as a product out of the glowing mass of primary gas
or world-material, and hence that matter, or world-material, to
which the life-producing force is attached, is to be sought away
back before the time when began the formations of worlds in
their incandescent state, whereby it is, of course, conceded
that life in the ordinary sense was destroyed, if it really
subsisted before the heating of the particles of matter.
"Another objection to this theory is this, that if organizations
spring from the favorable union of atoms, this surrenders the
rule to chance and excludes a unitary order of the world, while
failing to explain the origin of thinking, moral and
reason-gifted beings; since, if thinking, reason and moral
sentiment spring from matter, they must be attributes of the
same; and since the product is always less than the producer, it
follows that intelligence, reason and ethics must be present
somewhere in matter in a concentrated form; and this reflection
brings us quite naturally to the third theory.
"The intellectual, divine principle penetrates matter as the
positive element, which under definite conditions steadily works
upon the negative element of the original substance and forces
the same under constant changing of form and combining parts, to
realize definite, universally similar ideas, and to attain
definite aims; and wherever matter in the process of development
offers certain conditions, there the intellectual element
produces what is called life. And this takes for granted that
life may spring up spontaneously there where there was no life
before; and this fact has been established beyond all reasonable
doubt. The juice of mutton, beef and a mixture of gelatine and
sugar have been put in separate vessels, these made air-tight
and exposed for a long time to a heat of as much as three
hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, so as to be quite sure that all
living germs were destroyed. Yet after the lapse of weeks in
some cases and of months in others, living beings were developed
in the vessels.
"Under the relation of the earth as existing to-day, life would
again be developed, if we were in a condition instantaneously to
annihilate all life; yet the same results would not be produced
as in the original period, because the needed materials are no
longer present in the mighty masses, nor in the requisite fluid
and gaseous conditions to attain so powerful effects, to which
belong also as necessary conditions the far higher temperature
and the greater humidity of the atmosphere of that epoch. In the
first creative period the force as well as the material were
present in colossal measure and then arose those gigantic plants
and animals, which laid the foundation for all later organisms.
Without the colossal ferns and lichens and palm-like growths of
the early ages, the plants of to-day would have been impossible,
and without the monstrous giant creatures of old, which became
more and more refined through gradual adaptation to altered
relations, the modern animal kingdom could not have arisen. This
adaptation is one of the most wonderful phenomena in the history
of the development of the earth and is found as well in the
realm of plants as in that of animals. Originally there were
only aquatic animals, but as the relations changed so that it
became necessary, partly for the procuring of food and partly
for the safety of the offspring, that animals should go on land,
their attempts constantly repeated to do so, gradually produced
a change in the limbs fitted for motion, and so came about the
transformation of fins into wings in the creatures that wanted
to rise out of the water into the air, which then had far more
carrying power than at the present day.
"Whatever may be said about the qualities of matter and the
force united with it (more truly the force manifesting itself
therein), it cannot be denied, that the plan of creation is a
unitary one, moving on according to definite laws and striving
towards definite final results. This presupposes that a
conscious idea lies at the basis of the creative plan, and this
implies an original consciousness which we call God. God and
nature are one, just as intellect and body are one in man.
Nature, _i. e._, substance, changes according to the impulses
that go out from God, but God remains unchanged. All that
possesses form, all organization must be destroyed in the
incandescent process of forming world-bodies, but the divine,
the intellectual principle is indestructible; and when matter
under the impulses that went forth from God, has reached the
grade of development at which organization is possible, then the
divine principle steps into force as the positive element, and
that is life. This positive element works on and on, steadily
producing higher forms and higher organizations, until in man it
fashions itself into a self-recognizing, conscious and
individual essence, which, as derived from God, is
indestructible, and after the consummation of its earthly
organism, is capable, as an individual, intellectual being, of
an infinitely progressive development.
"So far man can attain by a chain of logical deductions; but to
define the idea that lies at the basis of the world-order is
impossible; just as also a man will never be in a condition to
find out or to comprehend how the working of the intellectual
element, upon the substance capable of change, is made possible.
Life is the self-manifested working of the intellectual element
upon matter. Man never understands the laws of life, though he
can understand the laws necessary for the preservation of life,
since he can deduce them from the outward manifestations of
life. Man must be contented with this; he can never understand
God; and since life is the expression of the divine activity,
its origin must ever remain a mystery to him."
Though concurring generally in the foregoing views (which may have
been materially modified by their channel) I do not accept them as a
finality. That a brooding spiritual power has to do with all
development and progress I do not doubt. But this power is not
_necessarily_ a monotonous and universal influence like gravitation or
caloric. There is no reason to forbid special acts of the creative
spiritual energy, for we observe to-day the production of plants and
of beautiful fabrics by spiritual power where the necessary conditions
exist. Moreover, the greatest potency of spiritual power is at the
beginnings in the most plasmic conditions of matter. It is in the
animal germ and the vegetable seed that the invisible world is most
potential, and I am inclined to think that naturalists have attached
too much importance to the exterior environment, and too little to the
interior conditions in which the higher potencies of organization are
to be found, and in which alone we may find the entrance of life from
the true world of life.
The hasty conclusions of naturalists as to _evolution_ do not explain
the evolution and the vast variety of the vegetable kingdom. To
attribute this to any power of modification by environment, when we
see how little environment can do to make any _essential_ change in
vegetation, would require more credulity than I would consider
justifiable in the pursuit of scientific truths. So in the evolution
of the animal kingdom, I believe the power of the physical environment
has been greatly overrated.