Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE ARENA.
EDITED BY B. O. FLOWER.
VOL. IV.
PUBLISHED BY
THE ARENA PUBLISHING CO.,
BOSTON, MASS.
1891.
CONTENTS.
June, 1891
The New Columbus JULIAN HAWTHORNE
The Unknown (Part I) CAMILLE FLAMMARION
The Chivalry of the Press JULIUS CHAMBERS
Society's Exiles B. O. FLOWER
Evolution and Christianity PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, Ph.D.
The Irrigation Problem in the Northwest JAMES REALF, JR.
Revolutionary Measures and Neglected Crimes PROF. JOS. RODES BUCHANAN
Spencer's Doctrine of Inconceivability REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN
The Better Part WILLIAM ALLEN DROMGOOLE
The Heiress of the Ridge NO-NAME PAPER
The Brook P. H. S.
Optimism, Real and False EDITORIAL
The Pessimistic Cast of Modern Thought EDITORIAL
July, 1891
Oliver Wendell Holmes GEORGE STEWART, D.C.L., LL.D.
Plutocracy and Snobbery in New York EDGAR FAWCETT
Should the Nation Own the Railways? C. WOOD DAVIS
The Unknown (Part II) CAMILLE FLAMMARION
The Swiss and American Constitutions W. D. MCCRACKAN
The Tyranny of All the People REV. FRANCIS BELLAMY
Revolutionary Measures and Neglected Crimes,
(Part 2d) PROF. JOS. RODES BUCHANAN
Æonian Punishment REV. W. E. MANLEY, D.D.
The Negro Question PROF. W. S. SCARBOROUGH
A Prairie Heroine HAMLIN GARLAND
An Epoch-Marking Drama EDITORIAL
The Present Revolution in Theological Thought EDITORIAL
The Conflict Between Ancient and Modern Thought in the
Presbyterian Church EDITORIAL
August, 1891
The Unity of Germany MME. BLAZE DEBURY
Should the Nation Own the Railways? C. WOOD DAVIS
Where Must Lasting Progress Begin? ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
My Home Life AMELIA B. EDWARDS
The Tyranny of Nationalism REV. MINOT J. SAVAGE
Individuality in Education PROF. MARY L. DICKINSON
The Working-Women of To-day HELEN CAMPBELL
The Independent Party and Money at Cost R. B. HASSELL
Psychic Experiences SARA A. UNDERWOOD
A Decade of Retrogression FLORENCE KELLEY WISCHNEWETZKY
Old Hickory's Ball WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE
The Era of Woman EDITORIAL
September, 1891
The Newer Heresies REV. GEO. C. LORIMER, D.D.
Harvest and Laborers in the Psychical Field FREDERIC W. H. MYERS
Fashion's Slaves B. O. FLOWER
Un-American Tendencies REV. CARLOS D. MARTYN, D.D.
Extrinsic Significance of Constitutional
Government in Japan KUMA OISHI, A.M.
University Extension PROF. WILLIS BOUGHTON
Pope Leo on Labor THOMAS B. PRESTON
The Austrian Postal Banking System SYLVESTER BAXTER
Another View of Newman WILLIAM M. SALTER
Inter-Migration Rabbi SOLOMON SCHINDLER
He Came and Went Again W. N. HARBEN
O Thou Who Sighest for a Broader Field JULIA ANNA WOLCOTT
An Evening at the Corner Grocery HAMLIN GARLAND
October, 1891
James Russell Lowell GEORGE STEWART, D.C.L., LL.D.
Healing Through the Mind HENRY WOOD
Mr. and Mrs. James A. Herne HAMLIN GARLAND
Some Weak Spots in the French Republic THEODORE STANTON
Leaderless Mobs H. C. BRADSBY
Madame Blavatsky at Adyar MONCURE D. CONWAY
Emancipation by Nationalism THADDEUS B. WAKEMAN
Recollections of Old Play-Bills CHARLES H. PATTEE
The Microscope DR. FREDERICK GAERTNER
A Grain of Gold WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE
Religious Intolerance To-day EDITORIAL
Social Conditions Under Louis XV EDITORIAL
November, 1891
Pharisaism in Public Life EDITORIAL
Cancer Spots in Metropolitan Life EDITORIAL
The Saloon EDITORIAL
Hot-beds of Social Pollution EDITORIAL
The Power and Responsibility of the Christian Ministry EDITORIAL
What the Clergy Might Accomplish EDITORIAL
ILLUSTRATIONS.
June, 1891
B. O. Flower
Julius Chambers
Out of Work
Invalid in Chair
Cellarway Leading to Under-Ground Apartments
Sick Man in Under-Ground Apartment
Constance and Maggie
Exterior of a North End Tenement House
Under-Ground Tenement with Two Beds
Widow and two Children in Under-Ground Tenement
Portuguese Widow in Attic
Portuguese Widow and Three Children
The Victoria Square Apartment House, Liverpool, Eng.
Rev. T. Ernest Allen
July, 1891
Oliver Wendell Holmes
August, 1891
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Amelia B. Edwards
September, 1891
Rev. Geo. C. Lorimer
Illustrations of "Fashion's Slaves"
Prominent Actresses in Costume
Kuma Oishi
October, 1891
James Russell Lowell
Mr. and Mrs. James A. Herne
Mr. and Mrs. James A. Herne Illustrated in Character
November, 1891
Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge
Noted Members of the South Dakota Divorce Colony
[Illustration: (signed) Cordially Yours B. Orange Flower]
THE ARENA.
No. XIX.
JUNE, 1891.
THE NEW COLUMBUS.
BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
History repeats itself, but on new planes. Often, a symbol appears in
one age, and the spirit of which it is the expression is revealed in
another. Each answers the need of its own time. From the creative
standpoint, which is out of time, spirit and symbol are one; but to us,
who see things successively, they seem as prior and posterior.
If this be so, it should be possible for a thoughtful and believing mind
in some measure to forecast the future from the record of the past. No
doubt, past and present contain the germs of all that is to be, were the
analyst omniscient. But it needs not omniscience roughly to body-forth
the contours of coming events. It is done daily, on a smaller or larger
scale, with more or less plausibility. All theories are grounded in this
principle. And it is noticeable that, at this moment, such tentative
prophesies are more than frequent, and more comprehensive than usual in
their scope.
The condition of mankind, during the last quarter of the fifteenth
century, bore some curious analogies to its state at present. A certain
stage or epoch of human life seemed to have run its course and come to a
stop. The impulses which had started it were exhausted. In the political
field, feudalism, originally beneficent, had become tyrannous and
stifling; and monarchy, at first an austere necessity, had grown to be,
beyond measure, arrogant, selfish, and luxurious. In science, the old
methods had proved themselves puerile and inefficient, and the leading
scientists were magicians and witches; in literature, no poet had arisen
worthy to strike the lyre that Chaucer tuned to music. As for religion,
the corruptions of the papacy, and the corresponding degradation of the
monasteries and of the priesthood generally, had brought it down from a
region of sublime and self-abnegating faith, to a commodity for raising
money, and a cloak to hide profligacy. Martin Luther was still in the
womb of the future; and so were Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes,
and Oliver Cromwell. Pessimists were declaring, according to their
invariable custom, that what was bad would get worse, and that what was
good would disappear. But there were, scattered here and there
throughout Christendom, a number of men of the profounder, optimistic
tendency, who saw in existing abuses but the misuse or misapprehension
of elements intrinsically good; who knew that evils bear in themselves
the seeds of their own extirpation; and who believed that Providence,
far from having failed in its design to secure the ultimate happiness of
the human race, was bringing the old order of things to a close in order
to provide place for something new and higher.
But that obstacle in the way of improvement which was apparently the
most immovable, was the geographical one. The habitable earth was used
up. Outside of Europe there was nothing, save inaccessible wilderness,
and barren, boundless seas. There was nothing for the mass of men to do,
and yet their energy and desire were as great as ever; there was nowhere
for them to go, and yet they were steadily increasing in numbers. The
Crusades had amused them for a while, but they were done with; the
plague had thinned them out, and war had helped the plague; but the
birth-rate was more than a match for both. A new planet, with all the
fresh interests and possibilities which that would involve, seemed
absolutely necessary. But who should erect a ladder to the stars, or
draw them down from the sky within man's reach? The one indispensable
thing was also the one thing impossible.
If, next year, we were to learn that some miraculous Ericsson or Edison
had established a practicable route to the planet Mars, and that this
neighbor of ours in the solar system was found to be replete with all
the things that we most want and can least easily get,--were such news
to reach us, we might comprehend the sensation created in the Europe of
1492, four centuries ago, when it received the information that a
certain Christopher Columbus had discovered a brand new continent,
overflowing with gold and jewels, on the other side of the Atlantic. The
impossible had happened. Our globe was not the petty sphere that it had
been assumed to be. There was room in it for everybody, and a fortune
for the picking up. And all the world, with Spain in the van, prepared
to move on El Dorado. A whiff of the fresh Western air blew in all
nostrils, and re-animated the moribund body of civilization. The
stimulus of Columbus' achievement was felt in every condition of human
life and phase of human activity. Mankind once more saw a future, and
bound up its loins to take advantage of it. Literature felt the electric
touch, and blossomed in the unmatched geniuses of the Elizabethan age.
Science ceased to reason _à priori_, and began to investigate and
classify facts. Human liberty began to be conscious of thews and sinews,
soon to be tested in the struggle of the Netherlands against Philip II.
of Spain, and, later, in that of the people of England against their own
Charles Stuart. Religion was heard to mutter something about the rights
of private conscience, and anon the muttering took form in the heroic
protest of the man of Eisleben. It was like the awakening in the palace
of the Sleeping Beauty, in the fairy-tale. Columbus had kissed the lips
of the Princess America, and at once the long-pent stream of old-world
life dashed onward like a cataract.
A new world! Four hundred years have passed, and the New World is less a
novelty than it was. We have begun to suspect that no given number of
square miles of land, no eloquence and sagacity of paper preambles and
declarations, no swiftness of travel nor instantaneousness of
communication, no invincibility of ironclads nor refinement of society,
no logic in religion, no gospel of political economy,--none of these and
a hundred other things will read us the Riddle of the Sphinx. _Non tali
auxilio, nec defensoribus istis!_ The elements of true life lie deeper
and are simpler. Once more, it seems, we have reached the limits of a
dispensation, and are halted by a blank wall. There is no visible way
over it, nor around it. We cannot stand still; still less can we turn
back. What is to happen? What happens when an irresistible force
encounters an impenetrable barrier?
That was the question asked in Columbus' day; and he found an answer to
it. Are we to expect the appearance of a new Columbus to answer it
again? To unimaginative minds it looks as if there were no career for a
new Columbus. In the first place, population is increasing so fast that
soon even the steppes of Russia and the western American plains will be
overcrowded. Again, land, and the control of industries, are falling
into the possession of a comparative handful of persons, to whom the
rest of the population must inevitably become subject; or, should the
latter rebel, the ensuing period of chaos would be followed, at best, by
a return of the old conditions. Religion is a lifeless letter, a school
of good-breeding, a philosophical amusement; the old unreasoning faith
that moved mountains can never revive. Science advances with ever more
and yet more caution, but each new step only confirms the conviction
that the really commanding secrets of existence will forever elude
discovery. Literature, rendered uncreative by the scientific influence,
has fallen to refining upon itself, and photographing a narrow
conception of facts. The exhausting heats of Equatorial Africa, and the
paralyzing cold of the Poles, forbid the hope of successful colonization
of those regions. Social life is an elaborate apeing of behavior which
has no root in the real impulses of the human heart; its true underlying
spirit is made up of hatred, covetousness, and self-indulgence. There
are no illusions left to us, no high, inspiring sentiment. We have
reached our limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vast
cataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, may save us the
slow misery of extinction by disease, despair, and the enmity of every
man against every other. What Columbus can help us out of such a
predicament?
Such is the refrain of the nineteenth century pessimist. But, as before,
the sprouting of new thought and belief is visible to the attentive eye
all over the surface of the sordid field of a decaying civilization. The
time has come when the spirit of Columbus' symbol shall avouch itself,
vindicating the patient purpose of Him who brings the flower from the
seed. Great discoveries come when they are needed; never too early nor
too late. When nothing else will serve the turn, then, and not till
then, the rock opens, and the spring gushes forth. Who that has
considered the philosophy of the infinitely great and of the infinitely
minute can doubt the inexhaustibleness of nature? And what is nature but
the characteristic echo, in sense, of the spirit of man?
Even on the material plane, there are numberless opportunities for the
new Columbus. Ever and anon a canard appears in a newspaper, or a
romance is published, reporting or describing some imaginary invention
which is to revolutionize the economical situation. The problem of
air-navigation is among the more familiar of these suggestions, though
by no means the most important of them. No doubt we shall fly before
long, but that mode of travel will be, after all, nothing more than an
improvement upon existing means of intercommunication. After the
principle has been generally adopted, and the novelty has worn off, we
shall find ourselves not much better, nor much worse off than we were
before. Flying will be but another illustration of the truth that
competition is only intensified by the perfecting of its instruments.
Men will still be poor and rich, happy and unhappy, as formerly. If I
can go from New York to London in a day, instead of in a week, so also
can those against whom I am competing. The idea that there is any real
gain of time is an illusion; the day will still contain its
four-and-twenty hours, and I shall, as before, sleep so many, play so
many, and work so many. Relatively, my state will be unchanged.
More promising is the idea of the transformation of matter. Science is
now nearly ready to affirm that substances of all kinds are specific
conditions of etheric vortices. Vibration is the law of existence, and
if we could control vibrations, we could create substances, either
directly from the etheric base, or, mediately, by inducing the atoms of
any given substance so to modify their mutual arrangement, or
characteristic vibration, as to produce another substance. It is evident
that if this feat is ever performed, it must be by some process of
elemental simplicity, readily available for every tyro. A prophet has
arisen, during these latter days, in Philadelphia, who somewhat
obscurely professes to be on the track of this discovery. He is commonly
regarded as a charlatan; but men cognizant of the latest advances of
science admit themselves unable to explain upon any known principles the
effects he produces. It need not be pointed out that if Mr. Keely, or
any one else, has found a way to metamorphose one substance into
another, the consequences to the world must be profound. Labor for one's
daily bread will be a thing of the past, when bread may be made out of
stones by the mere setting-up of a particular vibration. The race for
wealth will cease, when every one is equally able to command all the
resources of the globe. The whole point of view regarding the material
aspects of life will be vitally altered; leisure (so far as necessary
physical effort is concerned) will inevitably be universal. For when we
consider what have been the true motives of civilization and its
appurtenances during the greater part of the historical period, we find
it to be the desire to better our physical condition. It is commerce
that has built cities, made railroads, laws, and wars, maintained the
boundaries of nations, and kept up the human contact which we are
accustomed to call society. When commerce ceases--as it will cease, when
there is no longer any reason for its existence--all the results of it
that we have mentioned will cease also. In other words, civilization and
society, as we now know them, will disappear. Human beings will stay
where they are born, and live as the birds do. There will be no work
except creative or artistic work, done for the mere pleasure of the
doing, voluntarily. Society will no longer be based upon mutual
rivalries and the gain of personal advantage. Science will not be
pursued on its present lines, or for its present ends; for when the
human race has attained leisure and the gratification of its material
wants, it would have no motives for further merely physical
investigation.
This would seem to involve a new kind of barbarism. And so, no doubt, it
would, were the discoveries of our Columbus to be limited to the
material plane. But it is far more probable that material
transubstantiation will be merely the corollary or accompaniment of an
infinitely more important revelation and expansion in the spiritual
sphere. What we are to expect is an awakening of the soul; the
re-discovery and re-habilitation of the genuine and indestructible
religious instinct. Such a religious revival will be something very
different from what we have hitherto known under that name. It will be a
spontaneous and joyful realization by the soul of its vital relations
with its Creator. Ecclesiastical forms and dogmas will vanish, and
nature will be recognized as a language whereby God converses with man.
The interpretation of this language, based as it is upon an eternal and
living symbolism, containing infinite depths beyond depths of meaning,
will be a sufficient study and employment for mankind forever. Art will
receive an inconceivable stimulus, from the recognition of its true
significance as a re-humanization of nature, and from the perception of
its scope and possibilities. Science will become, in truth, the handmaid
of religion, in that it will be devoted to reporting the physical
analogies of spiritual truths, and following them out in their subtler
details. Hitherto, the progress of science has been slow, and subject to
constant error and revision, because it would not accept the inevitable
dependence of body on soul, as of effect on cause. But as soon as
physical research begins to go hand-in-hand with moral or psychical, it
will advance with a rapidity hitherto unimagined, each assisting and
classifying the other. The study of human nature will give direction to
the study of the nature that is not human; and the latter will
illustrate and confirm the conclusions of the former. More than half the
difficulties of science as now practised is due to ignorance of what to
look for; but when it can refer at each step to the truths of the mind
and heart, this obstacle will disappear, and certainty take the place of
experiment.
The attitude of men towards one another will undergo a corresponding
change. It is already become evident that selfishness is a colossal
failure. Viewed as to its logical results, it requires that each
individual should possess all things and all power. Hostile collision
thus becomes inevitable, and more is lost by it than can ever be gained.
Recent social theorists propose a universal co-operation, to save the
waste of personal competition. But competition is a wholesome and vital
law; it is only the direction of it that requires alteration. When the
cessation of working for one's livelihood takes place, human energy and
love of production will not cease with it, but will persist, and must
find their channels. But competition to outdo each in the service of all
is free from collisions, and its range is limitless. Not to support
life, but to make life more lovely, will be the effort; and not to make
it more lovely for one's self, but for one's neighbor. Nor is this all.
The love of the neighbor will be a true act of Divine worship, since it
will then be acknowledged that mankind, though multiplied to human
sense, is in essence one; and that in that universal one, which can have
no self-consciousness, God is present or incarnate. The divine humanity
is the only real and possible object of mortal adoration, and no genuine
sentiment of human brotherhood is conceivable apart from its
recognition. But, with it, the stature of our common manhood will grow
towards the celestial.
Obviously, with thoughts and pursuits of this calibre to engage our
attention, we shall be very far from regretting those which harass and
enslave us to-day. Leaving out of account the extension of psychical
faculties, which will enable the antipodes to commune together at will,
and even give us the means of conversing with the inhabitants of other
planets, and which will so simplify and deepen language that audible
speech, other than the musical sounds indicative of emotion, will be
regarded as a comic and clumsy archaism,--apart from all this, the
fathomless riches of wisdom to be gathered from the commonest daily
objects and outwardly most trivial occurrences, will put an end to all
craving for merely physical change of place and excitement. Gradually
the human race will become stationary, each family occupying its own
place, and living in patriarchal simplicity, though endowed with power
and wisdom that we should now consider god-like. The sons and daughters
will go forth whither youthful love calls them; but, with the perfecting
of society, those whose spiritual sympathies are closest will never be
spatially remote; lovers will not then, as now, seek one another in the
ends of the earth, and probably miss one another after all. Each member
of the great community will spontaneously enlist himself in the service
of that use which he is best qualified to promote; and, as in the human
body, all the various parts, in fulfilling their function, will serve
one another and the whole.
Perhaps the most legitimately interesting phase of this speculation
relates to the future of these qualities and instincts in human nature
which we now call evil and vicious. Since these qualities are innate,
they can never be eradicated, nor even modified in intensity or
activity. They belong with us, nay, they are all there is of us, and
with their disappearance, we ourselves should disappear. Are we, then,
to be wicked forever? Hardly so; but, on the contrary, what we have
known as wickedness will show itself to be the only possible basis and
energy of goodness. These tremendous appetites and passions of ours were
not given us to be extinguished, but to be applied aright.
They are like fire, which is the chief of destroyers when it escapes
bounds, or is misused; but, in its right place and function, is among
the most indispensable of blessings. But to enlarge upon this thought
would carry us too far from the immediate topic; nor is it desirable to
follow with the feeble flight of our imagination the heaven-embracing
orbit of this theme. A hint is all that can be given, which each must
follow out for himself. We have only attempted to indicate what regions
await the genius of the new Columbus; nor does the conjecture seem too
bold that perhaps they are not so distant from us in time as they appear
to be in quality. They are with us now, if we would but know it.
THE UNKNOWN.
PART I.
BY CAMILLE FLAMMARION.
_Translated from the author's manuscript, by G. A. H. Meyer and
J. H. Wiggin._
Croire tout découvert est une erreur profonde:
C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde.
(To fancy all known is an error profound,--
The sky-line mistaking for earth's utmost bound.)
The idea expressed in this distich is so self-evident that we might
almost characterize it as trite. Yet the history of every science marks
many eminent men, of superior intelligence, who have been arrested in
the way of progress by a wholly contrary opinion, and have very
innocently supposed that science had uttered to them her last word. In
astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, in optics, in natural history, in
physiology, in anatomy, in medicine, in botany, in geology, in all
branches of human knowledge, it would be easy to fill several pages with
the names of celebrated men who believed science would never pass the
limits reached in their own time, and that nothing remained to be
discovered thereafter. In the army of wise men now living it would not
be difficult to name many distinguished scholars who imagine that, in
the spheres whereof they are masters, it is needless to search for
anything new.
It may be unbecoming to talk about one's self, but as, on the one side,
some have done me the honor to ask what I think of certain
problems,--while, on the other side, I have been more than once accused
of busying myself, in a rather unscientific way, with certain vague
investigations,--I will begin by acknowledging that the maxim contained
in the two verses of my motto has been the conviction of my whole life;
and if, from my callow youth until this very day, I have been interested
in the study of phenomena pertaining to the domain of inquiries called
occult, such as magnetism, spiritualism, hypnotism, telepathy,
ghost-seeing, it is because I believe we know next to nothing of what
may be known, and that nearly everything still remains to be
apprehended; for I believe the thirst for knowledge is one of our best
faculties, the one most prolific, without which we should still be
dwelling in an Age of Stone, inasmuch as it is our right, if not our
duty, to seek the truth by all the methods accessible to our
intellectual powers.
It is for this reason that I published among other things, in the course
of the year 1865,--now a quarter-century past,--a treatise entitled
Unknown Natural Forces, and touching certain questions analogous to
those which are to occupy our attention in this paper; and so I ask my
readers to note the following quotations therefrom, as an introduction
to our present investigation:
It is foolish to suppose that all things are known to us.
True wisdom involves continual study.
In the month of June, 1776, a young man, the Marquis de
Jouffroy, was experimenting upon the Doubs,[1] with a steamboat
forty feet long by six feet wide. For two years he had been
inviting scientific attention to his invention; for two years he
had insisted that steam was a powerful force, heretofore
unappreciated. All ears remained deaf to his voice. Complete
isolation was his sole recompense. When he walked through the
streets of Beaume-les-Dames, a thousand jests greeted his
appearance. They nicknamed him Jouffroy the Pump. Ten years
later, having constructed a _pyroscaphe_ [steamboat] which
voyaged along the Saone, from Lyons to Isle Barbe, Jouffroy
presented a petition to Cabinet Minister Calonne and to the
Academy of Sciences. They refused even to look at his invention.
[1] The Doubs is a stream after which one of the Eastern
Departments of France is named. Its principal city is
Besançon, the birthplace of Victor Hugo.
On August 9, 1803, Robert Fulton, the American, ascended the
Seine in a novel steamboat, at a speed of six kilometers per
hour. The Academy of Sciences and the government officials
witnessed the experiment. On the tenth they had forgotten him,
and Fulton departed to try his fortunes with his own countrymen.
In 1791 an Italian, named Galvani, suspended from the bars of
his window at Bologna some flayed frogs, which he that morning
had seen in motion on a table, although they had been killed the
night before. This incident seemed incredible, and was
unanimously rejected by those to whom he related it. Learned men
would have considered it below their dignity to take any pains
to verify his story, so sure were they of its impossibility.
Galvani, however, had noticed that the maximum effect was
produced when a metallic arc, of tin and copper, was brought
into contact with the lumbar nerves and pedal extremities of a
frog. Then the animal would be violently convulsed. The observer
believed this came from a nervous fluid, and so he lost the
advantage of his observations. It was reserved for Volta to
really discover electricity.
Yet already Europe is furrowed by wagons drawn by flame-mouthed
dragons. Distances have vanished before the patience of the
humble workers of the world, which is reduced to pettiness by
the genius of man. The longest journeys have become well-trodden
promenades; the most gigantic tasks are accomplished under the
potential and tireless hand of this unseen force; a telegraphic
despatch flies, in the twinkling of an eye, from one continent
to the other; without leaving our armchairs, we converse with
the inhabitants of London and Saint Petersburg; yet these
miracles pass unnoticed. We do not dream to what struggles, to
what mortifications, to what persecutions, these wonders are
due; and we do not reflect that the impossible of yesterday has
become the actual of to-day.
There are men who call to us: "Halt, ye small scientists! We do
not understand you! Consequently, you cannot yourselves
comprehend what you are talking about!" We may reply: However
narrow your judgment, your myopia does not afflict all mankind.
It must be declared to you, gentlemen, that in spite of
yourselves, despite your ravings, the chariot of human knowledge
advances further than ever before, and will continue its
triumphal march towards the conquest of new powers.
Like the spasms of Galvani's frog, certain crude facts, about
which you are skeptical, reveal the existence of natural forces
as yet unknown. There is no effect without a cause. The human
being is the least known of all beings within our ken. We have
learned how to measure the sun, to traverse celestial distances,
to analyze starlight; yet we are ignorant as to what we
ourselves are. Man is a double being, _homo duplex_; and this
double nature remains a mystery to himself. We think; but what
is thought? Nobody can say. We walk; but what is this organic
action? Nobody knows. My will is an immaterial force; all the
faculties of my soul are immaterial; nevertheless, if I will to
raise my arm, this volition overcomes matter. How does this
power act? What mediation serves for the conveyance of the
mental command, in order to produce a physical effect? As yet no
one can answer.
Tell me how the optic nerve transmits to our mentality a vision
of external objects! Tell me how thought conceives and where it
resides, and of what nature is cerebral activity! Tell me...!
But no! I could question you for ten years, without the greatest
among you being able to solve the least of my riddles.
In this, as in the cases before adduced, we have the unknown for
our problem. I am far from saying that the force brought into
play in these phenomena can some day be employed like
electricity or steam. Such a notion would be neither more nor
less than absurd! Nevertheless, though differing essentially
from those, occult force is not the less real.
Several years ago I designated this unknown force by the title
_psychical_. This designation may well be retained.
Can we not find the happy medium between absolute negation and
dangerous credulity? Is it reasonable either to deny everything
we do not comprehend, or to accept all the fantasies engendered
in the vortex of disordered imaginations? Can we not achieve at
the same time the humility which becomes the weak and the
dignity which befits the strong?
I conclude this statement as I began it, by declaring that it is
not in favor of the Davenport Brothers that I plead; nor do I
take up the gauntlet for any sect, for any group of people, or
for any person whatsoever; but I contend in behalf of certain
facts, of whose validity I was convinced years ago, though
without understanding their cause.
I beg the reader to excuse the length of this citation; but it seems to
me to serve so naturally as an introduction to this present inquiry that
even to-day, after a lapse of a quarter-century, I really see no
important changes to be made in this old declaration, except to add that
it now appears to me to have been rather audacious on the part of a man
so very young, and that it forthwith won him many hearty enemies among
the elect of science.
The experimental method is bound to conquer here, as everywhere. Let us,
then, without partisanship, study the question under its divers aspects.
1
"The immortality of the soul is a matter so important," writes Pascal,
"that one must have lost all moral sensibility if he remains indifferent
as to its nature."
Why should we give up the hope of ever arriving at a knowledge of the
nature of the thinking principle which animates us, and of ascertaining
whether or not it outlives the destruction of the body? It must be
admitted that hitherto science has taught us nothing on this fundamental
subject. Is this any reason for renouncing the study of the problem? On
this, as on many other points, we are not of the same mind as those
material Positivists who declare themselves satisfied with not knowing
anything. We think, on the contrary, that we should attack the problem
by all methods, and not neglect a single hint which may aid the
solution.
Personally, I declare that I have not yet discovered for myself one fact
which proves with certainty the existence of soul as separate from body.
Otherwise, however sublime astronomical science may be,--though it stand
at the head of human researches, as the first, the most important, and
the most widespread of all sciences,--I avow that, if the inductive
method had permitted me to penetrate secrets of existence, I should
inevitably have abandoned the science of the firmament, for that which
would have dethroned the other through its prime and unequalled
importance; since it would be superfluous for us to evade the fact that
the gravest and most interesting of all questions, to ourselves, is that
of our continuous personal existence. The existence of God, of the
entire universe, touches us far less intimately. If we ever cease to
live (for what is the span of a human life in the light of eternity!) it
is a matter of utter indifference to us whether other things exist or
not. Doubtless this reasoning is severely egotistic! Ah, how can it be
otherwise?
If we have no clear and irrefutable proofs, we have still the aid of a
goodly number of observations, establishing the conclusion that we are
compassed about by a set of phenomena, and by powers differing from the
physical order commonly observed day by day; and these phenomena urge us
to pursue every line of investigation, having for its end a psychical
acquaintance with human nature.
Let us begin at the beginning, with a recital of observations which,
from their very nature, have the disadvantage of being very personal.
2
At the age of sixteen, on my way home one day from the Paris
Observatory, I noticed, on the bookseller's stand in the Galeries de
l'Odeon, a green-covered volume entitled Le Livre des Esprits (Book of
Spirits), by Allan-Kardec. I bought it, and read it through at a
sitting. There was in it something unexpected, original, curious. Were
they true, the phenomena therein recounted? Did they solve the great
problem of futurity, as the author contended? In my anxiety to ascertain
this I made the acquaintance of the high-priest, for Allan-Kardec had
made of Spiritism a veritable religion. I assisted at the séances. I
experimented and became myself a medium. In one of Allan-Kardec's works,
called Genesis, over the signature of Galilee, may be read a whole
chapter on Cosmogony, which I wrote in a mediumistic condition.
I was at that time connected with the principal circles in Paris where
these experiments were tried, and for two years I even filled the
exacting position of secretary to one of these circles, an office which
morally bound me not to be absent from a single séance.
Communications were received in three different ways: by writing with
our own hands; by placing our hands upon planchette, in which a pencil
was placed which did the writing; by raps beneath the table, or by
movements which indicated certain letters, when the alphabet was
repeated aloud by one of the sitters.
The first method was the only one in use in the Society for Spiritualist
Study presided over by Allan-Kardec; but it is the method leaving the
widest margin for doubt. Indeed, at the end of several years of
experimenting in this fashion, the result was that I became skeptical
even of myself, and for the reasons following.
It cannot be denied that, under mediumistic conditions, one does not
write in his usual fashion. In the normal state, when we wish to write a
sentence, we mentally construct that sentence--if not the whole of it,
at least a part of it--before writing the words. The pen and hand obey
the creative thought. It is not so when one writes mediumistically. One
rests one's hand, motionless but docile, on a sheet of paper, and then
waits. After a little while the hand begins to move, and to form
letters, words, and phrases. One does not create these sentences, as in
the normal state, but waits for them to produce themselves. Yet the mind
is nevertheless associated therewith. The subject treated is in unison
with one's ordinary ideas. The written language is one's own. If one is
deficient in orthography, the composition will betray this fault.
Moreover, the mind is so intimately connected with what is written, that
if it ponders something else, if the thoughts are allowed to wander from
the immediate subject, then the hand will pause, or trace incoherent
signs.
Such is the state of the writing-medium,--at least, so far as I have
observed it in myself. It is a sort of auto-suggestive state. We are
assured there are mediums who write so mechanically that they know not
what they are writing, and record theses in strange tongues, on subjects
concerning which they are ignorant; but this I have never been able to
verify with any certainty.
A few years previous to my commencement of these studies, my illustrious
friend Victorien Sardou had undergone similar experiences. As a medium
he wrote descriptions of divers planets in our system, principally of
Jupiter, and drew very odd pictures, representing the habitations of
that planet. One of these pictures depicted the house of Mozart, while
others represented the dwellings of Zoroaster and of Bernard Palissy,
who seemed to be country neighbors in that immense planet. These
habitations appeared to be aërial and of marvellous lightness. The first
of them, Mozart's, was essentially formed of musical instruments and
indications, such as the staff, notes, and clefs. The second was
principally bucolic. There were to be seen flowers, hammocks, swings,
flying men; while underneath were intelligent animals, engaged in
playing a novel game of tenpins, in which the sport did not lie in
bowling the pins over, but in crowning their heads, as in the childish
game of cup-and-ball. I reproduced this last design in the work
entitled, Les Terres du Ciel (Heavenly Globes), page 180.
These curious drawings prove, beyond a peradventure, that the signature,
_Bernard Palissy in Jupiter_, is apocryphal, and that it was not a
spirit inhabitant of Jupiter who guided Victorien Sardou's hand. Neither
did the gifted author conceive these sketches beforehand, and execute
them in pursuance of a deliberate purpose; but at that time he found
himself in a mental condition similar to that above described. We may
neither be magnetized nor hypnotized, nor put to sleep in any fashion,
and yet the brain may remain alien to our mechanical productions. Its
cells are functionally agitated, and doubtless act by a reflex impulsion
on the motor nerves. We all then believed that Jupiter was inhabited by
a superior race. These communications were the reflections of opinions
generally held. In these days, however, nobody imagines anything of the
kind about Jupiter. Moreover, spirit séances have never taught us the
least thing in astronomy. Such manifestations in nowise prove the
intervention of spirits. Have writing-mediums given us other proofs,
more convincing? This question we will examine later.
3
The second method, planchette, is more independent. This little wooden
writer became the fashion chiefly through Madame de Girardin. Its
communications soothed her last days, and prepared her for a death
fragrant with hope. She believed she was in communication with the
spirits of Sappho, Shakespeare, Madame de Sévigné, and Molière; and
amidst these convictions she died, without disquietude, without
rebellion, without regret. She had introduced a taste for such
experiments into the home of Victor Hugo, in Jersey. Nine years later,
Auguste Vacquerie, in Les Miettes de l'Histoire (Crumbs of History),
wrote as follows:
Madame de Girardin's departure [from Jersey] did not abate my
desire for experimenting with the tables. I pressed eagerly
forward into this great marvel,--the half-opened door of death.
No longer did I wait for the evening. At midday I began my
investigations, and forsook them only with the dawn. If I
interrupted myself at all during that time, it was only to dine.
Personally I had no effect upon the table, and did not touch it;
but I asked questions. The mode of communication was always the
same, and I had accustomed myself to it. Madame de Girardin sent
me two tablets from Paris,--a little tablet, one of whose legs
was a pencil, for writing and drawing. A few trials proved that
this tablet designed poorly and wrote badly. The other was
larger, and consisted of a disk, or dial, whereon was inscribed
the alphabet, the letters being designated by a movable pointer.
This apparatus also was rejected after an unsuccessful trial,
and I finally resumed the primitive process, which--simplified
by familiarity and sundry convenient abbreviations--soon
afforded all desirable rapidity. I talked fluently with the
table, the murmur of the sea mingling with our conversation,
whose mysteriousness was increased by the winter, at night,
amidst storms, and through isolation. The table no longer
responded by a few words merely, but by sentences and pages. It
was usually grave and magisterial, but at times it would be
witty and even comical. Sometimes it had an access of choler.
More than once I was insolently reproved for speaking to it
irreverently, and I confess to not feeling at ease until I had
obtained forgiveness. The table made certain exactions. It chose
the interlocutors it preferred. It wished sometimes to be
questioned in verse, and was obeyed; and then it would answer in
verse. All these dialogues were collected, not at the close of
the séance, but at the moment, and under the dictation of the
table. They will some day be published, and will propound an
imperious problem to all intelligent minds thirsting for new
truths.
If now asked for my explanation of all this, I hesitate to
reply. I should not have hesitated in Jersey. I should have
unhesitatingly affirmed the presence of spirits. It is not the
opinion of Paris which now retards me. I know what respect is
due to the opinion of the Paris of to-day, of that Paris so
wise, so practical, and so positive, which believes in nothing
but dancing skirts and brokers' bulletins; but the capital's
shrugging shoulders would not compel me to lower my voice. I am
even happy to say, in the face of Paris, that as to the
existence of what are called _spirits_, I have no doubts. I have
never had that fatuous vanity as to our race, which declares
that the ascending ladder of being ends with man. I am persuaded
that we have at least as many rounds above us as there are
beneath our feet, and I believe as firmly in spirits above as I
do in donkeys beneath. The existence of spirits once admitted,
their intervention becomes merely a question of details. Why
could they not communicate with man by some means, and why may
not that means be a table? Because immaterial beings cannot move
a table? But who can say these beings _are_ immaterial? They
also may have bodies, but more subtile than ours,--bodies as
imperceptible to our sight, as light is to our touch. It is
fairly presumable that there are transitional states between the
human condition and the immaterial. Death comes after life, as
man supersedes the animal. The inferior animals are men, with
less soul. Man is an animal with more equipoise and
self-direction. Death brings a condition of less materiality,
but still with some matter left. I know therefore no reasonable
argument against the reality of the table phenomena.
Nine years, however, have passed away since all this occurred. I
gave up my daily interviews after a few months, for the sake of
a friend whose insufficient mind could not bear these breaths
from the unknown. I have never reperused the sheets whereon
sleep the words which moved me so profoundly. I am no longer in
Jersey, upon that rock lost among the waves, where the exile was
torn from his native soil, away from life. Myself a living
corpse, it did not astonish me to encounter the dead alive; and
so little is certainty natural to man, that one may doubt even
the things he has seen with his eyes and touched with his hands.
Finally, Victor Hugo, who assisted at these experiments, has
said: "The moving and speaking table has been greatly ridiculed.
Let us speak plainly! This ridicule is misplaced. It is the
bounden duty of science to sound the depths of all phenomena. To
ignore spiritualistic phenomena, to leave them bankrupt by
inattention, is to make a bankrupt of truth itself." (Les Genies
[The Geniuses]: Shakespeare.)
It is table movements which are here spoken of, dictations by tipping or
rapping; that is to say, by the third method heretofore referred to.
This method has always appeared to be the most independent. In placing
our fingers on a planchette, armed with a pencil, and in aiding its
motions, we are brought into direct personal association with the
results. We may be under the illusion that an outside spirit is guiding
the hand, when we are unintentionally controlling it ourselves. We put
questions relating to subjects which specially interest us. Passively we
write things which we already know more or less about, and unconsciously
inspire ourselves with the name of the personage invoked. Far more
reliable are the answers given by a table.
4
Several persons place themselves around a table, their hands resting
thereupon and await results. After a given time, if the required
conditions for the production of the phenomena have been complied with,
raps are heard, apparently within the table, and there are certain
motions of the furniture. Sometimes the table tips on one or two legs,
and slowly oscillates. Sometimes it rises entirely from the floor, and
remains suspended, as if adhering to the palms lying upon it; and this
lasts during ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Sometimes the table fastens
itself to the floor with such tenacity that its weight seems to be
doubled or tripled. At other times, and almost always when so requested
by one of the sitters, a noise is heard like that of a saw, a hatchet,
or a pencil at work. These are physical effects, which have been
observed, and prove undeniably the existence of an unknown force.