It is said proverbially, and I am quite aware of the fact, that a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that sharp tools should not
be entrusted to the hands of unskilled persons; and it is because some
may depreciate my knowledge, and class me among those to whom sharp
tools are a danger, both to themselves and the community at large, that
I have not placed my discovery before the scientific world.
I have no particular ambition to pose as a great genius or inventor;
the things which I have discovered are so simple, that anybody else,
following the same line of thought, would probably have stumbled upon
the same truths. That my discoveries, placed in the hands of profane or
frivolous persons, would be fraught with many and great evils I do not
deny, and it is for this consideration that I refrain from giving my
_exact_ modus operandi in this narrative.
As will be seen from a perusal of this short recital, but little
further thought and elaboration are required to place my experiments
among the most astounding of this most marvellous age of discovery and
invention.
It is a trite expression we make use of when we say that “Electricity
is in its infancy.” Of course it is; it is but in its swaddling
clothes: but, by and by, it will grow such a powerful fellow as to
claim by right the kingship of the whole mechanical and motive world.
Now to my mind the two greatest forces in the universe are brain power
(or intellect) and electricity; and the time is rapidly approaching
when these two subtle energies shall govern or control nearly
everything under the sun. My friends infer that if I had a little
more brain force I should not take such absurd views of these two
great _Souls of Man and Motion_, as I am pleased to term intellect and
electricity. That I am not so distraught as my friends are pleased to
suppose, may be gathered from the outcome of those experiments which I
am now about to explain, so far at least as that can be done without
actually divulging the particular secrets which, for the present, I
wish to withhold, even from the great _savants_ of this scientific
epoch. I am afraid, however, that some reader of these lines will, if
he be of a keen, searching, inventive temperament, come in a short time
very near the borders of that discovery which it has taken me a dozen
years to experiment upon, and place in its present unfinished form.
Even when I was a lad I was a great reader and literary delver after
things which were in any way obscure, unfinished, or apparently
unfathomable; and among the many theories I formed upon subjects of
which the world had written much, and talked more, without advancing
any nearer to their solution, was an idea regarding the soul of man!
I may say in a few words, without giving the precise chain of thought
I employed, that my idea of man’s soul was--that it was nothing more
nor less than his _brain_; for is not that the very spirit, essence,
conscience, reason, and vital principle of man?
Certainly: for in what degree can even a man’s heart compare with
his brain in the supremacy it asserts over his corporeal body? It
is true that the heart is essential to him, and has a great work to
perform, and can do it without help from his brain, even while the body
and brain sleep; but, after all, it is a mere beautiful machine--a
mechanical, monotonous slave, with nothing more to recommend it to
notice than its faithfulness to its hidden duty.
Now let me affirm at once that the brain _is_ the soul, and when you
acquiesce in this, you will see more clearly how it is worked out
as a substantial truth in my wonderful experiments, or rather, as
their wonderful _result_; experiments, which after all were but my
intellectual knowledge reduced to a reasonable system.
Very well. I commenced my experiments with this theory properly worked
out in my own mind, but not substantiated with positive proof, _that
the soul and the brain were synonymous_.
Now the soul never dies--consequently the brain never dies! It decays,
and resolves itself into its constituent atoms, but it leaves behind it
what I will term _brain-ether_, which is absolutely indestructible and
immortal, and consequently lasts through all time.
Then came the thought--“If the brain-ether exists, where shall I find
it?” I wanted to know this one thing; then I could work out the ideas
I had in my mind, following them up with experiments to prove the
correctness of my premises.
Just think for a few moments of the vast encyclopædia of knowledge
stored in a human brain of ordinary calibre; think of the scenes, the
faces, the technical knowledge, the music, the skill, and the secrets
that human brain contains, and which, when the body decays, are turned
into ethereal memories--memories _not lost_, but stored up in the
brain-ether for ever.
Now it occurred to me, that if I could only ascertain what became of
this brain-ether as the body decayed, that I might secure some of it,
and with the help of modern scientific apparatus, so far capture its
treasury of knowledge as to make that latent knowledge of incalculable
service to mankind.
For many weeks I thought of places likely to be the earthly
resting-place of what I considered to be the fugitive brain-ether, and,
like every other mortal who has essayed the same intellectual feat, I
failed because I had the words, “The soul has fled,” ever present in my
mind.
Naturally, when a human being dies, if one says, “His soul has fled,”
the person spoken to directly assumes that the soul has left the body,
and gone no one knows whither. But, being scientifically artful, I took
an opposite and antagonistic view of the usually accepted answer, and
said to myself:
“Now suppose the soul has not fled, but is still present in the cranium
in the form of brain-ether.”
This startling hypothesis I took and worked upon. Forsaking the common
theory, I resolved to see if I could not by some means discover the
brain-ether, which I was morally certain existed _somewhere_, and which
I quite believed was as likely, or more likely, to be found in its
ordinary resting-place--the cranium--as elsewhere.
A recently deceased body or head was of no service to me to
experimentalize upon, as the spirit or essential ether would not have
become free till the disintegration of the pulpy matter of the brain
was complete. What I wanted was a skeleton, or even a skull, which had
neither been opened nor tampered with; and having no medical friends I
was at a loss to know how I could supply my want, when a lucky accident
gave me just what I required.
One day I was walking through Gower Street, London, when whom should I
run against but my old friend Stairs. Stairs is an Egyptologist, great
at reading hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing. Not having seen each
other for two years, we naturally strolled into the Horseshoe Hotel to
finish our chat in comfort, and to lubricate our throats, which have a
wonderful knack of becoming dry when their owners meet old friends.
Stairs had been away for fifteen months in Egypt searching for any
curious things having a commercial value in England. During his
wanderings in the country of the Pharaohs, he had purchased a large
number of curios, stones, amulets, rings, sarcophagi, and mummies,
which he was now endeavouring to dispose of to the trustees of the
British Museum.
After I had heard many of his adventures, it became his turn to inquire
how I was employing myself, and this finally led to my explaining to
Stairs all about my theory of the soul. Of course, being ignorant of
the matter, he simply laughed, and suggested that I had better have one
of his mummies to experiment upon!
Why not?
Just the very thing; what could be better than an ancient, unrolled
mummy, some three thousand years old?
I was positively delighted; and in furtherance of my fancy he handed
me his card, on the understanding that I was to proceed to his house,
and make a selection of any mummy I thought would suit my purpose, take
it home with me for a month to experiment upon, and at the end of that
time return it to him.
That very evening I went to my friend’s house in Gordon Square with a
small covered van, and brought my precious Egyptian away, thankful to
old Stairs for his kindly consideration. Stairs was off to Italy for a
month, and I had his permission to do what I liked with the mummy, so
long as I did not spoil its commercial value.
When the defunct Egyptian was safely deposited in my study I could have
hugged him for very joy, but refrained from the embrace as he smelt a
trifle musty.
I, Doctor Nosidy, scientist, mesmerist, thought-reader, and
electrician, felt that evening that I stood upon the threshold of
some grand discovery. The thought thrilled me as it did Columbus when
he came in sight of the long-sought land, or Bernard Palissy when
he discovered the true mode of firing his beautiful pottery-ware,
or Galileo when he discovered the movement of the earth. I felt the
sensations of these and other discoverers rolled into one; moreover,
it was my conviction that I was about to find something by the side of
which their discoveries would appear insignificant indeed.
Setting my apparatus in order, I commenced work by unrolling the head
of the mummy; carefully stripping off the multitudinous layers of
cerecloth, which were permeated quite through with a dark, brittle
gum or resin of some kind. By and by I came to the leathery and
gum-covered visage, wrinkled, emaciated, and black with the dry
atmosphere of thirty centuries.
Dark curly hair still adhered to the skull, and was not so brittle but
that, after bathing the compressed locks, I could lift them with the
blade of a spatula quite away from the cranium without damage. The
whole head was a very fine one--the nose prominent and hawk-like, the
eyes cavernous, and the mouth excessively broad and grinning; the lips
were so dried and compressed that they were flat with the face. The
teeth were still white and glossy, and the entire absence of any signs
of decay proclaimed the fact that the owner was young at his decease.
All these features I noticed as I worked away upon my subject, and
having at length uncovered the whole head, I made a small hole through
the apex of the cranium with a brad-awl. This done, I inserted, into
the space once occupied by the brain, the ends of the wires connected
with a certain electric instrument. Into the mouthpiece of the machine
I spoke, asking,
“Do you hear me?”