It used to be thought that a man who said he liked dry champagne would
say anything. In the same way, some persons may hold that a person who
could believe in the recurrent Australian story of "suspended
animation"--artificially produced in animals, and prolonged for
months--could believe in anything. It does not do, however, to be too
dogmatic about matters of opinion in this world. Perhaps the Australian
tale of an invention by which sheep and oxen are first made lifeless,
then rendered "stiff ones" by freezing, and then restored to life, and
reproduced with gravy, may be like the genius of Beethoven. Very few
persons (and these artists) believed in Beethoven at first, but now he is
often considered to be the greatest of composers. Perhaps great
discoveries, like the works of men of original genius, are certain to be
received at first with incredulity and mockery. We will not, therefore,
take up a dogmatic position, either about the painting or the preserved
meats of the future; but will hope for the best. The ideally best, of
course, is that the tale from Australia may prove true. In that case the
poorest will be able to earn "three square meals a day," like the
Australians themselves; and while English butchers suffer (for some one
must suffer in all great revolutions), smiling Plenty will walk through
our land studying a cookery-book. There are optimistic thinkers, who
gravely argue that the serious desires of humanity are the pledges of
their own future fulfilment. If that be correct, the Australian myth may
be founded on fact. There is no desire more deep-rooted in our
perishable nature than that which asks for plenty of beef and mutton at
low prices. Again, humanity has so often turned over the idea of
conveniently suspended animation before, that there must be something in
that conception. If we examine the history of ideas we shall find that
they at first exist "in the air." They float about, beautiful alluring
visions, ready to be caught and made to serve mortal needs by the right
man at the right moment. Thus Empedocles, Lucretius, and the author of
"Vestiges of Creation," all found out Darwinism before Mr. Darwin. They
spied the idea, but they left it floating; they did not trap it, and
break it into scientific harness. Solomon De Caus, as all the world has
heard, was put into a lunatic asylum for inventing the steam-engine,
though no one would have doubted his sanity if he had offered to raise
the devil, or to produce the philosopher's stone, or the _elixir vitae_.
Now, these precious possessions have not been more in men's minds than a
system of conveniently suspended animation. There is scarcely a
peasantry in Europe that does not sing the ballad of the dead bride. This
lady, in the legends, always loves the cavalier not selected by her
parents, the detrimental cavalier. To avoid the wedding which is thrust
on her, she gets an old witch to do what the Australian romancer
professes to do--to suspend her animation, and so she is carried on an
open bier to a chapel on the border of her lover's lands. There he
rides, the right lover, with his men-at-arms, the bride revives just in
time, is lifted on to his saddle-bow, and "they need swift steeds that
follow" the fugitive pair. The sleeping beauty, who is thrown into so
long a swoon by the prick of the fairy thorn, is another very old
example, while "Snow-white," in her glass coffin, in the German nursery
tale, is a third instance.
It is not only the early fancy of the ballad-mongers and fairy
tale-tellers that has dwelt longingly on the idea of suspended animation.
All the mystics, who all follow the same dim track that leads to nothing,
have believed in various forms of the imaginary Australian experiment.
The seers of most tribes, from Kamschatka to Zululand, and thence to
Australia, are feigned to be able to send their souls away, while their
bodies lie passive in the magical tent. The soul wanders over the
earthly world, and even to the home of the dead, and returns, in the
shape of a butterfly or of a serpent, to the body which has been lying
motionless, but uncorruptible, in apparent death. The Indian Yogis can
attain that third state of being, all three being unknown to Brahma,
which is neither sleeping nor waking, but trance. To produce this
ecstasy, to do for themselves what some people at the Antipodes pretend
to do to sheep and cattle, is the ideal aim of the existence of the Yogi.
The Neoplatonists were no wiser, and Greek legend tells a well-known
story of a married mystic whose suspended animation began at last to bore
his wife. "Dear Hermotimus"--that was his name, if we have not forgotten
it--"is quite the most absent of men," his spouse would say, when her
husband's soul left his body and took its walks abroad. On one occasion
the philosopher's spiritual part remained abroad so long that his lady
ceased to expect its return. She therefore went through the usual
mourning, cut her hair, cried, and finally burned the body on the funeral-
pyre. "We can do no more for miserable mortals, when once the spirit has
left their bones," says Homer.
At that very moment the spirit returned, and found its uninsured tenement
of clay reduced to ashes. The sequel may be found in a poem of the late
Professor Aytoun's, and in the same volume occurs the wondrous tale of
Colonel Townsend, who could suspend his animation at pleasure.
There is certainly a good deal of risk, as well as of convenience, in
suspended animation. People do not always welcome Rip Van Winkle when he
returns to life, as we would all welcome Mr. Jefferson if he revisited
the glimpses of the footlights,
"The hard heir strides about the lands,
And will not yield them for a day."
There is the horrible chance of being buried alive, which was always
present to the mind of Edgar Poe. It occurs in one of his half-humorous
stories, where a cataleptic man, suddenly waking in a narrow bed, in the
smell of earthy mould, believes he has been interred, but finds himself
mistaken. In the "Fall of The House of Usher" the wretched brother, with
his nervous intensity of sensation, hears his sister for four days
stirring in her vault before she makes her escape. In the "Strange
Effects of Mesmerism on a Dying Man," the animation is mesmerically
suspended at the very instant when it was about naturally to cease. The
results, when the passes were reversed, and the half fled life was half
restored, are described in a passage not to be recommended to sensitive
readers. M. About, uses the same general idea in the fantastic plot of
his "L'Homme a l'Oreille Cassee," and the risk of breakage was insisted
on by M. About as well as by the inventive Australian reporter. Mr.
Clarke Russell has also frozen a Pirate. Thus the idea of suspended
animation is "in the air," is floating among the visions of men of
genius. It is, perhaps, for the great continent beneath the Southern
Cross to realize the dreams of savages, of seers, of novelists, of poets,
of Yogis, of Plotinus, of M. About, and of Swedenborg. Swedenborg, too,
was a suspended animationist, if we may use the term. What else than
suspension of outer life was his "internal breathing," by which his body
existed while his soul was in heaven, hell, or the ends of the earth?
When the Australian discovery is universally believed in (and acted on),
then, and perhaps not till then, will be the time for the great
unappreciated. They will go quietly to sleep, to waken a hundred years
hence, and learn how posterity likes their pictures and poems. They may
not always be satisfied with the results, but no artist will disbelieve
in the favourable verdict of posterity till the supposed Australian
method is applied to men as well as to sheep and kangaroos.