CHAPTER XVII.

Personal Experience--Intelligence from the Sphere of

Light 217

Matter, Life, Spirit.

NECESSITY OF KNOWLEDGE, NOT FAITH.--Guizot forcibly expresses the value

of a knowledge of future life when he says: "Belief in the supernatural

(spiritual) is the special difficulty of our time; denial of it is the

form of all assaults on Christianity, and acceptance of it lies at the

root, not only of Christianity, but of all positive religion whatever."

He stands not alone in this conclusion. The difficulty, to a great

majority of men of science and leaders of thought, appears

insurmountable, and they no longer feel a necessity for defending their

want of belief, but smile at the credulity of those who believe anything

beyond what their senses reveal.

Not only the infidel world perceives this difficulty; it is well

understood by the leaders of Christianity, for they have been taught its

strength by the irrepressible conflict which has culminated in the want

of belief at the present time. With this result before them, it is idle

for the church leaders to assert that revelation in the Bible is

sufficient to remove this difficulty, which has grown in the very

sanctuary, in the shadow of biblical teachings. While the value of the

Bible, as interpreted by theologians, depends on the belief in

immortality, it has not proved the existence of man beyond the grave in

such an absolute manner as to remove doubt; and yet, of all evidence it

is designed to give, that on this point should be the most complete and

irrefutable.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves nothing, even admitted in its

most absolute form. If Christ was the Son of God and God himself, he was

unlike ordinary mortals, and what is true of him is not necessarily so

of them.

His physical resurrection does not prove theirs. Admitting similarity,

his bodily resurrection after three days, while his body remained

unchanged, does not prove theirs after they have become dust, and

scattered through countless forms of life for a thousand ages. If, with

some sects, the resurrection of the body be discarded, then the

resurrection of Christ has no significance, for it is expressly held

that his body was revivified and taken from the tomb.

Skepticism has increased, because the supporters of religion have not

attempted to keep pace with the march of events, but, on the contrary,

asserted that they had all knowledge possible to gain on this subject,

and that anything outside of their interpretation was false.

Instead of founding religion on the constitution of man, and making

immortality his birthright, they have regarded these as foreign to him,

and only gained by the acceptance of certain doctrines. They removed

immortality from the domain of accurate knowledge; and those who pursued

science turned with disgust from a subject which ignored present

research for past belief.

Hence, there has been, unfortunately, the great army of investigators

and thinkers, in the realm of matter, studying its phenomena and laws,

never approaching the threshold of the spiritual; and, on the other

hand, the more important knowledge of spirit, of man's future, which

retrospects his present life and all past ages, and reaches into the

infinite ages to come, was the especial care of those who scorned nature

and abhorred reason. Hence the antagonism, which can only be removed by

the priest laying aside his books as infallible authority, discarding

beliefs, dogmas, and metaphysical word legerdemain, and studying the

inner world in the same manner that the outer has been so advantageously

explored. When this has been done, it may be found that physical

investigators have not the whole truth, even when they have been the

most exact.

It may be found that, having omitted the spiritual side in all their

investigations, their conclusions are erroneous to the extent of that

factor, which may be one of the most important. It may be found that in

order to have a complete and perfect knowledge of the external world,

the internal or spiritual must be understood.

Here we face the time-old questions: What is matter? What is spirit? The

philosophy of nature here rests. There is no middle ground. The

materialist starts from the atom, which, he says, has in itself all the

possibilities of the universe and outside of which there is nothing.

THE ATOM.--But who knows of the atom, into which matter, at last

analysis, is resolved? No one. Aside from the active forces which

apparently flow from it, we know nothing, and speculation takes the

place of knowledge. That speculation, unfettered by the requirements of

accurate science, grew rankly in the minds of the sages of antiquity,

and bore the strangest fruits. From that time to the present,

speculative thought has not ceased in activity, nor arrived at any

certain conclusion.

The atomic theory is one of the most splendid generalizations in the

whole circle of sciences. As a working hypothesis its aid is invaluable,

and the solution it affords of the most intricate combination of the

elements, truly marvelous. Yet it is a conjecture; the existence of the

atom a guess. No one ever saw, tasted, or felt the atom. It is

absolutely beyond the senses, as it is beyond any instrumental aid

thereto. The entire structure of physical science, as expounded to-day,

rests on conjecture, the only evidence in support of which is that it

explains the phenomena. There is no assurance that other conjectures

might not explain them quite as well.

It would be a waste of time to explore this field, wherein the baseless

dreams of philosophers and scientists have grown like Jonah's gourd,

over-shadowing the barren sands.

The manner in which the nature of the distinct and indestructible atom

was arrived at, shows the puerility of the theory. If we take a fragment

of matter, we can break it into distinct pieces; these are again

divided, and so on, until we reach a point where further division is

impossible.

One of these indivisible particles, says the Materialist, is an atom; a

conclusion derived from the gross conception of material division, and

the limitation of the mind.

Endow this atom with force, or call it a center for the propagation of

force, and the materialistic system is complete; yet these conclusions

are but dreams. With equal arrogance, the Materialists lead to the

higher ground of vitality, of mind and of morals, forgetting that the

fundamental proposition on which this system rests is a guess, a

surmise, and nothing more.

But investigation by other means than the primitive experience of

mechanical division, shows that the atom has no existence as a fixed

entity. Professor Crookes has demonstrated that matter has properties

unknown to the present race of philosophers.

By way of illustration: If a certain vessel be closed, and the air

exhausted, until only one hundred atoms remain, that hundred leave no

space, but occupy the entire vessel. If the vacuum be made more perfect,

and only ten atoms remain, the ten still occupy the whole space; and if

the process could be carried so far that only one remained, it would

still fill the space. The atomist might divide it indefinitely, and yet

each division fill the space. In short, were there but one atom in the

universe, that atom would fill all space.

NEW PROPERTIES.--When matter is thus rarified, or in other words, when

the pressure is removed, new properties appear, and the tangible fades

into the intangible. The qualities of pure force begin to be manifested.

The intimation is made that were it possible to make the vacuum more

perfect, there would arise out of this invisible gas, spontaneous

manifestation of energy; or matter would be resolved into force.

WHAT IS MATTER?--Having seen that the conception of the atom is

immature, and incapable of demonstration, we find matter, of which the

atom is supposed to be the foundation, equally incapable of definition.

With matter we never come in sensuous contact; we only know its forces,

as expressed in phenomena.

The succession of seasons, the recurrence of day and night, the teeming

earth, the starry heavens--these are manifestations of matter. Matter

here is revealed to us as an appearance. Matter is appearance; phenomena

are concrete expressions of force. It may be asked: Do these phenomena

create themselves? Do bodies become organic by the confluence of atoms?

Rather are they not molded by the force which through them gains

expression? What is this force? Is it independent? On ultimate analyses,

force resolves itself into motion, which is discernable to the senses

only as expressed in phenomena. If we were obliged to explain the

phenomena of matter only, some theory might be plausibly maintained;

fronting one world we might understand it, but we are fronting two

worlds. There is constantly the caused and the cause. We never are

satisfied that the caused caused itself. We may receive the beautiful

exposition of the doctrine of evolution, and yet we have only the road

over which life has been irresistibly forced. Why? Wherefore? By what

power? Instinctively we turn to the realm of spiritual causes.

Material science, with all its boasted accuracy and infallibility,

breaks down, and utterly fails, when called to explain mental and

spiritual phenomena. It boasts of infallibility, when its fundamental

theories are conjectures that the advance of thought may to-morrow show

to be vagaries of fancy. We must look to the eternal activities of

spirit for the final solution of the grossest manifestation of matter.

NATURE A WITCHES' POT.--The present conception of nature, by material

science, is a witches' pot, into which, by some unknown process, matter

and force were placed. The pot seethes, and out of the seething conflict

foams up to the surface in kaleidoscopic changes, organic beings. The

savans stand around its rim like Shakespeare's witches and chant a

technical gibberish about laws; the pre-existence and correlation of

force; the indestructibility of energy; the eternity of matter; the

potentialities of the atom; the struggle for existence; the survival of

the fittest, and in admiration praise each other's profundity of sight,

while the sharpest eyed see nothing beneath the foaming scum. They pride

themselves on explanations, of causes, while really they play with

words.

At the threshold of this discussion of the problem of mind and spirit we

have that of life. The living being is the most wonderful achievement of

force in its multitudinous forms. Life is the gateway to the realm of

spirit, and beyond that gateway lie the questions we seek to solve.

The living being, by the fact of its being such, has new and hitherto

undetermined relations. It has escaped from the hold of the forces in

part from the common lot of matter, and a new horizon uplifts before it.

New and mysterious forces intrude, the sum of which we call vital

energy. Well we know that here the material scientist will smile or

sneer, for he has already settled the question in his own mind and that

of his confreres, that there is nothing beyond the properties of matter.

The animal body is composed of definite quantities of carbon, hydrogen,

lime, iron, etc., and the conflict of atoms, the combustion of carbon by

the oxygen of the air, the burning of phosphorus in the nerves, is the

activity evolved which is called life. In the higher animals, especially

in man, this life force derived from burning elements is changed to

thought, and the quantity of thought depends on the activity of the

process.

No one, however, has ever proved that such transformation occurs, or

even attempted the task. The most thoughtful and profound acknowledge

that at the threshold of life all physical theories utterly fail, and

that the problem does not admit of solution. The more persistent declare

life to be a resultant of protoplasm; a fragment of protoplasm is the

lowest form of a living being. It is a homogeneous mass, scarcely a cell

or aggregation of cells. These cells do not feel or know; they are

sensitive; that is all. A human being is said by these material

scientists to be the sum of an infinite number of moners, as a coral

branch is the sum of a great number of polyps. These moners form, under

different circumstances, bone, muscle, and nerve. They propagate and

die. Their multiplication and destruction is the source and

accompaniment of vital changes, and mental states. When the necessity

for the destruction of a great number of these moners arises, the end,

the destruction of all, or death of the combined organism is the result.

According to this view, by the simple addition of moners, we obtain

something none of them singly possessed. The single moner has only

sensitiveness, their infinite aggregate, in the human being, has

feeling, intelligence, will, and God-like aspirations. The time old

axiom never before disputed is set aside, and the sum is declared to be

not only greater than its parts--it is infinitely greater, and acquires

qualities which the parts do not possess.

It may be urged that in the acquisition of new qualities the same is

true of the chemical union of elements, which yield products entirely

different in quality from the combining bodies. These, however, unite in

fixed proportions in a manner far from understood, while, with the

hypothetical moners, they are aggregated mechanically, as polyps in a

cluster, and this union of individuals changes not their functions, but

simply increases the mass.

Whether we accept this moner hypothesis, or the more generally received

theory that life is the product of organization, arising from the

chemical actions in the body, it is impossible to say wherein the dead

animal differs from the living. Analysis can not reveal this secret, for

the living animal can not be subjected to that test. The life principle

escapes before the alembic or retort is brought into requisition. The

song of the bird can not be found by chemical analysis. We know that the

living being is held together, and dominated over by the strongest

forces, and the moment these relax their hold, decomposition commences.

What are these forces? Whence do they come? Whither do they go?

LIFE AND MIND.--Taking vital force in its highest expression, in man, it

is self-conscious and has independent will. It arises above the atoms of

its physical being, above the influences which environ it, and says, _I

will_, and executes that will. I know well that if we here leave

physical science for metaphysics, there are philosophers who would not

only reason away this force, but the existence of the body itself. They

are true intellectual acrobats; amusing jugglers, who throw words

instead of painted balls, and confuse by their wonderful dexterity. Yet,

after all has been said, _we know_ we exist and have physical bodies.

Had we not such bodies the thought of them would never have been

fashioned in our minds. As we know the sun will rise, or the night

follow, we know we have bodily forms, and are thereby brought in contact

with the physical world. It is a fact, and as such can not be reasoned

away. In the same manner we are conscious of a mental or spiritual life

which arches the physical world as the dome of the sky.

IS THE GULF BETWEEN SPIRIT AND MATTER BRIDGED?--Here we come to that

vague and uncertain realm where spirit touches matter. We leave the

coast line of the tangible and seen for the intangible and unseen. There

is no bridge over the gulf, which is said to be impassable. Material and

spiritual phenomena are united by no common bond, and each stands by

itself. The great thought stream has set toward the materialistic

interpretation of all spiritual phenomena, or ruled them out of the pale

of the believable. If these phenomena are real, if man--the ego--is

superior to the oxygen and carbon of his body; if the manifestations of

mind are superior to the combustion of tissue in the lungs, then all

these manifestations should be amenable to certain laws and conditions,

which ascertained, will harmonize them into a perfect system.

The brain is the point of contact between spirit and matter, and as far

as the manifestations of that spirit are related to the material world

while connected with the physical body, it must be through and by means

of the brain. The intimate character of this relation gives strong color

to the reasoning based on the material view that the brain produces

thought, as the liver produces bile. But such reasoning is from

appearance rather than the reality. There is, as Tyndall eloquently

expresses, a chasm between matter and mind that can not be passed.

"The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of

consciousness is unthinkable.... Were our minds and senses so expanded,

strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very

molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions,

all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be;

and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of

thought and feeling,--we should be as far as ever from the solution of

the problem, 'How are these physical processes connected with the facts

of consciousness?' The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would

still be intellectually impossible."

SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE.--As the experiments alluded to show that matter

may, under certain conditions, take on new properties, ceasing to be

matter, in the usual acceptance of that word, the horizon of matter

which has been thought to rest over attenuated hydrogen, may extend to

infinite reaches beyond, including stuffs or substances which have never

been revealed to the senses. As the eye is capable of detecting only a

narrow belt of rays, and the ear a scarcely broader belt of sounds,

beyond which, on either side, are unknown realms of light and sounds, so

we are able to detect only a narrow range of elements; and there may be

a realm on one side too gross for recognizance by the senses, and on the

other, one too attenuated. Beings fashioned of this attenuated substance

might walk by our side unseen, nor cast a shadow in the noon-day sun.

SPIRIT ETHER.--Aside from this spiritual substance, beyond the pale of

the most attenuated matter, is the spirit ether. The students of light

have found it possible to explain its phenomena only by the hypothesis

of an ether, a universal fluid of extreme tenuity, the vibrations of

which are interpreted by the eye as light. This ether was at first a

dream of the imagination; but, by answering all questions and receiving

the verification of mathematics, it has become a demonstrated reality.

It is probably the common medium for the transference of electricity,

heat, and magnetism as well. It is an illustration of one of the many

instances where the Imagination has overreached the Reason in the race

of discovery.

In the same manner we may predicate another ether, the medium through

which all spiritual phenomena are produced. We may prove the existence

of this ether, by the certainty and harmony of the answers it gives, as

the existence of the luminiferous ether has been demonstrated. As the

great life-giver, we may distinguish it as psycho-ether. It can not be

said to be material, for it belongs to the region beyond that recognized

as material by our senses. It is the sublimation of matter, vastly more

attenuated than light-ether, and thought is propagated in it from

thinking centers, as light is in the luminiferous ether from luminous

bodies. The qualities of this ether are the possibilities of life and

spirit and to it for explanation we refer all psychic phenomena.

What the Senses Teach of the World and the Doctrine of Evolution.

IS THERE MORE THAN ONE WORLD--STUFF?--Thus far, with a few exceptions

which may be called heterodox, physicists have in their speculations

used the term matter as though in ultimate conception there is but one

kind of matter and the atoms of that matter are absolutely alike. In

other words there is but one stuff of which the cosmos is formed. The

senses on which this theory is based do not endorse, but, by their

limitation, prove the opposite. We have no means of knowing of sound

aside from the ear, which is wonderfully fashioned to receive vibrations

and transmit them to the brain; yet its imperfection, caused by the

limitations of nerve tissue, reveals the fact that it is cognizant of

only a narrow field, either side of which is a wide tract, which to it

is profound silence. If a sound wave impinges on the ear with less

vibrations than 16½ times in a second it is inaudible; and if the number

of vibrations is increased above 38,000 per second, they again lose the

power of impressing the ear. There may be insects capable of hearing

these high sounds, which to man are silence itself; and the long waves

that beat less than 16½ times in a second may be sweet music to some of

the lower tribes of animated life.

Perfect as the eye may be as an optical instrument, its range is far

less than that of the ear. Only those rays of light having waves

1-39,000th of an inch in length are visible on one side, and the last

visible radiations on the other end of the spectrum have wave lengths of

1-575,000th of an inch. This is a narrow limit, and on either side there

must be rays, which eyes or nerves differently constructed would receive

and interpret, yielding, perhaps, colors unknown to our consciousness.

There is a harmony in color waves, like music in sound waves, for as a

note blends in one, in all octaves above or below, so light waves, twice

or thrice the length of given waves yield the same color impression.

We may regard from the same point of view the sense of taste, the nerves

of which have a still narrower range, and are apparently differently

affected in animals than they are in man--substances disagreeable to him

being relished by them, and of course affecting the taste differently.

We are not sure that there are not senses which appreciate conditions of

matter, of which we have no conception. There are insects which

apparently have organs bestowing senses unlike our own. Their antennæ

have no corresponding organs in the higher animals, and the conception

of the world which these give has no analogy in our minds.

As the senses are thus cognizant of narrow belts of sound and light,

leaving unknown stretches on either side, so what is called matter may

be the narrow range recognized by our finite powers as a whole, on

either side of which may lie stuffs of widely different qualities and

possibilities.

A DEAD VIEW OF DEAD WORLDS.--Pausing to consider the received theory of

force, as an explanation of the causes of the world--creation, we shall

find that it fails to meet the high promises it vauntingly makes.

According to the received theory of force, every manifestation of power

and energy on the earth is originally derived from the sun. The growth

of plants and animals, and all the activities displayed by the latter,

are derived from their food, which was produced by the light and heat of

the sun.

In illustration of the sun's incalculable power, take, for instance, the

rain fall of one-tenth of an inch extending over the United States. Such

a rain-fall has been estimated at ten thousand millions of tons, which

the heat of the sun had raised at least to the height of one mile. It

would take all the pumping engines in the United States a century to

lift this amount of water back again to the clouds. If the force is so

great as displayed in the rain-fall of one-tenth of an inch, how

incomprehensible the power which lifts the entire amount of water

evaporated, amounting to, at least, forty inches!

Yet the force of the sun, manifested on the earth, is an inconceivably

small part of that radiated, for the earth only receives in the

proportion that its surface bears to the sphere of its orbit, and how

incomparable is its diameter of 8,000 miles to that of a sphere

184,000,000 across. The combined surface of all the planets would

receive a scarcely appreciable ratio of the entire amount which,

unimpeded, flies away into the abyss of space.

The energy radiated at the surface of the sun is estimated at 7,000

horse power to the square foot, and if the sun was a mass of coal, it

would have to be consumed in 5,000 years in order to supply it, and in

5,000 years would have to cool down to 9,000 degrees, C. If the nebular

hypothesis be received, the contraction would supply the loss for 7,000

years before the temperature would fall 1 degree, C.

Incomprehensible as this force is, it is constantly diminishing, and

although the projection of meteors and hypothetical cosmical bodies may

prolong its action, the time must come when all its energy will be

dissipated into space; all bodies will have the same temperature, and as

there is no other source of energy, physical and vital phenomena will

cease, and the universe, bereft of living beings, will itself be dead.

A DEAD WORLD.--According to the most advanced views at present

entertained, this is the end of the career of the universe.

Balfour Stewart endorses this conclusion by saying: "We are induced to

generalize still further, and regard not only our own system, but the

whole material universe, when viewed with respect to serviceable energy,

as essentially evanescent, and as embracing a succession of physical

events which can not go on forever as they are."

In stronger language Mr. Pickering says: "The final result, therefore,

would be that all bodies would assume the same temperature, there would

be no further source of energy; physical phenomena would cease, and the

physical universe would be dead. Such, at least, is the present view of

this stupendous question."

In explanation of the origin of this energy, and the reason for its

loss, Mr. Stewart further says: "It is supposed that these particles

originally existed at a great distance from each other, and that, being

endowed with force of gravitation, they have gradually come together;

while in this process heat has been generated, just as if a stone were

dropped from the top of a cliff toward the earth."

Thus the universe would become an equally heated mass, utterly worthless

as far as the work of production is concerned, since such production

depends on difference of temperature.

In other words, the universe becomes dead matter, wholly incapable of

supporting life, and so far as present science gives us any information,

must remain forever at rest.

The fact that such a conclusion has been reached should cause us to

pause in doubt of the correctness of the data leading thereto. It would

be more plausible were it shown how, at the end of the great cycle,

there was renewal of the lost energy, and return to the nebulous

beginning. Causation moves in cycles, and the most alarming

perturbations are balanced by forces operating in other directions, so

that the result is the preservation of order. Planets swing wide of

their orbits for a million years, getting further and further away, yet

the time comes when they return on a pathway carrying them as wide on

the other side.

This latest view of the universe by scientific thought, however

plausible its argument, or apparently logical its results, is proven by

the very logic of those results to be defective.

THE LOGIC OF RESULTS.--It starts with the declaration that matter and

force are inseparable, that there can be no matter without force. The

nebulous beginning was a storehouse of energy, which has been wasting

ever since the first world was formed. This force has been for countless

ages dispersing by radiation. It is still wasting, for as it is radiated

into space it does not even raise the temperature of the trackless abyss

through which it passes. When it is all gone, there will be left the

force of gravitation, holding with adamantine grasp the dead residuum of

suns and planets; and, strange conclusion to which these premises force

us, this residuum must be matter without force.

Here the problem remains unsolved, and a theory which proudly assumes

for itself the distinction of being the only true system of nature,

which rules God out of the universe, or makes Him an unknown and

unknowable quantity, destroys life in nature, and has no means of its

restoration except by a miracle. If the universe is a machine which in

time will run down and die, all its force being dissipated, does it not

follow that in the beginning some superior power united this force with

matter? And also, does it not follow that if this dead universe again

lives, a superior power must draw back the scattered beams of light,

heat, magnetism, and other forces, and re-endow the dead residuum?

Thus this materialistic hypothesis, which boasts arrogantly of its

certitude, begins in assumption and ends in a dilemma out of which

confession of ignorance and acceptance of miracle only can extricate it.

Creation is not a clock that must be wound up at stated intervals by a

foreign power, and any system which does not provide for its restoration

as well as destruction, confesses weakness.

THE CHOICE OF CAUSES.--We have this choice: To believe that forces by

blind action and reaction have evolved the world from a nebulous

fire-cloud and peopled it with sentient and intellectual beings, making

of it a perpetual motion, a machine not designed, but the result of

infinite failures, perfected by infinite blunders, and sustained by the

fortuitous equilibrium of unseeing, unknowing forces; or that back of

these forces is an intelligence, planning and willing through their

agency. If the latter be accepted, it does not follow that the crude

conception of design in nature as the direct work of a personal God must

be maintained. At the commencement of the great revival of the study of

nature, when the views which have revolutionized scientific thought were

beginning to dawn, illy defined and partially understood, they were

seized on by a class seeking support to the theological doctrines they

felt yielding beneath their feet, and distorted by plausible sophistry

into apparent vindication of their dogmas. Of these, Paley became most

famous, his illustration of the watch was the most renowned of his

arguments. It is misleading, as there is no real likeness between a

watch and the mechanism of nature. Yet we do not endorse the

complacency of many leading supporters of evolution. Evolution is

undoubtedly a true statement of the _method_ of creation. It offers no

further explanation and gives no cause. Accepting evolution and

following the development of life from the least to the greatest, what

do we see but the constant unfoldment of a well defined purpose and

plan? Are not the beings of the Silurian and Devonian epoch prophecies

of the forms which were evolved out of them? We may call things by new

names, and in place of design use "adaptation"; we do not change the

relations of things thereby. When we see a bird cleave the air with

rapid wings, and observe the wonderful adaptation of bones and muscles

and forms of feathers, we may explain it all by evolution, which has

made the bird the embodiment of the forces of the air. Have we done more

than state the method of growth? What cause have we assigned for the

process? We see an interminable series of forms, changing from age to

age, becoming more and more complex in their relations, but pressing

forward constantly to final production of man as the perfection of the

vertebrate type. Evolution describes this process, at every step

furnishing evidence of a purpose, achieving its ends through matter,

often failing, but through failures at last reaching its object. In this

light the imperfection of organs proves nothing against design. The eye

of man is instanced as more imperfect than a glass lens. It is as

perfect as the organic material out of which it is made permits. That it

becomes diseased is from the same necessity of organization.

EVOLUTION.--Evolution is a new name for facts exceedingly old; but its

supporters would have its scheme reach through creation to the

foundation of things. Advancement with them means only better adaptation

in the struggle for existence, the result of accidental fitness which

has pushed unorganized protoplasm to man. Matter and its potentialities

granted, all else flows in assured course. Difficulties disappear; the

riddle of the Sphinx is no longer obscure. The sunlight has fallen on

the marble lips, and Memnon has revealed in a single sentence what

mortal man has never understood, "The survival of the fittest." The

theologian has rested in blissful confidence in the arms of the Creator;

now comes the scientist who by easy methods calls the Creator

"evolution," and falls as blindly confident into the arms of his

new-named God. The likeness is made more complete by the scorn of one

equaling the sneer of the other.

It is a new name for the old fact, that the forms of life on this earth

are united by common parentage, and have been differentiated by the

accumulation of infinite beneficial changes. The struggle for existence

has been the center around which these have aggregated. This no careful

student will deny. Having granted this, what then? Is anything

explained? Have we approached the cause by a single step? Really, has

anything been done more than to explain the phenomena of the world with

new words and phrases?

Of old it was said the world is a machine with gods or a god at the

crank; to-day the god at the crank is the Unknowable, the laws of

nature, the potentiality of matter; or in the most recent theory the

all-god has appeared in the revival of the god imminent in the universe,

which is regarded as an organism, with a god-soul. This is poetic but

neither sensible nor scientific. Forever and forever old ideas are

washed on the shore of time, out of the wreck of the past, and instead

for being relegated to the museum, are galvanized into grimace of life,

and branded as new, when they are rapidly disintegrating in every part.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.--The survival of the fittest is a wonderful

scheme of the preservation of the best. To illustrate, take the tiger

and the deer. Once they herded together, the tiger not being, as now,

noted for strength or cunning, nor the deer for caution and fleetness.

The dull tiger was able to take as prey the least cautious and weakest

of the deer. The fleetest deer propagated, and then only the most

cunning tigers were able to procure food, and continue their kind. As

their strength and cunning increased, the cautiousness and fleetness of

the deer increased in this matched game of life; the two species

reacting on each other until we now have the perfected deer and tiger.

In both kingdoms of living beings, among all their diverse families and

species, this struggle has gone on, and the result is the

differentiation from abysmal protoplasmic slime the humming bird on the

flower to the leviathan in the deep; the litchen on the rock to man with

an intellectual comprehension of unknown breadth. We here have the

chronicle of creation, and Froissart was not more garrulous with his

exploits of lord and lady than the chroniclers of the changes effected

in specific forms "on their way to man."

We hear all that is said, and with a feeling of disappointment, while

admitting all, respond that we were promised a cause, and have been

given only a method? What stands behind the "struggle for existence?"

What is the infinite force of the ceaseless unrest, which throws each

wave higher on the tide line, working like a blind giant, hewing out

organic forms from protoplasm, and amid infinite failures approximating

ever to the perfect, with constant prophecy that that perfection will be

attained? The "survival of the fittest" reveals the prodigal method

which preserves one of a million germs, casting the others back into the

seething crucible for new trials. Can it claim anything more? The laws

of nature are grooves in which causes run to effects; but why do they

thus move? Calling them by other names will not satisfy. As Newton, when

he gave the law of gravitation mathematical form, penetrated not a step

toward its cause, so the biologist has not passed the threshold of the

domain of life. A recent scientific association sat in silence after a

verbose and flippant discussion on protoplasm, when asked by a member

what was the difference between living and dead protoplasm? Not one

could answer. Life had escaped their observation. Protoplasm dead is no

longer protoplasm. The protoplasmic germ impelled by the forces of life,

commences its growth, sending out its feeding vessels, and from the

beginning copies the paleontological history of the earth, and more

completely the biography of its direct ancestors.

When we consider that this invisible fleck bears in its cell or cells

the impress of every condition bearing on its progenitors from remotest

time, and will express it in all these conditions, it is no longer a

phenomenon on which we gaze, but a miracle of creative power, and all

that has been written by physiologists since Galen's time as to its

cause is as children's prattle. The material side furnishes no adequate

explanation. Its coarse methods are not adapted to measure the illusive

psyche. The balance weighs not, the scalpel dissects not, the retort

holds not the elements of the soul.

Scientific Methods of the Study of Man, and Results.

THE EVOLUTIONIST.--Scientists have different ways of studying man. The

evolutionist first develops the form. He says that life began in

protoplasm in the unrecorded ages of the past, and step by step, through

mollusk, fish, saurian and mammal, has arisen by the "struggle for

existence" and "survival of the fittest," until the mammal by strangely

fortuitous chances has become a human being. As the human body is a

modified animal form, so the intellect is a modified and developed

instinct, the highest and most spiritual conscientiousness being only

the result of accumulated experiences of what is for the best. The

highest of animals is man, with no barrier between him and them, and

subject to the same fate. There is no indication of a guiding

intelligence, and if he possess an immortal spirit, so does the mollusk

and the fleck of protoplasm.

THE CHEMIST.--The chemist has his method, that of analysis. He takes the

vital tissues and resolves them into their elementary parts. He tells us

that there is so much hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen in the muscles; so

much lime and phosphorus in the bones; so much phosphorus in the nerves,

and iron in the blood. He separates these elements in retort or

crucible, and weighs them with nicety so that he knows to a thousandth

of a grain their proportions. He has made the ultimate analysis, and

these are all he can discover. Life is the result of their union; mind

the burning of phosphorus in the brain, and as for spirit, it is quite

unnecessary to explain the phenomena. The chemist has finished his work,

and placed in the museum the results of his analysis. That body perhaps

weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. In a large glass jar is the water

it contained--clear, crystal water, such as flashes in the sunlight of a

rainbow-arching shower, or a dewdrop sparkling on the petals of a lily.

There are about eight or ten gallons of it, for the body is

three-fourths water. There is a small jar of white powder representing

the lime; another, still smaller, the silex; another the phosphorus.

There are homeopathic vials containing a trace of sulphur, of iron,

magnesia, the potash, the soda, the salts and so on until the vials,

great and small, contain more or less of almost every element. Here we

have what was once a human being. We have every thing that went to make

him, except one, which lacking, these elements are lifeless, and of no

more value than water from the brook and earth from its banks: the

vital, or psychic principle. Place the contents of all the lesser jars

in the greater water jar, shake, dissolve, and manipulate, dead and

inert they remain, and will remain so long as thus treated. The chemist

in his analysis has made no account of the subtile principle which made

these elementary atoms an expression of its purpose. The living form has

its origin in the remote past, and its atoms were arranged and brought

into union by a vital process which thus began; which must begin in this

manner and traverse the same path. Phosphorus may be essential to give

activity to the brain, and a given amount of thought may correspond to a

fixed amount of phosphorus burned in nerve tissue. What of that? We know

that in one of these vials is all the phosphorus that existed in one

human being; we may burn it all, and it will give flame, not

intelligence. If intelligence comes from its burning, the process must

take place in nerve cells organized for the purpose, and that structure

must have been planned by superior thought.

To call the ingredients of these bottles a human being would be like

calling a pile of brick, mortar and lumber a house, except the

comparison fails in the house being built by outside forces, while the

living being must be organized from within. No mixing of the contents of

these bottles and jars can evolve life, or even the smallest speck of

protoplasm.

THE ANATOMIST.--The third scheme is that of the anatomist, who with

keen-edged scalpel bends over the body after life has gone out of it,

and traces the course of arteries and veins, the form and location of

nerves, the attachment of muscular fibers, and in connection with the

physiologist defines the functions of each separate organ. An

exquisitely fashioned machine it is, wonderfully and fearfully made,

growing up from an invisible germ. After anatomist and physiologist have

finished, and on their dissecting table only a mass of rubbish remains,

they triumphantly point to it and exclaim: "See! We have settled the

question of spirit! There can be nothing beyond this organism. We have

determined how every cell and fiber of it are put together, and the

functions they perform. No where is there an indication of any thing

superior or transcending this material form. Here is where the food is

digested; here it is assimilated; here this secretion is made; here

excretion of poisonous matter takes place; here in the brain, in these

gray cells, thought arises. Ah! it is a wonderful complex machine."

Indeed it is, and what has become of the power which moved it? You have

a strange machine, unlike all others, for it is, according to your

ideas, an engine to make steam, instead of to be moved by it; a mill to

make a waterfall, instead of to be run by falling water. What is the

difference between a dead man and a living one? Incomprehensibly great,

and yet the dead man to the chemist, the anatomist, the biologist, is

identically the same as the living. That unknown element, life, escapes

the crucible, the retort, the scalpel, the microscope, and the

conclusions of those who take it not into consideration are the vague

conjecturing of children, who have gained but a half knowledge of the

subjects that excite their attention.

Yet science proudly claims the knowledge of all things possible to know.

It has searched into the foundations of the earth and ascended the

starry dome of infinitude; it grasps the inconceivably small and the

inconceivably great; it delves in the hard stratum of facts, and sports

in the most sublime theories. It gives the laws of the dancing motes,

and those which guide the movements of stellar worlds; the sullen forces

of the elements and the subtile agencies which sustain living beings.

WHAT IS BEYOND THE STRIFE FOR EXISTENCE?--What, O Science, is there

beyond the grave which shuts down with adamantine wall between this life

and the future?

The answer comes: Beyond? There is nothing. Do not dream, but know the

reality. What becomes of its music after the instrument is destroyed?

Where is the hum of the bee after the insect has passed on its busy

wings? Where is the light in the lamp after the oil is burned? Where is

the heat of the grate after the coal has burned? Given the conditions

and you have music, heat and light. When these conditions perish you

have nothing. As the impinging of oxygen against carbon in the flame

produces light and heat, so the combination of elements in the nerves

and brain produces the phenomena of life and intelligence. As the liver

secretes bile, so the brain produces thought. Destroy the brain and mind

disappears, as the music when the instrument is broken.

Look you and see the strife for existence. See you the myriads of human

beings who have perished. The world is one vast charnel house, its

material being worked over and over again in endless cycle. Tooth and

claw to rend and tear; arrow, club, spear, sword, and gun to kill; the

weak to fall, the strong and brutal to triumph, to multiply, and advance

by the slaughter of its own weaker members. The atom you can not see

with unaided eye devours and is devoured, and ascending to man, he is by

turns the slayer and the slain.

There's not an atom of the earth's thick crust,

Of earth or rock, or metals' hardened rust,

But has a myriad times been charged with life,

And mingled in the vortex of its strife;

And every grain has been a battle-field

Where murder boldly rushed with sword and shield.

Turn back the rocky pages of earth's lore,

And every page is written o'er and o'er

With wanton waste. The weak are for the strong,

And Might is victor, whether right or wrong.

Enameled armor and tesselated scale,

With conic tooth that broke the flinty mail;

The shell protecting and the jaw which ground

The shell to dust, there side by side are found;

The fin that sped the weak from danger's path,

The stronger fin that sped the captor's wrath;

A charnel house where, locked in endless strife,

Cycle the balanced forces, Death and Life.

If you seek for a meaning or a purpose you will find none. What you call

design is only the harmony of fluctuating chances produced by countless

failures.

PHILOSOPHY.--Invoke philosophy with her robes of snow, pretending to a

knowledge of the world and its infinite destiny; it will tell you of the

cycle of being; the succession of generations; that life and death

complement each other, and that all you may hope for is change.

Unceasing change is the abiding law, and he who grasps to hold, will

find but shadows in his grasp.

RELIGION.--Religion may teach us a pessimistic view of the world, and to

bow like cringing slaves unquestioningly to the rod. We may accept that

all is for the best whether we understand it or not, as the unalterable

decree of fate, yet as rational beings we recoil from this bondage, and

the questions are ever present, of the purpose of this life and the

evidences of that future of which the most doubting dream.

Religion, resting as it does on the immortality of the spirit, should

answer us so plainly and absolutely that there could be no doubt. That

there is weeping and broken hearts shows that it does not, or else that

it makes that existence so terrible that the dread of it is more than

that of annihilation. The fear of Hell, which has driven the world to

madness, is now cast into the lumber room with other errors, outgrown,

and in the free atmosphere one can not understand the terrors it once

awakened. The arbitrary heaven is also passing away, and a more natural

conception of the future life is gaining precedent. Yet the words of

teachers of religion are cold and soulless, and even the poets, touched

by the finger of a decaying faith, voice the incredulity of the age in

lines which speak only in despair. Oh! poet of immortal song, how

chilling to the heart the words that yet too often find response in its

doubts and fears:

"And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But oh! for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still.

"Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead,

Will never come back to me."

There is little consolation to be found in these directions. Let us turn

back to first principles; let us for a time forget the claims of

scientists and take up the book of nature at her plain alphabet and

ascertain whether these claims of material science have a sure

foundation.

What is the Sensitive State?

A RACE WITHOUT SIGHT.--If the human race were born without organs of

vision, man could form no idea of the beautiful and splendid phenomena

revealed to the eye. The normal state would be blindness. Day and night

would be marked by intervals of repose and activity, but the cloudy

midnight and the radiance of the sun, the glories of morning, the

splendors of sunset, the star-gemmed canopy of the cloudless night, the

infinite changes, the phantasmagoria of heaven and earth, would be

unknown. The flowers might bloom in beauty, their fragrance would

delight, but their form and color would be unrecognized. The mind,

deprived of the infinite series of sensations which flow into it through

the sense of vision, would have none of the conceptions thereby

engendered. If a being who could see should attempt to reveal to the

sightless race the beauties of the world as seen by the eye in the

light, they would treat him as an impostor relating an idle tale, to

them incomprehensible.

A RACE WITHOUT HEARING.--If to the deprivation of sight were added the

loss of hearing, the vital powers would not be impaired; the organic

functions would continue the same, but all sounds would cease and

perfect silence reign. The mind could form no conception of music, the

songs of birds, the sighing of the wind, the roar of the storm, or the

soft modulations of the human voice. As nature would be voiceless, so

man would be dumb. The gift of speech would be lost with the power of

receiving the sounds of words. The soul, in silence and darkness, unable

to communicate its thoughts with others, would be bereft of all the

sensations, emotions, and conceptions which arise from seeing and

hearing, nor could it be taught these by those who possessed these

senses, for no conceptions could be formed of sights never seen, or

sounds never heard.

SENSITIVENESS.--In like manner, the sensitive condition reveals a

universe which is unknown to the senses, and of which man is as

profoundly ignorant as those born blind are of light. It is the heritage

of all, yet manifested only at rare intervals in favored individuals. It

is as it would be with the sense of sight, were thousands blind, while a

few saw imperfectly, and only one with distinctness. The sight of that

one would indicate what all might attain under favorable circumstances,

as the perception of those who are sensitive shows what is possible in

this direction. It is through this gateway that we are able to penetrate

the arcana of a higher existence, and it is our purpose to go by easy

steps along the pathway that leads into the vista stretching beyond this

portal, into unexplored regions, of which scarcely a conception has yet

been formed.

We have consciousness of spiritual realities, of an infinite after-life,

and aspirations which it alone can satisfy, and for which this mortal

sphere furnishes no provision. Shall we regard these aspirations as idle

longings, and this consciousness as a baseless fancy? Or have we

spiritual energies which have called this spiritual nature into being?

The eye is created in conformity to the laws of light, to receive the

rays and allow their impingement on the optic nerves. It is proof of the

existence of light. In the same manner, spiritual perception is evidence

of the existence of spiritual energies. It would be quite as difficult

for the mind to comprehend spiritual being, if without this

consciousness, as for the blind to understand the beauties of light.

Sensitiveness is a faculty pertaining to the spiritual nature, and is

acute in proportion as that spiritual nature dominates the physical

senses. It is possessed by all, and by a few in a remarkable degree. It

is variable in the same individual, is often the result of drugs, of

fatigue, of sleep, and may be induced or intensified by hypnotism or

mesmerism. It may manifest itself suddenly and at long intervals, once

only in a lifetime, or be a steadfast quality. It may have all degrees

of acuteness, from impressibility scarcely distinguishable from the

individual's own thoughts, to the purest independent clairvoyance.

CONDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF SENSITIVENESS.--For one mind to

influence another, the two must be in harmony, at least in certain

points. The thought vibrations in one will not otherwise awake like

vibrations in the other. Take for illustration two musical strings, one

with fixed attachments, and the other with a moveable bridge or stop.

Now if the first be set in vibration, the other, being on a different

key, will not respond in unison, but the stop will slightly move; and if

the vibrations continue, the stop will move forward until the exact

length of chord is attained, and then both strings will vibrate in

harmony, one repeating the notes of the other.

If an hundred musical instruments were placed in a room, only two of

which were tuned alike, if one of these were touched, its mate would

respond, but the others would remain silent.

These thought vibrations may be received suddenly like a flash, as in

the case of premonitions and warnings of danger, the sensitive state

lasting but a brief time; or it may be cultivated and become permanent

with the individual. The hypnotic, or somnambulic subject, may be more

or less affected at first, and slowly fall under the influence, until

the continuous condition is the same as that in which a premonition is

received.

As an illustration of the method by which this is accomplished, whether

the operator be a spirit clad in a physical or in a celestial body, the

improvements by age and use of the violin may be taken.

This instrument, the most perfect of all in its capacity for expressing

the delicate feelings of the soul, gains its soft sweetness and rich

perfection by use and age. The cremona, worth its weight in gold, may

once have been harsh, with dissonant tones, rasping to the ear. The

Tyrolese maker selects the smoothest wood his mountain affords, clear of

grain, and free from flaw or blemish. He carves the parts with sedulous

care and exhaustless patience; swell and curve and hollow are wrought,

polished, and cemented together so as to make them as one. Then the

delicate strings are drawn over the bridge, and the instrument tested.

It may squeak or jar, and refuse, even in a master's hands, to express

his desire. But with every vibration of the strings it improves. Every

movement changes its fibers, and forces them into harmonious accord.

After a time they will all be in unison. The playing of a single tune

may not produce this result; a score or a thousand may not. It may pass

from hand to hand, and generation after generation may grow old and die,

as each successive master touches its strings, before all its deepest

qualities are expressed. Then its tones melt in voluptuous harmony; wail

with the broken hearted; fill the soul with the gladness of delight;

revive the murmur of the sombre pines; the song of the birds in the

forest; the laughing of falling waters; the hoarse voice of the tempest

with hail and lightning flash, rush of winds and burst of clouds. Nature

speaks through the instrument, and vibrates the heart with every

emotion, passion, and aspiration.

In the same manner, if a being independent of, and detached from the

physical body, should attempt to impress its thoughts on a sensitive, it

might no more than partially succeed after many trials. Each effort,

however, would be more successful, for thought vibrations constantly

tend to efface the causes of discord, and if the Intelligence is

patient, and the sensitive submissive, the thoughts of the former would

at last flow uninterruptedly into or through the mind of the latter.

And what is thus possible for a sensitive, in regard to an individual

intelligence, is possible to acquire in relation to the thought

atmosphere of the universe, or psychic-ether. If this be possible, if a

being may become thus exquisitively sensitive, and receive the waves of

thought as they traverse this ether, as the eye catches vibrations of

light, that being would be a focus to receive the intelligence of all

thinking beings in the universe.

The sensitive state, then, is the outcropping in mortal life, in

apparently abnormal form, of that which is normal to the spirit of life.

We thus conclude that its most astonishing development, as revealed, is

immeasurably below its normal capabilities when freed from the

limitation of the body. The permanent condition of a spiritual being

after separation from the physical form must be that of the most perfect

and delicately sensitive. What we see here in partial or total eclipse,

is there in the glory of full light.

THOUGHTS NOT WORDS IMPRESSED.--While Max Müller ardently supports his

theory that thought itself depends upon the words which express it, we

constantly meet with facts which indicate that the _idea_ is conveyed

from one mind to another, and there is clothed in words according to

the culture of the receiving mind. The vividness with which the idea is

impressed insures the use of similar verbal clothing. An instance is

reported by Dapson, in Deleuze, where a sealed letter was given a very

susceptible magnetic subject. It reads:

"No other than the eye of Omnipotence can read this sentence

in this envelope.

_Troy, New York, Aug. 1837._"

The subject read it:

"No other than the eye of Omnipotence can read this in this

envelope. ---------- 1837."

He omitted "sentence," and all the date but the year. It is to be

observed that in all instances of thought transference or sensitiveness,

the reproduction of names, dates, etc., expressed by arbitrary words,

are the most difficult and unreliable, and this has been a source of

doubt, and an argument against the truthfulness of the magnetic subject.

It requires a deeper hypnotic state to receive dates and names

correctly, than connected ideas. It is because ideas and not the verbal

form are received, that culture becomes of greatest value connected with

sensitiveness, as will be amplified in a succeeding section, treating on

misconceived sensitiveness, whereby is made possible the seemingly

superhuman achievements of authors, philosophers, sages, statesmen, and

inventors. It will also be more extendedly treated of in the chapter

devoted to the consideration of Dreams.

Sensitive State: Its Division into Mesmeric, Somnambulic, and

Clairvoyant.

THE SIXTH SENSE.--In the normal state we know and understand the

external world through and by the senses. The eye reveals to us the

beauties of light, and by its aid the wondrous diversities of nature.

The ear brings to the mind the varied sounds, makes oral speech and the

sweet harmonies of music possible. The organ of smell sentinels the

citadel of health against pestiferous odors, and gives the exquisite

enjoyment of perfumes. Ordinarily we rely on these senses as our guides,

and so complete is our reliance that we recognize no other avenue to

knowledge of the external world; yet at times we find that our minds

extend beyond the senses and have capabilities which can not be referred

to them. There is an interior perception, which has been called the

sixth sense, which, sensitive to impressions from supernal sources, at

times rises above all the others. It is through this sense or better,

this sensitive state, that we gain an insight into the spiritual nature

of man. The senses would lead us away to a gross materialism, for they

belong to the animal organization; this sensitiveness leads us in an

opposite direction. We find through it another nature overlaid and

obscured by the senses and their understanding. This sensitive state is

the activity of the spiritual being, in the ratio of its perfection, and

is really as normal as the most sensuous condition. The study of this

state is the gateway to the understanding of our spiritual being, and

the first lesson it teaches is that man is a dual creation; a spirit, an

intelligent entity, clothed with, and circumscribed by, a physical body.

Only so far as that body interferes with the activity of the spirit, is

it of interest to us in the present discussion, which relates entirely

to the spirit.

This sensitive state is possessed by many, and in many more it may be

induced by proper means. It may be laid down as a rule that whatever

weakens the physical faculties strengthens this spiritual perception.

Thus it is often manifested in disease, after fatigue, or in the

negative hours of sleep. Some drugs have the power of inducing it, and

mesmerism is the strongest of all artificial means. I use the term

_sensitive_ with the meaning here given, and from that meaning shall not

deviate. Many who possess this power in a slight degree may not

distinguish its perceptions from those of the senses with which they

blend, but there are times when the mind passes into an entirely

different state from that of its normal activity, that of sensitive

receptivity, and what is usually termed intuition is intensified. I

propose to study this sensitive state first in connection with that of

wakefulness, and then with that of sleep; and from simple

thought-reading to the reception of thought from supernal sources.

Hitherto the discussion of spirit has been considered impracticable by

scientific methods, and theology and metaphysics have occupied the

field. In this border-land between the known and the unknown, ignorance

and charlatanry have held high carnival, and those who love scientific

accuracy perhaps are excusable in regarding the belief in spiritual

beings as a superstition; yet there has accumulated as folk lore, as

myths, as an outside, out-of-the-way literature, a vast mass of

material, some of which, it is true, is mere rubbish, through which

gleams bright veins of truth, showing the close relations between the

seen and the unseen universes. Here and there a sensitive mind has

received the light in clearer effulgence, and made the surrounding gloom

more densely impenetrable. At remote intervals the oriflamme of the

spiritual conception of nature has flashed athwart the intervals of

gross materialism, but religion, moral conduct, not knowledge, has been

the motive. This age demands knowledge for its own sweet sake, assured

that the highest morality will flow therefrom. In the study of the

conditions of the mind, the various states of sleep, clairvoyance,

somnambulism, etc., will be defined and illustrated.

SLEEP.--Sleep is the "twin sister of death" only in appearance, for

aside from poetic fancy, sleep is the negative condition of activity. In

perfect sleep all the faculties of the mind are in repose, and the

bodily functions go on with the least waste. It is essentially restful

and recuperative. The waste of the body, its wear and tear of muscle and

nerve is repaired; new cells take the place of those broken down, and

the debris moves slowly forward to the excretory organs and is

eliminated.

In this state of negative repose there is no manifestation of thought,

and it is as unlike the clairvoyant or sensitive state as that of

wakefulness; but shaded into this state of sleep, as into that of

wakefulness, are various degrees of sensitiveness. The conditions of

sleep are provocative of this impressibleness. Night is negative; the

silence and the vail of darkness shutting out external objects conduce

to make the mind negative and susceptible.

At midnight is the culmination of this negativeness, and hence the

ghastly dread of that hour has a foundation in fact, and is not an idle

superstition. Ghosts may never appear, yet if they were to appear the

midnight hour, of all others, would be assigned by the student cognizant

of this fact for them to come like shafts of frozen moonshine, into the

walks of men.

MESMERIC STATE.--Mesmerism, under whatever name, animal magnetism,

hypnotism, etc., is a potent means in the study of psychology. It has

made it possible to command many of the most evanescent phenomena, and

allow of their careful examination, when otherwise they came at rare

intervals and at such unexpected moments as made it impossible to

carefully compare and study them. Somnambulism, clairvoyance, and that

state of exquisite sensitiveness which makes us receptive of impressions

transformed into dreams, may be commanded in a sensitive, and observed

at leisure.

In the commencement we must free ourselves from the commonly received

idea that sleep has any resemblance to any of these several states which

are usually called magnetic, mesmeric, or clairvoyant sleep. As already

stated, sleep is the negative of being, and more distinct from these

states of exalted perception than waking. The incongruous and often

incoherent visions which arise in the half-waking state, or when only a

part of the mental faculties are at rest, are the ordinary dreams, which

have no significance, and are very different in their origin and meaning

from the impressions received in the sensitive state, which is one of

intense wakefulness and activity. The sensitive condition is possessed

in a marked degree by about one in five, and may be induced in a still

larger ratio. It is more frequently found in women than in men. It may

be cultivated, and become an important factor in the character and

happiness of the individual.

We will simply for convenience divide the sensitive state into the

hypnotic, somnambulic and clairvoyant; but it must be borne in mind that

these merge into each other; and that no sharp line can be drawn between

them.

Mesmerism may be regarded as the method by which all of these states may

be induced. The mesmeric state is equivalent to the hypnotic. After

years of delay, mesmerism has been accepted under another name, that of

hypnotism; but the theory of a "fluid" or specific influence is

discarded. Hypnotists cannot, however, exceed the most common

experiments without the facts demanding even as a working hypothesis,

this specific influence.

The ticking of a watch held close to the ear, or intensely gazing at

some object, will throw a sensitive into an abnormal condition, at the

mercy of the "dominant idea," and he becomes an automaton in the hands

of an external influence. This is the hypnotic state, beyond which the

"dominant idea" fails. A sensitive may be led by a "dominant idea," but

soon manifests a power which stretches beyond into an unexplored region

of possibilities, exhibiting mental perceptions far more acute than

those possess who are around him, or he himself possesses in his normal

condition. Hypnotism as treated by its exponents is an extremely

complicated state, ranging from the cataleptic to the independent

clairvoyant. To define it with the usual narrow meaning is extremely

misleading and unscientific.

There are two distinct states of hypnotism. The first is that in which

most platform experiments are made. The sensitive is capable of carrying

on conversations, answering questions, and is governed by a "dominant

idea," believing all the operator wishes, and doing as commanded.

The sensitive rapidly enters the next stage, when he becomes insensible

to pain, and irresponsive to the address of any one except the operator.

Until this stage is reached consciousness and memory are retained, a

fact fatal to the theory of automatic action or "unconscious

cerebration." In this profound state the sensitive has no memory of

events which occur. It is an induced, incipient somnambulism, the true

counterpart of that which under proper condition appears spontaneously.

The report of the Committee on Hypnotism, vol. I., p. 95, of Proceedings

of American Society for Psychical Research, shows that it confined its

attention to fifty or sixty students of Harvard College. Of these about

a dozen were affected, and of these, two were so good that attention was

confined to them.

"The extraordinary mixture, in the hypnotic trance, of preternatural

refinement of discrimination with the grossest insensibility, is one of

the most remarkable features of the condition. A blank sheet of paper,

with fine-cut edges, without watermarks or any thing which could lead to

the recognition of one side or edge from the other, is shown to the

subject with the statement that it is a photograph of a well-known face.

As soon as he distinctly sees the photograph upon its surface, he is

told that it will float off from the paper, make a voyage around the

walls of the room, and then return to the paper again. During this

imaginary performance, he sees it successfully on the various regions of

the wall; but if the paper is meanwhile secretly turned over, and handed

to him upside down, or with its under surface on top, he instantly

recognizes the change, and seeing the portrait in the altered position

of the paper, turns the latter about, 'to get the portrait right.'"

In the hypnotic state the subject is under the control of the operator,

and in a great degree an automaton; in the somnambulic, he in part

regains his individuality, and in certain lines of thought and action is

superior to himself in his waking moments. Natural somnambulism comes

without warning, and illustrates the condition induced by mesmeric

passes.

SOMNAMBULISM.--Sleep waking, or sleep walking, whatever may be its

cause, mental derangement by disease or intense exertion of mind or

body, or a constitutional inclination thereto, is of deepest interest to

the psychologist as proving the independence of the spirit of the

physical senses. The somnambulist has lost the use of his senses. He

feels, hears and sees nothing by touch, ear or eye, and yet the objects

to which his attention is drawn are plainly perceptible.

The Archbishop of Bordeaux is authority for the following narrative: A

young clergyman was in the habit of rising from his bed, and writing his

sermons while asleep. When he had written a page he would read it aloud

and correct it. Once in altering the expression "_ce devin enfant_," he

substituted the word "_adorable_" for "_devin_," which, commencing with

a vowel, required that "_ce_" before it should be changed to "_cet_;" he

accordingly added the "_t_." While he was writing the Archbishop held a

piece of pasteboard under his chin to prevent him seeing what he was

writing, but he went on without being in the least incommoded. The paper

on which he was writing was removed and another piece substituted, but

he at once perceived the change. He also wrote pieces of music with his

eyes closed. He once wrote the words under the notes too large, but

discovering his mistake, he erased and rewrote them. He certainly did

not see with his eyes and yet the vision was perfect.

The case of Jane C. Rider, known as the Springfield somnambulist,

created in its time much wonder and speculation among intelligent

persons acquainted with the facts. A full account of it was published in

the Boston _Medical and Surgical Journal_, Volume XI., Numbers 4 and 5.

Miss Rider would walk in her sleep, attend to domestic duties in the

dark or with her eyes bandaged, and read in a dark room with her eyes

covered with cotton batting, over which was tied a black silk

handkerchief. She learned without difficulty to play at backgammon while

in this state, and would generally beat her antagonist, though in her

normal state she knew nothing about the game.

A young lady, while at school, succeeded in her Latin exercises without

devoting much time or attention to them, apparently. At length the

secret of her easy progress was discovered. She was observed to leave

her room at night, take her class-book, and go to a certain place on the

banks of a small stream, where she remained but a short time and then

returned to the house. In the morning she was invariably unconscious of

what had occurred during the night; but a glance at the lesson of the

day usually resulted in the discovery that it was already quite familiar

to her.

A young man on a farm in Australia, after a hard day's work, went to

sleep on a sofa; after some little time he arose, passed through several

gates, opening and fastening them. Reaching the shed, he took off his

coat, sharpened his shears, caught a sheep, and had just finished

shearing it when his companions came with lanterns in search of him. The

shock of awaking caused him to tremble like a leaf, but he soon

recovered. The sheep was shorn as perfectly as if the work had been done

in broad daylight.

MORAL EFFECT OF MESMERISM.--Dr. Voisin recommends a suggestive

application of mesmerism. He experimented on a coarse, debauched and

lazy woman, who was susceptible to magnetism; and kept her in the

mesmeric sleep ten or twelve hours a day, and to its value as a curative

agent he added moral education. During her sleep he suggested ideas of

obedience, of submission, of decency, and exhorted her to useful labor.

In this sleep she memorized whole pages of moral books. A complete

transformation was effected in her in a few months.

What a glorious field here opens for the moral reformer! The calloused

criminal who will not listen to moral suasion, deaf alike to entreaty

and prayer, may be hypnotized, and in that susceptible condition taught

the Lord's Prayer and moral precepts; his moral nature roused and thus

be transformed into a new being. The influence of some men when brought

into contact with criminals is explained by their strong mesmeric or

hypnotic influence. They always lift up those they control. They are

born masters, though they may not understand the cause of their

strength.

TRANCE AND CLAIRVOYANCE.--The trance or clairvoyant state has been

observed in all ages and among all races of mankind. It has, in seasons

of great religious excitement, become epidemic, the devotee falling in

convulsions, becoming cataleptic, and after hours, days, or even months

of apparent death, awakening with mind overwrought with visions of the

strange world in which it had dwelt during the period of

unconsciousness.

The records of clairvoyance are as old as history. If prophecy, the

"clear seeing of the future," be its fruit, the prophets and sages of

the past were all more or less endowed with this gift. Socrates and

Apollonius predicted, and were conscious of, events transpiring at

remote distances. Cicero mentions that when the revelations are being

given, someone must be present to record them, as "these sleepers do not

retain any recollection of them." Pliny, speaking of the celebrated

Hermotimus, of Clazomenæ, remarks that his soul separated itself from

the body, and wandered in various parts of the earth, relating events

occurring in distant places. During the period of inspiration his body

was insensible. The day of the battle of Pharsalia, Cornelius, a priest

of profound piety, described while in Padua, as though present, every

feature of the fight. Nicephorus says that when the unfortunate Valens,

taking refuge in a barn, was burned by the Goths, a hermit named Paul,

in a fit of ecstasy, cried out to those who were with him: "It is now

that Valens burns." Tertulian describes two females, celebrated for

their piety and ecstasy, that they entered that state in the midst of

the congregation, revealed celestial secrets, and knew the innermost

hearts of persons.

St. Justin affirms that the sibyls foretold events correctly, and quotes

Plato as coinciding with him in that view. St. Athenagoras says of the

faculty of prescience, that "it is proper to the soul." Volumes might be

readily filled with quotations like the foregoing, showing that

clairvoyance has been received as true by profound thinkers in every

age. Swedenborg, Zschokke, Davis, are not peculiarities of modern times,

but repetitions of Socrates, Apollonius, and countless others who deeply

impressed their personality on their times.

WHAT IS CLAIRVOYANCE?--Clairvoyance is a peculiar state of

impressibility, presenting gradations from semi-consciousness to

profound and death-like trance. Whether natural, or induced by

artificial means, the attending phenomena are similar. In its most

perfect form the body is in deepest sleep. A flame may be applied to it

without producing the quiver of a nerve; the most pungent substances

have no effect on the nostrils; pins or needles thrust into the most

sensitive part give no pain; surgical operations may be performed

without being felt. Hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, as well as

seeing, are seemingly independent of the physical organs. The muscular

system is either relaxed or rigid; the circulation impeded in some cases

until the pulse becomes imperceptible; and respiration leaves no stain

on a mirror held over the nostrils.

In passing into this state, the extremities become cold, the brain

congested, the vital powers sink, a dreamy unconsciousness steals over

the faculties of the mind. There is a sensation of sinking or floating.

After a time the perceptions become intensified; we can not say the

senses are intensified, for they are of the body, which for the time, is

insensible.

The mind sees without the physical organs of vision, hears without the

organs of hearing, and feeling becomes a refined consciousness, which

brings it _en rapport_ with the intelligence of the world. The more

death-like the conditions of the body, the more lucid the mind, which

for the time owes it no fealty.

If, as there is every reason to believe, clairvoyance depends on the

unfolding of the spirit's perception, then the extent of that unfolding

marks the degree of its perfection. However great or small this may be,

the state itself is the same, differing only in degree, whether observed

in the Pythian or Delphic oracle, the visions of St. John, the trance of

Mohammed, the epidemic catalepsy of religious revivals, or the

illumination of Swedenborg. The revelations made have a general

resemblance, but they are so colored by surrounding circumstances that

they are extremely fallible. The tendency of the trance is to make

objective the subjective ideas acquired by education. This is exhibited

in cases of religious ecstasy and trance, when the subject sees visions

of winged angels and of Christ; transforming dogmas and beliefs into

objective realities. Such revelations, of course, have no more value

than the illusory visions of the fever-stricken patient.

Yet there is a profound state which sets this aside, and divests the

mind of all trammels, and brings it into direct contact with the thought

atmosphere of the world--the psycho-ether. Time and space for it, then,

have no existence, and matter is transparent.

The weakening of the physical powers by disease is favorable to

sensitiveness. As the senses are deadened, the powers of the interior

consciousness are quickened, and a new world rises above the horizon of

the corporeal senses.

Evidence of the truth of clairvoyance was given in the _Brooklyn Eagle_,

soon after the loss of the "Arctic," in 1854. The wife, son and daughter

of Captain Collins were making the tour of Europe, and the Captain, to

gratify a passing whim, consulted a clairvoyant as to their locality.

The answer was that they were at that time visiting a church, which was

accurately described. When the wife's letter came, it contained a

narrative of a visit to a church at exactly the same hour, describing it

as the clairvoyant had done, thus showing that the communication was

quite correct.

As the family had arranged to return on the "Arctic," and as the ship

was a day late, of course Captain Collins became anxious. Sunday and

Monday passed without news from the ship, and his anxiety increased. He

thought of the clairvoyant and called on her. At first, although

apparently deeply entranced, she could see nothing. Everything was in a

cloud. At length she was able to see the three persons standing on the

deck of a ship, amid great confusion, and almost concealed in fog and

mist. This was all she could discern. This was nearly two days before

the telegraph announced the loss of the "Arctic," and the arrival of a

boat-load of survivors on the Canadian coast. But the Collins family

were not among the saved.

If we compare what may be called artificially induced with the

spontaneous clairvoyance, we shall find them similar. The first example

is of a sensitive, a youth of seventeen, who was blindfolded by means

of soft paper folded double, and then gummed over his eyelids, and a

silk handkerchief tied over this paper. Under these circumstances the

sensitive was able to take a pack of cards and select any one called

for, read the pages of a book, although those present were ignorant of

the words, his sensitiveness being entirely independent of the knowledge

of those around him.

CLAIRVOYANCE FROM DISEASE.--There are instances where persons have

fallen into this sensitive or clairvoyant state by disease or a nervous

shock, and in the prolonged trance which followed, manifested all the

phenomena usual to the induced somnambulic or clairvoyant state, even in

higher degree. Of these Mollie Fancher is one of the best examples. She

was called the "sleepless girl of Brooklyn," and for nine years, it is

claimed by competent authority, did not sleep, and ate so little food

that it was claimed she did not partake of any. She was, at fifteen

years of age, healthy, but delicately organized. At that time she was

thrown from a street car, and her head and body injured. A day or two

afterwards she was seized with violent spasms. One by one her senses

failed. Sight was first to leave, and hearing followed. Then she lost

her speech, and then the ability to swallow. This last she had not been

known to exercise for nine years, and during the same length of time her

eyelids were closed. She took no sleep, unless the intervals of trance

be called sleep. She was breathless and rigid as dead. These spasms

lasted less than a minute, and were accompanied with, or followed by,

violent muscular contortions.

Her lower limbs became twisted entirely around each other. Her right arm

was bent upward and doubled under her head. She had no use of her right

hand at all, and of the left hand only the thumb and little finger.

Lying all the time, night and day, upon her right side, her right hand

cramped under her neck, and only her left free, with closed eyes, and

working back of her head, as she was forced to do, she wrought the most

exquisite worsted work and wax flowers. The darkness or light were all

the same to her; in fact, the light was painful to her, and even the

gas-light was placed in the further corner of the room and shaded. She

regained hearing and speech after several years, but otherwise her

conditions remained unchanged. She knew the thoughts of those who came

near her; printed pages or a sealed letter held in her hand back of her

head were readily read. Mr. Henry Parkhurst made many experiments to

test her powers. She repeatedly read sealed letters he gave her, and, as

a crucial test, he took a letter at random from the waste basket of an

acquaintance, tore it in strips, and then cut the stripes into squares.

He shook the pieces well together, put them into an envelope, and sealed

it. This he handed the blind girl. She passed her hand over it several

times, took a pencil and wrote the letter verbatim. Mr. Parkhurst opened

the envelope, arranged the pieces, and found she had made a perfect

copy.

Not satisfied, with the assistance of two friends, Mr. Parkhurst secured

an ancient mining report, yellow with age, and with averted face, so

that he might not see the contents, he tore out a page of tabulated

figures with explanation. This he folded and tore into scores of pieces.

Some of the pieces fell on the floor and were allowed to remain there.

The others he put in an envelope and sealed, and handed to one of his

assistants, who put it in another envelope, which he also sealed and

handed to the third, who enclosed it in the same manner. Then the party

went to Miss Fancher's room, and asked her to give them the contents of

the envelope. She took it in her hand and wrote, "It is nonsense;

figures in which there are blank places, words that are incomplete, and

sentences in which words are missing." She wrote on, in some sentences

skipping three or four words, and began with the last five letters of a

word having ten letters. The table of figures she made contained blank

spaces, but she wrote it out; and the gentleman returned to Mr.

Parkhurst's, where they arranged the pieces in their original form. They

found that the copy made by Miss Fancier was absolutely correct, and the

blank spaces represented the pieces left on the floor. When these were

fitted in, the broken sentences were complete.

Dr. Spier, from the first her attending physician, watched her case with

unrelenting vigilance, and made a full record of her changing symptoms.

One day he received a note from her, warning him that an attempt would

be made to rob him, and the next day the attempt was made. She knew when

he was coming, and would mention the moment he started from his

residence, a mile away. In the early stages of her illness, Dr. Spier

administered an emetic to test whether the claim that she had not

partaken of food was true. It gave her great pain, and proved that her

stomach was empty. She well knew the nature of the medicine, although

purposely he attempted to keep it from her. Soon after she went into the

rigid condition which lasted nine years. When she began to recover, the

memory of these nine years was gone, and she only remembered the

incidents of the previous. Nine years and a half after administering the

test, when Dr. Spier entered the room, Miss Fancher broke out with:

"You thought I didn't know you gave me that medicine, but I did. You

wanted to learn if food was in my stomach, but found none there. It made

me very sick. You will not do so again, will you?"

Thus she returned after all that time to the thought which she had at

the moment of entering on that strange experience. She had a double

life, and did not remember anything which occurred in her trance.

A SIMILAR CASE IN ENGLAND.--The case of Mollie Fancher is not alone,

although, perhaps, not more remarkable than that of Miss Eliza Hamilton

of England. A physician visited her in 1882, when she was fourteen years

of age. He found that in 1881 she had met with a severe injury which had

caused paralysis of her limbs and right arm. She had been treated at the

hospital for four months, at the end of which time she ceased to take

food and returned home. He saw her about two months thereafter, and thus

speaks of her: "She frequently passes into a trance condition, in which

her left arm becomes as stiff and immovable as her right one. She sings

hymns and repeats passages from the Bible, but is quite insensible to

pain when pinched or pricked with a pin; nor does she hear or speak when

addressed. When she revives, she tells her friends that she has been to

various places and seen various people, and describes conversations

which she has had, and objects she has seen in the rooms of persons she

has been visiting. These descriptions, on inquiry, are found to be

correct.... At times she speaks of having been in the company of persons

with whom she was acquainted in this world, but who have passed away;

and she tells her friends that they have become much more beautiful, and

have cut off the infirmities with which they were afflicted while here.

She often describes events which are about to happen to her and are

always fulfilled exactly as she predicts."

Her father read in her presence a letter he had received from a friend

in Leeds, speaking of the loss of his daughter, about whose fate he and

his family were very unhappy, as she had disappeared nearly a month

before and left no trace. Eliza went into the trance state, and cried

out, "Rejoice! I have found the lost girl! She is happy in the angel

world." She said the girl had fallen into dark water where dyers washed

their cloths; that her friends could not have found her had they sought

her there, but now the body had floated a few miles and could be found

in the River Aire. The body was found as described.

Now, knowing that her eyes were closed, that she could not hear, that

her bodily senses were in profound lethargy, how are we to account for

the intensivity and keenness of sight, the quick deftness of figures

enabling her to make the most beautiful contrast of colors in her

worsteds, or the delicate adjustment of the petals of her flowers? Her

mental powers were exceedingly exalted, and scarcely a question could be

asked her but she correctly answered.

In this case the independence of the mind of the physical body shown in

every instance of clairvoyance, is proven beyond cavil or doubt. If it

is demonstrated that the mind sees without the aid of eyes, hears when

the ears are deaf, feels when the nerves of sensation are at rest, it

follows that it is independent of these outward avenues, and has other

channels of communication with the external world essentially its own.

It must be here observed that as long as the mind is united with the

body, usually the physical senses overlay and conceal the higher psychic

faculties. The mind seemingly is dependent on the body, and is changeful

to corporeal conditions. It becomes enfeebled by disease, by accidents

to the brain, and at times disappears, like a lingering spark from a

flame, in the dotage of age. This, however, is only external appearance,

arising from the limitations fixed by the contact with physical matter,

as the light of the sun may be shut out by an opaque body.

The case of Laura Bridgeman is an illustration and evidence from another

point of view that the intellect is, in a measure at least, independent

of the senses. Completely deprived of sight and hearing at an early

period of childhood, she was a blind and deaf mute. She never had any

knowledge, through the eyes, of the bright landscape, of the glorious

sun, morning and evening, the blue sky, the floating clouds, the waving

trees, the green hills, the beautiful flowers. All was darkness and

profound night. She never heard the exquisite notes of harmony, of

instrument or modulated voice, the sigh of winds, the carol of birds. To

her all had been unbroken silence. Dr. Howe, her kind and angelic

teacher, says: "As soon as she could walk she began to explore the rooms

of the house. She became familiar with forms, density, weight, and heat,

of every article she could lay her hands upon.... An attempt was made to

give her knowledge of arbitrary signs by which she could interchange

thoughts with others. There was one of two ways to be adopted: Either to

go on and build up a language of signs which she had already commenced

herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language in common use;

that is, to give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a

knowledge of letters, by combinations by which she could express her

ideas of the existence, and the mode and condition of existence of

anything. The former would have been easy, but very ineffectual; the

latter seemed difficult, but if accomplished, very effectual. I

determined, therefore, to try the latter."

After describing the process by which he taught her to associate names

with things, he goes on to say; "Hitherto the process had been

mechanical, and the success about as great as teaching a knowing dog a

variety of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and

patiently imitated everything her teacher did. But now the truth began

to flash upon her; her intellect began to work; she perceived that here

was a way by which she could herself make up a sign of anything that was

in her mind, and show it to another mind, and at once her countenance

lighted up with a human expression. It was no longer a dog or a parrot;

it was an immortal soul, eagerly seizing upon a link of union with other

spirits! I could almost fix upon the moment the truth first dawned upon

her mind, and spread its light to her countenance. I saw that the great

obstacle was overcome, and henceforth nothing but patient perseverance,

and plain, straight-forward efforts were to be used."

At the end of the year, a report of the case was made, from which the

following extract is taken: "It has been ascertained beyond a

possibility of a doubt, that she can not see a ray of light, can not

hear the least sound, and never exercises her sense of smell if she has

any. Thus her mind dwells in darkness and stillness, as profound as

that of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights, sweet sounds,

and pleasant odors, she has no perception; nevertheless, she is happy

and playful as a lamb, a bird, and the enjoyment of her intellectual

faculties, or the acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure,

which is plainly marked in her expressive features.... In her

intellectual character, it was pleasing to observe an insatiable thirst

for knowledge and a quick perception of the relation of things. In her

moral character, it is beautiful to behold her continued goodness, her

keen enjoyment of existence, her expansive love, her unhesitating

confidence, her sympathy with suffering, her conscientiousness,

truthfulness and hopefulness."

Her spirit was locked within her body without the least contact with the

world through the most useful senses; yet she not only thought, but

thought in the same manner as those who possess these senses in

perfection. If thought depends on the senses, then the quality of

thought should change when deprived of the senses. It is true that when

thus fettered in expression, it does not escape the limitations of its

surroundings, yet in the struggle we see the indication of the limitless

possibilities of the spirit when these are cast aside.

Sensitiveness Proved by Psychometry.

Light emanating from suns and worlds, as it wings its swift way across

the regions of space, bears on its rays the pictures of every object

from which it is emptied or reflected, and hence the universe, from

center to remotest bounds, is filled with pictures; is a vast storehouse

of photographs of all events from the fading of a leaf to the revolution

of a world since time began. Thus a ray of light leaving the earth

during the coal age bears a picture of the then existing gigantic

forests and inky seas, and is yet somewhere passing the remote

coastlines of unknown systems, and could some swifter messenger overtake

it, he would have a view of the world as it was when that ray was

reflected from the carboniferous period. The messenger is not needed to

overtake the fugitive ray, for the light thus reflected, struck against

rock and tree, and photographed the images of every moment since the

stars first sang together. Every atom still vibrates to the molding hand

of life under which it has at some time passed, and the sensitive mind

is able to catch these vibrations and interpret their meaning in forms

of thought. The discovery of this wonderful faculty of the mind is not

of recent date.

Almost fifty years ago an Episcopal Bishop remarked to Dr. Buchanan that

when he touched brass, even in the night, when he could not know with

what substance he came in contact, he at once felt a disagreeable

influence and recognized an offensive metallic taste. Such experience

had been common to a great number of persons, and frequently observed,

but this time it was called to the attention of the right man. All the

world for ages had seen bodies fall to the ground, and countless

millions of eyes have seen the phenomenon with no more thought than the

brute, until a falling apple drew the attention of Newton. Dr. Buchanan

at once saw that there was a profound philosophy back of this fact which

transcended the senses. He began a lengthy series of experiments, by

which he discovered that it was by no means rare for persons to be

affected by metallic and other substances. In a class of one hundred and

thirty students at the Eclectic Medical College, forty-three were

sensitive in greater or less degree. Medicines held in the hand without

any knowledge of their properties, produced the same effect, varying

only in degree as when taken into the stomach. By placing the hand, or

merely coming into the atmosphere of a deceased person, the sensitive

was able to locate and describe the disease. In this field Dr. Buchanan

has stood almost alone, until recently M. Bourru and M. Burot of the

Naval Medical School at Rochfort, have made extended experiments on the

"action of medicines at a distance," which is really another way of

stating the facts observed by him a generation ago. They held the metals

and drugs six inches or so from the back of the head of the patients and

proved all that Dr. Buchanan claimed for his discovery.

But the discoverer did not rest here; he went a step further and found

that a letter or any article having been brought in contact with the

person, when taken in the hand or placed on the forehead of one

sufficiently sensitive, gave the character of its writer or owner.

Repeated experiments, such as any one may make, prove beyond question

that the sensitive can in this manner read the character of the writer

from his writings, his state of health, better than the most intimate

friend, or even the writer himself. It is a marvelous statement, but

only marvelous in our not understanding its cause. When this is

revealed, and mystery removed, the subject allies itself with other

phenomena of mind, having their origin in impressibility.

Prof. Denton carried the results of psychometry far beyond the

boundaries reached by Dr. Buchanan. If the world is one vast picture

gallery of every act and thought since the beginning of time, the fossil

shell, the rock-fragment, the broken arrow head, the shred of mummy, and

the rush leaf from the banks of the Nile should reproduce in the

sensitive the story of their origin and age. By a great number of

experiments, the details of which fill three volumes, Prof. Denton

sought to establish this generalization and write the geological and

pre-historic history of the earth. That he found a kernel of truth can

not be denied, but he allowed sources of error to creep in and vitiate

his wonderfully suggestive and patient research. A person sensitive to

the degree that enables him to feel the influences given to a fragment

of stone thousands of years ago, would be more strongly impressed with

the influence imparted by the one who secured it, and held it in his

hands before the experiment. It is from this cause that uncertainty

rests on his otherwise well-planned experiments. Yet he has proved that

such sensitiveness exists, and that by it the story of history from

fragments of ruined architecture may be read, and scenes in geological

ages by fossil, bone or shell be described.

How? Really psychometry, depending on the sensitiveness of the brain, is

a lower degree of clairvoyance, and is merged, in its clearest forms,

therein. Sensitiveness means the capability of receiving the

psycho-ether waves as they pulsate from some center, and as everything

touched by life is in a state of such vibration, the recognition is only

a question of the delicacy of the receiving organization.

There is a vast accumulation of narratives of ghosts, witches,

apparitions, hallucinations, illusions, dreams, etc., which it is the

present fashion to relegate to the sphere of superstition and ignorance.

Many of these, however anomalous, have a foundation in fact, and will be

found, when stripped of the portions superstition has added, readily

explainable, either as subjective, arising from impressions on the

sensitive, or as objective and manifested by the same principles. As

sensitiveness to these subtile influences greatly varies in different

individuals and at different times in the same individual, and at times

becomes clairvoyance, scarcely an illustration can be given of one

without introducing the other. We must constantly bear in mind that

there is one fundamental cause back of all these so-called occult

phenomena, varying in the degree of its manifestation in accord with the

channel through which it flows.

SUBJECTIVE SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.--Dr. Abercrombie is authority for the

following illustration of subjective spectral illusions: "A gentleman of

high mental endowments, and now upwards of eighty years of age, of spare

habits and enjoying uninterrupted health, has been for eleven years

subject to the daily visits of spectral figures. They in general present

human countenances; the head and body are distinctly defined, the lower

parts are for the most part, lost in a kind of cloud. The figures are

various, but he recognizes the same countenances repeated from time to

time, especially of late years, that of an elderly woman, with a

peculiarly arch and playful expression, and a dazzling brilliancy of

eye, who seems just ready to speak with him.... This female is dressed

in an old-fashioned Scottish plaid of Tartan, drawn up and brought

forward over the head, and then crossed below the chin, as the plaid

was worn by aged women in his younger day. He can seldom recognize among

the spectres any figure or countenance which he remembers to have seen;

but his own face has been presented to him, gradually undergoing the

change from youth to manhood, and from manhood to old age."

It is not necessary to call in the aid of an invisible being to explain

such appearances. The house had been occupied by Scotch who dressed as

described, and the influence they left impressed itself on the

gentleman's sensitive brain.

"All houses where men have lived and died are haunted houses," not by

actual ghosts, but by the subtile force which persons impart to

everything with which they come in contact. That he was subject to some

influence outside of himself is shown by the appearances always being of

some one that he had never seen, and hence they could not have been

revived pictures from his own brain. After he had been in the house for

a long time he began to see his own face; that is, after he had imparted

his own influence to his surroundings, he received them back as from a

mirror.

Dendy, in his "Philosophy of Mystery," mentions "M. Andral, who in his

youth saw, in La Pitie, the putrid body of a child covered with larvæ,

and during the next morning the spectre of this corpse lying on his

table was as perfect as reality." He could not see it by a mental

effort, nor any where else than on his table, and whenever he looked at

that, the appearance at once came. It may be said in explanation, that

the sight of the disgusting object produced a strong impression on the

optic nerves and mind, and a suggestive object, as the table reproduced

the same state. We have no evidence that one object, under the same

light, affects the optic nerves more than any other would under the

same circumstances. Vivid mental impressions are more readily reproduced

than those that scarcely ruffle the surface of thought; but this does

not account for the student not seeing the appearance at any other time

or place than on the table where it had laid, and which we would say

retained the influence imparted to it by the body having lain there.

Professor Hitchcock says that during a severe sickness, "day after day

visions of strange landscapes spread out before him--mountain, lake and

forest; vast rocks, strata upon strata piled to the clouds; the panorama

of a world shattered and upheaved, disclosing the grim secrets of

creation, the unshapely and monstrous rudiments of organic being." His

son, Professor Charles Hitchcock, adds that his father saw the sandstone

beds of the Connecticut valley spread out before him, covered with

tracks, and by the superior insight wrought by sickness, cleared up some

doubtful points to which he had vainly given his attention. Professor

Hitchcock became, in consequence of his sickness, exceedingly sensitive,

and the geological specimens near him, or that he had handled, brought

up in his mind the pictures of their primeval age.

HALLUCINATIONS.--The received definition of an hallucination is a false

perception without any material basis, being formed entirely in the

mind. An individual who sees pictures on a blank wall, or who hears

voices when no sound reaches his ear, is hallucinated. "The reason for

this being that the erroneous perception constituting the hallucination

is found in that part of the brain which ordinarily requires the

excitation of sensorial impressions for its functions." In this view,

hallucination is evidence of mental derangement and incipient insanity.

This explanation is by no means sufficient for this class of facts. That

a certain tract of brain can of itself give the mind complicated

representations, never before seen or imaged in the mind, is not

established. The reappearance of objects that have been seen is better

explained, and still more satisfactorily, by causes which unite them all

together, and with all like phenomena. George Combe says of a painter

who inherited much of the patronage of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and believed

himself to possess a talent superior to his, was so fully engaged that

he had painted three hundred large and small portraits in one year. The

fact appeared physically impossible, but the secret of his rapidity and

astonishing success was this: He required but one sitting of his model.

His method was as follows, as given by himself: "When a sitter came, I

looked attentively on him for half an hour, sketching from time to time

on the canvas. I did not require a longer sitting. I removed the canvas,

and passed to another person. When I wished to continue the first

portrait, I recalled the man to my mind. I placed him on the chair,

where I perceived him as distinctly as though really there, and, I may

add, in form and color more decidedly brilliant. I looked from time to

time at the imaginary figure and went on painting, occasionally stopping

to examine the picture exactly as though the original was before me;

whenever I looked towards the chair I saw the man. This method made me

very popular, and as I always caught the resemblance, the sitters were

delighted that I spared them the annoying sittings of other painters."

This painter was far from incipient insanity. He was sensitive to

impressions, and able by that organization to recall the image of the

sitter, but not that of one who had not occupied the chair.

The Rev. T. L. Williams, Vicar of Porthleven, in _The Journal of the

Society for Psychical Research_, July, 1885, gives his personal

experience: "On an occasion when I was absent from home, my wife awoke

one morning, and to her surprise and alarm saw me standing by the

bedside looking at her. In her fright she covered her face with the bed

clothes, and when she ventured to look again the appearance was gone. On

another occasion, when I was not absent from home, my wife saw me, as

she supposed, coming from church in surplice and stole. I came a little

way, she says, and turned round the corner of the building, where she

lost sight of me. I was at the time in the church in my place in the

choir, where she was much surprised to see me on entering the

building.... My daughter has often told me, and now repeats the story,

that she was passing my study door, which was ajar, and looked in to see

if I was there. She saw me in my chair, and as she caught sight of me, I

stretched out my arms, and drew my hands across my eyes, a familiar

gesture of mine. I was in the village at the time. Now, nothing occurred

at or about the times of these appearances to give any meaning to them."

He adds: "A good many years ago there was a devout young woman living in

my parish, who used to spend much of her spare time in church in

meditation and prayer. She used to assert that she frequently saw me

standing at the altar when I certainly was not there in the body." Mr.

Williams must have been a man peculiarly endowed with psychic force to

thus impress himself.

The following is from the pen of the gifted Mary Howitt, and not only

gives a remarkable fact, but her explanation of the same: "I conducted

Mrs. Nenner through a room which contained some ancient furniture and a

quantity of valuable old china. This china had been left in our care by

a friend during his lengthened absence abroad. His thoughts from his

place of sojourn at the antipodes constantly reverted to these

heirlooms.

"'Who are these six gentlemen, evidently brothers, sitting where the old

china is?' asked Mrs. Nenner, when we had passed through the room.

"'There was no one there at all,' I said, much surprised.

"'Then,' said she, 'I must have seen six brother spirits. There they

were sitting; tall, fair men, light haired, all strikingly alike, all

the same age. They must be brothers!'

"I recognized in her description the owner of the china. Before Mrs.

Nenner left, we showed her a portrait of the owner of the china, our

friend on the other side of the world. She at once said, 'Oh, that is

one of the six brothers!' In some mysterious manner the intensity of

thought fixed by the possessor of the china upon his possessions--we

knew that his thoughts constantly reverted to them--had been able to

manifest itself to the sight in the form of the man himself, but

multiplied into six forms. It should be observed that this gentleman was

of what now we should term a 'mediumistic' temperament. It is possible,

that being at the antipodes, he might be, at the time his multiplied

form was beheld, asleep--it being night there when it is day with

us--and that his thoughts might have, in a dream, revisited England."