CONCLUSION
It is radiant summer-time and the June roses are making the air sweet
with fragrance. June breezes are fanning alike the flower-crowned
prairie of the West and the crowded thoroughfares of the Eastern cities.
The electric current has bridged distances and connected the breath-note
of Chicago with that of New York. By it we can listen to the voices of
our friends, across the mighty expanse of the continent. We can even
store up their words and songs and reecho them at will. A strange force
is this invisible current of which we are now learning the Alpha. What
its ultimate possibilities are, who shall determine? With it the
opposing forces of nature are made subservient and the very winds can be
made messengers between physical and sentient beings.
We look at the trolley car passing our door and wonder at the power that
propels it. Little by little we are opening our souls to the reception
of beliefs in the invisible powers of nature.
How far is it to the end? What new and marvelous revelations shall each
succeeding year bring to us?
A reception is being held in the parlors of the hotel where the scene of
our first chapter was laid. Forest City has become a town of
metropolitan proportions and its citizens are among the most progressive
people of these twentieth century days.
Among the guests filling the parlors are several whose names are
household words throughout our land.
“A strange case,” says one, “that reported of double identity. A
Welshman half of the time and an Englishman the other half, and the two
wholly unacquainted with each other.”
“Did you hear,” inquires another, “of the psychic experience of Dr.
Seba?”
“No, what was it?”
“Why, as I heard it, the Doctor was out one day at the farther end of
Grande Avenue, and on his way home, when he felt an impelling force
direct him to go to a certain house. It was a place which he had never
before visited, and he could not account for the power which moved him.
However, he yielded to the influence, and arrived just in time to save
the life of a lady taken with hemorrhage from the lungs. He prescribed
for her, wondering that no one expressed any surprise at seeing him
there, and did not know until he reached his down-town office that a
telephone message directing him to that same place awaited him, having
been received by his clerk after he had left the office.”
“How do you account for it?”
“Telepathy. The message was taken to him by a mental current, no more
mysterious nor wonderful than that which propels that electric fan
there. All the mechanism of the world is governed by unchanging law.
Thought transference, hypnotism, clairaudience and clairvoyance are
undoubtedly governed by laws which, when understood, may appear simple.
Science is a divine revelation, and some genius will be given the key by
which its mysteries shall be deciphered. Tesla’s discoveries are opening
the door to a before-closed world of knowledge. The Roentgen ray has
proven supposed opaque bodies transparent. Who among us would not have
denied a few years ago the possibility of such a thing? And then think
of wireless telegraphy, another wonderful discovery.”
“Of course you have read Hudson’s explanation of psychic phenomena?”
“Yes; his idea of subjective mind explains much of the
before-unexplained, so-called spirit manifestations, at least to my
satisfaction; but there is much more that I would like to understand. It
will be some time, I imagine, before we shall equal the Hindoos in the
knowledge of psychic forces. I confess, when I read of some of their
performances, I am ready to believe it supernatural.”
“True, but think how much is no longer mysterious which, a few years
ago, was deemed supernatural!”
“Yes, we are a progressive people. For one thing, Doctor, mental
therapeutics has done much to prevent the mortality from drug-poisoning.
Don’t you think so?”
“Ahem! Well, yes, perhaps it has. The great trouble is, when a person is
given a glimmering of a great truth he immediately jumps at conclusions
and carries the idea beyond the bounds of common sense. I am Rosicrucian
enough to believe that nature has given an antidote to every ill human
flesh is heir to, and that every leaf and flower that grows has its
beneficent uses if we were wise enough to understand them. I don’t deny
that the mind has much to do with the condition of the body, but I
believe even mind influence has its limitations. Of course, nervous and
hysterical people are most susceptible to it, and oftentimes diseases
exist only in the mind.”
“What do you think of hypnotism as a factor in healing, Doctor?”
“Well, the French have been experimenting somewhat with that. It is even
a more dangerous agent to use than electricity. Hypnotism may be
dangerous even if self-imposed. For one thing, I believe it is
enervating to the will, and a person controlled by the will of another
may be evilly influenced. Again, what is insanity but the loss of
control of the will over the subjective mind. Each time a person yields
himself to the control of another or suffers himself to be put in the
condition called trance, is he not approaching the borderland of
insanity?”
“I suppose, generally speaking, a sound nervous organization is not
susceptible to hypnotic influence.”
“Not as susceptible as the more frail, disturbed ones.”
“But, Doctor, it is a great thing to control delirium and render a
subject insensible to pain, even during a surgical operation.”
“Yes, if it can be done. I am told that it has been done, and may serve
with a certain class of subjects; but it will not reset a broken arm nor
remove a cancer. I have not much use for it.”
“Beware, Doctor, we have not learned all its possibilities yet. By the
way, that Major Walden and his wife are a fine couple.”
“Yes; did you ever hear that they had been twice married?”
“Twice married? No; how was that?”
“Why, it seems that a rascally spirit-medium separated them ten or
fifteen years ago, and the Major married again. Fortunately, or
unfortunately as the case may be, number two was smashed up in a railway
wreck and the story turned out in the orthodox fashion. She herself used
to be a clairvoyant or something of the kind.”
“What, not that pretty woman he has with him now?”
“The same. I heard her myself once, out in Denver.”
“Ugh! That is incredible. She is the last one I should think of
connecting with the idea of spirit-mediumship. She looks as innocent as
an angel.”
“Ah, my friend, see what prejudice will do. She is as innocent as one,
in my opinion. She was merely self-deceived as to the source of her
power, and not understanding it, supposed it supernatural. It is a
wonder it had not either killed her or made her insane, for even
self-imposed hypnotism, as I said before, seems to weaken and wear both
the mental and physical beings, and where one escapes injury, many
suffer from it. But we all hug our delusions. The more monstrous, the
dearer they are to us.”
“And yet, as you have already stated, what may appear false to us in one
generation may prove to be truth in the next.”
“Yes; but remember the hunter after Truth took from his breast the
shuttle of Imagination and wound on it the thread of his wishes, and so
wove his net to entrap Truth. What we must do is to hunt for Truth with
a different net, one in which credulity and desire have no place.”
“But, Doctor, who shall determine when we have complied with the
requirements? May each generation pass away, holding but a feather from
Truth’s wing in his hand? Shall we believe in nothing of which a shadow
of doubt remains in our minds? What creed—what _ism_ can bear the test?”
“We read, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ We are also told that
Truth is the work of God, falsehood the work of man. If any belief bear
evil fruit, shall we not reject it? According to Froude, ‘The practical
_effect_ of a belief is the real test of its soundness.’ Let us apply
that test to modern beliefs. Wherever we find misery, wretchedness, or
demoralization concomitant or subsequent, let us reject the creed or
belief as false and dangerous.”
We have been told to learn of the philosophers always to look for
natural causes in all extraordinary events; and when such natural causes
are wanting, recur to God.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.