In the April number of this magazine its Editor gave us a paper called
"The Man in History." Readers will not have failed to note the grand
width and depth it gave to ordinary views. The facts concerning the
human being, from the earliest records to those of the present day, were
marshalled in so masterly a way, and the mental grip on the whole mass
was so far-reaching and unique, that people must have perceived that
they were gaining the benefits of a lifetime study.
This article is therefore in no sense a reply to Dr. Ridpath's
masterpiece. On the contrary, I wish to refer to all the historical
events as he has introduced them, and can only regret that want of space
forbids a reprint which would enable the original to be read with these
comments. My endeavor is simply to bring forward for contemporaneous
consideration certain suggestions which seem to me to be of a highly
interesting character, and which were forced in upon my own thought by
the results of experiments upon the human being. After the long series
of articles published in THE ARENA about three years ago, many of my
readers will not require further explanation of these experiments; but
for others I will briefly refer, later on in this paper, to the
phenomena which greatly affect one's views regarding man's powers and
possibilities, together with the nature and extent of his agency in the
world's events.
Dr. Ridpath has brought forward as interesting a question as was ever
laid before a public, namely, how far, if at all, Man is the maker of
history. And by the word "history" the learned author does not mean
those records of events which any chance chronicler may choose to
present, but the events themselves, their causes, action, and results.
Here he presents both sides of the question, with the arguments which
may be alternately used in support of each. He cites two master
thinkers, Carlyle and Buckle, whose differences of opinion relative to
man's agency in history were distinctly defined: Carlyle seeking the
hero in each great event, and recognizing only one force, that of God,
behind the principal actor of the temporary drama, and never satisfied
until the _individual_ origins of history could be discovered. On the
other hand, Buckle, to whom man, including the part he played, appeared
"as the mere result of historical forces," and in the view of scientific
rationalism contemplating "only the lines of an infinite and unalterable
causation encompassing the world and bringing to pass whatever is done
by the agency of men _en masse_."
I confess I was not by any means clear at first as to what Buckle meant
by this "infinite and unalterable causation." If he meant the shapings
of heredity coming down through many generations to produce a man able
to lead in a certain event, then I followed him. I also sufficiently
understood him if he referred to national desires and necessities
assisting to produce competent manipulators of important events. But I
did not gather until later that this language might possibly be intended
to include what in common parlance is called "the will of God."
In the alternation of contention which Dr. Ridpath lays before us with
so much skill, we are all more or less familiar with the Carlyle side of
the argument, so let us consider a part of what is said on the Buckle
side. In sentences collected from different portions, the "believer in
the predominance of universal causation" is represented as speaking in
this way:
Men produce nothing. They control nothing. On the contrary, they
are themselves like bubbles thrown up with the heavings of an
infinite sea. They do not direct the course of history. Nations go
to battle as the clouds enter a storm. Do clouds really fight, or
are they not rather driven into concussion? Are not unseen forces
behind both the nations and the clouds? What was Rome but a
catapult, and Caesar but the stone? He was flung from it beyond the
Alps to fall upon the barbarians of Gaul and Britain. What was
Alfred but the bared right arm of England? What was Dante but a
wail of the middle ages?--and what was Luther but a tocsin? What
was Napoleon but a thunderbolt rattling among the thrones of
Europe? He did not fling himself, but _was flung_!
The whole tendency of inquiry respecting the place of man in
history has been to reduce the agency of the individual. Every
advance in our scientific knowledge has confirmed what was
aforetime only a suspicion, that the influence of man, as man, on
the world's course of events is insignificant. Over all there is a
controlling Force and Tendency, without which events and facts and
institutions are nothing.... History may be defined as the
aggregate of human forces acting under law, moving invisibly--but
with visible phenomena.... The individuals who contribute to the
vast volume do not understand their contributions thereto, or the
general scheme of which they are little more than the atomic parts.
Over this aggregate of human forces there presides somehow and
somewhere a Will, a Purpose, a Principle, the nature of which no
man knoweth to this day. To this Will and Purpose, to this
universal Plan, which we are able to see dimly manifested in the
general results and course of things, men give various names
according to their age and race; according to their biases of
nature and education. Some call it ... Fate; some, the First Cause;
some, the Logos; some, Providence; some of the greatest races have
called it God.
We come then to the admission on the Buckle side of the argument that
the forces referred to as "universal causation" may possibly include the
will of God. And from the time this admission is made there seems to be
little of material difference between the contestants. Practically, both
refer, or may refer, back to the will of God; and the discussion here
brings me to the point at which some pertinent questions may be asked.
In what historical crises has the will of God been manifested? Can you
confidently point to one? If so, your conversational friend will
probably call your attention to some terrible disasters which arose from
it. Perhaps you may thus point to some monarchy. But your iconoclastic
friend will probably refer you to a loathsome system of parasitic
adulation, in which place and position went by favoritism and whimsical
preference, and where advancement through personal merit was almost
unknown. These ills, you think, could not be present in a republic; but
when you point to one of these, your attention is directed to an
internal rottenness in which justice and liberty are bought and sold by
men who must make their fortunes during a short term of irresponsible
office. You are then apt to smile at the idea that any of these
represented the intentions of God.
Or, to take an extreme case, you may instance the life, teachings, and
death of Christ. But if your friend be a fairly good amateur historian
he can sufficiently indicate the many wars, the almost countless
conflicts and incalculable amount of manslaughter that belief in Christ
gave rise to. He can tell of those stupendous waves of crusadic
fanaticism in the course of which the pillage and rapine of utterly
lawless hordes brought undying disgrace upon Europe. He can pile story
upon story of carnage and divided homes until you may possibly conclude
that it would have been better for the world if the cross of Golgotha
had never been heard of. A wrong conclusion, most certainly; but one
that has oceans of facts to back it.
Outside the cases in which retribution has seemed to follow close upon
wrongdoing, where can we find a momentous event of history which we can
point out to ourselves and say with confidence, "That, certainly, was
brought about by the will of God." If amalgamation of hostile baronies
into one dominant nation and the acquirement of many civil advantages
may be regarded as a blessing, then some will point back to an immensely
picturesque figure of history and claim that the Norman William was one
specially produced by the divine will for an event from which issued
peculiarly valuable results. But here we have to face a question which
is continually prominent when historical events are attributed to the
will of God: "Is it necessary," we are driven to ask ourselves, "that
God's purposes be brought to a culmination through trickery, perjury,
manslaughter, and every kind of falsity?" Personally I feel totally
unable to think this. I wish to mention the difficulties which everyone
who thinks honestly must encounter, and to do so reverently. History
thus seems to enforce acceptance of one of two conclusions: Either that
the justice of God is not what we are glad to suppose it to be; or else
that these matters were not conducted according to the divine will. For
in William's case we find all these difficulties: the claim to be acting
on Harold's promise, the prior mortgaging of the intended results to the
church of Rome in order to gain the assistance of foreign hordes by
calling the proposed invasion a holy war, and other trickeries which
need not now be set out. He brought his newly-made England into the
bondage of a hierarchy, and in buying Romish aid established a precedent
that was followed by other kings until priestcraft gained the unlimited
power which drained the coffers of Europe, impoverished Italy, beggared
Spain, revelled in the demoniacal Inquisition, subsequently degraded the
Lower Canadians to almost the ignorance of the beasts, and is now using
the whole of its political power to fasten its vampire clutch upon the
fair virgin provinces of the Canadian Northwest.
If William could have foreseen some results of his handiwork he could
have been properly regarded as one of the worst devils ever let loose
upon the earth. And yet we are asked to believe that all these things
were foreknown to the Deity, and that the shaping of William's policy
was under the divine will.
This brief survey of a great event is only one of a large number that
could be made, each collection of occurrences showing similar mixed
conditions--some exhibiting resulting benefits, but in many cases
mingled with disaster and distress to such an extent that the movement
as a whole cannot possibly be attributed by any thinking person to the
divine will.
Every historian will admit that in the great events of history, the
conquests and other large acquisitions of territory, some one or more of
the following disgraces were present: the killing of human beings, false
pretences, pillage and rapine, human tortures, treacheries,
imprisonments, introductions of diseases, plagues, and bad habits,
traffic in drugs and liquors which debauched, degraded, and killed. Such
a list is almost endless. And shall we say that an Almighty Father
caring for his children could have desired such proceedings? Surely not!
Let us be sensible and conform our judgment to the evidence.
In doing so, what is our alternative? Are we not forced to comprehend
that even the most valuable improvements were only advanced so far as
human intelligence could advance them when this intelligence was
illuminated by a partial exercise of its highest faculties? Are we not
forced to admit that the resulting benefits, whether personal or
national, were for the most part those which were humanly foreseen, and
that the subsequent disasters were for the most part those which could
not be foreseen by human intelligence?--or were foreseen and
intentionally risked and braved? Has there been a single event of
history which cannot be honestly attributed to human intelligence--this
being aided by a partial exercise of its highest faculties?
What, then, are these highest faculties? What are the powers within man
which enable him to transcend other men, and previous men? Let me here
state my conviction, which later on will seem justified, that advance in
comprehension of the higher faculties in man must be gained through a
further acquaintance with phenomena which may be present in hypnotic
conditions. I do not mean that personal attention to the experiments is
necessary, no matter how preferable. Nor do I suggest that they tell as
much as one could wish--at least, so far as I have followed them. Mine
have only led me to the outside ramparts of vast realms which await the
investigations of others.
What I mean is that everyone should in some way be made certain, either
through personal experiment or reliable hearsay, that in the human
make-up there are faculties which may be forced by will-power into an
activity which they do not manifest in the ordinary daily life. There is
no reason to doubt that these are the same faculties which become so
apparent in the keen-sightedness of those who are great in statecraft,
diplomacy, business, or in any other way. With ordinary people,
especially the laboring classes, these faculties seem more inactive,
through disuse. In most men they seem to show activity only when forced
by concentration and will-power; but there are bright people of both
sexes in whom they seem very alert without urging.
My reasons for stating that everyone should be acquainted with these
peculiarities are well founded. Without this the admission that there is
a "soul" in man is largely due to the compulsion of hearsay. Without
this, and certain other studies, some of the reasons for the evolution
of man and beast are obscured, and the most telling argument in favor of
further evolution remains practically a blank. Without this we need not
look for a better understanding of man's place in history. But, on the
other hand, this kind of research supplies proof of many seemingly
miraculous powers in man which have valuable explanations to make in
regard to the history of history.
Here the truth-seeker may prove to himself the reality of "soul." And
why should anyone admit its reality if he has never had cause to regard
himself as anything better than a good-natured animal? Unless he has had
made clear to him some soul-truths (which, owing to the fact that every
human being is a hypnotic patient, are generally made manifest without
any dabbling in experiments)--unless, I say, he has been in some way
convinced of the reality of "soul," his moral ramparts are chiefly
constructed of the hearsay that provides but slim defence. The
suggestion here is that the best way to be able to believe in miracles
is to learn how to perform them!
This paper, however, will deal solely with man's place in history, which
is only a section of the ranges of view which the study of the mesmeric
phenomena forces into consideration. We want to know more about those
who have controlled armies, nations, events, and themselves. We want to
gain a better idea of the forces at work in the making of history; how
far, if not entirely, man was responsible; how far, if at all, he was
assisted in any peculiar way toward the acquirement of a farsightedness
superior to that of his fellows; why historical events, both in their
inception and action, were so peculiarly human and often so dreadfully
animal; why the sought-for and acquired benefits have so often been
mingled with distress and catastrophe.
These somewhat numerous inquiries are answered, in effect, by an
exposition of the faculties referred to, and of the powers by which
these may be forced into increased activity. When these are understood
so far as they can be explained here, then the answers to all the above
queries will become apparent to those who apply the facts to their
knowledge of history; and they will need no more detailed answer than
that which I shall give.
Many have noted the fact that the foremost personages of history have
been men of great will-power. They might be French, Greek, Jew, or
Moslem; they might be of any occupation, rank, or color; but always they
were men of great will-power. This has been the one peculiarity common
to all. But why should will-power be a _sine qua non_ of greatness? The
reasons will appear as we proceed.
In the year 1897 an attempt to explain mesmerism is not as necessary as
it used to be. The amount of notice which the newspapers give to the
subject suggests that an interest in it is very widespread in America.
Even the most illiterate must now be aware that persons may be so
influenced by the wills of others that they pass into a sleep, or a
condition resembling sleep, during which they are to a large extent, and
sometimes entirely, subject to the wills of the actuators. Professionals
have also assisted in instructing the public as to the minor phenomena.
One of them has lately been making money in New York by keeping his
patient in the hypnotic trance for a week, during which ignorant medical
students and doctors tried brutal methods of awakening the victim--the
same methods which disgrace some of the hospitals when unfortunates pass
into trances from unknown causes. In other cases, persons in the
audience are requested to pencil secretly some lines on paper and hide
the writings in their pockets. The patient on the stage then reads the
writing, and this reading is subsequently compared with the hidden
papers and found to be correct. The numbers engraved on people's watches
are also read in the same way.
I have never attended such performances because they had nothing to
teach me; and if confederates were used, all I can say is that the
performances could be given much more easily without confederates. My
reason for mentioning these people is that their work, if genuine, as I
suppose, allows me a greater brevity in this paper; also because their
large numbers prove the truth of what I published long ago, that anyone
of fairly strong will-power can perform these seeming marvels if a
suitable patient can be procured. It may, however, be accepted as
absolutely correct that the vision of mesmerized patients is not impeded
by materials. In my earliest experiments I tried all kinds of
receptacles when secreting articles. But the changes made no difference.
The patients can discern the interior of an iron box as easily as we in
the ordinary state can see through a glass one. Of course this has
nothing to do with ordinary vision, the eyelids being closed at the
time. All such trials as this I ranked in the lowest grade, because the
patients may have been reading what was within my own knowledge--a
faculty that was partly exhibited to prominent men in chief cities by
Mr. Stuart Cumberland and Mr. Irving Bishop.
This classifying of my experiments is only to bring on their mention in
the order in which they seem to increase in importance. As a fact, the
same faculties attend to them all. Still, the division is useful.
Second, then, come those which dealt with long distances. To one of my
first patients (a messenger in a law-office) I showed scenes in Syria,
Egypt, Athens, and Rome, and after I had removed him from the mesmeric
sleep I handed him a pile of photographs which I had brought from
foreign countries. He turned them over rapidly and picked out the
picture of the scene he had witnessed, and without hesitation. I ranked
all this class next to lowest in importance because I had the scenes in
my own mind at the time. Yet the patients saw more than I was thinking
of. When I showed this messenger the obelisk in front of St. Peter's at
Rome, he also described the great colonnade around the piazza, which I
had at the moment forgotten. Subsequent experiments with others made me
know that he was viewing the scene itself.
The class ranked third, or next higher, were those in which the patients
were called from a distance. In the Arlington Heights Sanitarium some of
the patients formerly received, and I suppose still receive, beneficial
hypnotic treatment. One patient, Grace ----, could be called into the
office at any time by the simple will of Dr. Ring, the proprietor. I
received the account from a valued nurse who attended this patient in
the hospital. I was able to do the same thing myself in one case, but
only when the patient was at some occupation which did not require much
concentration. I am not prepared to speak as to the spaces across which
this influence may be exerted. With another patient, who was over two
miles away, the experiment seemed fairly successful, but I am not
sufficiently certain to claim a success.
In class four, the patients told facts which had not been previously
within their knowledge or mine. For tests of this kind I would procure
from friends some old coins wrapped up so that I could not know the
dates on them. When the first patient with whom this was tried was told
to pass into the sleep she called out the date of the coin almost
instantaneously--"1793." I thought she was still awake and guessing. But
in that instant she had passed into a deep sleep and had told the date
correctly.
In the fifth class the reader's credence will be much tested. Many of
the Scripture miracles were not a whit more difficult to believe. In
fact, some were precisely the same. Professional frauds have created
much hostility to the idea of anyone possessing clairvoyance. But the
somewhat amusing fact is that every human being is a clairvoyant--which
could be shown beyond disagreement if the doubter were placed in the
mesmeric trance. An instructive experiment has lately been told me, in
which the same patient, Grace ----, was used. A Mrs. Fuller, an invalid
in the hospital, was anxious about her daughter, who had not lately
written. Dr. Chapin, one of the house doctors, was the actuator. Under
his will the faculties of Grace ---- were made to see the child, then
about thirty miles off. She described Mrs. Fuller's home, its interior,
the daughter coming from school with her books, whom she talked to, what
she said, the precise time on a peculiar old clock in the room, and a
call on a neighbor then made by the daughter--all of which was afterward
proved to have been correctly reported. I mention Dr. Chapin's work
because it relieves me of some of the seeming egotism which a recital of
this kind enforces, and because my own experiments, which were, in
effect, precisely the same, though different in detail, have been
published elsewhere.[16]
[16] "The Ascent of Life," by Stinson Jarvis. Postal address,
Branch "X," New York, N. Y. Price $1.50.
As if these facts were not astounding enough, we come finally to a sixth
class, in which we find that these marvels can be produced by one's own
will-power acting on one's own interior faculties--the proofs of which I
have already published.
Now here, I submit, we get our right clew to the true position of man in
history. We now see why great men had always to be possessed of peculiar
will-power. They were great when the intensities of their ambitions,
desires, or necessities forced from their soul-faculties some portions
of knowledge which gave them a temporary ascendency, such, for instance,
as would provide an advantage in strategy, statecraft, duplicity,
treachery, or any other qualities which have assisted men who were
leaders. There was no limit to this, for the experiments show that there
is some quality in the soul of man that seems to be omniscient, or in
direct correspondence with omniscience.
It was always through stress. None have become great in idleness or
slackened energies. And as soon as the stress ceased, after the occasion
for the intense strivings of years passed, when the fruits of victory
were being enjoyed, when the aim of life was simply to hold and not to
gain, then the man ceased to be markedly different from others. Then
other men lead, because nature's leaderships are gained by that
intensest concentration which forces the best methods from the
soul-faculties. Apply this system of nature to any great event of
history and you will invariably find it accomplishing the known results.
There you will find a man making a name for himself, and, in a sense,
making history. Always through stress, strain, and necessity, in the
same ways that extraordinary ingenuity comes to men and animals to
assist their escape from situations of dire peril. Lock up the human
wild beasts who agonize for liberty, and you will find that few jails
will hold them. And their escapes may well be called miraculous.
The question then comes back for answer: What about this "universal
causation"?--Fate?--the will of God? Here it must be said, as before,
that no event of history can be selected which cannot be honestly
referred to the intelligence of man when this has been assisted by a
partial use of his soul-faculties. When human projects ran foul of
natural laws, disaster followed. For instance, the acquirement of a new
territory may take a vast amount of energy and heroic fighting--and the
will of one man may then be paramount in making a fact of history
coupled with his name; but if the army of occupation dies in the swamps
of the conquered country, shall the disaster be attributed to God? Shall
we not rather say that if the events of history were in His intended
control they would be less cruel, less human, less bestial? Can anyone
trace a lasting benefit that arose from Napoleon's career? The meteor
disappeared into impalpable dust. The conquered lands returned to their
owners. Was any country improved by his coming? He left a bloody trail
through Egypt, but not till the last decade has the Egyptian fellah
known a whiff of liberty or justice for two thousand years. The only
outcome that lasts to the present day is the assisted vanity of the
French people, a vanity built on the abilities of one man, which were
lost to the country when he died. Does anyone see a trace of the will of
God in all this? I do not.
His Corsican mother bore him while she attended her husband in his
battles. The offspring was marked for war in his mother's womb. He was
preeminently a natural product; and in him we find indomitable will
continually concentrated on faculties which yielded the discernments
that made him master of men and master of war. No man came under his
scrutiny without feeling that he was read to the core. The weaknesses,
strengths, vanities, braveries, and ambitions of others were all read,
used, and played upon for one man's ends. And from Bismarck back to
Cyrus we find all the great ones ruling in the same way--through the
discernments that are will-forced from the soul-faculties.
But among lesser men, and in everyday life? Here, the same, only in
lesser degrees; not with a knowledge of the processes at work, and thus
without the conscious direction of effort which would produce more
satisfactory results; though often the world is astonished when the
extraordinary introspection of some business men enables them to make
money in all their dealings. This is not luck. Their amassed wealth is
the proof of their life's strain--almost another name for it. And it
should be remarked, in passing, that most of the great ones have been
deeply religious in their own ways. Jay Gould was deeply religious in
his own way, though I am told he wrecked many. So is Bismarck. So were
Wellington and Von Moltke--men who guided frightful carnage. We may
smile at the religion which wrecks and kills and prays, but we do not
remove the combination; and it is probable that the great ones have been
too closely conscious of their own sudden discernments to find a gross
materialism possible. It was the same with the pagans. Even Bonaparte
had an implicit belief in what he called his lucky star.
The followers of Buckle claim that man is personally hardly more than a
cipher in history, that his name is hardly worth writing in the great
scroll. But how is this when the fate of Europe rests, as it may rest at
this moment, wholly and solely in the faculties of one man? The instinct
of hero-worship is too deep-set to be valueless. And the experiments
which do so much to explain the sources of increased human knowledge
point to the fact that it is in the man of the hour that the history of
the hour is written. One leads; the others follow. Gifted he may be,
even before he is born; endowed he may be, by forefathers who were
clean; but when the event approaches there is always one who more than
others realizes the stress, strain, or peril, and in a mighty effort
creates from his own faculties a scheme or plan which others are glad to
follow.
That is greatness. That is history. That is creation. For creation is of
spirit; and man, as these seemingly trivial experiments prove, is also,
in part, of spirit. The disasters that may result through other causes
from his action are only the proof of his humanness--proof that his
strain for enlightenment was not continued. In these ways history is
human, but always with a partly secreted and godlike faculty awaiting
demand. "Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto
you." The greatest man that ever lived taught this. And whatever he was,
or was not, he knew more than any other man.
This article is by no means intended to suggest that the will of God
need not be considered in the study of history. When it is proved that
human privacy is impossible, and that any ordinary person's soul may be
made to see us at all times, then we may be quite sure that the Giver of
these faculties to man possesses them himself and that we are watched
both personally and nationally. But the article _is_ intended to suggest
that man has progressed and has been great when the exercise of his
will-power, or the concentrated desire of prayer, has forced his
interior faculties, perhaps through their correspondences, to help him
through enlightenment. We find ourselves placed on this planet in total
ignorance as to why we came or where we go, but there seems to be one
continuous purpose through all--that man shall improve. It may be that
high intelligence, combined with experience in all grades of life, is
required somewhere else. It may be that in order to gain such experience
it must be lived through. There would certainly be no striving if
everything came to us as an unearned gift. The disasters resulting from
one man's action are a warning to the next venturer; and if experience
is not, or cannot be, sent into a soul as an unearned gift, then the
higher wisdom may be non-interference.
The estimate of man's personal agency in history is necessarily raised
when the faculties he has utilized in gaining his ends are inquired
into. Such a study seems to lead toward an alteration in the accepted
idea of divine control in matters of history when it suggests this
intention--that the divinity of a right control shall be shown through
man. Such a study shows that he is sufficiently endowed with a spiritual
nature, not only for this purpose, but for any other; and it suggests
that, as his faculties bring him into direct connection with some
All-knowledge from which every kind of intelligence may be drawn, he is
expected to use his opportunities; also that the natural consequences of
mistakes will not be rectified except through the intelligence supplied
to further demand.