STUDIES
IN THE
OUT-LYING FIELDS
OF
PSYCHIC SCIENCE

By HUDSON TUTTLE

AUTHOR OF ARCANA OF NATURE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MAN ETC

New York
M L HOLBROOK & CO

COPYRIGHT BY
HUDSON TUTTLE,
1889.

TO
ALFRED E. GILES,
OF
HYDE PARK, MASS.,
AN ERUDITE SCHOLAR, A FEARLESS INVESTIGATOR, AN
UNSHRINKING ADVOCATE OF HIS CONVICTIONS, HONEST
AND TRUE TO HIMSELF AND OTHERS;
IN RECOGNITION OF A MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP OF MANY
YEARS THIS VOLUME IS FRATERNALLY DEDICATED.

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ANALYSIS.

There is a Psychic Ether, related to thought, as the luminiferous ether is to light.

This may be regarded as the thought atmosphere of the universe. A thinking being in this atmosphere is a pulsating center of thought-waves, as a luminous body is of light.

There is a state of mind and body known as sensitive, or impressible, in which it receives impressions from other minds. This state may be normal, or induced by fatigue, disease, drugs, or arise in sleep. The facts of clairvoyance, trance, somnambulism and psychometry prove the existence of this ether, and are correlated to it.

Thought transference is also in evidence, as well as that vast series of facts which give intimation of an intelligence surviving the death of the physical body.

This sensitiveness may be exceedingly acute, and the individual unconscious of it, and then it is known as genius, which is acute susceptibility to the waves of the psychic atmosphere.

Sensitiveness explains the true philosophy of prayer.

All the so-called occult phenomena of mesmerism, trance, clairvoyance, mind reading, dreams, visions, thought transference, etc., are correlated to and explained by means of this psychic ether.

All these phenomena lead up to the consideration of immortality, which is a natural state, the birthright of every human being.

The body and spirit are originated and sustained together, and death is their final separation.

The problem of an immortal future, beginning in time, is solved by the resolution of forces at first acting in straight lines, through spirals reaching circles which, returning within themselves, become individualized and self-sustaining.

Spiritual beings must originate and be sustained by laws as fixed and unchanging as those which govern the physical world.

Sensitiveness gives great pleasures and may give pain; the author’s experience as a sensitive, related, shows this.

And, finally, a communication from a spirit whose life had been noble and unselfish, given while the recipient was in a sensitive and receptive state, detailing an account of the phenomena called death, but which is really birth into the spirit realm, the meeting of friends, and the knowledge of a quarter of a century of its joys, together with “the poet’s story,” it being an account given by one whose earth-life had been selfish, and whose selfish thoughts had formed themselves into phantom companions, following him into the realm of the future world, and making his life there one of despair, and how he escaped these legitimate children of his brain by heroic acts of unselfishness, complete the story. These last are no fictions of the imagination, written to amuse the reader; but the author is firmly convinced, yes, knows they are the words of actual living beings who have once lived on earth like ourselves.

H. T.

CONTENTS.

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.”

Since civilization began, mankind have held certain stones and metals as precious, and attributed rare qualities to charms, relics and amulets. We may indulge our mirth over the miraculous qualities ascribed to the bones of martyrs and the teeth of saints, a bit of wood from the true cross; but casting aside the rubbish gathered by imposture and credulity, we discover a great truth. Precious stones and metals have become so because of the subtile power of their emanations. In a true relic the sensitive perceives the full expression of the original owner’s life, and feels it reproduced in him. As the phonograph treasures up the tone, the accent, the quality of the voice, and the thought of the speaker, so the relic preserves and constantly gives forth the character of the one it represents.

Shrines and holy places have cause for being regarded as sacred, and their preservation in purity for the one and only purpose is correct in science. The church devoted to the worship of Jehovah holds its devotees with the invisible bonds reaching out from the walls forged from the psycho-aura of all preceding worshippers. That the members hold their houses exclusively for certain uses may be the result of superstition, but they are right in thus doing. A church building given over during the week to shows and entertainments, and nightly filled with the class such would draw, would become so saturated with worldly influences as to be unfit for the promulgation of the highest religious thought on Sunday. Both audience and minister would feel the depressing effect, and religious zeal would reach zero.

How strong and enduring the impress stamped on a relic or jewel may be, is shown in the following story told of Robert Browning by Mr. Knowles (Spectator, Jan. 30, 1869): “Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some years since, an Italian nobleman (Count Ginnasi) was brought to his house. The Count professed to have great mesmeric powers, and declared in reply to Mr. Browning’s avowed skepticism, he would convince him of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him then and there, which he could hand him, and which was in anyway a memento or relic. It so happened by curious accident, that Mr. Browning was wearing under his coat sleeves some gold wrist studs to his shirt, which he had quite recently taken into wear in absence of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had never before worn them in Florence, or elsewhere, and found them in an old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One of these he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand awhile and then said as if much impressed, ‘There is something here which cries out in my ear, Murder! murder!’

“And truly,” said Mr. Browning, “these studs were taken from the dead body of a great uncle of mine, who was violently killed on his estate in St. Kitts nearly eighty years ago. They were produced in court as proofs that robbery had not been the object of the strangler, which was effected by his own slaves. They were taken out of the night-gown in which he died and given to me.”

Sensitiveness During Sleep.

The Index published the following:

“Recently the youngest child of Warren Wasson (Katie) fell into a well and was nearly drowned. A day or two since, a letter was received from Mr. Wasson, who is in Oregon, written before he had heard of the occurrence. He stated that on the same Sunday, at the time of the accident, he was taking a nap, and was awakened by a terrifying dream. He thought he saw little Katie dripping with water, and the little boy next older than Katie was immersed in the water, and that he was able to save him only by taking hold of his ears. When he pulled him out, he was covered with spots like a leopard. Mr. Wasson says that as he awoke he was covered with cold sweat, and in an agony of mind. This is a very strange coincidence, and the dream corresponds with the occurrence, save that the little boy was not in danger. It was the little girl who was spotted from the chill.”

It resembles a wrongly received telegraphic dispatch, in which one word is substituted for another.

Effect of Strong Mental Impression.—A strong mental impression carried into sleep is conducive to impressibility. Inspector Jewett, of the Brooklyn Police, was so worried about the lost pistol of John Kenny, who had shot a car-driver, as he wanted the weapon in evidence against the ruffian, that he dreamed about it. He saw it in a certain saloon, in a certain place, and the next morning went to the saloon and found the pistol exactly where he saw it in his dream.

The rescue of the crew of the “Sparkenhoe,” November 30, 1875, by Capt. Adam S. Smalley, as told by him, is a fine illustration of impressibility in sleep. He sailed from Bordeaux November 24, 1875, in the brigantine “Fred Eugene,” bound for Key West, and soon encountered stormy weather. When six hundred miles at sea, on the night of the 29th, he suddenly awoke from sleep, deeply impressed with a dream, in which he had seen a number of men in great peril. He related this to his wife, adding that he hoped no shipwrecked crew needed his assistance. At midnight, he again retired, and again the vision was repeated with more distinctness, and the men appearing on a wreck needing the utmost dispatch to rescue them. The Captain went immediately on deck, and without any assigned reason, changed the course of the ship two points, and, giving orders to be called at daylight, retired, and slept till the appointed time.

Going on deck at dawn, and sweeping the horizon with his glass, he discovered a ship far to the windward, with a signal of distress displayed. He endeavored to work his vessel up, but with short sail and heavy sea, most of the forenoon passed, and a long distance remained. He was resolved to take a long tack, and not change his course until prompted to do so by the same impulse that bade him do so the night before. More sail was made, although prudence forbade, in the face of a gale at any moment threatening to break, and all the men stood at their posts for over an hour, awaiting the orders for tacking.

At last the prompting came, and going about, the vessel reached a point two miles to the leeward of the distressed ship, where her three boats, containing twenty-three men in all, had put off to intercept the brig. They were taken on board, the boats cut loose, and all sail taken in as quickly as possible, and in ten minutes a fierce hurricane lashed the sea to foam. The gale raged four days with unabated fury, so that, had they not been rescued at the very moment they were, they would have certainly perished.

We have two explanations. The first is that of thought transference—the reception on the sensitive brain of Captain Smalley of the intense thoughts of the perishing crew. As the inductive plate sends its influence across miles of space, we may suppose that the vibrations from them would go out across the wide sea interval, and, finding a receiving instrument, be converted again to thought. The second explanation is that of the interference of spiritual beings, who impress their thoughts on the mind of the Captain in the same manner. The prompting as to the course to steer is beyond and outside of the dream, and proves the extreme sensitiveness of the commander.

A Dream Saves a Shipwrecked Crew.—Of precisely similar character is the impression received by Capt. G. A. Johnson of the schooner “Augusta H. Johnson.” He sailed from Quero for home, encountering a terrible hurricane. On the second day, he saw a disabled brig, and near by a barque. He was anxious to reach home, and thinking the barque would assist the brig, continued on.

But the impression came that he must turn back and board the brig. He could not shake it off, and at last he, with four men, boarded the brig in the dory. He found her deserted, and made sail on her. After a time they saw an object ahead, appearing like a man on a cake of ice. The dory was again manned, and sent to the rescue. It proved to be the mate of the bark “Leawood,” clinging to the bottom of an overturned boat, which, being white, appeared in the distance as ice. This premonition came without seeking, and in direct opposition to the desire of Captain Johnson, desiring to escape from the storm, and reach home without delay.

A Life Saved.—The Biddeford (Me.) Journal thus relates the story of the narrow escape of a sailor:

“Last week the schooner “Ida May” lay at Government Wharf, near the mouth of Kennebunk River, with one man on board, Freeman Grove, who was in the cabin asleep. In the night he was awakened by some one touching him and saying, ‘You will be drowned.’ On opening his eyes, no one was present, but he immediately went on deck, and found the side of the vessel caught under the wharf by the tide, and shortly it would have sunk, and cabin and all been under water. With a plank he pried the side from the wharf, and she came up with the tide. The sleeper, being in the cabin, must have been drowned had he not been awakened by the voice.”

Perhaps no greater disaster was ever accompanied by a greater number of special premonitions and warnings of coming danger than the “Ashtabula horror,” where a train crowded with passengers plunged into a gulf in a fearful storm, and, taking fire, was burned. The Times published a list of the names of those saved by “presentiments.” One, in particular, is related at length, and is thoroughly vouched for. A young lady, by the name of Hazen, having with her a colored servant, started from Baltimore for Pittsburg, where she was to be married. She had purchased tickets at Buffalo for the ill-fated train. During the night previous, “Aunt Chloe,” the colored slave, had a dream, which so impressed her that when they reached the depot she positively refused to go on that train. “Auntie” had been as a mother to Miss Hazen, who lost her mother in infancy. The young lady, perhaps somewhat a believer in the superstitions of the slaves, humored Auntie’s mood, and deferred going until the next train—in all probability thereby saving the lives of both.

Clairvoyant Dream-State.—The Oakland (Cal.) Tribune records a pleasing story, which fully illustrates what may be called a permanent dream-sensitiveness identical with clairvoyance: “Twenty years ago, a bachelor in Oakland dreamed of visiting a family consisting of parents and two little girls, who were unknown to him in his waking hours. From that time forth, he continued to dream of them for a score of years. He saw the children grow from childhood to womanhood. He was at the closing exercises when they graduated. In fact, he shared all the pleasures and griefs of the family. His friendship to his dreamland friends seemed so real, he often remarked that he felt certain he would know them in reality at some future time.

“Two months ago, in a dream, he saw the husband die, and from that time he ceased to dream of them in a period of twenty years. He received a letter from New York City, the writer being the widow of a cousin of his, with whom he had had no intercourse since his boyhood—over thirty years. She wrote that she wished to make San Francisco her future home, and it was arranged for him to meet her and her two daughters at the wharf at Oakland. On their arrival, imagine his surprise to see his dream friends. They were equally so when he related to them the dreams in which they had figured. He told them incidents connected with their past lives which he could not have known under ordinary circumstances. He described their former home, even to the furniture and household ornaments, and was correct in every particular. The sequel is that he married the lady, and they are living happily in this city.”

Allegorical Dreams.—When important intelligence comes in allegorical form, it is difficult to give adequate explanation, without calling to our aid an outside intelligence. The London News has the following:

“Most people remember the terrible railway accident, in which Dickens himself and his proof-sheets escaped, while so many perished. In the train there chanced to be a gentleman and lady just returned from India. The lady said to her husband, ‘I see the great wave rolling on; it is close to us,’ and then the crash came, and she was a corpse. The husband was unhurt, and at a later time explained his wife’s strange words. Ever since they had set sail from India, she had been haunted in sleep by a dream of a vast silvery wave, and always, just as it was about to break on her, she had awakened in terror.”

Less tragic, but quite odd enough for Mr. Proctor’s collection, is the anecdote of the south-country farmer’s dream. The good man awakened from his first sleep, and aroused his wife to tell her about a startling vision. He had dreamed that he saw a favorite cow drowning in a pond in a neighboring common. “There ain’t no pond there;” said the wife, with natural irritation and double-shotted negatives. This was undeniably true, but the farmer was uneasy. At last he arose, dressed, and walked up the long lane which led to the common. Everything was quiet, but just at the top of the lane the farmer heard a sound as of a man digging. Then a light caught his eye. It glimmered through a hedge that divided the lane from the fields. The farmer cautiously drew near, till he was just above the ditch. There he spied a country fellow, with a lantern, digging a long, straight, deep hole in the ground. An ax lay beside the hole. At this point the farmer slipped, the hedge rustled, and the delver fled away. The farmer secured the lantern and made for home. Just at the entrance of the lane, the time being about two in the morning, he met one of his servant wenches hurrying in the direction whence he had come. “What do you want, my lass? No good, I fear,” said the agricultural moralist; and, in short, he made the girl tell him her story. She was going to an assignation with her “young man,” who had jilted her, and was courting another girl. She had threatened him with an action for breach of promise of marriage, and the swain had promised that, if she would but meet him at two in the morning, at the bend of the lane, he would satisfy her, and remove all jealousy and differences.

“Very well, my lass,” said the farmer, “come, and I’ll show you what he had to give you.” He led the way, and revealed to the horrified girl the long, deep, narrow hole and sharp ax which had awaited her. Naturally, she did not any longer pursue her lover; and here is a dream which even Mr. Proctor will admit not to have been purposeless. Indeed, the “machinery” of the drowning cow made the vision appeal directly to the bucolic mind.

Of the same prophetic character is the following well-authenticated dream:

Mrs. Jacob Condon, living a few miles from Reed, Pa., dreamed a few nights ago that her year-old baby was burned to death, and that she sent word of the casualty to her husband, who was working at a distance from home, by James Portlewaith, a neighbor. The next morning she told her husband of her dream, and admitted that it made her despondent. He laughed at her fears, and went away to his work. Late in the forenoon, Mrs. Condon left her kitchen to go to the wood-shed, a few steps away. While she was there she heard her baby screaming. She ran into the house and found the child lying in front of an open grate, wrapped in flames. She threw an old coat about the child, and smothered the flames, but it was so badly burned that it died in a few minutes. Mrs. Condon went to the door to call for assistance. As she reached the door, James Portlewaith was passing the gate. She sent him to her husband with the dreadful news, thus fulfilling her terrible dream to the letter.

Mrs. Howitt, whose veracity no one can dispute, gives the following experience in the Psychological Review, London, which may be taken as an illustration of thought transference, or as the interposition of a supreme intelligence:

“I dreamed that I received a letter from my eldest son. In my dream I eagerly broke open the seal, and saw a closely-written sheet of paper, but my eye caught only these words in the middle of the first page, written larger than the rest and underlined, ‘My father is very ill.’ The utmost distress seized me, and I suddenly awoke, to find it only a dream; yet the painful impression of reality was so vivid, that it was long before I could compose myself. The first thing I did the following morning was to commence a letter to my husband, relating this distressing dream. Six days afterwards, on the 18th, an Australian mail came in and brought me a letter, the only letter I received by that mail, and not from any of my own family, but from a gentleman in Australia with whom we were acquainted. This letter was addressed on the outside, ‘Immediate,’ and with a trembling hand I opened it; and true enough, the first words I saw—and these written larger than the rest, in the middle of the paper, and underlined, were: ‘Mr. Howitt is very ill.’ The context of these terrible words was, however, ‘If you hear that Mr. Howitt is very ill, let this assure you that he is better;’ but the only emphatic words which I saw in my dream, and these, nevertheless, slightly varying, as, from some cause or other, all such mental impressions, spirit revelations, or occult, dark sayings generally do vary from the truth or type which they seem to reflect.”

Stainton Moses, M. D., who has given life-long attention to psychic research, remarks on the apparent discrepancy between the words of the dream, and the letter as follows:

“It may be permitted to the writer to suggest, that through a fuller acquaintance with, and deeper observation of, the phenomena of ‘spirit revelation, occult, dark sayings’, etc., the truth has forced itself upon various philosophic minds, that in obedience to a primal law of spirit’s intercourse with spirit—it is always the essence or spirit of an idea or fact which is sought to be conveyed to the mind, and not the mere literal clothing of that idea or fact. This essence or spirit of the idea is the grain of true wheat alone needed; the form is simply the husk that clothes it for a temporary purpose, and must of necessity fall away from it as a dead thing. ‘In this material, matter-of-fact age, literal truth,’ says the Rev. James Smith, ‘the lowest of all truths in one sense, is generally regarded as the highest. But they are superficial thinkers who dabble only in literal truth or physical truth.’ This is a knowledge of Law Spiritual, without which progress is impossible for the student of psychology.”

The Idea, not Words, Conveyed.—If the idea was sent through the psychic-ether, as a wave of thought, it would translate itself into language, and the language of the receiving mind would be the one into which it would be translated. It would pass through space as the essence of thought, and the sensitive recipient would clothe it with the garments of words.

Wm. Howitt, on his visit to Australia, had a dream which he regarded as having great importance as a fact in Mental Science. He says:

“Some weeks ago, while yet at sea, I had a dream of being at my brother’s at Melbourne, and found his house on a hill at the further end of the town, next to the open forest. The garden sloped a little way down the hill to some brick buildings below; and there were greenhouses on the right hand by the wall as you looked down the hill from the house. As I looked out the windows in my dream, I saw a wood of dusky-foliaged trees, having a segregated appearance in their heads; that is, their heads did not make that dense mass like our woods. ‘There!’ said I, addressing some one in my dream, ‘I see your native forest of Eucalyptus!’ This dream I told to my sons, and to two of our fellow-passengers, at the time, and on landing, as we walked over the meadows, long before we reached the town, I saw this very wood. ‘There!’ I exclaimed, ‘is the very wood of my dream. We shall see my brother’s house there.’ And so we did. It stood exactly as I saw it, only looking newer; but there, over the wall of the garden, is the wood exactly as I saw it and now see it, as I sit at the dining-room window writing. When I look upon this scene I seem to look into my dream.”

This mysterious perception of scenes and events which, after perhaps years, come before the dreamer or enter into his life, is supported by ample testimony.

In the Spiritual Magazine, 1871, the author, speaking of this dream, gives further curious details:

“In a vision at sea, some thousand miles from Melbourne, I not only clearly saw my brother’s home and the landscape around it, but also saw things in direct opposition to news received before leaving England. It was said that all the men were gone to the gold-fields, and that even the Governor and Chief-Justice had no men-servants left. But I now saw abundance of men in the streets of Melbourne, and many sitting on doorsteps asking employment.... When in the street before my brother’s house, we saw swarms of men, and some actually sitting on steps, seeking work. All was so exactly as I had described, that great was the astonishment of my companions.”

If we were to regard sleep, after the common usage, as a simple state, dreams, visions, thought transference, and the appearance of a person while living at a distance, become a mass of irreconcilable details. But this is a wholly erroneous view of the character of sleep. It is one of the most complex and changeful conditions, ranging from the disturbed doze of the overweary, to the most sensitive clairvoyance. It will be seen that many of the so-called dreams are really visions received in a more sensitive condition than is furnished during the waking hours.

Dreams.

Sensitiveness During Sleep.—There are dreams and dreams. When greatly fatigued, mentally or physically, the partially awakened faculties often become impressed with strangely distorted thoughts. Then there are the terrible dreams from indigestion, the peculiar interpretations of bodily discomfort, as dreams of frosts and snows, when chilled during sleep, or of burning forests when over-heated. Galen gives examples of such dreams in the case of a man who dreamed that his right leg was turned to stone, and soon after lost the use of it by palsy; and another patient who dreamed that he was in a vessel filled with blood, which the physician accepted as a sign that the man ought to be bled, by which a serious disease under which he labored was cured.

In perfect sleep dreams do not occur, because all the mental faculties are dormant. The conjecture that the mind always dreams, but fails to remember, is not true. A hearty supper, by inducing indigestion, is a prolific cause of bad dreams.

Derangement of the perfect correlation of the mental faculties, in sickness or the weakness of age, is a frequent cause of the wildest and most incoherent visions. All these causes may be well considered, and after their influences have been eliminated, there remains an order distinct and inexplicable by known causes. The dreamer may not be sensitive to psychic influences while awake, but during sleep may become exceedingly so. Night favors sensitiveness because of its negative influence. All nervous diseases are aggravated by the coming of twilight, and midnight is the hour when the most perfect negativeness is reached, as high noon is that of extreme positiveness.

It would be an easy task to fill volumes with dreams that have been received as premonitions of future events, or forecasts of desired information, which was otherwise impossible to obtain. I do not desire to crowd these pages with any more than will serve to illustrate the various characters of the true psychic dream, and show how the extra sensitiveness acquired in sleep explains this subject. It is misleading, however, to employ the word sleep in this connection, for in sound sleep there is dreamless rest. Sleep is the repose of the faculties, and impressions are not recognized. The peculiar condition in which these dreams occur, is mistaken for sleep, but is nearer trance. The silence of the night and its soothing negative quality, enhances this state, and impressions are borne into the receptive mind on the psycho-ether. Dreams that reach into the future and foretell events concealed from human ken, and which no reasoning or forethought can predict, are of interest as revealing glimpses of a new field of thought—that of prophecy.

In the “Glimpses of the Supernatural,” is a dream related by a dignitary of the Church of England:

“My brother had left London for the country to preach for a certain society to which he was officially attached. He was in usual health, and I therefore had no cause to feel anxiety about him. One night my wife awoke me, finding that I was sobbing in my sleep, and asked me the cause. I said, “I have been to a small village, and I went up to the door of the inn. A stout woman came to the door. I said to her: ‘Is my brother here?’ She said, ‘No, sir; he is gone.’ ‘Is his wife here?’ I inquired. ‘No, sir; but his widow is.’” Then the distressing thought came to me that my brother was dead. A few days after, I was suddenly summoned into the country. My brother had been attacked by a fatal illness, at Caxton. The following day his wife was summoned, and the next day, while they were seated together, she heard a sigh and he was gone. When I reached Caxton, it was the very village I had visited in my dream. I went to the same house, was let in by the same woman, and found my brother dead and his widow there.”

The story told by Dean Stanley has been widely circulated. The chiefs of the Campbells, of Inverawe, gave an entertainment. After the party broke up, one of the guests returned, claiming protection, which Campbell pledged himself to give. It afterwards appeared, in a brawl, he had killed Donald, the cousin of Campbell, and notwithstanding his pledge, he ordered him away. The murderer appealed to the word of his host, and was allowed to stay for the night, where Campbell slept. The blood-stained Donald appeared to him saying: “Inverawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed; shield not the murderer.” Having sent the guilty man away, the last time the vision came, saying: “Inverawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed. We shall not meet again until we meet at Ticonderoga.”

In 1758, there was a war between France and England, and Campbell, belonging to the Forty-second Highlanders, went to America. On the eve of the engagement the general said to the officers, who knew of what they regarded as Campbell’s superstition, that it was best not to tell him the name of the fortress they were to attack on the morrow, but call it Fort George. The fort was assaulted in the morning and Campbell mortally wounded. His last words were: “General, you have deceived me. I have seen him again. This is Ticonderoga.”

Vouched for as this occurrence is by the highest authority, it is of great significance, not only as a dream, but it shows that death brought about a sensitive condition like that in which the dream was received, and enabled Donald to again appear.

Among the news items of the San Francisco Chronicle, appeared the following:

“Yesterday morning W. S. Read, of Oakland, with a companion named Stein, started out from Long Wharf to reach a yacht upon which they were going on a fishing excursion. When about two hundred yards from the wharf the boat was capsized and Read was drowned. He started to swim to the wharf, but when within fifty feet of it he sank and did not rise again. Connected with this sad event is a dream: Last Friday night the sister of the deceased dreamed that her brother had gone out in a boat on Sunday, that the boat had been upset and he drowned. So vivid was the impression of the dream, that on Saturday morning she went to her brother’s office, told him of it, and implored him not to go out, but he laughed at her fears as the result of a disordered mind.”

Dr. M. L. Holbrook relates the following instances of dreams, which are certainly worth recording:

“Over twenty years ago I was subject to attacks of acute bronchitis, which in Spring gave me great trouble. On one occasion I was so exceedingly ill I felt I should not recover, and in this mood I fell to sleep, during which, in a dream, or what appeared to be such, my sister, who had died when I was a little boy, seemed to come to my bedside and said: ‘Martin, you are not going to die; you have much important work yet to accomplish, and we have come to cure you.’ Then what I can only describe as a shock of heavenly electricity struck me on the head, and was intensified over the lungs, where it seemed to almost burn through my chest, when it passed towards my feet in a delightful glow. The shock was so great that I awoke, free from the disease, and have never had the trouble since.”

“In 1867 I was alone in my sleeping-room in New York, and dreamed that I was dying, and in my struggles awoke. There was nothing peculiar in this experience, it may be truthfully said, for this sensation is quite common with those who suffer with nightmare. The singularity of the case was that every night for a succession of nights the same thing happened, growing more and more intense, until the last night I thought I could not escape, and died. After it was over, the thought came to me, ‘Well, it is not so bad after all; a rather pleasant experience!’ At this moment my father-in-law, who had been dead several months, appeared to me. He was the same as when alive, but more spiritual and beautiful. He said: ‘Martin, I have been endeavoring to show myself to you for several nights. Now I have succeeded, and shall trouble you no more.’ That was the last of my disturbing dreams. My thoughts were not upon him. I have never been able to convince myself that the vision was not objective, though I know some may not look at it in the same light.”

Dr. A. M. Blackburn, of Cresco, Iowa, a well-known physician of that town, dreamed that he was called to visit a little girl in the neighboring town of Ridgeway. On his return he came to a broad river which it was impossible to cross. While waiting on the banks, an old friend, long since dead, appeared and assisted him in crossing. When the doctor arose in the morning he related his dream, and so strongly was he impressed with its prophetic meaning that he secured a policy on his life, talked over and arranged his business, and having adjusted all his affairs, he awaited the fatality he said was sure to overtake him. A day or two after, he was called to Ridgeway to visit a little girl, and on his return his horse ran away and he was killed. There is an allegorical element in this dream, and the presence of a departed friend who assists him over the stream, gives it a poetic cast. Yet who can say that it was not realized?

A dream is related by J. Crysler, of Republic City, Kansas, which proved not only true, but the elements of “the double,” or of the appearance of the dreamer in the place he dreamed about, is introduced. He said, while from home he dreamed that his wife was sick, and awoke. On falling asleep again, the dream was repeated, a thing that had never before occurred to him. He remarked to a friend in the morning, that if he believed in dreams he would go directly home, as he felt troubled. He, however, waited and completed his business, reaching home the next day, when he found his wife just recovering from a severe attack of illness. Their three-year-old boy lodged with his mother, and became restless. All at once he asked: “Ma, what man is that standing there?” “Why,” she replied, “I see no one.” “Oh!” said he, “it is pa!” and turning over, contentedly dropped to sleep. The thoughts of the father, intensified by his solicitude, struck the sensitive brain of his child with such a force as to produce the impression that the father was an objective reality.

A prophetic dream must be impressed on the receiving mind, from a source having more than human intelligence. There must be a mind back of the impressions, capable of comprehending cause and effect more clearly than mortals are able to do. The effect cannot rise above its cause.

Laugh at the fantasies of a fevered brain, or the visions produced by a gorged stomach; the nightmare of the gourmand; the ghost-seeing of the dyspeptic; but there remain the dreams of the clear head and pure heart as angel visitants, and these should be treasured. When we rest in the arms of sleep, she hushes us with hymns sung by angelic voices, and sweet visions of the morning land.

Sensitiveness Induced by Disease.

Disease, by weakening the physical powers, is often conducive to a wonderful sensitiveness. In some cases of fever, the senses are wrought to an astonishing acuteness, especially hearing, the patient being disturbed by even the ticking of a watch in a remote room. The inner perception at other times is made equally acute. If the pulsations of sound become so magnified and painful, the waves of thought in the psycho-ether may become equally magnified, and reproduce the thoughts which sent them forth to the mind of the recipient. Many of the facts given in illustration of other phases of sensitiveness apply equally well here.

“Mademoiselle N—— was convalescing after a very prolonged illness, which had reduced her to a state of extreme weakness. All her family had gone to church, when a violent storm arose. Mademoiselle N—— went to the window to watch its effects; the thought of her father suddenly struck her, and, under existing circumstances, she felt much uneasiness. Her imagination soon persuaded her that her father had perished. In order to conquer her fears she went into a room in which she was accustomed to see him in his arm-chair. On entering, she was very much surprised at seeing him in his place, and in his accustomed attitude. She immediately approached to inquire how he had come in, and in addressing him, attempted to place her hand on his shoulder, but encountered only space. Very much alarmed, she drew back, and turning her head as she left the room, still saw him in the same attitude. More than half an hour elapsed from the time she first saw the apparition. During this time Mademoiselle N——, who was convinced that it was an illusion, entered the room several times, and carefully examined the arrangement of the objects, and especially of the chair.” (De Boismont, page 276.)

Nothing had occurred to her father, and the appearance may be adequately accounted for on psychometric grounds. The chair was vibrant with the influence of the father, and those vibrations constantly carried out with them his image.

Mrs. Denton, an extremely sensitive person, relates an experience which shows how exactly similar the impressibility which may be called normal in contradistinction to that induced by disease. On entering a car from which the passengers had gone to dinner, she was surprised to see the seats occupied.

“Many of them were sitting perfectly composed, as if, for them, very little interest was attached to this station, while others were already in motion (a kind of compressed motion), as if preparing to leave. I thought this somewhat strange, and was about turning to find a seat in another car, when a second glance around showed me that the passengers, who had appeared so indifferent were really losing their identity, and, in a moment, were invisible to me. I had had time to note the personal appearance of several; and taking a seat I awaited the return of the passengers, thinking it more than probable I might in them find the prototypes of the faces and forms I had a moment before so singularly beheld. Nor was I disappointed. A number of those who returned to the cars I recognized as being, in every particular, the counterparts of their late but transient representatives.”

Mary Dana Shindler, in the Voice of Truth, says:

“An aunt of ours was very ill with fever, and her only brother, commanding a packet ship between Havana and Charleston, was daily expected; but we feared he would arrive too late to see his sister in earth-life. One morning while we were watching at her bedside, she suddenly sat up, clapped her hands, and exclaimed joyfully, ‘Brother William has come!’ We all thought her mind wandering; but in about ten minutes he arrived at her house, and from that moment she began to recover. She could not tell us how she discovered that he had arrived, but only said, ‘I knew it; I heard, and felt him.’”

Bishop Bowman, in a sermon delivered in Philadelphia, narrated a remarkable experience, which shows how near the state of death approaches trance or clairvoyance. The usual light treatment of the fact of the result of cerebral disturbance is far from a satisfactory solution:

“On my return from Japan, I preached in California, and probably overworked myself. The last Sunday in February, after holding divine service in my St. Louis Church, I returned home, when I was immediately taken sick with a lingering fever, which the physicians predicted would end fatally. At this point I seemed to fall into a kind of ecstasy, and I did not know whether I was alive or dead. I imagined I was on board a magnificent ship, and heard the captain say, ‘Stop her,’ which I thought to be the voice of my Divine Master, when my young eighteen-months-old child, who had died twenty years ago, came to me and said that she had heard that I was coming, and had come to meet me. After some conversation which I do not recollect, she said, ‘Do you think I have grown, papa?’ She then arose in a form of glory I have never before witnessed, and never again expect to see until I die, and then returned to her usual state, saying that she came in that shape to see if I would know her. She said that many other friends had inquired after me, and that an old gentleman and lady had taken her up and kissed her, saying that her papa was their boy. I then asked her where her mama was. ‘Oh, she is away doing something for the Lord, but will meet us on our arrival at the wharf.’ It was a season of great preciousness to me. It seems to me that I have come back from the other world; and although it is peculiar for me to say I was dead, it seems to me I was not in the body.”

The testimony of those who have approached nearest to death, and have been brought back to life, favors, if not proves, that at that great crisis, as the senses fail, spiritual sensitiveness becomes acute, and the perceptions merge into a universal consciousness. A gentleman while swimming failed to sustain himself, and before assistance could reach him, sank, as he supposed, to rise no more.

“Then he saw, as if in a wide field, the acts of his own being, from the first dawn of memory until the time he entered the water. They were all grouped and ranged in the order of the succession of their happening, and he read the whole volume of existence at a glance; nay, its incidents and entities were photographed on his mind, illumined by light, the panorama of the battle of life lay before him.” (“Sleep, Memory and Sensation,” page 43.)

Clairvoyance has, as thus appears, a retrospection, and is as able to see the past as the present, or previse the future. The element of time does not appear to enter into the cognition of events by this faculty. Everything is in the present, and the past is only distinguished by order of sequence.

A gentleman in Iowa related to me his experience while insensible from the effect of cold. He was overtaken by a fearful storm, such as sometimes sweep across the prairies, and, losing his way after hours of vain struggling, sank exhausted in a drift of snow. The past events of his life came in a panoramic show before him, but so rapidly moving, that from boyhood until that moment was as an instant; then came a sense of perfect physical happiness, and he began dimly to see the forms of those whom he had known while living, but were now dead. They grew more and more distinct, but just as they came near and were, as he thought, overjoyed to receive him, darkness came suddenly and great pain; the vision faded, and he became conscious of the presence of his friends who had rescued him, and were applying every measure to restore him to life. How near he had reached the boundary line, the “dead line” beyond, from which there is no return to the body, was shown by his crippled hands and feet.

It is a singular fact that no one has ever recovered from a near approach to this line, who does not tell the same tale of an exalted perception and intensification of the mental faculties. Sometimes this is exhibited by the recognition of an event then transpiring, with which the subject is intimately connected, as in the following, wherein the deaths of near relatives or friends are discerned:

It is a historical fact that Rev. Joseph Buckminster, who died in Vermont, in 1812, just before his death, announced that his distinguished son, Rev. J. S. Buckminster, was dead.

The Eaton (O.) Telegraph gives the following parallel case: “On Wednesday morning last, at four o’clock, Gen. John Quince breathed his last. But a few minutes after that, Joseph Deem, who also died on the 14th, aroused from his sleep, and said to his son John, who attended him, ‘Gen. Quince is dead.’ To this John replied, ‘You are mistaken, father, Gen. Quince is well, and goes by after his mail every day.’ ‘Yes,’ said Father Deem, ‘Gen. Quince is dead.’ Shortly after a neighbor came in, and said that Gen. Quince had suddenly died.”

Whenever the power of expression is retained, we see the development of clairvoyance at the approach of death. Sometimes the paralysis of the muscles prevents vocal expression, but where this is the case, the eyes show the ecstasy which the lifting of the vail from a new world only can give.

Mrs. Helen Willmans relates this touching story of the death of her child:

“From her birth she had been afraid of death. Every fiber of her body and soul recoiled from the thought of it.

“‘Don’t let me die!’ she said. ‘Don’t let me die! Hold me fast—I can’t go.’

“‘Jenny,’ I said, ‘you have two little brothers in the other world, and there are thousands of tender-hearted people over there, who will love and take care of you.’

“But she cried despairingly, ‘Don’t let me go. They are strangers over there.’

“But even as she was pleading her little hands relaxed their clinging hold from my waist, and lifted themselves eagerly aloft; lifted themselves with such a straining effort that they raised the wasted body from its reclining position among the pillows. Her eyes filled with the light of divine recognition. They saw plainly something we could not see. But even at that supreme moment she did not forget to leave a word of comfort for those who gladly would have died in her place. ‘Mamma! mamma! they are not strangers. I am not afraid!’ And every instant the light burned more gloriously in her blue eyes, until at last it seemed as her soul leaped forth upon its radiant waves, and in that moment her trembling form relapsed among the pillows, and she was gone.”

Thus we perceive that sensitiveness, which is first manifested in the mesmeric state, breaks in at rare intervals, during wakefulness or sleep, as vivid impressions or dreams, arises to clairvoyance as the spirit and physical body are separated more and more, and reaches its most intense expression at the moment of death, when the union between the two is severed.