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Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science

by Hudson Tuttle · English · Gutenberg #35855 · 438,938 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science

Author: Hudson Tuttle


        
Release date: April 13, 2011 [eBook #35855]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN THE OUT-LYING FIELDS OF PSYCHIC SCIENCE ***




Produced by Bryan Ness, S.D., and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)









  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.




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.


                                                             PAGE.

  Dedication                                                     3

  Analysis                                                       5

CHAPTER I.

  Matter, Life, Spirit                                           9

CHAPTER II.

  What the Senses Teach of the World and the Doctrine of
  Evolution                                                     20

CHAPTER III.

  Scientific Methods of the Study of Man, and its Results       31

CHAPTER IV.

  What is the Sensitive State                                   37

CHAPTER V.

  Sensitive State: Its Division into Mesmeric, Somnambulic
  and Clairvoyant                                               44

CHAPTER VI.

  Sensitiveness Proved by Psychometry                           64

CHAPTER VII.

  Sensitiveness During Sleep                                    75

CHAPTER VIII.

  Dreams                                                        86

CHAPTER IX.

  Sensitiveness Induced by Disease                              93

CHAPTER X.

  Thought Transference                                          99

CHAPTER XI.

  Intimations of an Intelligent Force                          117

CHAPTER XII.

  Effects of Physical Influences on the Sensitive              147

CHAPTER XIII.

  Unconscious Sensitiveness                                    151

CHAPTER XIV.

  Prayer in the Light of Sensitiveness and Thought Waves       165

CHAPTER XV.

  Christian Science, Mind Cure, Faith Cure--their
  Physical Relations                                           178

CHAPTER XVI.

  What the Immortal State Must Be                              188

CHAPTER XVII.

  Personal Experience--Intelligence from the Sphere of
  Light                                                        217




Matter, Life, Spirit.


NECESSITY OF KNOWLEDGE, NOT FAITH.--Guizot forcibly expresses the value
of a knowledge of future life when he says: "Belief in the supernatural
(spiritual) is the special difficulty of our time; denial of it is the
form of all assaults on Christianity, and acceptance of it lies at the
root, not only of Christianity, but of all positive religion whatever."

He stands not alone in this conclusion. The difficulty, to a great
majority of men of science and leaders of thought, appears
insurmountable, and they no longer feel a necessity for defending their
want of belief, but smile at the credulity of those who believe anything
beyond what their senses reveal.

Not only the infidel world perceives this difficulty; it is well
understood by the leaders of Christianity, for they have been taught its
strength by the irrepressible conflict which has culminated in the want
of belief at the present time. With this result before them, it is idle
for the church leaders to assert that revelation in the Bible is
sufficient to remove this difficulty, which has grown in the very
sanctuary, in the shadow of biblical teachings. While the value of the
Bible, as interpreted by theologians, depends on the belief in
immortality, it has not proved the existence of man beyond the grave in
such an absolute manner as to remove doubt; and yet, of all evidence it
is designed to give, that on this point should be the most complete and
irrefutable.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves nothing, even admitted in its
most absolute form. If Christ was the Son of God and God himself, he was
unlike ordinary mortals, and what is true of him is not necessarily so
of them.

His physical resurrection does not prove theirs. Admitting similarity,
his bodily resurrection after three days, while his body remained
unchanged, does not prove theirs after they have become dust, and
scattered through countless forms of life for a thousand ages. If, with
some sects, the resurrection of the body be discarded, then the
resurrection of Christ has no significance, for it is expressly held
that his body was revivified and taken from the tomb.

Skepticism has increased, because the supporters of religion have not
attempted to keep pace with the march of events, but, on the contrary,
asserted that they had all knowledge possible to gain on this subject,
and that anything outside of their interpretation was false.

Instead of founding religion on the constitution of man, and making
immortality his birthright, they have regarded these as foreign to him,
and only gained by the acceptance of certain doctrines. They removed
immortality from the domain of accurate knowledge; and those who pursued
science turned with disgust from a subject which ignored present
research for past belief.

Hence, there has been, unfortunately, the great army of investigators
and thinkers, in the realm of matter, studying its phenomena and laws,
never approaching the threshold of the spiritual; and, on the other
hand, the more important knowledge of spirit, of man's future, which
retrospects his present life and all past ages, and reaches into the
infinite ages to come, was the especial care of those who scorned nature
and abhorred reason. Hence the antagonism, which can only be removed by
the priest laying aside his books as infallible authority, discarding
beliefs, dogmas, and metaphysical word legerdemain, and studying the
inner world in the same manner that the outer has been so advantageously
explored. When this has been done, it may be found that physical
investigators have not the whole truth, even when they have been the
most exact.

It may be found that, having omitted the spiritual side in all their
investigations, their conclusions are erroneous to the extent of that
factor, which may be one of the most important. It may be found that in
order to have a complete and perfect knowledge of the external world,
the internal or spiritual must be understood.

Here we face the time-old questions: What is matter? What is spirit? The
philosophy of nature here rests. There is no middle ground. The
materialist starts from the atom, which, he says, has in itself all the
possibilities of the universe and outside of which there is nothing.


THE ATOM.--But who knows of the atom, into which matter, at last
analysis, is resolved? No one. Aside from the active forces which
apparently flow from it, we know nothing, and speculation takes the
place of knowledge. That speculation, unfettered by the requirements of
accurate science, grew rankly in the minds of the sages of antiquity,
and bore the strangest fruits. From that time to the present,
speculative thought has not ceased in activity, nor arrived at any
certain conclusion.

The atomic theory is one of the most splendid generalizations in the
whole circle of sciences. As a working hypothesis its aid is invaluable,
and the solution it affords of the most intricate combination of the
elements, truly marvelous. Yet it is a conjecture; the existence of the
atom a guess. No one ever saw, tasted, or felt the atom. It is
absolutely beyond the senses, as it is beyond any instrumental aid
thereto. The entire structure of physical science, as expounded to-day,
rests on conjecture, the only evidence in support of which is that it
explains the phenomena. There is no assurance that other conjectures
might not explain them quite as well.

It would be a waste of time to explore this field, wherein the baseless
dreams of philosophers and scientists have grown like Jonah's gourd,
over-shadowing the barren sands.

The manner in which the nature of the distinct and indestructible atom
was arrived at, shows the puerility of the theory. If we take a fragment
of matter, we can break it into distinct pieces; these are again
divided, and so on, until we reach a point where further division is
impossible.

One of these indivisible particles, says the Materialist, is an atom; a
conclusion derived from the gross conception of material division, and
the limitation of the mind.

Endow this atom with force, or call it a center for the propagation of
force, and the materialistic system is complete; yet these conclusions
are but dreams. With equal arrogance, the Materialists lead to the
higher ground of vitality, of mind and of morals, forgetting that the
fundamental proposition on which this system rests is a guess, a
surmise, and nothing more.

But investigation by other means than the primitive experience of
mechanical division, shows that the atom has no existence as a fixed
entity. Professor Crookes has demonstrated that matter has properties
unknown to the present race of philosophers.

By way of illustration: If a certain vessel be closed, and the air
exhausted, until only one hundred atoms remain, that hundred leave no
space, but occupy the entire vessel. If the vacuum be made more perfect,
and only ten atoms remain, the ten still occupy the whole space; and if
the process could be carried so far that only one remained, it would
still fill the space. The atomist might divide it indefinitely, and yet
each division fill the space. In short, were there but one atom in the
universe, that atom would fill all space.


NEW PROPERTIES.--When matter is thus rarified, or in other words, when
the pressure is removed, new properties appear, and the tangible fades
into the intangible. The qualities of pure force begin to be manifested.
The intimation is made that were it possible to make the vacuum more
perfect, there would arise out of this invisible gas, spontaneous
manifestation of energy; or matter would be resolved into force.


WHAT IS MATTER?--Having seen that the conception of the atom is
immature, and incapable of demonstration, we find matter, of which the
atom is supposed to be the foundation, equally incapable of definition.
With matter we never come in sensuous contact; we only know its forces,
as expressed in phenomena.

The succession of seasons, the recurrence of day and night, the teeming
earth, the starry heavens--these are manifestations of matter. Matter
here is revealed to us as an appearance. Matter is appearance; phenomena
are concrete expressions of force. It may be asked: Do these phenomena
create themselves? Do bodies become organic by the confluence of atoms?
Rather are they not molded by the force which through them gains
expression? What is this force? Is it independent? On ultimate analyses,
force resolves itself into motion, which is discernable to the senses
only as expressed in phenomena. If we were obliged to explain the
phenomena of matter only, some theory might be plausibly maintained;
fronting one world we might understand it, but we are fronting two
worlds. There is constantly the caused and the cause. We never are
satisfied that the caused caused itself. We may receive the beautiful
exposition of the doctrine of evolution, and yet we have only the road
over which life has been irresistibly forced. Why? Wherefore? By what
power? Instinctively we turn to the realm of spiritual causes.

Material science, with all its boasted accuracy and infallibility,
breaks down, and utterly fails, when called to explain mental and
spiritual phenomena. It boasts of infallibility, when its fundamental
theories are conjectures that the advance of thought may to-morrow show
to be vagaries of fancy. We must look to the eternal activities of
spirit for the final solution of the grossest manifestation of matter.


NATURE A WITCHES' POT.--The present conception of nature, by material
science, is a witches' pot, into which, by some unknown process, matter
and force were placed. The pot seethes, and out of the seething conflict
foams up to the surface in kaleidoscopic changes, organic beings. The
savans stand around its rim like Shakespeare's witches and chant a
technical gibberish about laws; the pre-existence and correlation of
force; the indestructibility of energy; the eternity of matter; the
potentialities of the atom; the struggle for existence; the survival of
the fittest, and in admiration praise each other's profundity of sight,
while the sharpest eyed see nothing beneath the foaming scum. They pride
themselves on explanations, of causes, while really they play with
words.

At the threshold of this discussion of the problem of mind and spirit we
have that of life. The living being is the most wonderful achievement of
force in its multitudinous forms. Life is the gateway to the realm of
spirit, and beyond that gateway lie the questions we seek to solve.

The living being, by the fact of its being such, has new and hitherto
undetermined relations. It has escaped from the hold of the forces in
part from the common lot of matter, and a new horizon uplifts before it.
New and mysterious forces intrude, the sum of which we call vital
energy. Well we know that here the material scientist will smile or
sneer, for he has already settled the question in his own mind and that
of his confreres, that there is nothing beyond the properties of matter.
The animal body is composed of definite quantities of carbon, hydrogen,
lime, iron, etc., and the conflict of atoms, the combustion of carbon by
the oxygen of the air, the burning of phosphorus in the nerves, is the
activity evolved which is called life. In the higher animals, especially
in man, this life force derived from burning elements is changed to
thought, and the quantity of thought depends on the activity of the
process.

No one, however, has ever proved that such transformation occurs, or
even attempted the task. The most thoughtful and profound acknowledge
that at the threshold of life all physical theories utterly fail, and
that the problem does not admit of solution. The more persistent declare
life to be a resultant of protoplasm; a fragment of protoplasm is the
lowest form of a living being. It is a homogeneous mass, scarcely a cell
or aggregation of cells. These cells do not feel or know; they are
sensitive; that is all. A human being is said by these material
scientists to be the sum of an infinite number of moners, as a coral
branch is the sum of a great number of polyps. These moners form, under
different circumstances, bone, muscle, and nerve. They propagate and
die. Their multiplication and destruction is the source and
accompaniment of vital changes, and mental states. When the necessity
for the destruction of a great number of these moners arises, the end,
the destruction of all, or death of the combined organism is the result.

According to this view, by the simple addition of moners, we obtain
something none of them singly possessed. The single moner has only
sensitiveness, their infinite aggregate, in the human being, has
feeling, intelligence, will, and God-like aspirations. The time old
axiom never before disputed is set aside, and the sum is declared to be
not only greater than its parts--it is infinitely greater, and acquires
qualities which the parts do not possess.

It may be urged that in the acquisition of new qualities the same is
true of the chemical union of elements, which yield products entirely
different in quality from the combining bodies. These, however, unite in
fixed proportions in a manner far from understood, while, with the
hypothetical moners, they are aggregated mechanically, as polyps in a
cluster, and this union of individuals changes not their functions, but
simply increases the mass.

Whether we accept this moner hypothesis, or the more generally received
theory that life is the product of organization, arising from the
chemical actions in the body, it is impossible to say wherein the dead
animal differs from the living. Analysis can not reveal this secret, for
the living animal can not be subjected to that test. The life principle
escapes before the alembic or retort is brought into requisition. The
song of the bird can not be found by chemical analysis. We know that the
living being is held together, and dominated over by the strongest
forces, and the moment these relax their hold, decomposition commences.
What are these forces? Whence do they come? Whither do they go?


LIFE AND MIND.--Taking vital force in its highest expression, in man, it
is self-conscious and has independent will. It arises above the atoms of
its physical being, above the influences which environ it, and says, _I
will_, and executes that will. I know well that if we here leave
physical science for metaphysics, there are philosophers who would not
only reason away this force, but the existence of the body itself. They
are true intellectual acrobats; amusing jugglers, who throw words
instead of painted balls, and confuse by their wonderful dexterity. Yet,
after all has been said, _we know_ we exist and have physical bodies.
Had we not such bodies the thought of them would never have been
fashioned in our minds. As we know the sun will rise, or the night
follow, we know we have bodily forms, and are thereby brought in contact
with the physical world. It is a fact, and as such can not be reasoned
away. In the same manner we are conscious of a mental or spiritual life
which arches the physical world as the dome of the sky.


IS THE GULF BETWEEN SPIRIT AND MATTER BRIDGED?--Here we come to that
vague and uncertain realm where spirit touches matter. We leave the
coast line of the tangible and seen for the intangible and unseen. There
is no bridge over the gulf, which is said to be impassable. Material and
spiritual phenomena are united by no common bond, and each stands by
itself. The great thought stream has set toward the materialistic
interpretation of all spiritual phenomena, or ruled them out of the pale
of the believable. If these phenomena are real, if man--the ego--is
superior to the oxygen and carbon of his body; if the manifestations of
mind are superior to the combustion of tissue in the lungs, then all
these manifestations should be amenable to certain laws and conditions,
which ascertained, will harmonize them into a perfect system.

The brain is the point of contact between spirit and matter, and as far
as the manifestations of that spirit are related to the material world
while connected with the physical body, it must be through and by means
of the brain. The intimate character of this relation gives strong color
to the reasoning based on the material view that the brain produces
thought, as the liver produces bile. But such reasoning is from
appearance rather than the reality. There is, as Tyndall eloquently
expresses, a chasm between matter and mind that can not be passed.

"The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of
consciousness is unthinkable.... Were our minds and senses so expanded,
strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very
molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions,
all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be;
and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of
thought and feeling,--we should be as far as ever from the solution of
the problem, 'How are these physical processes connected with the facts
of consciousness?' The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would
still be intellectually impossible."


SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE.--As the experiments alluded to show that matter
may, under certain conditions, take on new properties, ceasing to be
matter, in the usual acceptance of that word, the horizon of matter
which has been thought to rest over attenuated hydrogen, may extend to
infinite reaches beyond, including stuffs or substances which have never
been revealed to the senses. As the eye is capable of detecting only a
narrow belt of rays, and the ear a scarcely broader belt of sounds,
beyond which, on either side, are unknown realms of light and sounds, so
we are able to detect only a narrow range of elements; and there may be
a realm on one side too gross for recognizance by the senses, and on the
other, one too attenuated. Beings fashioned of this attenuated substance
might walk by our side unseen, nor cast a shadow in the noon-day sun.


SPIRIT ETHER.--Aside from this spiritual substance, beyond the pale of
the most attenuated matter, is the spirit ether. The students of light
have found it possible to explain its phenomena only by the hypothesis
of an ether, a universal fluid of extreme tenuity, the vibrations of
which are interpreted by the eye as light. This ether was at first a
dream of the imagination; but, by answering all questions and receiving
the verification of mathematics, it has become a demonstrated reality.
It is probably the common medium for the transference of electricity,
heat, and magnetism as well. It is an illustration of one of the many
instances where the Imagination has overreached the Reason in the race
of discovery.

In the same manner we may predicate another ether, the medium through
which all spiritual phenomena are produced. We may prove the existence
of this ether, by the certainty and harmony of the answers it gives, as
the existence of the luminiferous ether has been demonstrated. As the
great life-giver, we may distinguish it as psycho-ether. It can not be
said to be material, for it belongs to the region beyond that recognized
as material by our senses. It is the sublimation of matter, vastly more
attenuated than light-ether, and thought is propagated in it from
thinking centers, as light is in the luminiferous ether from luminous
bodies. The qualities of this ether are the possibilities of life and
spirit and to it for explanation we refer all psychic phenomena.




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


IS THERE MORE THAN ONE WORLD--STUFF?--Thus far, with a few exceptions
which may be called heterodox, physicists have in their speculations
used the term matter as though in ultimate conception there is but one
kind of matter and the atoms of that matter are absolutely alike. In
other words there is but one stuff of which the cosmos is formed. The
senses on which this theory is based do not endorse, but, by their
limitation, prove the opposite. We have no means of knowing of sound
aside from the ear, which is wonderfully fashioned to receive vibrations
and transmit them to the brain; yet its imperfection, caused by the
limitations of nerve tissue, reveals the fact that it is cognizant of
only a narrow field, either side of which is a wide tract, which to it
is profound silence. If a sound wave impinges on the ear with less
vibrations than 16½ times in a second it is inaudible; and if the number
of vibrations is increased above 38,000 per second, they again lose the
power of impressing the ear. There may be insects capable of hearing
these high sounds, which to man are silence itself; and the long waves
that beat less than 16½ times in a second may be sweet music to some of
the lower tribes of animated life.

Perfect as the eye may be as an optical instrument, its range is far
less than that of the ear. Only those rays of light having waves
1-39,000th of an inch in length are visible on one side, and the last
visible radiations on the other end of the spectrum have wave lengths of
1-575,000th of an inch. This is a narrow limit, and on either side there
must be rays, which eyes or nerves differently constructed would receive
and interpret, yielding, perhaps, colors unknown to our consciousness.
There is a harmony in color waves, like music in sound waves, for as a
note blends in one, in all octaves above or below, so light waves, twice
or thrice the length of given waves yield the same color impression.

We may regard from the same point of view the sense of taste, the nerves
of which have a still narrower range, and are apparently differently
affected in animals than they are in man--substances disagreeable to him
being relished by them, and of course affecting the taste differently.

We are not sure that there are not senses which appreciate conditions of
matter, of which we have no conception. There are insects which
apparently have organs bestowing senses unlike our own. Their antennæ
have no corresponding organs in the higher animals, and the conception
of the world which these give has no analogy in our minds.

As the senses are thus cognizant of narrow belts of sound and light,
leaving unknown stretches on either side, so what is called matter may
be the narrow range recognized by our finite powers as a whole, on
either side of which may lie stuffs of widely different qualities and
possibilities.


A DEAD VIEW OF DEAD WORLDS.--Pausing to consider the received theory of
force, as an explanation of the causes of the world--creation, we shall
find that it fails to meet the high promises it vauntingly makes.

According to the received theory of force, every manifestation of power
and energy on the earth is originally derived from the sun. The growth
of plants and animals, and all the activities displayed by the latter,
are derived from their food, which was produced by the light and heat of
the sun.

In illustration of the sun's incalculable power, take, for instance, the
rain fall of one-tenth of an inch extending over the United States. Such
a rain-fall has been estimated at ten thousand millions of tons, which
the heat of the sun had raised at least to the height of one mile. It
would take all the pumping engines in the United States a century to
lift this amount of water back again to the clouds. If the force is so
great as displayed in the rain-fall of one-tenth of an inch, how
incomprehensible the power which lifts the entire amount of water
evaporated, amounting to, at least, forty inches!

Yet the force of the sun, manifested on the earth, is an inconceivably
small part of that radiated, for the earth only receives in the
proportion that its surface bears to the sphere of its orbit, and how
incomparable is its diameter of 8,000 miles to that of a sphere
184,000,000 across. The combined surface of all the planets would
receive a scarcely appreciable ratio of the entire amount which,
unimpeded, flies away into the abyss of space.

The energy radiated at the surface of the sun is estimated at 7,000
horse power to the square foot, and if the sun was a mass of coal, it
would have to be consumed in 5,000 years in order to supply it, and in
5,000 years would have to cool down to 9,000 degrees, C. If the nebular
hypothesis be received, the contraction would supply the loss for 7,000
years before the temperature would fall 1 degree, C.

Incomprehensible as this force is, it is constantly diminishing, and
although the projection of meteors and hypothetical cosmical bodies may
prolong its action, the time must come when all its energy will be
dissipated into space; all bodies will have the same temperature, and as
there is no other source of energy, physical and vital phenomena will
cease, and the universe, bereft of living beings, will itself be dead.


A DEAD WORLD.--According to the most advanced views at present
entertained, this is the end of the career of the universe.

Balfour Stewart endorses this conclusion by saying: "We are induced to
generalize still further, and regard not only our own system, but the
whole material universe, when viewed with respect to serviceable energy,
as essentially evanescent, and as embracing a succession of physical
events which can not go on forever as they are."

In stronger language Mr. Pickering says: "The final result, therefore,
would be that all bodies would assume the same temperature, there would
be no further source of energy; physical phenomena would cease, and the
physical universe would be dead. Such, at least, is the present view of
this stupendous question."

In explanation of the origin of this energy, and the reason for its
loss, Mr. Stewart further says: "It is supposed that these particles
originally existed at a great distance from each other, and that, being
endowed with force of gravitation, they have gradually come together;
while in this process heat has been generated, just as if a stone were
dropped from the top of a cliff toward the earth."

Thus the universe would become an equally heated mass, utterly worthless
as far as the work of production is concerned, since such production
depends on difference of temperature.

In other words, the universe becomes dead matter, wholly incapable of
supporting life, and so far as present science gives us any information,
must remain forever at rest.

The fact that such a conclusion has been reached should cause us to
pause in doubt of the correctness of the data leading thereto. It would
be more plausible were it shown how, at the end of the great cycle,
there was renewal of the lost energy, and return to the nebulous
beginning. Causation moves in cycles, and the most alarming
perturbations are balanced by forces operating in other directions, so
that the result is the preservation of order. Planets swing wide of
their orbits for a million years, getting further and further away, yet
the time comes when they return on a pathway carrying them as wide on
the other side.

This latest view of the universe by scientific thought, however
plausible its argument, or apparently logical its results, is proven by
the very logic of those results to be defective.


THE LOGIC OF RESULTS.--It starts with the declaration that matter and
force are inseparable, that there can be no matter without force. The
nebulous beginning was a storehouse of energy, which has been wasting
ever since the first world was formed. This force has been for countless
ages dispersing by radiation. It is still wasting, for as it is radiated
into space it does not even raise the temperature of the trackless abyss
through which it passes. When it is all gone, there will be left the
force of gravitation, holding with adamantine grasp the dead residuum of
suns and planets; and, strange conclusion to which these premises force
us, this residuum must be matter without force.

Here the problem remains unsolved, and a theory which proudly assumes
for itself the distinction of being the only true system of nature,
which rules God out of the universe, or makes Him an unknown and
unknowable quantity, destroys life in nature, and has no means of its
restoration except by a miracle. If the universe is a machine which in
time will run down and die, all its force being dissipated, does it not
follow that in the beginning some superior power united this force with
matter? And also, does it not follow that if this dead universe again
lives, a superior power must draw back the scattered beams of light,
heat, magnetism, and other forces, and re-endow the dead residuum?

Thus this materialistic hypothesis, which boasts arrogantly of its
certitude, begins in assumption and ends in a dilemma out of which
confession of ignorance and acceptance of miracle only can extricate it.

Creation is not a clock that must be wound up at stated intervals by a
foreign power, and any system which does not provide for its restoration
as well as destruction, confesses weakness.


THE CHOICE OF CAUSES.--We have this choice: To believe that forces by
blind action and reaction have evolved the world from a nebulous
fire-cloud and peopled it with sentient and intellectual beings, making
of it a perpetual motion, a machine not designed, but the result of
infinite failures, perfected by infinite blunders, and sustained by the
fortuitous equilibrium of unseeing, unknowing forces; or that back of
these forces is an intelligence, planning and willing through their
agency. If the latter be accepted, it does not follow that the crude
conception of design in nature as the direct work of a personal God must
be maintained. At the commencement of the great revival of the study of
nature, when the views which have revolutionized scientific thought were
beginning to dawn, illy defined and partially understood, they were
seized on by a class seeking support to the theological doctrines they
felt yielding beneath their feet, and distorted by plausible sophistry
into apparent vindication of their dogmas. Of these, Paley became most
famous, his illustration of the watch was the most renowned of his
arguments. It is misleading, as there is no real likeness between a
watch and the mechanism of nature. Yet we do not endorse the
complacency of many leading supporters of evolution. Evolution is
undoubtedly a true statement of the _method_ of creation. It offers no
further explanation and gives no cause. Accepting evolution and
following the development of life from the least to the greatest, what
do we see but the constant unfoldment of a well defined purpose and
plan? Are not the beings of the Silurian and Devonian epoch prophecies
of the forms which were evolved out of them? We may call things by new
names, and in place of design use "adaptation"; we do not change the
relations of things thereby. When we see a bird cleave the air with
rapid wings, and observe the wonderful adaptation of bones and muscles
and forms of feathers, we may explain it all by evolution, which has
made the bird the embodiment of the forces of the air. Have we done more
than state the method of growth? What cause have we assigned for the
process? We see an interminable series of forms, changing from age to
age, becoming more and more complex in their relations, but pressing
forward constantly to final production of man as the perfection of the
vertebrate type. Evolution describes this process, at every step
furnishing evidence of a purpose, achieving its ends through matter,
often failing, but through failures at last reaching its object. In this
light the imperfection of organs proves nothing against design. The eye
of man is instanced as more imperfect than a glass lens. It is as
perfect as the organic material out of which it is made permits. That it
becomes diseased is from the same necessity of organization.


EVOLUTION.--Evolution is a new name for facts exceedingly old; but its
supporters would have its scheme reach through creation to the
foundation of things. Advancement with them means only better adaptation
in the struggle for existence, the result of accidental fitness which
has pushed unorganized protoplasm to man. Matter and its potentialities
granted, all else flows in assured course. Difficulties disappear; the
riddle of the Sphinx is no longer obscure. The sunlight has fallen on
the marble lips, and Memnon has revealed in a single sentence what
mortal man has never understood, "The survival of the fittest." The
theologian has rested in blissful confidence in the arms of the Creator;
now comes the scientist who by easy methods calls the Creator
"evolution," and falls as blindly confident into the arms of his
new-named God. The likeness is made more complete by the scorn of one
equaling the sneer of the other.

It is a new name for the old fact, that the forms of life on this earth
are united by common parentage, and have been differentiated by the
accumulation of infinite beneficial changes. The struggle for existence
has been the center around which these have aggregated. This no careful
student will deny. Having granted this, what then? Is anything
explained? Have we approached the cause by a single step? Really, has
anything been done more than to explain the phenomena of the world with
new words and phrases?

Of old it was said the world is a machine with gods or a god at the
crank; to-day the god at the crank is the Unknowable, the laws of
nature, the potentiality of matter; or in the most recent theory the
all-god has appeared in the revival of the god imminent in the universe,
which is regarded as an organism, with a god-soul. This is poetic but
neither sensible nor scientific. Forever and forever old ideas are
washed on the shore of time, out of the wreck of the past, and instead
for being relegated to the museum, are galvanized into grimace of life,
and branded as new, when they are rapidly disintegrating in every part.


THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.--The survival of the fittest is a wonderful
scheme of the preservation of the best. To illustrate, take the tiger
and the deer. Once they herded together, the tiger not being, as now,
noted for strength or cunning, nor the deer for caution and fleetness.
The dull tiger was able to take as prey the least cautious and weakest
of the deer. The fleetest deer propagated, and then only the most
cunning tigers were able to procure food, and continue their kind. As
their strength and cunning increased, the cautiousness and fleetness of
the deer increased in this matched game of life; the two species
reacting on each other until we now have the perfected deer and tiger.
In both kingdoms of living beings, among all their diverse families and
species, this struggle has gone on, and the result is the
differentiation from abysmal protoplasmic slime the humming bird on the
flower to the leviathan in the deep; the litchen on the rock to man with
an intellectual comprehension of unknown breadth. We here have the
chronicle of creation, and Froissart was not more garrulous with his
exploits of lord and lady than the chroniclers of the changes effected
in specific forms "on their way to man."

We hear all that is said, and with a feeling of disappointment, while
admitting all, respond that we were promised a cause, and have been
given only a method? What stands behind the "struggle for existence?"
What is the infinite force of the ceaseless unrest, which throws each
wave higher on the tide line, working like a blind giant, hewing out
organic forms from protoplasm, and amid infinite failures approximating
ever to the perfect, with constant prophecy that that perfection will be
attained? The "survival of the fittest" reveals the prodigal method
which preserves one of a million germs, casting the others back into the
seething crucible for new trials. Can it claim anything more? The laws
of nature are grooves in which causes run to effects; but why do they
thus move? Calling them by other names will not satisfy. As Newton, when
he gave the law of gravitation mathematical form, penetrated not a step
toward its cause, so the biologist has not passed the threshold of the
domain of life. A recent scientific association sat in silence after a
verbose and flippant discussion on protoplasm, when asked by a member
what was the difference between living and dead protoplasm? Not one
could answer. Life had escaped their observation. Protoplasm dead is no
longer protoplasm. The protoplasmic germ impelled by the forces of life,
commences its growth, sending out its feeding vessels, and from the
beginning copies the paleontological history of the earth, and more
completely the biography of its direct ancestors.

When we consider that this invisible fleck bears in its cell or cells
the impress of every condition bearing on its progenitors from remotest
time, and will express it in all these conditions, it is no longer a
phenomenon on which we gaze, but a miracle of creative power, and all
that has been written by physiologists since Galen's time as to its
cause is as children's prattle. The material side furnishes no adequate
explanation. Its coarse methods are not adapted to measure the illusive
psyche. The balance weighs not, the scalpel dissects not, the retort
holds not the elements of the soul.




Scientific Methods of the Study of Man, and Results.


THE EVOLUTIONIST.--Scientists have different ways of studying man. The
evolutionist first develops the form. He says that life began in
protoplasm in the unrecorded ages of the past, and step by step, through
mollusk, fish, saurian and mammal, has arisen by the "struggle for
existence" and "survival of the fittest," until the mammal by strangely
fortuitous chances has become a human being. As the human body is a
modified animal form, so the intellect is a modified and developed
instinct, the highest and most spiritual conscientiousness being only
the result of accumulated experiences of what is for the best. The
highest of animals is man, with no barrier between him and them, and
subject to the same fate. There is no indication of a guiding
intelligence, and if he possess an immortal spirit, so does the mollusk
and the fleck of protoplasm.


THE CHEMIST.--The chemist has his method, that of analysis. He takes the
vital tissues and resolves them into their elementary parts. He tells us
that there is so much hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen in the muscles; so
much lime and phosphorus in the bones; so much phosphorus in the nerves,
and iron in the blood. He separates these elements in retort or
crucible, and weighs them with nicety so that he knows to a thousandth
of a grain their proportions. He has made the ultimate analysis, and
these are all he can discover. Life is the result of their union; mind
the burning of phosphorus in the brain, and as for spirit, it is quite
unnecessary to explain the phenomena. The chemist has finished his work,
and placed in the museum the results of his analysis. That body perhaps
weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. In a large glass jar is the water
it contained--clear, crystal water, such as flashes in the sunlight of a
rainbow-arching shower, or a dewdrop sparkling on the petals of a lily.
There are about eight or ten gallons of it, for the body is
three-fourths water. There is a small jar of white powder representing
the lime; another, still smaller, the silex; another the phosphorus.
There are homeopathic vials containing a trace of sulphur, of iron,
magnesia, the potash, the soda, the salts and so on until the vials,
great and small, contain more or less of almost every element. Here we
have what was once a human being. We have every thing that went to make
him, except one, which lacking, these elements are lifeless, and of no
more value than water from the brook and earth from its banks: the
vital, or psychic principle. Place the contents of all the lesser jars
in the greater water jar, shake, dissolve, and manipulate, dead and
inert they remain, and will remain so long as thus treated. The chemist
in his analysis has made no account of the subtile principle which made
these elementary atoms an expression of its purpose. The living form has
its origin in the remote past, and its atoms were arranged and brought
into union by a vital process which thus began; which must begin in this
manner and traverse the same path. Phosphorus may be essential to give
activity to the brain, and a given amount of thought may correspond to a
fixed amount of phosphorus burned in nerve tissue. What of that? We know
that in one of these vials is all the phosphorus that existed in one
human being; we may burn it all, and it will give flame, not
intelligence. If intelligence comes from its burning, the process must
take place in nerve cells organized for the purpose, and that structure
must have been planned by superior thought.

To call the ingredients of these bottles a human being would be like
calling a pile of brick, mortar and lumber a house, except the
comparison fails in the house being built by outside forces, while the
living being must be organized from within. No mixing of the contents of
these bottles and jars can evolve life, or even the smallest speck of
protoplasm.


THE ANATOMIST.--The third scheme is that of the anatomist, who with
keen-edged scalpel bends over the body after life has gone out of it,
and traces the course of arteries and veins, the form and location of
nerves, the attachment of muscular fibers, and in connection with the
physiologist defines the functions of each separate organ. An
exquisitely fashioned machine it is, wonderfully and fearfully made,
growing up from an invisible germ. After anatomist and physiologist have
finished, and on their dissecting table only a mass of rubbish remains,
they triumphantly point to it and exclaim: "See! We have settled the
question of spirit! There can be nothing beyond this organism. We have
determined how every cell and fiber of it are put together, and the
functions they perform. No where is there an indication of any thing
superior or transcending this material form. Here is where the food is
digested; here it is assimilated; here this secretion is made; here
excretion of poisonous matter takes place; here in the brain, in these
gray cells, thought arises. Ah! it is a wonderful complex machine."

Indeed it is, and what has become of the power which moved it? You have
a strange machine, unlike all others, for it is, according to your
ideas, an engine to make steam, instead of to be moved by it; a mill to
make a waterfall, instead of to be run by falling water. What is the
difference between a dead man and a living one? Incomprehensibly great,
and yet the dead man to the chemist, the anatomist, the biologist, is
identically the same as the living. That unknown element, life, escapes
the crucible, the retort, the scalpel, the microscope, and the
conclusions of those who take it not into consideration are the vague
conjecturing of children, who have gained but a half knowledge of the
subjects that excite their attention.

Yet science proudly claims the knowledge of all things possible to know.
It has searched into the foundations of the earth and ascended the
starry dome of infinitude; it grasps the inconceivably small and the
inconceivably great; it delves in the hard stratum of facts, and sports
in the most sublime theories. It gives the laws of the dancing motes,
and those which guide the movements of stellar worlds; the sullen forces
of the elements and the subtile agencies which sustain living beings.


WHAT IS BEYOND THE STRIFE FOR EXISTENCE?--What, O Science, is there
beyond the grave which shuts down with adamantine wall between this life
and the future?

The answer comes: Beyond? There is nothing. Do not dream, but know the
reality. What becomes of its music after the instrument is destroyed?
Where is the hum of the bee after the insect has passed on its busy
wings? Where is the light in the lamp after the oil is burned? Where is
the heat of the grate after the coal has burned? Given the conditions
and you have music, heat and light. When these conditions perish you
have nothing. As the impinging of oxygen against carbon in the flame
produces light and heat, so the combination of elements in the nerves
and brain produces the phenomena of life and intelligence. As the liver
secretes bile, so the brain produces thought. Destroy the brain and mind
disappears, as the music when the instrument is broken.

Look you and see the strife for existence. See you the myriads of human
beings who have perished. The world is one vast charnel house, its
material being worked over and over again in endless cycle. Tooth and
claw to rend and tear; arrow, club, spear, sword, and gun to kill; the
weak to fall, the strong and brutal to triumph, to multiply, and advance
by the slaughter of its own weaker members. The atom you can not see
with unaided eye devours and is devoured, and ascending to man, he is by
turns the slayer and the slain.

    There's not an atom of the earth's thick crust,
    Of earth or rock, or metals' hardened rust,
    But has a myriad times been charged with life,
    And mingled in the vortex of its strife;
    And every grain has been a battle-field
    Where murder boldly rushed with sword and shield.
    Turn back the rocky pages of earth's lore,
    And every page is written o'er and o'er
    With wanton waste. The weak are for the strong,
    And Might is victor, whether right or wrong.
    Enameled armor and tesselated scale,
    With conic tooth that broke the flinty mail;
    The shell protecting and the jaw which ground
    The shell to dust, there side by side are found;
    The fin that sped the weak from danger's path,
    The stronger fin that sped the captor's wrath;
    A charnel house where, locked in endless strife,
    Cycle the balanced forces, Death and Life.

If you seek for a meaning or a purpose you will find none. What you call
design is only the harmony of fluctuating chances produced by countless
failures.


PHILOSOPHY.--Invoke philosophy with her robes of snow, pretending to a
knowledge of the world and its infinite destiny; it will tell you of the
cycle of being; the succession of generations; that life and death
complement each other, and that all you may hope for is change.
Unceasing change is the abiding law, and he who grasps to hold, will
find but shadows in his grasp.


RELIGION.--Religion may teach us a pessimistic view of the world, and to
bow like cringing slaves unquestioningly to the rod. We may accept that
all is for the best whether we understand it or not, as the unalterable
decree of fate, yet as rational beings we recoil from this bondage, and
the questions are ever present, of the purpose of this life and the
evidences of that future of which the most doubting dream.

Religion, resting as it does on the immortality of the spirit, should
answer us so plainly and absolutely that there could be no doubt. That
there is weeping and broken hearts shows that it does not, or else that
it makes that existence so terrible that the dread of it is more than
that of annihilation. The fear of Hell, which has driven the world to
madness, is now cast into the lumber room with other errors, outgrown,
and in the free atmosphere one can not understand the terrors it once
awakened. The arbitrary heaven is also passing away, and a more natural
conception of the future life is gaining precedent. Yet the words of
teachers of religion are cold and soulless, and even the poets, touched
by the finger of a decaying faith, voice the incredulity of the age in
lines which speak only in despair. Oh! poet of immortal song, how
chilling to the heart the words that yet too often find response in its
doubts and fears:

    "And the stately ships go on
      To their haven under the hill;
    But oh! for the touch of a vanished hand,
      And the sound of a voice that is still.

    "Break, break, break,
      At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
    But the tender grace of a day that is dead,
      Will never come back to me."

There is little consolation to be found in these directions. Let us turn
back to first principles; let us for a time forget the claims of
scientists and take up the book of nature at her plain alphabet and
ascertain whether these claims of material science have a sure
foundation.




What is the Sensitive State?


A RACE WITHOUT SIGHT.--If the human race were born without organs of
vision, man could form no idea of the beautiful and splendid phenomena
revealed to the eye. The normal state would be blindness. Day and night
would be marked by intervals of repose and activity, but the cloudy
midnight and the radiance of the sun, the glories of morning, the
splendors of sunset, the star-gemmed canopy of the cloudless night, the
infinite changes, the phantasmagoria of heaven and earth, would be
unknown. The flowers might bloom in beauty, their fragrance would
delight, but their form and color would be unrecognized. The mind,
deprived of the infinite series of sensations which flow into it through
the sense of vision, would have none of the conceptions thereby
engendered. If a being who could see should attempt to reveal to the
sightless race the beauties of the world as seen by the eye in the
light, they would treat him as an impostor relating an idle tale, to
them incomprehensible.


A RACE WITHOUT HEARING.--If to the deprivation of sight were added the
loss of hearing, the vital powers would not be impaired; the organic
functions would continue the same, but all sounds would cease and
perfect silence reign. The mind could form no conception of music, the
songs of birds, the sighing of the wind, the roar of the storm, or the
soft modulations of the human voice. As nature would be voiceless, so
man would be dumb. The gift of speech would be lost with the power of
receiving the sounds of words. The soul, in silence and darkness, unable
to communicate its thoughts with others, would be bereft of all the
sensations, emotions, and conceptions which arise from seeing and
hearing, nor could it be taught these by those who possessed these
senses, for no conceptions could be formed of sights never seen, or
sounds never heard.


SENSITIVENESS.--In like manner, the sensitive condition reveals a
universe which is unknown to the senses, and of which man is as
profoundly ignorant as those born blind are of light. It is the heritage
of all, yet manifested only at rare intervals in favored individuals. It
is as it would be with the sense of sight, were thousands blind, while a
few saw imperfectly, and only one with distinctness. The sight of that
one would indicate what all might attain under favorable circumstances,
as the perception of those who are sensitive shows what is possible in
this direction. It is through this gateway that we are able to penetrate
the arcana of a higher existence, and it is our purpose to go by easy
steps along the pathway that leads into the vista stretching beyond this
portal, into unexplored regions, of which scarcely a conception has yet
been formed.

We have consciousness of spiritual realities, of an infinite after-life,
and aspirations which it alone can satisfy, and for which this mortal
sphere furnishes no provision. Shall we regard these aspirations as idle
longings, and this consciousness as a baseless fancy? Or have we
spiritual energies which have called this spiritual nature into being?

The eye is created in conformity to the laws of light, to receive the
rays and allow their impingement on the optic nerves. It is proof of the
existence of light. In the same manner, spiritual perception is evidence
of the existence of spiritual energies. It would be quite as difficult
for the mind to comprehend spiritual being, if without this
consciousness, as for the blind to understand the beauties of light.

Sensitiveness is a faculty pertaining to the spiritual nature, and is
acute in proportion as that spiritual nature dominates the physical
senses. It is possessed by all, and by a few in a remarkable degree. It
is variable in the same individual, is often the result of drugs, of
fatigue, of sleep, and may be induced or intensified by hypnotism or
mesmerism. It may manifest itself suddenly and at long intervals, once
only in a lifetime, or be a steadfast quality. It may have all degrees
of acuteness, from impressibility scarcely distinguishable from the
individual's own thoughts, to the purest independent clairvoyance.


CONDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF SENSITIVENESS.--For one mind to
influence another, the two must be in harmony, at least in certain
points. The thought vibrations in one will not otherwise awake like
vibrations in the other. Take for illustration two musical strings, one
with fixed attachments, and the other with a moveable bridge or stop.
Now if the first be set in vibration, the other, being on a different
key, will not respond in unison, but the stop will slightly move; and if
the vibrations continue, the stop will move forward until the exact
length of chord is attained, and then both strings will vibrate in
harmony, one repeating the notes of the other.

If an hundred musical instruments were placed in a room, only two of
which were tuned alike, if one of these were touched, its mate would
respond, but the others would remain silent.

These thought vibrations may be received suddenly like a flash, as in
the case of premonitions and warnings of danger, the sensitive state
lasting but a brief time; or it may be cultivated and become permanent
with the individual. The hypnotic, or somnambulic subject, may be more
or less affected at first, and slowly fall under the influence, until
the continuous condition is the same as that in which a premonition is
received.

As an illustration of the method by which this is accomplished, whether
the operator be a spirit clad in a physical or in a celestial body, the
improvements by age and use of the violin may be taken.

This instrument, the most perfect of all in its capacity for expressing
the delicate feelings of the soul, gains its soft sweetness and rich
perfection by use and age. The cremona, worth its weight in gold, may
once have been harsh, with dissonant tones, rasping to the ear. The
Tyrolese maker selects the smoothest wood his mountain affords, clear of
grain, and free from flaw or blemish. He carves the parts with sedulous
care and exhaustless patience; swell and curve and hollow are wrought,
polished, and cemented together so as to make them as one. Then the
delicate strings are drawn over the bridge, and the instrument tested.
It may squeak or jar, and refuse, even in a master's hands, to express
his desire. But with every vibration of the strings it improves. Every
movement changes its fibers, and forces them into harmonious accord.
After a time they will all be in unison. The playing of a single tune
may not produce this result; a score or a thousand may not. It may pass
from hand to hand, and generation after generation may grow old and die,
as each successive master touches its strings, before all its deepest
qualities are expressed. Then its tones melt in voluptuous harmony; wail
with the broken hearted; fill the soul with the gladness of delight;
revive the murmur of the sombre pines; the song of the birds in the
forest; the laughing of falling waters; the hoarse voice of the tempest
with hail and lightning flash, rush of winds and burst of clouds. Nature
speaks through the instrument, and vibrates the heart with every
emotion, passion, and aspiration.

In the same manner, if a being independent of, and detached from the
physical body, should attempt to impress its thoughts on a sensitive, it
might no more than partially succeed after many trials. Each effort,
however, would be more successful, for thought vibrations constantly
tend to efface the causes of discord, and if the Intelligence is
patient, and the sensitive submissive, the thoughts of the former would
at last flow uninterruptedly into or through the mind of the latter.

And what is thus possible for a sensitive, in regard to an individual
intelligence, is possible to acquire in relation to the thought
atmosphere of the universe, or psychic-ether. If this be possible, if a
being may become thus exquisitively sensitive, and receive the waves of
thought as they traverse this ether, as the eye catches vibrations of
light, that being would be a focus to receive the intelligence of all
thinking beings in the universe.

The sensitive state, then, is the outcropping in mortal life, in
apparently abnormal form, of that which is normal to the spirit of life.
We thus conclude that its most astonishing development, as revealed, is
immeasurably below its normal capabilities when freed from the
limitation of the body. The permanent condition of a spiritual being
after separation from the physical form must be that of the most perfect
and delicately sensitive. What we see here in partial or total eclipse,
is there in the glory of full light.


THOUGHTS NOT WORDS IMPRESSED.--While Max Müller ardently supports his
theory that thought itself depends upon the words which express it, we
constantly meet with facts which indicate that the _idea_ is conveyed
from one mind to another, and there is clothed in words according to
the culture of the receiving mind. The vividness with which the idea is
impressed insures the use of similar verbal clothing. An instance is
reported by Dapson, in Deleuze, where a sealed letter was given a very
susceptible magnetic subject. It reads:

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

                               _Troy, New York, Aug. 1837._"

The subject read it:

   "No other than the eye of Omnipotence can read this in this
   envelope.                               ---------- 1837."

He omitted "sentence," and all the date but the year. It is to be
observed that in all instances of thought transference or sensitiveness,
the reproduction of names, dates, etc., expressed by arbitrary words,
are the most difficult and unreliable, and this has been a source of
doubt, and an argument against the truthfulness of the magnetic subject.

It requires a deeper hypnotic state to receive dates and names
correctly, than connected ideas. It is because ideas and not the verbal
form are received, that culture becomes of greatest value connected with
sensitiveness, as will be amplified in a succeeding section, treating on
misconceived sensitiveness, whereby is made possible the seemingly
superhuman achievements of authors, philosophers, sages, statesmen, and
inventors. It will also be more extendedly treated of in the chapter
devoted to the consideration of Dreams.




Sensitive State: Its Division into Mesmeric, Somnambulic, and
Clairvoyant.


THE SIXTH SENSE.--In the normal state we know and understand the
external world through and by the senses. The eye reveals to us the
beauties of light, and by its aid the wondrous diversities of nature.
The ear brings to the mind the varied sounds, makes oral speech and the
sweet harmonies of music possible. The organ of smell sentinels the
citadel of health against pestiferous odors, and gives the exquisite
enjoyment of perfumes. Ordinarily we rely on these senses as our guides,
and so complete is our reliance that we recognize no other avenue to
knowledge of the external world; yet at times we find that our minds
extend beyond the senses and have capabilities which can not be referred
to them. There is an interior perception, which has been called the
sixth sense, which, sensitive to impressions from supernal sources, at
times rises above all the others. It is through this sense or better,
this sensitive state, that we gain an insight into the spiritual nature
of man. The senses would lead us away to a gross materialism, for they
belong to the animal organization; this sensitiveness leads us in an
opposite direction. We find through it another nature overlaid and
obscured by the senses and their understanding. This sensitive state is
the activity of the spiritual being, in the ratio of its perfection, and
is really as normal as the most sensuous condition. The study of this
state is the gateway to the understanding of our spiritual being, and
the first lesson it teaches is that man is a dual creation; a spirit, an
intelligent entity, clothed with, and circumscribed by, a physical body.
Only so far as that body interferes with the activity of the spirit, is
it of interest to us in the present discussion, which relates entirely
to the spirit.

This sensitive state is possessed by many, and in many more it may be
induced by proper means. It may be laid down as a rule that whatever
weakens the physical faculties strengthens this spiritual perception.
Thus it is often manifested in disease, after fatigue, or in the
negative hours of sleep. Some drugs have the power of inducing it, and
mesmerism is the strongest of all artificial means. I use the term
_sensitive_ with the meaning here given, and from that meaning shall not
deviate. Many who possess this power in a slight degree may not
distinguish its perceptions from those of the senses with which they
blend, but there are times when the mind passes into an entirely
different state from that of its normal activity, that of sensitive
receptivity, and what is usually termed intuition is intensified. I
propose to study this sensitive state first in connection with that of
wakefulness, and then with that of sleep; and from simple
thought-reading to the reception of thought from supernal sources.

Hitherto the discussion of spirit has been considered impracticable by
scientific methods, and theology and metaphysics have occupied the
field. In this border-land between the known and the unknown, ignorance
and charlatanry have held high carnival, and those who love scientific
accuracy perhaps are excusable in regarding the belief in spiritual
beings as a superstition; yet there has accumulated as folk lore, as
myths, as an outside, out-of-the-way literature, a vast mass of
material, some of which, it is true, is mere rubbish, through which
gleams bright veins of truth, showing the close relations between the
seen and the unseen universes. Here and there a sensitive mind has
received the light in clearer effulgence, and made the surrounding gloom
more densely impenetrable. At remote intervals the oriflamme of the
spiritual conception of nature has flashed athwart the intervals of
gross materialism, but religion, moral conduct, not knowledge, has been
the motive. This age demands knowledge for its own sweet sake, assured
that the highest morality will flow therefrom. In the study of the
conditions of the mind, the various states of sleep, clairvoyance,
somnambulism, etc., will be defined and illustrated.


SLEEP.--Sleep is the "twin sister of death" only in appearance, for
aside from poetic fancy, sleep is the negative condition of activity. In
perfect sleep all the faculties of the mind are in repose, and the
bodily functions go on with the least waste. It is essentially restful
and recuperative. The waste of the body, its wear and tear of muscle and
nerve is repaired; new cells take the place of those broken down, and
the debris moves slowly forward to the excretory organs and is
eliminated.

In this state of negative repose there is no manifestation of thought,
and it is as unlike the clairvoyant or sensitive state as that of
wakefulness; but shaded into this state of sleep, as into that of
wakefulness, are various degrees of sensitiveness. The conditions of
sleep are provocative of this impressibleness. Night is negative; the
silence and the vail of darkness shutting out external objects conduce
to make the mind negative and susceptible.

At midnight is the culmination of this negativeness, and hence the
ghastly dread of that hour has a foundation in fact, and is not an idle
superstition. Ghosts may never appear, yet if they were to appear the
midnight hour, of all others, would be assigned by the student cognizant
of this fact for them to come like shafts of frozen moonshine, into the
walks of men.


MESMERIC STATE.--Mesmerism, under whatever name, animal magnetism,
hypnotism, etc., is a potent means in the study of psychology. It has
made it possible to command many of the most evanescent phenomena, and
allow of their careful examination, when otherwise they came at rare
intervals and at such unexpected moments as made it impossible to
carefully compare and study them. Somnambulism, clairvoyance, and that
state of exquisite sensitiveness which makes us receptive of impressions
transformed into dreams, may be commanded in a sensitive, and observed
at leisure.

In the commencement we must free ourselves from the commonly received
idea that sleep has any resemblance to any of these several states which
are usually called magnetic, mesmeric, or clairvoyant sleep. As already
stated, sleep is the negative of being, and more distinct from these
states of exalted perception than waking. The incongruous and often
incoherent visions which arise in the half-waking state, or when only a
part of the mental faculties are at rest, are the ordinary dreams, which
have no significance, and are very different in their origin and meaning
from the impressions received in the sensitive state, which is one of
intense wakefulness and activity. The sensitive condition is possessed
in a marked degree by about one in five, and may be induced in a still
larger ratio. It is more frequently found in women than in men. It may
be cultivated, and become an important factor in the character and
happiness of the individual.

We will simply for convenience divide the sensitive state into the
hypnotic, somnambulic and clairvoyant; but it must be borne in mind that
these merge into each other; and that no sharp line can be drawn between
them.

Mesmerism may be regarded as the method by which all of these states may
be induced. The mesmeric state is equivalent to the hypnotic. After
years of delay, mesmerism has been accepted under another name, that of
hypnotism; but the theory of a "fluid" or specific influence is
discarded. Hypnotists cannot, however, exceed the most common
experiments without the facts demanding even as a working hypothesis,
this specific influence.

The ticking of a watch held close to the ear, or intensely gazing at
some object, will throw a sensitive into an abnormal condition, at the
mercy of the "dominant idea," and he becomes an automaton in the hands
of an external influence. This is the hypnotic state, beyond which the
"dominant idea" fails. A sensitive may be led by a "dominant idea," but
soon manifests a power which stretches beyond into an unexplored region
of possibilities, exhibiting mental perceptions far more acute than
those possess who are around him, or he himself possesses in his normal
condition. Hypnotism as treated by its exponents is an extremely
complicated state, ranging from the cataleptic to the independent
clairvoyant. To define it with the usual narrow meaning is extremely
misleading and unscientific.

There are two distinct states of hypnotism. The first is that in which
most platform experiments are made. The sensitive is capable of carrying
on conversations, answering questions, and is governed by a "dominant
idea," believing all the operator wishes, and doing as commanded.

The sensitive rapidly enters the next stage, when he becomes insensible
to pain, and irresponsive to the address of any one except the operator.
Until this stage is reached consciousness and memory are retained, a
fact fatal to the theory of automatic action or "unconscious
cerebration." In this profound state the sensitive has no memory of
events which occur. It is an induced, incipient somnambulism, the true
counterpart of that which under proper condition appears spontaneously.

The report of the Committee on Hypnotism, vol. I., p. 95, of Proceedings
of American Society for Psychical Research, shows that it confined its
attention to fifty or sixty students of Harvard College. Of these about
a dozen were affected, and of these, two were so good that attention was
confined to them.

"The extraordinary mixture, in the hypnotic trance, of preternatural
refinement of discrimination with the grossest insensibility, is one of
the most remarkable features of the condition. A blank sheet of paper,
with fine-cut edges, without watermarks or any thing which could lead to
the recognition of one side or edge from the other, is shown to the
subject with the statement that it is a photograph of a well-known face.
As soon as he distinctly sees the photograph upon its surface, he is
told that it will float off from the paper, make a voyage around the
walls of the room, and then return to the paper again. During this
imaginary performance, he sees it successfully on the various regions of
the wall; but if the paper is meanwhile secretly turned over, and handed
to him upside down, or with its under surface on top, he instantly
recognizes the change, and seeing the portrait in the altered position
of the paper, turns the latter about, 'to get the portrait right.'"

In the hypnotic state the subject is under the control of the operator,
and in a great degree an automaton; in the somnambulic, he in part
regains his individuality, and in certain lines of thought and action is
superior to himself in his waking moments. Natural somnambulism comes
without warning, and illustrates the condition induced by mesmeric
passes.


SOMNAMBULISM.--Sleep waking, or sleep walking, whatever may be its
cause, mental derangement by disease or intense exertion of mind or
body, or a constitutional inclination thereto, is of deepest interest to
the psychologist as proving the independence of the spirit of the
physical senses. The somnambulist has lost the use of his senses. He
feels, hears and sees nothing by touch, ear or eye, and yet the objects
to which his attention is drawn are plainly perceptible.

The Archbishop of Bordeaux is authority for the following narrative: A
young clergyman was in the habit of rising from his bed, and writing his
sermons while asleep. When he had written a page he would read it aloud
and correct it. Once in altering the expression "_ce devin enfant_," he
substituted the word "_adorable_" for "_devin_," which, commencing with
a vowel, required that "_ce_" before it should be changed to "_cet_;" he
accordingly added the "_t_." While he was writing the Archbishop held a
piece of pasteboard under his chin to prevent him seeing what he was
writing, but he went on without being in the least incommoded. The paper
on which he was writing was removed and another piece substituted, but
he at once perceived the change. He also wrote pieces of music with his
eyes closed. He once wrote the words under the notes too large, but
discovering his mistake, he erased and rewrote them. He certainly did
not see with his eyes and yet the vision was perfect.

The case of Jane C. Rider, known as the Springfield somnambulist,
created in its time much wonder and speculation among intelligent
persons acquainted with the facts. A full account of it was published in
the Boston _Medical and Surgical Journal_, Volume XI., Numbers 4 and 5.
Miss Rider would walk in her sleep, attend to domestic duties in the
dark or with her eyes bandaged, and read in a dark room with her eyes
covered with cotton batting, over which was tied a black silk
handkerchief. She learned without difficulty to play at backgammon while
in this state, and would generally beat her antagonist, though in her
normal state she knew nothing about the game.

A young lady, while at school, succeeded in her Latin exercises without
devoting much time or attention to them, apparently. At length the
secret of her easy progress was discovered. She was observed to leave
her room at night, take her class-book, and go to a certain place on the
banks of a small stream, where she remained but a short time and then
returned to the house. In the morning she was invariably unconscious of
what had occurred during the night; but a glance at the lesson of the
day usually resulted in the discovery that it was already quite familiar
to her.

A young man on a farm in Australia, after a hard day's work, went to
sleep on a sofa; after some little time he arose, passed through several
gates, opening and fastening them. Reaching the shed, he took off his
coat, sharpened his shears, caught a sheep, and had just finished
shearing it when his companions came with lanterns in search of him. The
shock of awaking caused him to tremble like a leaf, but he soon
recovered. The sheep was shorn as perfectly as if the work had been done
in broad daylight.


MORAL EFFECT OF MESMERISM.--Dr. Voisin recommends a suggestive
application of mesmerism. He experimented on a coarse, debauched and
lazy woman, who was susceptible to magnetism; and kept her in the
mesmeric sleep ten or twelve hours a day, and to its value as a curative
agent he added moral education. During her sleep he suggested ideas of
obedience, of submission, of decency, and exhorted her to useful labor.
In this sleep she memorized whole pages of moral books. A complete
transformation was effected in her in a few months.

What a glorious field here opens for the moral reformer! The calloused
criminal who will not listen to moral suasion, deaf alike to entreaty
and prayer, may be hypnotized, and in that susceptible condition taught
the Lord's Prayer and moral precepts; his moral nature roused and thus
be transformed into a new being. The influence of some men when brought
into contact with criminals is explained by their strong mesmeric or
hypnotic influence. They always lift up those they control. They are
born masters, though they may not understand the cause of their
strength.


TRANCE AND CLAIRVOYANCE.--The trance or clairvoyant state has been
observed in all ages and among all races of mankind. It has, in seasons
of great religious excitement, become epidemic, the devotee falling in
convulsions, becoming cataleptic, and after hours, days, or even months
of apparent death, awakening with mind overwrought with visions of the
strange world in which it had dwelt during the period of
unconsciousness.

The records of clairvoyance are as old as history. If prophecy, the
"clear seeing of the future," be its fruit, the prophets and sages of
the past were all more or less endowed with this gift. Socrates and
Apollonius predicted, and were conscious of, events transpiring at
remote distances. Cicero mentions that when the revelations are being
given, someone must be present to record them, as "these sleepers do not
retain any recollection of them." Pliny, speaking of the celebrated
Hermotimus, of Clazomenæ, remarks that his soul separated itself from
the body, and wandered in various parts of the earth, relating events
occurring in distant places. During the period of inspiration his body
was insensible. The day of the battle of Pharsalia, Cornelius, a priest
of profound piety, described while in Padua, as though present, every
feature of the fight. Nicephorus says that when the unfortunate Valens,
taking refuge in a barn, was burned by the Goths, a hermit named Paul,
in a fit of ecstasy, cried out to those who were with him: "It is now
that Valens burns." Tertulian describes two females, celebrated for
their piety and ecstasy, that they entered that state in the midst of
the congregation, revealed celestial secrets, and knew the innermost
hearts of persons.

St. Justin affirms that the sibyls foretold events correctly, and quotes
Plato as coinciding with him in that view. St. Athenagoras says of the
faculty of prescience, that "it is proper to the soul." Volumes might be
readily filled with quotations like the foregoing, showing that
clairvoyance has been received as true by profound thinkers in every
age. Swedenborg, Zschokke, Davis, are not peculiarities of modern times,
but repetitions of Socrates, Apollonius, and countless others who deeply
impressed their personality on their times.


WHAT IS CLAIRVOYANCE?--Clairvoyance is a peculiar state of
impressibility, presenting gradations from semi-consciousness to
profound and death-like trance. Whether natural, or induced by
artificial means, the attending phenomena are similar. In its most
perfect form the body is in deepest sleep. A flame may be applied to it
without producing the quiver of a nerve; the most pungent substances
have no effect on the nostrils; pins or needles thrust into the most
sensitive part give no pain; surgical operations may be performed
without being felt. Hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, as well as
seeing, are seemingly independent of the physical organs. The muscular
system is either relaxed or rigid; the circulation impeded in some cases
until the pulse becomes imperceptible; and respiration leaves no stain
on a mirror held over the nostrils.

In passing into this state, the extremities become cold, the brain
congested, the vital powers sink, a dreamy unconsciousness steals over
the faculties of the mind. There is a sensation of sinking or floating.
After a time the perceptions become intensified; we can not say the
senses are intensified, for they are of the body, which for the time, is
insensible.

The mind sees without the physical organs of vision, hears without the
organs of hearing, and feeling becomes a refined consciousness, which
brings it _en rapport_ with the intelligence of the world. The more
death-like the conditions of the body, the more lucid the mind, which
for the time owes it no fealty.

If, as there is every reason to believe, clairvoyance depends on the
unfolding of the spirit's perception, then the extent of that unfolding
marks the degree of its perfection. However great or small this may be,
the state itself is the same, differing only in degree, whether observed
in the Pythian or Delphic oracle, the visions of St. John, the trance of
Mohammed, the epidemic catalepsy of religious revivals, or the
illumination of Swedenborg. The revelations made have a general
resemblance, but they are so colored by surrounding circumstances that
they are extremely fallible. The tendency of the trance is to make
objective the subjective ideas acquired by education. This is exhibited
in cases of religious ecstasy and trance, when the subject sees visions
of winged angels and of Christ; transforming dogmas and beliefs into
objective realities. Such revelations, of course, have no more value
than the illusory visions of the fever-stricken patient.

Yet there is a profound state which sets this aside, and divests the
mind of all trammels, and brings it into direct contact with the thought
atmosphere of the world--the psycho-ether. Time and space for it, then,
have no existence, and matter is transparent.

The weakening of the physical powers by disease is favorable to
sensitiveness. As the senses are deadened, the powers of the interior
consciousness are quickened, and a new world rises above the horizon of
the corporeal senses.

Evidence of the truth of clairvoyance was given in the _Brooklyn Eagle_,
soon after the loss of the "Arctic," in 1854. The wife, son and daughter
of Captain Collins were making the tour of Europe, and the Captain, to
gratify a passing whim, consulted a clairvoyant as to their locality.
The answer was that they were at that time visiting a church, which was
accurately described. When the wife's letter came, it contained a
narrative of a visit to a church at exactly the same hour, describing it
as the clairvoyant had done, thus showing that the communication was
quite correct.

As the family had arranged to return on the "Arctic," and as the ship
was a day late, of course Captain Collins became anxious. Sunday and
Monday passed without news from the ship, and his anxiety increased. He
thought of the clairvoyant and called on her. At first, although
apparently deeply entranced, she could see nothing. Everything was in a
cloud. At length she was able to see the three persons standing on the
deck of a ship, amid great confusion, and almost concealed in fog and
mist. This was all she could discern. This was nearly two days before
the telegraph announced the loss of the "Arctic," and the arrival of a
boat-load of survivors on the Canadian coast. But the Collins family
were not among the saved.

If we compare what may be called artificially induced with the
spontaneous clairvoyance, we shall find them similar. The first example
is of a sensitive, a youth of seventeen, who was blindfolded by means
of soft paper folded double, and then gummed over his eyelids, and a
silk handkerchief tied over this paper. Under these circumstances the
sensitive was able to take a pack of cards and select any one called
for, read the pages of a book, although those present were ignorant of
the words, his sensitiveness being entirely independent of the knowledge
of those around him.


CLAIRVOYANCE FROM DISEASE.--There are instances where persons have
fallen into this sensitive or clairvoyant state by disease or a nervous
shock, and in the prolonged trance which followed, manifested all the
phenomena usual to the induced somnambulic or clairvoyant state, even in
higher degree. Of these Mollie Fancher is one of the best examples. She
was called the "sleepless girl of Brooklyn," and for nine years, it is
claimed by competent authority, did not sleep, and ate so little food
that it was claimed she did not partake of any. She was, at fifteen
years of age, healthy, but delicately organized. At that time she was
thrown from a street car, and her head and body injured. A day or two
afterwards she was seized with violent spasms. One by one her senses
failed. Sight was first to leave, and hearing followed. Then she lost
her speech, and then the ability to swallow. This last she had not been
known to exercise for nine years, and during the same length of time her
eyelids were closed. She took no sleep, unless the intervals of trance
be called sleep. She was breathless and rigid as dead. These spasms
lasted less than a minute, and were accompanied with, or followed by,
violent muscular contortions.

Her lower limbs became twisted entirely around each other. Her right arm
was bent upward and doubled under her head. She had no use of her right
hand at all, and of the left hand only the thumb and little finger.
Lying all the time, night and day, upon her right side, her right hand
cramped under her neck, and only her left free, with closed eyes, and
working back of her head, as she was forced to do, she wrought the most
exquisite worsted work and wax flowers. The darkness or light were all
the same to her; in fact, the light was painful to her, and even the
gas-light was placed in the further corner of the room and shaded. She
regained hearing and speech after several years, but otherwise her
conditions remained unchanged. She knew the thoughts of those who came
near her; printed pages or a sealed letter held in her hand back of her
head were readily read. Mr. Henry Parkhurst made many experiments to
test her powers. She repeatedly read sealed letters he gave her, and, as
a crucial test, he took a letter at random from the waste basket of an
acquaintance, tore it in strips, and then cut the stripes into squares.
He shook the pieces well together, put them into an envelope, and sealed
it. This he handed the blind girl. She passed her hand over it several
times, took a pencil and wrote the letter verbatim. Mr. Parkhurst opened
the envelope, arranged the pieces, and found she had made a perfect
copy.

Not satisfied, with the assistance of two friends, Mr. Parkhurst secured
an ancient mining report, yellow with age, and with averted face, so
that he might not see the contents, he tore out a page of tabulated
figures with explanation. This he folded and tore into scores of pieces.
Some of the pieces fell on the floor and were allowed to remain there.
The others he put in an envelope and sealed, and handed to one of his
assistants, who put it in another envelope, which he also sealed and
handed to the third, who enclosed it in the same manner. Then the party
went to Miss Fancher's room, and asked her to give them the contents of
the envelope. She took it in her hand and wrote, "It is nonsense;
figures in which there are blank places, words that are incomplete, and
sentences in which words are missing." She wrote on, in some sentences
skipping three or four words, and began with the last five letters of a
word having ten letters. The table of figures she made contained blank
spaces, but she wrote it out; and the gentleman returned to Mr.
Parkhurst's, where they arranged the pieces in their original form. They
found that the copy made by Miss Fancier was absolutely correct, and the
blank spaces represented the pieces left on the floor. When these were
fitted in, the broken sentences were complete.

Dr. Spier, from the first her attending physician, watched her case with
unrelenting vigilance, and made a full record of her changing symptoms.
One day he received a note from her, warning him that an attempt would
be made to rob him, and the next day the attempt was made. She knew when
he was coming, and would mention the moment he started from his
residence, a mile away. In the early stages of her illness, Dr. Spier
administered an emetic to test whether the claim that she had not
partaken of food was true. It gave her great pain, and proved that her
stomach was empty. She well knew the nature of the medicine, although
purposely he attempted to keep it from her. Soon after she went into the
rigid condition which lasted nine years. When she began to recover, the
memory of these nine years was gone, and she only remembered the
incidents of the previous. Nine years and a half after administering the
test, when Dr. Spier entered the room, Miss Fancher broke out with:
"You thought I didn't know you gave me that medicine, but I did. You
wanted to learn if food was in my stomach, but found none there. It made
me very sick. You will not do so again, will you?"

Thus she returned after all that time to the thought which she had at
the moment of entering on that strange experience. She had a double
life, and did not remember anything which occurred in her trance.


A SIMILAR CASE IN ENGLAND.--The case of Mollie Fancher is not alone,
although, perhaps, not more remarkable than that of Miss Eliza Hamilton
of England. A physician visited her in 1882, when she was fourteen years
of age. He found that in 1881 she had met with a severe injury which had
caused paralysis of her limbs and right arm. She had been treated at the
hospital for four months, at the end of which time she ceased to take
food and returned home. He saw her about two months thereafter, and thus
speaks of her: "She frequently passes into a trance condition, in which
her left arm becomes as stiff and immovable as her right one. She sings
hymns and repeats passages from the Bible, but is quite insensible to
pain when pinched or pricked with a pin; nor does she hear or speak when
addressed. When she revives, she tells her friends that she has been to
various places and seen various people, and describes conversations
which she has had, and objects she has seen in the rooms of persons she
has been visiting. These descriptions, on inquiry, are found to be
correct.... At times she speaks of having been in the company of persons
with whom she was acquainted in this world, but who have passed away;
and she tells her friends that they have become much more beautiful, and
have cut off the infirmities with which they were afflicted while here.
She often describes events which are about to happen to her and are
always fulfilled exactly as she predicts."

Her father read in her presence a letter he had received from a friend
in Leeds, speaking of the loss of his daughter, about whose fate he and
his family were very unhappy, as she had disappeared nearly a month
before and left no trace. Eliza went into the trance state, and cried
out, "Rejoice! I have found the lost girl! She is happy in the angel
world." She said the girl had fallen into dark water where dyers washed
their cloths; that her friends could not have found her had they sought
her there, but now the body had floated a few miles and could be found
in the River Aire. The body was found as described.

Now, knowing that her eyes were closed, that she could not hear, that
her bodily senses were in profound lethargy, how are we to account for
the intensivity and keenness of sight, the quick deftness of figures
enabling her to make the most beautiful contrast of colors in her
worsteds, or the delicate adjustment of the petals of her flowers? Her
mental powers were exceedingly exalted, and scarcely a question could be
asked her but she correctly answered.

In this case the independence of the mind of the physical body shown in
every instance of clairvoyance, is proven beyond cavil or doubt. If it
is demonstrated that the mind sees without the aid of eyes, hears when
the ears are deaf, feels when the nerves of sensation are at rest, it
follows that it is independent of these outward avenues, and has other
channels of communication with the external world essentially its own.

It must be here observed that as long as the mind is united with the
body, usually the physical senses overlay and conceal the higher psychic
faculties. The mind seemingly is dependent on the body, and is changeful
to corporeal conditions. It becomes enfeebled by disease, by accidents
to the brain, and at times disappears, like a lingering spark from a
flame, in the dotage of age. This, however, is only external appearance,
arising from the limitations fixed by the contact with physical matter,
as the light of the sun may be shut out by an opaque body.

The case of Laura Bridgeman is an illustration and evidence from another
point of view that the intellect is, in a measure at least, independent
of the senses. Completely deprived of sight and hearing at an early
period of childhood, she was a blind and deaf mute. She never had any
knowledge, through the eyes, of the bright landscape, of the glorious
sun, morning and evening, the blue sky, the floating clouds, the waving
trees, the green hills, the beautiful flowers. All was darkness and
profound night. She never heard the exquisite notes of harmony, of
instrument or modulated voice, the sigh of winds, the carol of birds. To
her all had been unbroken silence. Dr. Howe, her kind and angelic
teacher, says: "As soon as she could walk she began to explore the rooms
of the house. She became familiar with forms, density, weight, and heat,
of every article she could lay her hands upon.... An attempt was made to
give her knowledge of arbitrary signs by which she could interchange
thoughts with others. There was one of two ways to be adopted: Either to
go on and build up a language of signs which she had already commenced
herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language in common use;
that is, to give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a
knowledge of letters, by combinations by which she could express her
ideas of the existence, and the mode and condition of existence of
anything. The former would have been easy, but very ineffectual; the
latter seemed difficult, but if accomplished, very effectual. I
determined, therefore, to try the latter."

After describing the process by which he taught her to associate names
with things, he goes on to say; "Hitherto the process had been
mechanical, and the success about as great as teaching a knowing dog a
variety of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and
patiently imitated everything her teacher did. But now the truth began
to flash upon her; her intellect began to work; she perceived that here
was a way by which she could herself make up a sign of anything that was
in her mind, and show it to another mind, and at once her countenance
lighted up with a human expression. It was no longer a dog or a parrot;
it was an immortal soul, eagerly seizing upon a link of union with other
spirits! I could almost fix upon the moment the truth first dawned upon
her mind, and spread its light to her countenance. I saw that the great
obstacle was overcome, and henceforth nothing but patient perseverance,
and plain, straight-forward efforts were to be used."

At the end of the year, a report of the case was made, from which the
following extract is taken: "It has been ascertained beyond a
possibility of a doubt, that she can not see a ray of light, can not
hear the least sound, and never exercises her sense of smell if she has
any. Thus her mind dwells in darkness and stillness, as profound as
that of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights, sweet sounds,
and pleasant odors, she has no perception; nevertheless, she is happy
and playful as a lamb, a bird, and the enjoyment of her intellectual
faculties, or the acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure,
which is plainly marked in her expressive features.... In her
intellectual character, it was pleasing to observe an insatiable thirst
for knowledge and a quick perception of the relation of things. In her
moral character, it is beautiful to behold her continued goodness, her
keen enjoyment of existence, her expansive love, her unhesitating
confidence, her sympathy with suffering, her conscientiousness,
truthfulness and hopefulness."

Her spirit was locked within her body without the least contact with the
world through the most useful senses; yet she not only thought, but
thought in the same manner as those who possess these senses in
perfection. If thought depends on the senses, then the quality of
thought should change when deprived of the senses. It is true that when
thus fettered in expression, it does not escape the limitations of its
surroundings, yet in the struggle we see the indication of the limitless
possibilities of the spirit when these are cast aside.




Sensitiveness Proved by Psychometry.


Light emanating from suns and worlds, as it wings its swift way across
the regions of space, bears on its rays the pictures of every object
from which it is emptied or reflected, and hence the universe, from
center to remotest bounds, is filled with pictures; is a vast storehouse
of photographs of all events from the fading of a leaf to the revolution
of a world since time began. Thus a ray of light leaving the earth
during the coal age bears a picture of the then existing gigantic
forests and inky seas, and is yet somewhere passing the remote
coastlines of unknown systems, and could some swifter messenger overtake
it, he would have a view of the world as it was when that ray was
reflected from the carboniferous period. The messenger is not needed to
overtake the fugitive ray, for the light thus reflected, struck against
rock and tree, and photographed the images of every moment since the
stars first sang together. Every atom still vibrates to the molding hand
of life under which it has at some time passed, and the sensitive mind
is able to catch these vibrations and interpret their meaning in forms
of thought. The discovery of this wonderful faculty of the mind is not
of recent date.

Almost fifty years ago an Episcopal Bishop remarked to Dr. Buchanan that
when he touched brass, even in the night, when he could not know with
what substance he came in contact, he at once felt a disagreeable
influence and recognized an offensive metallic taste. Such experience
had been common to a great number of persons, and frequently observed,
but this time it was called to the attention of the right man. All the
world for ages had seen bodies fall to the ground, and countless
millions of eyes have seen the phenomenon with no more thought than the
brute, until a falling apple drew the attention of Newton. Dr. Buchanan
at once saw that there was a profound philosophy back of this fact which
transcended the senses. He began a lengthy series of experiments, by
which he discovered that it was by no means rare for persons to be
affected by metallic and other substances. In a class of one hundred and
thirty students at the Eclectic Medical College, forty-three were
sensitive in greater or less degree. Medicines held in the hand without
any knowledge of their properties, produced the same effect, varying
only in degree as when taken into the stomach. By placing the hand, or
merely coming into the atmosphere of a deceased person, the sensitive
was able to locate and describe the disease. In this field Dr. Buchanan
has stood almost alone, until recently M. Bourru and M. Burot of the
Naval Medical School at Rochfort, have made extended experiments on the
"action of medicines at a distance," which is really another way of
stating the facts observed by him a generation ago. They held the metals
and drugs six inches or so from the back of the head of the patients and
proved all that Dr. Buchanan claimed for his discovery.

But the discoverer did not rest here; he went a step further and found
that a letter or any article having been brought in contact with the
person, when taken in the hand or placed on the forehead of one
sufficiently sensitive, gave the character of its writer or owner.
Repeated experiments, such as any one may make, prove beyond question
that the sensitive can in this manner read the character of the writer
from his writings, his state of health, better than the most intimate
friend, or even the writer himself. It is a marvelous statement, but
only marvelous in our not understanding its cause. When this is
revealed, and mystery removed, the subject allies itself with other
phenomena of mind, having their origin in impressibility.

Prof. Denton carried the results of psychometry far beyond the
boundaries reached by Dr. Buchanan. If the world is one vast picture
gallery of every act and thought since the beginning of time, the fossil
shell, the rock-fragment, the broken arrow head, the shred of mummy, and
the rush leaf from the banks of the Nile should reproduce in the
sensitive the story of their origin and age. By a great number of
experiments, the details of which fill three volumes, Prof. Denton
sought to establish this generalization and write the geological and
pre-historic history of the earth. That he found a kernel of truth can
not be denied, but he allowed sources of error to creep in and vitiate
his wonderfully suggestive and patient research. A person sensitive to
the degree that enables him to feel the influences given to a fragment
of stone thousands of years ago, would be more strongly impressed with
the influence imparted by the one who secured it, and held it in his
hands before the experiment. It is from this cause that uncertainty
rests on his otherwise well-planned experiments. Yet he has proved that
such sensitiveness exists, and that by it the story of history from
fragments of ruined architecture may be read, and scenes in geological
ages by fossil, bone or shell be described.

How? Really psychometry, depending on the sensitiveness of the brain, is
a lower degree of clairvoyance, and is merged, in its clearest forms,
therein. Sensitiveness means the capability of receiving the
psycho-ether waves as they pulsate from some center, and as everything
touched by life is in a state of such vibration, the recognition is only
a question of the delicacy of the receiving organization.

There is a vast accumulation of narratives of ghosts, witches,
apparitions, hallucinations, illusions, dreams, etc., which it is the
present fashion to relegate to the sphere of superstition and ignorance.
Many of these, however anomalous, have a foundation in fact, and will be
found, when stripped of the portions superstition has added, readily
explainable, either as subjective, arising from impressions on the
sensitive, or as objective and manifested by the same principles. As
sensitiveness to these subtile influences greatly varies in different
individuals and at different times in the same individual, and at times
becomes clairvoyance, scarcely an illustration can be given of one
without introducing the other. We must constantly bear in mind that
there is one fundamental cause back of all these so-called occult
phenomena, varying in the degree of its manifestation in accord with the
channel through which it flows.


SUBJECTIVE SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.--Dr. Abercrombie is authority for the
following illustration of subjective spectral illusions: "A gentleman of
high mental endowments, and now upwards of eighty years of age, of spare
habits and enjoying uninterrupted health, has been for eleven years
subject to the daily visits of spectral figures. They in general present
human countenances; the head and body are distinctly defined, the lower
parts are for the most part, lost in a kind of cloud. The figures are
various, but he recognizes the same countenances repeated from time to
time, especially of late years, that of an elderly woman, with a
peculiarly arch and playful expression, and a dazzling brilliancy of
eye, who seems just ready to speak with him.... This female is dressed
in an old-fashioned Scottish plaid of Tartan, drawn up and brought
forward over the head, and then crossed below the chin, as the plaid
was worn by aged women in his younger day. He can seldom recognize among
the spectres any figure or countenance which he remembers to have seen;
but his own face has been presented to him, gradually undergoing the
change from youth to manhood, and from manhood to old age."

It is not necessary to call in the aid of an invisible being to explain
such appearances. The house had been occupied by Scotch who dressed as
described, and the influence they left impressed itself on the
gentleman's sensitive brain.

"All houses where men have lived and died are haunted houses," not by
actual ghosts, but by the subtile force which persons impart to
everything with which they come in contact. That he was subject to some
influence outside of himself is shown by the appearances always being of
some one that he had never seen, and hence they could not have been
revived pictures from his own brain. After he had been in the house for
a long time he began to see his own face; that is, after he had imparted
his own influence to his surroundings, he received them back as from a
mirror.

Dendy, in his "Philosophy of Mystery," mentions "M. Andral, who in his
youth saw, in La Pitie, the putrid body of a child covered with larvæ,
and during the next morning the spectre of this corpse lying on his
table was as perfect as reality." He could not see it by a mental
effort, nor any where else than on his table, and whenever he looked at
that, the appearance at once came. It may be said in explanation, that
the sight of the disgusting object produced a strong impression on the
optic nerves and mind, and a suggestive object, as the table reproduced
the same state. We have no evidence that one object, under the same
light, affects the optic nerves more than any other would under the
same circumstances. Vivid mental impressions are more readily reproduced
than those that scarcely ruffle the surface of thought; but this does
not account for the student not seeing the appearance at any other time
or place than on the table where it had laid, and which we would say
retained the influence imparted to it by the body having lain there.

Professor Hitchcock says that during a severe sickness, "day after day
visions of strange landscapes spread out before him--mountain, lake and
forest; vast rocks, strata upon strata piled to the clouds; the panorama
of a world shattered and upheaved, disclosing the grim secrets of
creation, the unshapely and monstrous rudiments of organic being." His
son, Professor Charles Hitchcock, adds that his father saw the sandstone
beds of the Connecticut valley spread out before him, covered with
tracks, and by the superior insight wrought by sickness, cleared up some
doubtful points to which he had vainly given his attention. Professor
Hitchcock became, in consequence of his sickness, exceedingly sensitive,
and the geological specimens near him, or that he had handled, brought
up in his mind the pictures of their primeval age.


HALLUCINATIONS.--The received definition of an hallucination is a false
perception without any material basis, being formed entirely in the
mind. An individual who sees pictures on a blank wall, or who hears
voices when no sound reaches his ear, is hallucinated. "The reason for
this being that the erroneous perception constituting the hallucination
is found in that part of the brain which ordinarily requires the
excitation of sensorial impressions for its functions." In this view,
hallucination is evidence of mental derangement and incipient insanity.
This explanation is by no means sufficient for this class of facts. That
a certain tract of brain can of itself give the mind complicated
representations, never before seen or imaged in the mind, is not
established. The reappearance of objects that have been seen is better
explained, and still more satisfactorily, by causes which unite them all
together, and with all like phenomena. George Combe says of a painter
who inherited much of the patronage of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and believed
himself to possess a talent superior to his, was so fully engaged that
he had painted three hundred large and small portraits in one year. The
fact appeared physically impossible, but the secret of his rapidity and
astonishing success was this: He required but one sitting of his model.
His method was as follows, as given by himself: "When a sitter came, I
looked attentively on him for half an hour, sketching from time to time
on the canvas. I did not require a longer sitting. I removed the canvas,
and passed to another person. When I wished to continue the first
portrait, I recalled the man to my mind. I placed him on the chair,
where I perceived him as distinctly as though really there, and, I may
add, in form and color more decidedly brilliant. I looked from time to
time at the imaginary figure and went on painting, occasionally stopping
to examine the picture exactly as though the original was before me;
whenever I looked towards the chair I saw the man. This method made me
very popular, and as I always caught the resemblance, the sitters were
delighted that I spared them the annoying sittings of other painters."

This painter was far from incipient insanity. He was sensitive to
impressions, and able by that organization to recall the image of the
sitter, but not that of one who had not occupied the chair.

The Rev. T. L. Williams, Vicar of Porthleven, in _The Journal of the
Society for Psychical Research_, July, 1885, gives his personal
experience: "On an occasion when I was absent from home, my wife awoke
one morning, and to her surprise and alarm saw me standing by the
bedside looking at her. In her fright she covered her face with the bed
clothes, and when she ventured to look again the appearance was gone. On
another occasion, when I was not absent from home, my wife saw me, as
she supposed, coming from church in surplice and stole. I came a little
way, she says, and turned round the corner of the building, where she
lost sight of me. I was at the time in the church in my place in the
choir, where she was much surprised to see me on entering the
building.... My daughter has often told me, and now repeats the story,
that she was passing my study door, which was ajar, and looked in to see
if I was there. She saw me in my chair, and as she caught sight of me, I
stretched out my arms, and drew my hands across my eyes, a familiar
gesture of mine. I was in the village at the time. Now, nothing occurred
at or about the times of these appearances to give any meaning to them."
He adds: "A good many years ago there was a devout young woman living in
my parish, who used to spend much of her spare time in church in
meditation and prayer. She used to assert that she frequently saw me
standing at the altar when I certainly was not there in the body." Mr.
Williams must have been a man peculiarly endowed with psychic force to
thus impress himself.

The following is from the pen of the gifted Mary Howitt, and not only
gives a remarkable fact, but her explanation of the same: "I conducted
Mrs. Nenner through a room which contained some ancient furniture and a
quantity of valuable old china. This china had been left in our care by
a friend during his lengthened absence abroad. His thoughts from his
place of sojourn at the antipodes constantly reverted to these
heirlooms.

"'Who are these six gentlemen, evidently brothers, sitting where the old
china is?' asked Mrs. Nenner, when we had passed through the room.

"'There was no one there at all,' I said, much surprised.

"'Then,' said she, 'I must have seen six brother spirits. There they
were sitting; tall, fair men, light haired, all strikingly alike, all
the same age. They must be brothers!'

"I recognized in her description the owner of the china. Before Mrs.
Nenner left, we showed her a portrait of the owner of the china, our
friend on the other side of the world. She at once said, 'Oh, that is
one of the six brothers!' In some mysterious manner the intensity of
thought fixed by the possessor of the china upon his possessions--we
knew that his thoughts constantly reverted to them--had been able to
manifest itself to the sight in the form of the man himself, but
multiplied into six forms. It should be observed that this gentleman was
of what now we should term a 'mediumistic' temperament. It is possible,
that being at the antipodes, he might be, at the time his multiplied
form was beheld, asleep--it being night there when it is day with
us--and that his thoughts might have, in a dream, revisited England."

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.

It is after this great event that the spiritual being, formed from
attenuated substance, far beyond the horizon of the most ethereal known
to the senses, is free from the environments of the physical body. It
sees, hears, feels, with the organization of its new being, and is
cognizant of a world unknown to the mortal senses.




Thought Transference.


The English Society for Psychical Research have given greater attention
to thought transference than any other subject which has engaged its
attention, claiming that if it be proved, it becomes the foundation for
a working theory, co-ordinating a vast number of related facts and
phenomena. It was the conclusion of the committee after numerous
experiments, that thought reading was an established fact. The adage,
"The devil is near when you talk about him," is proven daily; for when
an individual is going to a certain place expecting to meet certain
ones, his thoughts go before him, and impress themselves. When those
connected by intimate relations think of each other, their thoughts
vibrate in responsive brains. Distance has inappreciable influence on
the transference of thought. It may take place in the same room, or when
the two persons are thousands of miles apart. As a personal experience I
will relate one of many similar incidents which have awakened my
attention to this wonderful phenomenon. Sitting by my desk one evening,
suddenly as a flash of light, the thought came to write an article for
the _Harbinger of Light_, published at Melbourne, Australia. I had by
correspondence become acquainted with the editor, W. H. Terry, but there
had been no letters passed for nearly a year. I had not thought of him
or his journal, for I do not know how long a time, and I was amused at
first with the idea of writing on the subject suggested. But the
impression was so strong that I prepared and forwarded an article.
Nearly two months passed before I received a letter from Mr. Terry
requesting me to write an article on the subject, on which I had
written, and making due allowance for time, the dates of our letters
were the same. In our experience this crossing of letters answering each
other, has twice occurred, the second by Mr. Terry answering a request
of mine.

I have gathered a series of facts illustrative and demonstrative, by
their culminative evidence. If any one statement be questioned as
improbable, we must consider the probabilities increase with each and
every instance corroboratory, and when a constantly augmenting series
continue in the same line, each number adding strength to the others,
the probability becomes a certainty.

Dr. Nicolas, Count de Gonémys, of Corfu, gives his personal experience
in March number, 1885, of the _Journal of the Society for Psychical
Research_:

"In the year 1869 I was officer of health in the Hellenic army. By
command of the War Office I was attached to the garrison of the Island
of Zante. As I was approaching the Island in a steamboat, to take up my
new position, and about two hours distance from the shore, I heard a
sudden inward voice say to me over and over in Italian, 'Go to Voterra.'
I had no association with the name of M. Voterra, a gentleman of Zante,
with whom I was not even acquainted, although I had once seen him, ten
years before. I tried the effect of stopping my ears, and of trying to
distract myself by conversation with the bystanders, but all was
useless, and I continued to hear the voice in the same way. At last we
reached the land; I proceeded to my hotel and busied myself with my
trunks, but the voice continued to harass me. After a time a servant
came and announced to me that a gentleman was at the door who wished to
speak to me at once. 'Who is the gentleman?' I asked. 'M. Voterra,' was
the reply. M. Voterra entered, weeping violently, in uncontrollable
distress, imploring me to follow him at once, and see his son who was in
a dangerous condition. I found a young man in maniacal frenzy, naked in
an empty room, and despaired of by all the doctors of Zante for the past
five years."

By magnetism Dr. Nicolas effected a perfect cure, the maniac becoming in
the mesmeric state clairvoyant.

The following is by C. Ede, M. D., Guilford (_J. S. P. R._, July, 1882).

"Lady G. and her sister had been spending the evening with their mother,
who was in her usual health and spirits when they left her. In the
middle of the night the sister awoke in a fright, and said to her
husband, 'I must go to my mother at once; do order the carriage. I am
sure she is ill.' The husband, after trying in vain to convince his wife
that it was only a fancy, ordered the carriage. As she was approaching
the house where two roads met, she saw Lady G.'s carriage. When they met
each asked the other why she was there. The same reply was made by both.
'I could not sleep, feeling sure my mother was ill, and so I came to
see.' As they came in sight they saw their mother's confidential maid at
the door, who told them when they arrived, that their mother had been
taken suddenly ill, and was dying, and had expressed an earnest wish to
see her daughters."

The daughters having so recently parted from their mother, made them
peculiarly susceptible to her influence.

T. W. Smith, Ealing, W. England (_J. S. P. R._, July, 1882), had this
experience, showing the close bonds which unite husband and wife:

"I left my house, ten miles from London, in the morning as usual, and in
the course of the day was on the way to Victoria Street, when, in
attempting to cross the road made slippery by the water cart, I fell,
and was nearly run over by a carriage coming in an opposite direction.
The fall and the fright shook me considerably, but beyond that I was
uninjured. On reaching home, I found my wife waiting anxiously, and
this is what she related to me: She was in the kitchen when she suddenly
dropped, exclaiming, 'My God, he's hurt!' Mrs. S. who was near her heard
the cry, and both agreed as to the time, etc."

The Rev. P. H. Newham (_J. S. P. R._, Feb. 1887), relates an extended
series of experiments in will power. He was able while in church to draw
the attention of any one in the audience by simply directing his
thoughts to them. He experimented at a series of concerts, selecting
those in front of him so that they could not catch his eye by simply
raising their heads. "It was very interesting," he writes, "to see them
first fidget about in their seats and at last turn their heads around
and look about them, as if to see whence the uncomfortable feeling that
influenced them proceeded."

The London _Spectator_ for Christmas, 1881, contains an interesting
story by A. J. Duffield, of thought transference. The gist of this story
is that a Mr. Strong went to Lake Superior and became foreman of the
Franklin copper mine. He fell sick and would have died but for the care
of a lady whose husband was a director of the mining company. She had
him carried to her own house, and nursed him with kindest care until he
recovered. Seven years after this event, when he had drifted away from
the mines, he was sitting by himself one evening, when he suddenly saw
this kind lady in a room with nothing in it, no fire, no food. She was
calm and quiet, with the same face she had when she nursed him in the
fever. He thereby was made deeply conscious that she was in distress,
and sent her a most liberal amount of money by mail. The day after he
received a letter from the lady, saying that her husband was sick, and
that they were in great suffering, and asking for aid.

In this instance the mind of Capt. Strong was bound to his preserver
with strong bonds, love, gratefulness and expectation of some time
repaying his great obligation. It was in proper condition for the
reception of such thoughts, while, on the other hand, under the pressure
of suffering, the lady's mind was in a condition to give force to the
emanating thoughts.

The _Springfield Homestead_ published what it called an odd
circumstance, but so far from being odd is of proverbially common
occurrence. A Mrs. A. and her daughter called on their relative, Mrs.
B., of Central Street. On their way thither they remarked how pleased
they would be if Mrs. B.'s daughter, Mrs. L., of Hartford, could only be
there too. This remark was repeated to Mrs. B., and she replied that her
thoughts were similar. Then one of them recalled the old saying that the
combined thoughts of three women can bring any one from any place, and
the reply was made that if wishing would bring Mrs. L. she would surely
come. Mrs. B. prepared strawberry cake, saying her daughter, Mrs. L.,
was fond of it, and that she was going to lay a plate for her just as
though she were there. As they were sitting down to tea, the door bell
rang and in came the much wished for Mrs. L., greatly to their surprise.
When asked how she happened to come, she replied that she did not intend
to do so until that day, and decided to do so because tormented with the
impression that some one wanted to see her. She is not accustomed to
come to Springfield, not having visited her sister before in a year.

Henry Watson, of Mill Village, Pa., was suddenly impressed that his
services were needed at a certain point on French Creek. There was no
assignable cause for his going, and he resisted it as a vagary. The
impression, however, grew so strong that he yielded as to a charm. When
within a short distance of the spot cries for help reached his ears. In
the creek he found George Dowler and wife struggling for their lives.
They had attempted to ford the creek, and missing the way were
submerged. He was holding on to the horse while the swift current was
carrying his wife to her death. Taking a boat, Watson rescued her from
certain death. Had he not arrived at that very moment, she would have
been inevitably drowned.

L. M. Hastings of Osceola, Iowa, had a son murdered near Grand Island,
Neb. The night after the crime was committed he awoke about midnight
with his attention fixed on an apparition at the foot of the bed. He saw
the representation of two men with great distinctness, and something
told him that they were the pictures of the murderers of his son. He
studied them carefully until they faded out of sight, and then arose and
wrote a description which was forwarded to the prosecuting attorney. It
was found to be a thoroughly accurate description of the men who were
then under arrest and who were, without doubt the guilty parties. Mr.
Hastings had never seen these men nor received any description of them.


TRANSFERENCE OF THOUGHT AND PAIN.--Mrs. Arthur Severn, the distinguished
landscape painter (_J. S. P. R._, March, 1884), writes of an accident to
her husband which at once impressed itself on her:

"I woke with a start, feeling I had a hard blow on my mouth, and a
distinct sense that I had been cut under my upper lip, and held my
handkerchief to the part as I sat up in bed, and after a few seconds,
when I removed it, I was astonished not to see any blood, and only then
realized that it was impossible that anything could have struck me, and
so I thought it was only a dream. I looked at my watch and saw it was
seven, and finding Arthur (my husband) was not in the room, I concluded
he had gone out on the lake for a sail as it was fine.

"At breakfast (half-past nine) Arthur came in rather late, and I noticed
he rather purposely sat farther away from me than usual, and put his
handkerchief to his lip in the way I had done. I said: 'Arthur, why are
you doing that? I know you have hurt yourself; but I'll tell you why
afterwards.' He said: 'Well, when I was sailing, a sudden squall came,
throwing the tiller suddenly around, and it struck me a hard blow in the
mouth under the upper lip and it has been bleeding a good deal and won't
stop.' I then asked: 'At what time did it happen?' He answered: 'It must
have been about seven o'clock.' I then told what had happened to me,
much to his surprise and all who were at the table."

Rev. J. M. Wilson, head master of Clifton College (in _J. S. P. R._,
March, 1884), presents a fact which, while admitting of telegraphic
explanation, may be referred to a higher source:

"I was at Cambridge at the end of my second term in full health,
boating, football playing, and the like, and by no means subject to
hallucinations or morbid fancies. One evening I felt very ill, trembling
with no apparent cause; nor did it seem to me at the time to be a
physical illness, or chill of any kind. I was frightened; I was totally
unable to overcome it. I remember a struggle with myself, resolving that
I would go on with my mathematics, but it was in vain. I became
convinced that I was dying. I went down to the room of a friend, who
was on the same staircase. He exclaimed at me before I spoke. He pulled
out a whisky bottle and backgammon board, but I could not face it. We
sat over the fire, and he brought some one else to look at me. Toward
eleven, after some three hours, I got better, went to bed and after a
time to sleep, and next morning was quite well. In the afternoon came a
letter stating that my twin brother had died the evening before in
Lincolnshire."

Rev. Canon Warburton, Winchester, England (_J. S. P. R._, May 1884),
relates the following, which is of interest as an example of
transference of thought and of sensation:

"I went from Oxford to stay a day or two with my brother, then a
barrister at 10 Fish Street, Lincoln's Inn. When I reached his chambers
I found a note on the table apologizing for his absence, and saying he
had gone to a dance, and intended to be at home soon after one o'clock.
Instead of going to bed, I dozed in an arm-chair, but started up wide
awake exactly at one, ejaculating, 'By Jove, he's down!' and seeing him
coming out of the drawing room into the brightly illuminated landing,
catching his foot in the edge of the top stair and falling head-long,
just saving himself by his elbows and hands. (The house was one I had
never seen, and I did not know where he was.) I again fell adoze for
half an hour, and was awakened by my brother suddenly coming in and
saying: 'Ah! there you are! I have just had as narrow an escape of
breaking my neck as I ever had in my life. Coming out of the ballroom, I
caught my foot and tumbled full length down stairs.'"

The following is vouched for by Miss Millicent Ann Page, sister of the
Rev. A. Shaw Page, Vicar of Lesly, England, to whom it was related by
Mrs. Elizabeth Broughton, Edinburgh:

"Mrs. Broughton aroused her husband, telling him something dreadful had
happened in France. He begged her to go asleep again. She assured him
that she was not asleep when she saw what she insisted in then telling
him. First, a carriage accident, which she did not see, but she saw the
result: a broken carriage, collected crowd, a figure gently raised and
carried into the nearest house, and then a figure lying on the bed,
which she recognized as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually friends collected
around the bed, among them several members of the royal family--the
Queen, then the King--all tearfully, silently watching the dying Duke.
One man, she could see his back, but did not know who he was, was a
doctor. He stood bending over the Duke, feeling his pulse with his watch
in his other hand. Then all passed away. In the morning she wrote down
in her journal all she had seen. It was before the days of the
telegraph, and two or more days passed before the _Times_ announced the
death of the Duke of Orleans.

"A short time after, she visited Paris, recognized the place of the
accident, and received an explanation of her impression. The doctor who
attended the Duke was an old friend of hers; and as he watched by the
bed he said his mind was constantly occupied with her and her family.
The reason, therefor, was the remarkable likeness between the members of
her family and those of the royal family then present. 'I spoke of you
and yours when I reached home, and thought of you many times that
evening,' said the doctor. 'The likeness between yourself and the royal
family was never so strong. Here was a link between us, you see.'"

Certain dreams may be explained by thought-transference, which is liable
to take place during the varying moods of slumber as while awake. Rev.
J. C. Learned writes (_J. S. P. R._): "It was in 1883 that I took charge
of the Unitarian Church in Exeter, N. H. Five miles away, Rev. A. M.
Bridge was preaching at Hampton Falls, with whom I sometimes exchanged
pulpits. After a year or so he gave up the work in this little parish,
and somewhat later entered upon an engagement in the town of East
Marshfield, Mass., as the railroad runs, eighty miles from Exeter.

"On Wednesday, Dec. 13th, 1865, on waking in the morning, I remarked to
my wife upon the very vivid and singular dream which I had had, and
related it fully. I had seen Mr. Bridge taken suddenly and violently
ill. He seemed to be in a school-room. He sank down helpless and was
borne away by friendly hands. I was by him, and assisted others in
whatever way I could. But he grew worse; the open air did not revive
him; a leaden pallor soon spread over his features; peculiar spots which
I had never seen before, like moles or discoloration of the skin,
appeared upon his face, and after much suffering he died. Immediately
after breakfast, and while we were still speaking of the dream, a ring
at the door admitted Mr. Wells Healy, an old parishioner of Mr. Bridge,
at Hampton Falls. I guessed the nature of his message. He had come to
ask me to attend the funeral services of his former minister.

"I attended the funeral as requested. I learned from the family the
particulars of his death, which coincided remarkably in several points
with the dream already repeated to my wife, and when I looked at the
dead man in his coffin, my attention was fixed by the peculiar spots on
his face to which I have alluded, and which were stamped on my memory."


DOUBLE PRESENCE.--APPEARANCE OF LIVING PERSONS AT A DISTANCE.--It would
appear that this projection of thought to distant localities may be so
strong as to carry the appearance of the projector with it. This may be
explained by the aid of psychometry, or by the actual projection of the
psychic individuality, so as to give the impression of identity, and not
only that, but to receive and retain impressions on the part of the
projector. The double presence which has so perplexed the student of
these mysteries thus admits of solution, and becomes a part of the
fabric created by sensitiveness to thought impressions. These
appearances of living persons as apparitions or ghosts, have been
repeatedly employed as evidence of the subjectiveness of ghostly
apparitions of the dead; that as one must be unreal so must the other.
But this conclusion is unwarranted, as by the principles here advocated
the apparitions of the living are under the same law as those of the
dead.

It is possible for the independent clairvoyant at any time, in spirit,
to visit distant localities and persons, and if the latter are
sufficiently sensitive, they will recognize the clairvoyant's presence.
The phenomenon of "double presence," in this manner can be produced, as
somnambulism may be, by artificial means; that is through mesmerism or
hypnotism.

Many remarkable stories are recorded of the double, some of which are
unbelievable unless the principles heretofore stated are understood.

Josiah Gilbert, in the _London Speculator_, gives the following pleasing
narrative:

"A son of a family named Watkinson, residing in Lancashire, had gone to
America. One summer Sunday afternoon, they were attending services and
occupying a large square pew near the pulpit. It was hot, the door of
the small building was wide open, and one of the party who sat looking
down the aisle could see out into the meeting-house yard, which was
shaded by tall trees. Suddenly, to his intense surprise, he saw the
absent brother approaching through the trees, enter at the chapel door,
walk up the aisle, come to the very door of the pew itself, and lay his
hand upon it as though he would take a seat with them. At that moment
others of the family saw him also, but at that instant he vanished.

"This strange occurrence naturally raised sad forebodings, but in course
of time a letter arrived, and it appeared that the brother was alive and
well. He was then written to and asked if anything peculiar had happened
on that Sunday. He replied that it was odd that he should remember
anything about a Sunday so long passed, but certainly something had
happened on that Sunday. He had come in overpowered with heat and had
thrown himself on his bed, fallen asleep and had a strange dream. He
found himself among the trees of a country chapel; service was going on;
he saw them all, the door being open, sitting in their pews; he walked
up the aisle and put his hand on the pew door to open it, when he
suddenly, and to his great chagrin, awoke."

S. F. Deane, M. D., of Carlton, Neb., had a remarkable experience which
he relates as follows:

"After my arrival in Nebraska, I made my home with my daughters. At the
time I left Wisconsin, my wife was not well and I hesitated to leave
her. After I had been absent about three weeks, I had retired to my
room, which had a door opening into the street. About two o'clock in
the morning while awake, with sufficient light from a partially obscured
moon to see distinctly any person in the room, fully conscious of all my
surroundings, and with my face toward the door, I saw it open and a
person step into the room, which I at once recognized as the exact image
of my wife. She came directly across the room, knelt at my bedside, put
her arms about my neck, kissed me and said she had been very sick but
was better now. Then she said she must go and see Adelaide, and arose
and passed across the room, to the door of our daughter's room. She was
gone a few minutes when she again came through the open bedroom door
into my room, looked at me, as much as to say good-bye, passed out at
the door, and was gone.

"While she was present a peculiar calmness came over me; but when she
was gone a great anxiety took possession of me, and could I have taken a
train, I should have at once started for home. But I at last resolved to
await a letter, which came in due time from my son. He wrote: 'Mother is
quite sick, though better than night before last, when about half-past
two or three o'clock in the morning we thought for twenty or thirty
minutes she was dead. She lay insensible, pulsation ceased, or only
fluttered at intervals, and respiration seemed suspended, but she
rallied and is now in a fair way to recover.' She did recover and
enjoyed a fair degree of health."

There is no limit to the facts of this class which might be collected.
Enough have been here produced to show that coincidence offers a poor
apology as an explanation. The student will observe also, that however
carefully the facts are selected bearing on this one point of thought
transference, it is impossible, so intimately related are the branches
of psychic science, to have them entirely free from the possibility of
other explanations. Granting that thought may be transferred from one
mortal to another, admits that a spirit may transfer its thoughts to a
mortal also, and hence a spirit seeing a friend in distress may act as a
messenger. But in such a case thought is transferred, and in the same
manner. The sensitive on one side receives the pulsations of thought
from the other, through and by means of the psychic ether.

It will be thus seen that there is no mystery in one mind becoming
cognizant of the thoughts of another mind, for if in sympathy, such a
result is sure to follow. As a lamp gives light, because it is able to
set the light medium in motion, or give off waves therein, so the brain
gives off waves, or is a pulsating center in the psychic-ether. These
waves go outward and form the sphere of the individual, as the waves of
light go out and form the sphere of light around an incandescent body.

To be recognized, they must strike against a sensitive or sympathetic
brain, wherein they may be reproduced. By sympathetic, we mean one
which, for want of a better term, we will say is similarly attuned.
Thus, when two musical instruments are placed at some distance from each
other, and one is played, if they are not attuned in harmony the other
will give no response; but if they are, then when one is touched, the
other answers note for note.

The brain, being a pulsating center, its thoughts, as they go out in
waves, have to other brains, a tangible representation. The
psychic-ether, pulsating with innumerable waves, may be regarded as a
universal thought atmosphere, and the sensitive brain is able to gather
from it thoughts and ideas which its pulsations express.

If any reliance can be placed on the observations of the most credible
witnesses, whose evidence would be received on any other subject, and in
law would be given power to decide on life or death, these facts of
Thought Transference cannot be rejected. If they are received, they
demand explanation. If thought passes from one mind to another, or, as
it is often expressed, the will influences a distant person, it is
self-evident that something passes from one to the other. What is this
something? Facts conflict with the hypothesis of its being matter
radiated from one individual to another, as light was once supposed to
be transmitted. It passes too readily through vast thicknesses of solid
matter, and is too instantaneous in its action, to consist of radiant
particles. On the other hand, all of its phenomena show a striking
relationship to light, heat and kindred forces.


HOW IS THIS INFLUENCE EXERTED?--Admitting that there is a psychic-ether,
in which thinking produces waves, how does one individual influence
another thereby? If the brain vibrates like the strings of a musical
instrument, as no two are alike, no two vibrate alike. This is more than
a mere illustration. Both depend on similar laws, for the string excites
vibrations in the air, which are felt by the nerves of the tympanum of
the ear. Thinking creates undulations in ether, which are impressed on
other minds. The string of the instrument excites similar vibrations in
contiguous strings; for the atmosphere transmits the waves of sound.

This is very beautifully shown by a simple experiment, which equally
well illustrates the method by which mind influences mind. If a plate
of glass is strewn with sand, and, while held in a horizontal position,
a bow drawn across its edge, a musical sound will be produced from the
vibration of the plate, and the sand, by the impulse, forms into various
geometric lines, according to the note produced--each note giving rise
to a figure peculiar to itself. So invariably is this the case that a
piece of music might be accurately written from the forms assumed by the
sand.

Now, if a piece of parchment or paper be stretched, with proper
precautions, across the top of a large bell glass and strewn with sand,
and the glass plate held over it horizontally, and the bow drawn across
its edge, the forms assumed by the sand on the paper will accurately
correspond with the forms on the glass. If the glass is slowly removed
to greater and greater distances, the correspondence will continue until
the distance becomes too great for the air to transmit the vibrations.

When a slow air is played on a flute near this apparatus, each note
calls up a particular form in the sand, which the next note effaces and
establishes its own. The motion of the sand will even detect sounds that
are inaudible.

Professor Wheaton devised a means of beautifully illustrating this
sympathy. If a sounding board is placed so as to resound to all the
instruments of the orchestra, and connected by a metallic rod of
considerable length with the sounding-board of a harp or piano, the
instrument will accurately repeat the notes transmitted.

The nervous system, in its two-fold relation to the physical and
spiritual being, is inconceivably more finely organized than the most
perfect musical instrument, and is possessed of finer sensitiveness.

But it must not be inferred that all minds are receptive. Light falls on
all substances alike, but is very differently affected. One class of
bodies absorbs all but the yellow rays; another, all but the blue;
another, all but the red, because these substances are so organized that
they respond only to waves of the colors reflected.

Some individuals have the ear so organized that they can hear certain
sounds, but are totally deaf to others. The waves of sound strike all
tympanums alike; yet in these instances they are incapable of responding
to certain waves. Some person who delight in music, although all the
lower notes are plainly heard, as soon as the tune rises to a high key,
can not hear a single sound. In others, this is reversed. The eye of
some individuals is similarly arranged--some colors being undiscernible,
while others are perceptible. The vibrations are the same in all these
cases, but owing to peculiarities of organization are not felt. As
musical instruments to respond must be attuned in harmony, so there must
be correlated harmony between minds which transmit and receive thoughts.
All minds give out vibrations, as all musical strings give out sounds;
and as there must be a corresponding string to receive its notes, so
there must be not only a sensitive but harmoniously attuned mind to
receive the thought vibrations.

Individuals not mutually harmonious--at least in some point--do not
excite a mental influence on each other; but if they are thus organized,
they will influence each other. This is unavoidable, whether the will is
excited or not; but if the stronger will is exerted, its power is
proportionally greater, and it will magnetize the weaker; and the
peculiar phenomena attending that mental state will be manifested.

It is not the body which magnetizes or is magnetized; it is the mind;
and these effects are produced outside of the physical system. The fact
that one person can magnetize another by the simple power of the will,
though at a distance, is evidence that the mind in this exercise of
power is independent of the body.

If we grant, for the sake of the argument, that there is a spirit back
of the physical aspect of mortal life, it will be readily seen that all
that has been said of the transference of thought between individuals,
holds true between spiritual beings, as this transference at last
resides in the spirit-being. As man is a spirit incarnated, differing in
that respect only from a disembodied spirit, the body is the only
obstacle between him and the spirits above him. Sensitiveness to
impressions from another, or from a spirit, rest on the same cause; and
in the higher realm of spirit, the transference of thought is controlled
by the same laws, and reaches more perfect expression.




Intimations of an Intelligent Force.


BELIEF IN GUARDIAN ANGELS.--Memory brings back the days of our childhood
and again we hear our mother sing that simple song of joy, which, it is
said, Bishop McKendree murmured on his dying bed:

    Bright angels have from glory come,
      They're round my bed; they're in my room;
    They wait to waft my spirit home;
      All is well! All is well!

We approach the dark river of death alone, but we are not to cross
without a guide. We may be blind to the light of the celestial sphere in
the full pulse of health; we may be insensible to the presence of the
nearest and dearest of our departed; yet when death loosens the bonds
which unite the physical with the spiritual body, what is known dimly as
clairvoyance, the full possession of the spiritual senses, bursts upon
the awakened spirit. Then the dying find that death is life, and to
leave earthly friends is to meet the hosts of heaven.

That there are guardian angels has been taught from immemorial time, and
in some dim form is a belief of all except the lowest races of mankind.

It is a beautiful belief, full of consolation, of assurance, and comfort
to the struggling and striving. How hard may press the iron hand of
fate, how sharp the flinty stones beneath our bleeding feet, we think of
those blessed messengers by our side, and feel that our burdens are for
the purpose of giving us strength, else they would turn us aside to more
pleasant paths. We know that they are with us in the darkest hours, and
enjoy with us the days of our sunshine. We delve in the soil and smirch
of the world, and the physical being obscures and overlaps the spiritual
to such a degree that our horizon is shut down on that side by thick
clouds, and only at long intervals can a ray of light penetrate the
darkness.

Our lives might be so well ordered that we would be as conscious of the
presence of these guardians as of earthly friends. What is possible at
rare moments of lucidity is possible at all times under like conditions.
The fault is not on their side, but on ours. The sun forever shines in
the heavens, just above the thin vail of clouds, and if the sea does
not reflect the starry night, it is because of its agitated surface.

We do not see through the thin vail, which separates the world of
spirits and men. We cannot see the air which surges a profound and
agitated ocean above and around us. Without material rays of light we
could not see material things, and would be practically blind.

If we ascend a mountain in the night, we can only perceive the gray and
mossy rocks a few yards ahead of us, bordering the path, beyond which
would be impenetrable darkness, gloomy abysses, seemingly unfathomable,
and above, the dark night-clouds without a star. On the summit we rest
awaiting the morning, seeing nothing, but scenting the faint odors of
pine and the fragrance of flowers borne upwards on the gentle air.
Patiently we wait until the gray East blushes with a long horizontal
line of light flaming upward toward the crimson clouds, and the distant
mountain-tops with the silver flood. Lo! the orb of day pushes the
clouds aside, and flashes over the world in triumph. What
transformation! What grandeur and beauty! Valleys of eden, loveliness at
our feet, and snowy summits above our heads! Grand forests clothing the
hillsides, bloom and flower everywhere; gem-like lakes, and flashing
torrents, endless prospective of mountains on one side, and of plain on
the other. All night we were in the midst of this grandeur and beauty,
yet saw it not. We seemed suspended between earth and sky, and around us
only blackness, yet all this splendor of scenery existed the same as it
did before the light made it visible.

Thus the world of spirit may exist around us, unseen, unfelt, except as
we perceive the odor of asphodels, or hear the faint murmur of angel
whispers, for our eyes are blind to the light, by which it is revealed.


FACTS UNREFERABLE TO PREVIOUSLY CONSIDERED CAUSES.--After referring to
hypnotism, somnambulism, clairvoyance and thought transference, a great
mass of the facts presented for explanation, there still remain a large
number which stand apart by themselves, and which bring an outside or
independent intelligence with them, which no exaltation on the part of
the actor can supply. The only adequate or even plausible explanation of
these facts is that which refers them to the agency of intelligent
beings beyond our ken. The presence of such entities may or may not be
recognized by the percipient. The ideas and motives may be impressed all
the same. We may be assured that unconsciously those who by study and
practical experience become adept in particular lines of thought or
practical affairs, are the most proper mediums for the communication of
spirits dwelling in the same sphere of thought, and that such
communications are continuously made unconsciously to the percipients.
The weird stories which come up from the rugged toilers of the sea are
full of interest in this particular. The infinite solitude of waters;
the long and lonely watches, with the sweep of waves and the silent
stars, conduce to a state of abstraction and reverie, peculiarly
favorable to the reception of impressions. If there is need in this
world of the watchful care of guardian angels, the sailor on the lone
ship which plows the trackless waste at the mercy of the elements
requires them most. Human skill and foresight may provide to the utmost,
and yet there remains the greater dangers which can not be foreseen or
provided against. The sailor, feeling that he is helpless in the hands
of the elements, becomes superstitious, though often what is called in
him superstition, is belief in influences which future knowledge may
accept as valuable accessions to the realm of mental science. I have
from the lips of Capt. D. B. Edwards, the narrative of two incidents in
the life of his brother, which illustrates this faculty of intuition, if
we may give it that name; and if one were to gather up similar stories
which are told by the officers, volumes might be filled.

Capt. John B. Edwards was in command of the steamship "Monterey," one of
the New York and New Orleans line of steamers. In one of his voyages he
came up with Sandy Hook in a terrible storm. The air was so full of
driving snow that the officers could not see the length of the vessel.
The sea was high and rapidly increasing, and no pilot responded. To
remain was impossible; to go on was almost certain destruction. If the
Captain could make the light-ship he would know his bearings, and be
able to steer into harbor; but in that drift of blinding snow and rush
of waters, in which he had made his approach from the sea, he had been
unable to make observations, and had no assurance that he had not
deviated from his course under the influence of the drift of wind or
current, at least to the variation of a league or more. In his
perplexity he ordered the ship to be stopped, and for a moment reflected
on the difficulties of his position. While thus waiting, with every
sense strained to the utmost, an impression came like a flash, that the
light-ship lay in a certain direction. He immediately ordered the
officers to keep a sharp lookout forward, for he would run ten minutes
in a certain direction to test his impression. The great wheels again
revolved, and the steamer swung obedient to command, and rushed on into
the drift. In six minutes the mate on the bow threw up his hands,
crying: "Hard-a-port! hard-a-port!" and the steamer quickly responding
to her helm, passed the stern of the light-ship, from which the Captain
easily took his bearings and safely steamed into the port of New York.

During the war Capt. Edwards was coast pilot for the Government steamer
"Vanderbilt." During one voyage he came up to the "Hook;" a storm was
coming on and no pilot in sight. The Commodore came to the wheel-house
and asked Capt. Edwards if he thought he could take the ship into port.
Edwards shrank and trembled at the question, for he knew the ship was
drawing as much, if not more water, than was on the bar, and the
responsibility thus thrust upon him was overwhelming. But suddenly he
was forced to speak, replying without hesitation: "Yes, sir." "Go
ahead," was the order of the Commodore. With every faculty intensely
active, his strong and steady hand held the wheel, and the ship went
over the bar without touching, and all was well. His ability and
trustworthiness for the action received the highest recommendation from
the Commodore.

It is sad to learn that this noble man sacrificed his own life in caring
for his mate, who was a victim of yellow fever in the hospital of Rio
Janeiro. From the many remarkable experiences in his own life, Capt. D.
B. Edwards related, I take one which is characteristic of the others. He
is a strong and powerfully built man, with every line indicative of
honest resolution and endurance. He has retire

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