Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science Part 2

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 pa.s.sed the threshold of the domain of life. A recent scientific a.s.sociation 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 coa.r.s.e 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 acc.u.mulated 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 a.n.a.lysis. 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 a.n.a.lysis. That body perhaps weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. In a large gla.s.s 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.similated; 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.l protecting and the jaw which ground The sh.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ILl.u.s.tRATIONS 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 pa.s.s 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 hoa.r.s.e 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, pa.s.sion, 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.