Without going too deeply ito certain vexed questions
based upon what the orthodox men of science please to term the "hypothetical"
conclusions of the Psychological School, whenever we meet with discoveries
made by the former, coinciding perfectly with the teachings of the later,
we think ourselves entitled to make them known to the world of skeptics.
For instance, this psychological, or spiritual, school holds that "every
being and naturally-formed object is in its beginning, a spiritual or
monadial entity" which, having its origin in the spiritual or monadial
plane of existence, must necessarily have as many relations with the latter
as it has with the material or sensuous plane in which it physically develops
itself. That "each, according to the species, evolves from its monadial
centre an essential aura, which has positive and negative magnetoid relations
with the essential aura of every other, and that, mesmeric attention
and repulsion exhibiting a strong analogy with magnetic attraction
and repulsion, this analogous attraction and repulsion obtains not only
between individuals of the same, but of different species, not only in
animate but in inanimate nature." (Clairvoyance, Hygienic and
Medical, by Jacob Dixon, L.S.A.L.)
Thus, if we give our attention but to the electric and magnetic
fluids in men and animals, and the existing mysterious but undoubted interrelation
between those two, as well as between both of them and plants and minerals,
we will have an inexhaustible field of research, which may lead us to
understand more easily the production of certain phenomena. The modification
of the peripheral extremities of nerves by which electricity is generated
and discharged in certain general of fishes, is of the most wonderful
character, and yet, to this very day its nature remains a mystery to exact
science. For when it has told us that the electric organs of the fish
generate the electricity which is rendered active by nervous influence,
it has given us an explanation as hypothetical as that of the psychologists
whose theories it rejects in toto. The horse has nerves and muscles
as well as a fish, and even more so; the existence of animal electricity
is a well-established fact, and the presence of muscular currents has
been found in the undivided as well as in the divided muscles of all the
animals, and even in those of man. And yet by the simple lashing of its
feeble tail a small electrical fish prostrates a strong horse! Whence
this electric power, and what is the ultimate nature and essence of the
electric fluid? Whether as a cause or effect, a primary agent or a correlation,
the reason for each of its manifestations is yet hypothetical. How much,
or how little has it to do with vital power? Such are the ever-recurring
and always unanswerable queries. One thing we know, though, and that is,
that the phenomena of electricity as well as those of heat and phosphorescence,
within the animal body, depend on chemical actions; and that these take
place in the system just as they would in a chemist's laboratory; ever
modified by and subjected to this same mysterious Proteus - the Vital
Principle of which science can tell us nothing.
The quarrel between Galvani and Volta is well known. One
was backed by no less an authority than Alexander Humboldt, the other
by the subsequent discoveries of Matteucci, Dubois Reymond, Brown-Sequard,
and others. By their combined efforts, it was positively established that
a production of electricity was constantly going on in all the tissues
of the living animal economy; that each elementary bundle of fibrils in
a muscle was like a couple in a galvanic battery; and that the longitudinal
surface of a muscle acts like the positive pole of a pile, or galvanic
battery, while the transverse surface acts like the negative pole. The
latter was discovered by one of the greatest physiologists of our century
- Dubois Reynolds: who, nevertheless, was the greatest opponent of Baron
Reichenback, the discoverer of the Od Force, and ever showed
himself the most fierce and irreconcilable enemy of transcendental speculation,
or what is best known as the study of the occult, i.e., the yet
undiscovered forces in nature.
Every newly-discovered power, each hitherto unknown correlation
of that great and unknown Force of the Primal Cause of all, which is no
less hypothetical to skeptical science than to the common credulous mortals,
was, previous to its discovery, an occult power of nature. Once
on the track of a new phenomenon science gives an exposition of the facts
- first independent of any hypothesis as to the causes of this manifestation;
then - finding their account incomplete and unsatisfactory to the public,
its votaries begin to invent generalizations, to present hypotheses based
upon a certain knowledge of principles alleged to be at work by reasserting
the laws of their mutual connection and dependence. They have not
explained the phenomenon; they have but suggested how it might be
produced, and offered more or less valid reasons to show how it could
not be produced, and yet a hypothesis from their opponents' camp, that
of the Transcendentalists, the Spiritualists and Psychologists, is generally
laughed down by them before almost these latter have opened their mouths.
We will notice a few of the newly-discovered electro-magnetic phenomena
which are still awaiting an explanation.
In the systems of certain people the accumulation and secretion
of electricity, reach under certain conditions, to a very high degree.
This phenomenon is especially observed in cold and dry climates, like
Canada, for instance; as well as in hot, but at the same time, dry countries.
Thus - on the authority of that well-known medical journal, the Lancet - one can frequently meet with people who have but to approach their index
fingers to a gas-beak from which a stream of gas is issuing, to light
the gas as if a burning match had been applied to it. The noted American
physiologist, Dr. J. H. Hammond, possesses this abnormal faculty upon
which he discourses at length in his scientific articles. The African
explorer and traveller Mitchison informs us of a still more marvelous
fact. While in the western part of Central Africa, he happened at various
times in a fit of passion and exasperation at the natives, to deal with
his whip a heavy blow to a negro. To his intense astonishment the blow
brought out a shower of sparks from the body of the victim; the traveller's
amazement being intensified by his remarking that the phenomenon provoked
no comments, nor seemed to excite any surprise among the other native
who witnessed the fact. They appeared to look upon it as something quite
usual and in the ordinary run of things. It was by a series of experiments
that the ascertained at last, that under certain atmospheric conditions
and especially during the slightest mental excitement it was possible
to extract from the ebony-black body of nearly every negro of these regions
a mass of electric sparks; in order to achieve the phenomenon it sufficed
to gently stroke his skin, or even touch it with the hand. When the negroes
remained calm and quiet no sparks could be obtained from their bodies.
In the American Journal of Science, Professor Loomis
shows that "persons, especially children, wearing dry slippers with
thin soles, and a silk or woolen dress, in a warm room heated to at least
70°, and covered with a thick velvet carpet, often become so electrically
excited by skipping across the room with a shuffling motion, and rubbing
the shoes across the carpet, that sparks are produced on their coming
in contact with other bodies, and on their presenting a finger to a gas-burner,
the gas may be ignited. Sulphuric ether has been thus inflamed, and in
dry, cold weather sparks, half an inch in length, have been given forth
by young ladies who had been dancing, and pulverized resin has been thus
inflamed." So much for electricity generated by human beings. But
this force is ever at work throughout the all nature; and we are told
by Livingstone in his Travels in South Africa, that the hot wind
which blows during the dry seasons over the desert from north to south
"is in such an electric state that a bunch of ostrich feathers, held
a few seconds against it, becomes as strongly charged as if attached to
a powerful electric machine, and clasps the advancing hand with a sharp
crackling sound... By a little friction the fur of the mantles worn by
the natives gives out a luminous appearance. It is produced even by the
motion communicated in riding; and a rubbing with the hand causes sparks
and distinct crepitations to be emitted."
From some facts elicited by M. J. Jones, of Peckham, we
find them analogous to the experiments of Dr. Reichenbach. We observe
that "a magnetoid relation subsists between subjects of a nervous
temperament and shells - the outgrowth of living entities, and which,
of course, determined the dynamical qualities of their natural coverings."
The experimenter verified the results upon four different sensitive subjects.
He says that he "was first drawn to the enquiry by the fact of a
lady looking at a collection of shells, complaining of pain while holding
one of them. His method of experimenting was simply to place a shell in
the subject's hand; the purpura chocolatum, in about four minutes,
produced contraction of the fingers, and painful rigidity of the arm,
which effects were removed by quick passes, without contact, from the
shoulders off at the fingers."
Again, he experimented with about thirty shells, of which
he tried twelve, on May 9, 1853; one of these causing acute pain in the
arm and head followed by insensibility.
He then removed the patient to the sofa, and the shells
to a sideboard. "In a short time," says Mr. Dixon, from whose
book we quote the experiment, "to his astonishment the patient, while
still insensible, gradually raised her clasped hands, turning them towards
the shells on the sideboard, stretching the arms out at full length, and
pointing to them. He put down her hands; she raised them again, her head
and body gradually following. He had her removed to another room, separated
from that containing the shells by a nine-inch wall, a passage, and a
lath and plaster wall; the phenomenon, strange to say, was repeated. He
then had the shells removed into a back room, and subsequently into other
places, one of which was out of the house. At each removal the position
of the hands altered to each new position of the shells. The patient continued
insensible..for four days. On the third of these days the arm of the hand
that had held the shells was swollen, spotted, and dark-coloured. On the
morning of the fourth day, these appearances has gone, and a yellow tinge
only remained on the hand. The effluence which had acted most potently,
in this experiment, proceeded from the cinder murex and the chama
macrophylla, which was most wonderful; the others of the twelve were
the purpurata cookia, cerethinum orth., pyrula ficordis, sea urchin (Australia), voluta castena, voluta musica, purpura chocolatum, purpura hypocas tanum, melanatria
fluminea and monodonta declives."
In a volume entitled "The Natural and the Supernatural"
M. Jones reports having tested the magnetoid action of various stones
and wood with analogous results; but, as we have not seen the work we
can say nothing of the experiment. In the next number we will endeavour
to give some more facts and the proceed to compare the "hypotheses"
of both the exact and psychological sciences as to the cause of this inter-action
between man and nature, the Microcosm and the Macrocosm.
Theosophist, February, 1881
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