Telepathy and the Subliminal Self

In answer to inquiries as to his authority for this narrative, Mr. Fenton writes the editors of Phantasms of the Living:—

The following case was first published in the Spiritual Magazine in 1861, by Robert H. Collyer, M. D., F. C. S.

Although published in a spiritual publication, Dr. Collyer states that he himself is not a believer in spiritualism, but, on the contrary, is a materialist and has been for forty years.

He writes from Beta House, 8 Alpha Road, St. John’s Wood, N. W.:—

Dr. Collyer then quotes a letter from his mother which contains the following sentences:—

In reply to questions, Dr. Collyer wrote: “My father, who was a scientific man, calculated the difference of longitude between Camden and New Orleans and found that the mental impression was at the exact time of my brother’s death....

“In the published account I omitted to state that my brother Joseph, prior to his death, had retired for the night in his berth; his vessel was moored alongside the levee, at the time of the collision by another steamer coming down the Mississippi. Of course my brother was in his nightgown. He ran on deck on being called and informed that a steamer was in close proximity to his own. These circumstances were communicated to me by my brother William, who was on the spot at the time of the accident.”

In addition to these accounts, Mr. Podmore says:—

“I called upon Dr. Collyer on March 25th, 1884. He told me that he received a full account of the story verbally from his father, mother, and brother in 1857.... He was quite certain of the precise coincidence of time.”

A sister also writes corroborating all the main statements.

Other senses besides that of sight may receive the telepathic impression. In the following cases the sense of hearing was so impressed. The first account is from Commander T. W. Aylesbury, late of the Indian Navy. It is from Mr. Gurney’s collection in Phantasms of the Living.

“The writer when thirteen years of age was capsized in a boat when landing on the Island of Bally, east of Java, and was nearly drowned. On coming to the surface after being repeatedly submerged, the boy called out for his mother. This amused the boat’s crew, who spoke of it afterwards and jeered him a good deal about it. Months after, on arrival in England, the boy went to his home, and while telling his mother of his narrow escape he said, ‘While I was under the water I saw you all sitting in this room; you were working on something white. I saw you all—mother, Emily, Eliza, and Ellen.’ His mother at once said, ‘Why, yes, and I heard you cry out for me, and I sent Emily to look out of the window, for I remarked that something had happened to that poor boy.’ The time, owing to the difference in longitude, corresponded with the time when the voice was heard.”

Commander Aylesbury adds in another letter:

“I saw their features (my mother’s and sisters’), the room and the furniture, and particularly the old-fashioned Venetian blinds. My eldest sister was seated next to my mother.”

The following is an extract from a letter written to Commander Aylesbury by one of his sisters and forwarded to Mr. Gurney, in 1883:—

“I distinctly remember the incident you mention in your letter (the voice calling ‘Mother’); it made such an impression upon my mind I shall never forget it. We were all sitting quietly at work one evening; it was about nine o’clock. I think it must have been late in the summer, as we had left the street door open. We first heard a faint cry of ‘Mother’; we all looked up and said to one another, ‘Did you hear that? some one cried out “Mother.”’ We had scarcely finished speaking when the voice again called ‘Mother’ twice in quick succession, the last cry a frightened, agonizing cry. We all started up and mother said to me, ‘Go to the door and see what is the matter.’ I ran directly into the street and stood some few minutes, but all was silent, and not a person to be seen; it was a lovely evening, not a breath of air. Mother was sadly upset about it. I remember she paced the room and feared something had happened to you. She wrote down the date the next day, and when you came home and told us how nearly you had been drowned, and the time of day, father said it would be about the time nine o’clock would be with us. I know the date and the time corresponded.”

In the next case three of the senses—sight, hearing, and touch were concerned. It is from Mr. Gurney’s collection.

Apparitions are perhaps more frequently seen by a single percipient; there are, however, numerous well authenticated cases where they have been seen by several persons at the same time, sometimes by the whole and sometimes only by a part of the persons present.

Such cases are called collective. Here are two such cases reported to Mr. Gurney by physicians.

First, one from Dr. Wyld, 41 Courtfield Road, S. W.

The next case is from Dr. Wm. M. Buchanan, 12 Rutland Square, Edinburgh.

He writes:—

In answer to inquiries Mrs. Clerke says:—

“(1) The day of the death was the same, for I wrote it down. I think it was the third of August, but I know it was the same.

“(2) The description ‘very tall and pale’ was accurate.

“(3) I had no idea he was ill. He was only a few days ill.

“(4) The woman had never seen him. She had been with me about eighteen months and I considered her truthful. She had no object in telling me.”

Her husband, Colonel Clerke, corroborates as follows:—

“I well remember that on the day on which Mr. John Brersford, my wife’s brother, died in Tobago—after a short illness of which we were not aware—our black nurse declared she saw, at as nearly as possible the time of his death, a gentleman exactly answering to Mr. Brersford’s description, leaning over the back of Mrs. Clerke’s easy-chair in the open verandah. The figure was not seen by any one else.

“Shadwell H. Clerke.”

In this instance, looking upon the dying brother as the agent and the sister as the intended percipient, the question arises, why was she unable to perceive the telepathic influence which presented the likeness of her brother, while the colored nurse, an entire stranger to him, sees and describes him standing by his sister’s chair and apparently anxious that she should recognize him?

In another of Mr. Gurney’s cases, of four persons present in a business office where the phantasm of a fifth well-known person appeared, two persons saw the phantasm and two did not.

Abridged from Mr. Gurney’s account the circumstances were as follows:—

The narrator is Mr. R. Mouat, of 60 Huntingdon St., Barnsbury, N., and the incident occurred in his office on Thursday, September 5th, 1867. The persons concerned were the Rev. Mr. H., who had a desk in the same office and who may be considered the agent; Mr. Mouat, himself, and Mr. R., a gentleman from an office upstairs in the same building, the percipients; while a clerk and a porter who were also present saw nothing.

Mr. Mouat goes into his office at 10:45 o’clock on the morning of September 5th, sees his clerk and the porter in conversation, and the Rev. Mr. H. standing at the corner of a table at the back of the clerk. He is about to speak to Mr. H. about his being there so early (more than an hour before his usual time), when the clerk commenced speaking to him about business and especially a telegram concerning which something was amiss. This conversation lasted several minutes and was decidedly animated. During this scene, Mr. R., from an office upstairs, comes in and listens to the excited conversation. He looks at Mr. H. in a comical way, motioning with his head toward the two disputants, as much as to say “they are having it hot;” but to Mr. R.’s disgust Mr. H. does not respond to the joke. Mr. R. and the porter then leave the room. Mr. Mouat turns to Mr. H., who was all the while standing at the corner of the table, notices that he looks downcast, and is without his neck-tie; he says to him, “Well, what is the matter with you, you look so sour?” Mr. H. makes no reply, but looks fixedly at Mr. Mouat. Having finished some papers he was reading Mr. Mouat noticed Mr. H. still standing at the table. The clerk at that moment handed Mr. Mouat a letter saying, “Here, sir, is a letter from Mr. H.”

No sooner was the name pronounced than Mr. H. disappeared in a second.

Mr. Mouat is dumfounded—so much so that the clerk notices it. It is then discovered that the clerk has not seen Mr. H. at all, and declares that he has not been in the office that morning. The letter from Mr. H. was written on the previous day and informs Mr. Mouat that he is ill, and will not be at the office the next day, and asks to have his letters sent to his house.

The next day, Friday, Mr. H. enters the office at his usual hour, twelve o’clock; and on being asked by Mr. Mouat where he was the previous day at 10:45 o’clock, he replied that at that time he had just finished breakfast—was at home with his wife, and did not leave the house all day.

The following Monday Mr. Mouat meets Mr. R. and asks him if he remembers being in his office the previous Thursday morning. R. replies that he does, perfectly. Does he remember who were present and what was going on? “Yes,” said Mr. R., “you were having an animated confab with your clerk about a telegram. Besides yourself and the clerk there were present the porter and Mr. H.”

On being informed that Mr. H. was at home, fourteen miles’ distant, at that time, Mr. R. became indignant that any one should insinuate that he did not know a man was present when he saw him. He insisted on calling the porter to corroborate him; but on being questioned, the porter, like the clerk, declared that he did not see anything of Mr. H. that morning.

Here, in broad daylight, of four persons present and engaged in business, two saw Mr. H. and addressed him either in words or by signs, while two others with equal opportunities did not see him at all.

The Rev. Mr. H. at home during the time had no particular experience of any kind. All that can be said is, that, it must have been about his usual time for starting for the office; he had sent a letter about his mail which he knew would then be received, and all the general routine and habit of his life would tend to direct his mind to that locality at that particular time. He was ill as he appeared to be to those who saw his appearance at the office, and very likely he was negligently dressed.

Why should two of those present have seen his apparition, and two others have failed to see it? For the simple reason that, as in ordinary thought-transference, or in the “willing game” some are good subjects, or percipients, and others are not. For the same reason that of ten persons making trial of Planchette-writing, the board will move for only two or three out of the whole number—that is, in only a few would the hands act automatically in response to a subliminal self; and for the same reason it may also be true that amongst several persons, in only a few of those present, can the sense of sight or hearing be effected by a phantasm.

In many instances, children, and in some instances, very young children, have been the percipients—children too young to perceive any difference between the phantasm and a real person, and who have accordingly addressed it and spoken of it as they would of a real person. Even animals, especially horses and dogs, have given unmistakable evidence—by crouching, trembling, and fright—of perceiving the same phantasms that have been seen by persons who were present with them. The phantom being, so to speak, in the air, it is perceived by those whose organization is so adjusted as to make it impressionable, and to constitute, to a greater or less degree, what is known as a sensitive.

Doubtless, on close examination, it would be found that persons capable of hypnotization, though they may never have been hypnotized, natural somnambulists, persons accustomed to vivid dreaming, reverie, abstraction, and kindred states, in other words, persons in whom the subliminal self sometimes gives indications of independent action, are most likely to have some marked psychical experience. It may be only once in a lifetime, and this one instance may be the perception of a phantasmal appearance.

In bringing to a close these examples of apparitions, I wish to introduce one which has specially impressed me. It was the experience of a child—it is reported by the percipient herself. The statement is singularly straightforward, and simple; something was done on account of the vision which impressed the circumstance upon others who did not see it, for prompt action founded upon what was seen, saved a life. I give it in the percipient’s own words, written to Mr. Gurney. It is from Mrs. Brettany, 2 Eckington Villas, Ashbourne Grove, Dulwich.

She writes:—

Mrs. Brettany’s parents write:—

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Brettany states further:

Mrs. Brettany’s father writes further:—

Taking, as we must, the main incidents of this narrative as true, we have either a simple case of clairvoyance on the part of Mrs. Brettany as a child, or else, on the other hand, the subliminal self of the unconscious mother hastened to impress the situation upon the sensitive child, and with the definite good result which is recorded.

CHAPTER XII.

On the other hand, it must be stated that there is no intention of covering the whole ground of alleged occult psychic phenomena, but only a portion, even of such as relate to our present life. The subject of the return of spirits is untouched; it is only shown that the domain of alleged spiritualistic manifestations is deeply trenched upon by the action of the subliminal self of living people; what lies beyond that is neither affirmed nor denied; it rests upon ground yet to be cleared up and considered; and any facts open to satisfactory investigation are always welcomed by any of the many persons and societies interested in discovering what is true relating to it.

Confining ourselves within the limits assigned, if the series of alleged facts which has been presented in the preceding chapters be true, then we are in the presence of a momentous reality which, for importance and value, has not been exceeded, if, indeed, it has been approached by any of the discoveries of modern times.

But, it may be said, your alleged facts are not new; they are coeval with history, with mythology, with folk-lore, with religion. Granted that the facts are old, that similar ones have been known from very early times, how have these facts been treated by the leaders of thought in the nineteenth century?

That the earth goes round the sun is an old fact, yet it was not made patent and credible, even to the cultivated, much less to the average mind, till recent times. Evolution has been going on since millions of years before the human race came into existence—it is a very ancient fact, yet it is only within the memory of men still living that it has been found out and accepted. So telepathy has existed ever since the race was young, yet few even now know the facts, observations, and experiments upon which its existence is predicated or comprehend either its theories or its importance. The subliminal self has been active in every age of which we have any record. Yet it has never been recognized as forming a part of each and every individual’s mental outfit, but its wonderful action has either been discredited altogether, or else has been credited to foreign or supernatural agencies.

But telepathy can no longer be classed with fads and fancies; if not already an accepted fact, it has certainly attained to the dignity of a theory supported by both facts and experiments; a theory which has attracted to its study a large company of competent men in every civilized country.

A theory, no matter in what department of investigation it may be found, whether relating to matter or mind, is strong in proportion to the number of facts which it will bring into line, harmonize and reduce to system. It is that which makes the Nebular Theory of the formation of the planetary system so wonderfully strong; it harmonizes and reduces to system so many known but otherwise unrelated and unsystematized facts; and it is easier to find excuses or form minor theories to account for isolated and apparently erratic facts, like the retrograde motions of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, than to give up a theory, at once so grand in itself and at the same time harmonizing so many important astronomical phenomena. The same is true of the undulatory theory of light, and again of the theory of evolution, which forty years ago was looked upon as a flimsy hypothesis, but which is now universally accepted as an established truth. Some of the facts are still unclassified and unexplained, yet it so harmonizes in general the facts of the visible world, that instead of a mass of disjointed and heterogeneous objects and phenomena, such as men beheld in nature only a hundred years ago, the arbitrary work of a blind chance or a capricious Creator, we now behold a beautiful and orderly sequence, progression, and unfolding of the natural world according to laws which command our admiration and stimulate our reverence.

Apart from recent studies, exactly the same condition of chaos and confusion exists regarding psychical phenomena as existed concerning the facts in the physical world only a hundred years ago. Nor is it likening great things to small when we compare the nebular hypothesis, or the theory of evolution, conceptions which have educated an age and vastly enlarged the boundary of human thought, to the theory of telepathy and the fact and power of the subliminal self. For if it was important that men should know the laws governing inanimate matter, to comprehend the orbits and motions of the planets; if it developed the understanding to contemplate the grandeur of their movements, the vast spaces which they traverse, and the wonderful speed with which they accomplish their various journeys—if such knowledge has enlarged the capacity of men’s minds, given them truer notions of the magnitude of the universe, and grander conceptions of nature and the infinite power and intelligence which pervades and is exhibited in it, is it not equally important and equally improving and practical to study the subtler forces which pervade living organisms, the still finer laws and adjustments which govern the action of mind?

It has been contended by a large and intelligent class of writers, and those who most pride themselves on scientific methods and the infallibility of scientific inductions, that mind is only the product of organization and ceases to have any activity or even existence when the organs through which it usually manifests itself have perished. The general consensus of mankind is a sharp protest against this conclusion—but the experimental proofs have, to many, seemed in favor of this scientific denial;—the healthy brain in general exhibits a healthy mental activity, the diseased or imperfect brain shows impaired mental action, and the disorganized brain simply exhibits no mental activity nor any evidence whatever of the existence of mind. Nevertheless, it is a lame argument; it is simply an attempt to prove a negative.

The healthy rose emits an agreeable odor which our senses appreciate. You may destroy the rose—it does not prove that the fragrance which it emitted does not still exist even though our senses fail to appreciate it.

But experiment and scientific methods have also somewhat to say upon this subject. And first, in August, 1874, twenty-two years ago, at the moment when the materialistic school was at the height of its influence, both the scientific and religious world were brought to a momentary standstill—like a ship under full headway suddenly struck by a tidal wave—when one of the most eminent scientific men of his time, or of any time, standing in his place as president of the foremost scientific association in the world, spoke as follows: “Abandoning all disguise, the confession which I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of experimental evidence and discover in matter, which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form of life.”[2]

On that day the tap-root of materialism was wounded, and materialism itself has been an invalid of increasing languor and desuetude ever since. On the other hand, supernaturalism in every form was left in little better plight.

To thinking men of all classes this bold declaration opened up the grand thought, not new, but newly formulated and endorsed, that as the seed contained all the possibilities of the future plant—the ovum all the possibilities of the future animal, so matter, which had been thought so lightly of, contained within itself the germ, potency, and promise of nature in all her subsequent developments—of the vast universe of suns and systems, planets and satellites, and of every form of life, sensation, and intelligence which in due process of evolution has appeared upon their surfaces. It pointed the way to the thought of an infinite causal energy and intelligence pervading matter and working through nature in all its various grades of life from the first organized cell up to the grandest man. It gave a new meaning to mind in man, as being an individualized portion of that divine potency which ever existed in matter, and which acting through constantly improving and developing organisms, amidst constantly improving environments, at length appeared a differentiated, individualized, seeing, reasoning, knowing, loving spirit.

The mind, then, is of importance. It is no transient visitor which may have made its appearance by chance—a concatenation of coincidences, fortunate or unfortunate, but it is the intelligent tenant and master of a singularly beautiful and complicated house, a house which has been millions upon millions of years in the building, and yet which will be lightly laid aside when it ceases to accommodate and fulfil the needs of its tenant.

Who and what, then, is this lordly tenant whose germ was coeval with matter, whose birth was in the first living cell which appeared upon the planet, whose apprenticeship has been served through every grade of existence from the humble polyp upwards, whose education has been carried on through the brain and organs of every grade of animal life with its countless expedients for existence and enjoyment, until now, as lord of its domain, it looks back upon its long course of development and education, looks about upon its environments and wonders at itself, at what it sees, and at what it prophesies. Truly what is this tenant, what are its powers, and why is it here at all?

These are the questions which it has been the business of the strongest and wisest to discuss, from the time men began to think and record their thoughts until the present time; but how various and unsatisfactory have been the conclusions. The mental philosophers, psychologists, and encyclopedists simply present a chaos of conflicting definitions, principles, and premises, upon none of which are they in full agreement amongst themselves; they are not even agreed regarding the nature of mind—whether it is material or immaterial—how it should be studied, how it is related to the body, indeed whether it is an entity at all, or simply “a series of feelings or possibilities of them”; whether it possesses innate ideas or is simply an accretion of experiences. In short, the stock of generally received facts relating to mind has always remained exceedingly small. Psychologists have busied themselves chiefly about its usual and obvious actions, and when in full relation to the body, ignoring all other mental action or arbitrarily excluding it as abnormal and not to be taken into account in the study of normal mind; so with only half the subject under consideration true results could hardly be attained.

Since the organization of the Society for Psychical Research, in 1882, new fields of investigation have been undertaken and the unusual phenomena connected with the operations of mind have been systematically studied. A very hasty and imperfect sketch of this study and of the results obtained has been given in the preceding chapters, but for the use here made of these studies in connection with his own observations the writer alone is responsible. In these studies the field of investigation has been greatly extended beyond that examined by the old philosophers and physiologists. Beyond the usual activities in which we constantly see the mind engaged—observation of surroundings made by the senses, memory of them, reasoning about them, and putting them in new combinations in science, literature, or art—new activities have been observed, activities lying entirely outside the old lines, in new and hitherto unexplored fields.

It has been demonstrated by experiment after experiment carefully made by competent persons that sensations, ideas, information, and mental pictures can be transferred from one mind to another without the aid of speech, sight, hearing, touch, or any of the ordinary methods of communicating such information or impressions. That is, Telepathy is a fact, and mind communicates with mind through channels other than the ordinary use of the senses.

It has been demonstrated that in the hypnotic condition, in ordinary somnambulism, in the dreams and vision of ordinary sleep, in reverie, and in various other subjective conditions the mind may perceive scenes and events at the moment transpiring at such a distance away or under such physical conditions as to render it impossible that knowledge of these scenes and events could be obtained by means of the senses acting in their usual manner. That is, mind under some circumstances sees without the use of the physical organ of sight.

Again, it has been demonstrated that some persons can voluntarily project the mind—some mind—some centre of intelligence or independent mental activity, clothed in a recognizable form, a distance of one, a hundred, or a thousand miles, and that it can there make itself known and recognized, perform acts, and even carry on a conversation with the person to whom it was sent. That is, mind can act at a distance from, and independent of, the physical body and the organs through which it usually manifests itself.

These propositions present an aspect of mind which the authorities in the old fields of psychology have failed to observe or to recognize; or if they have at times caught a glimpse of it they have rather chosen to close their eyes and deny altogether the phenomena which these propositions imply, because they found it was impossible to classify them in their system. It has been to a degree a repetition of the folly exhibited by Galileo’s contemporaries and critics, who refused to look through his telescope lest their favorite theories of the universe should be damaged. Nevertheless, this newly studied aspect exists, and is adding greatly to our knowledge of the nature and action of mind.

Still another class of unusual mental phenomena found in this outlying field of psychology is that known under the general name of automatism; and by this is meant something more than the “unconscious cerebration” and “unconscious muscular action” of the physiologists, and something quite different from that.

There is, first, the class of motor automatisms, including Planchette-writing and other methods of automatic writing, drawing, painting, and kindred performances, also poetical or metrical improvisations, and trance, and so-called inspirational speaking:—Second, there are the sensory automatisms; or such as are manifested by impressions made upon the senses and which are reckoned as hallucinations. The impression of hearing a voice, of feeling a touch, or seeing a vision may be reckoned as examples of this kind of automatism.

No other division of this newly cultivated field presents so many unusual and debatable phenomena. Not only do those modern mysteries, Planchette-writing, trance-speaking, and mediumistic utterances come easily under this class of mental phenomena, but all that vast array of alleged supernatural phenomena which pervades the literature of every nation since the time when men first began to record their experiences. The oracles of the Greeks and Romans, the dæmon of Socrates, the voices of Joan of Arc, and the widespread custom of divination by means of crystal-gazing in some of its many forms have already been referred to and their relation to automatism or the action of the subliminal self has been noted.

There is still one important class of persons who have wielded an enormous influence upon mankind, an influence in the main wholesome, elevating, and developing, whose relation to automatism demands a passing consideration. I refer to the religious chiefs of the world.

As prominent examples of those founders of religions we will briefly notice Moses, Zoroaster, Mahomet, and Swedenborg. Each either professed himself to be, or his followers have credited him with being, the inspired mouthpiece of the Deity. There can be no doubt in the minds of candid students that each one of these religious leaders was perfectly honest, both as regards his conception of the character and importance of his doctrines and also regarding the method by which he professed to receive them. Each believed that what he taught was ultimate and infallible truth, and was received directly from the Deity. It is evident, however, that from whatever source they were derived the doctrines could not all be ultimate truth, since they were not in harmony amongst themselves; but the authors of them all present their claim to inspiration, and whose claim to accept and whose to reject it is difficult to decide. But accepting the theory that each promulgated the doctrines, theological, cosmological, and ethical, that came to him automatically through the superior perception of the subliminal self, all the phenomena fall into line with the well ascertained action of that subliminal self.

The truth which Moses saw was such as was adapted to his age and the people with whom he had to deal. So there came to his perception not only the sublime laws received at Sinai, but also the particulars regarding the tabernacle and its furnishing—the rings and the curtains, the dishes and spoons and bowls and covers, the rams’ skins dyed red, the badgers’ skins, and the staves of shittim wood. The same also is true regarding the teachings of Zoroaster.

The splendid results which followed the promulgation of Mahomet’s revelation to a few insignificant Arab tribes are proof of its vital germ of truth and of its adaptability to the soil into which it fell. It developed into a civilization from which, at a later period, a benighted and debased Christianity relighted its torch.

Also the teachings of Swedenborg, notwithstanding the apparent egotism of the man and the tiresome verbiage of many of his communications, are elevating and refining in character and useful to those who are attracted to them. That in either case an infinite Deity spoke the commonplace which is attributed to Him in these communications is incredible, but to suppose it all, both the grand and the trivial, the work of the subconscious self of the respective authors is in accordance with what we know of automatism and of the wonderful work of the subliminal self when left free to exercise its highest activities.

Let us examine with some care the history of two examples of unusual or supranormal mental action, the first found in one of the earliest of human records, and reckoned as fully inspired; the other equally unusual occurring within the last half century and making no claim to any supernatural assistance.

The first example is presented in the first chapter of Genesis, and is a clear, connected, and in the main correct, though by no means complete, account of the changing conditions of the earth in the earliest geological periods, and of the appearance in their proper order of the different grades of life upon its surface. That such a written account should have existed three thousand years before any scientifically constructed schedule even of the order in which plants and animals succeeded each other, much less of the manner in which the earth was prepared for their reception and nurture, is a most remarkable circumstance, regarded either from a literary or a scientific standpoint. It has been criticised for its lack of scientific exactness, and the supposed error of representing light as created before the sun, ignoring the early existence of aquatic life, and similar points. But let us take our stand with the grand old seer, whoever he may have been, whom we know as Moses, who gave to the world this graphic account of the order of creation so many centuries before science had thrown its light upon the condition of the earth in those far-off ages, and let us endeavor to see what his quickened vision enabled him to behold.

The panorama opens and discloses in an hour the grand progressive action of millions upon millions of years.

The first picture represents the created earth covered with water and enveloped in a thick mantle of steaming mist, causing a condition of absolute and impenetrable darkness upon its surface. In the language of the seer, “The earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” For ages the unbroken ocean which covered the earth was heated by internal fires; the rising vapor as it met the cooler atmosphere above was condensed and fell in one constant downpour of rain. Unceasing, steaming mist, vapor, and rain, wholly impenetrable to light: such were the conditions.

At length, as the cooling process went on, the density of the mists was diminished;—the wonderful fiat went forth, “Let light be”—and light was. But still the mantle hung close upon the unbroken ocean.

The second picture appears. Not only was there light but a firmament—an arch with a clear space underneath it; and it divided the waters which were above it from the waters which were beneath it.

Picture the third. The waters were gathered together and the continents appeared; and the land was covered with verdure—plants and trees, each bearing seed after its kind. Of the inhabitants of the sea the seer had taken no account. It was simply a picture that he saw—a natural, phenomenal representation.

Picture the fourth. The mists and clouds are altogether dispelled. The clear sky appears. The sun comes forth to rule the day—the moon to rule the night. The stars also appear.

Picture the fifth. The lower orders of animals are in full possession of the earth and sea—fish, fowl, and sea-monsters.

Picture the sixth. The higher orders of creation, mammals and man.

Such was the phenomenal aspect of the various epochs of creation roughly outlined, strong, distinct, and in the main true. Not even the scientific critic with his present knowledge could combine more strength and truth, with so few strokes of the brush.

Relieved of the burden of inspiration and the necessity for presenting absolute and unchangeable truth, and presenting the seer as simply telling what he saw, the picture is wonderful, and the telling is most graphic. It needed no deity nor angel to tell it—it was there—and the subliminal self of the seer whose special faculty it was to see, perceived the scene in all its grandeur. He also was the one best fitted to perceive the laws which should make his people great, and describe the forms and ceremonies which should captivate their senses and lead them on to higher intellectual, moral, and ethical development.

Next take the other example. Fifty years ago a young man, not yet twenty years of age, uneducated, a grocer’s boy and shoemaker’s apprentice, was hypnotized; and it was found that he had a most remarkable mental or psychical constitution. He had most unusual experiences, and presented unusual psychical phenomena which need not be recounted here.

At length it was impressed upon him as it might have been upon Socrates or Joan of Arc, or Swedenborg or Mahomet, that he had a mission and had a message to give to the world. He came from the rural town where he had spent his boyhood to the city of New York and hired a room on a prominent thoroughfare. He then, in his abnormal condition, proceeded to choose those who should be specially associated with him in his work—men of character and ability whom he did not even know in his normal state. First: Three witnesses were chosen who should be fully cognizant of everything relating to the method by which the message or book was produced. Of these one was a clergyman, one a physician, and one an intelligent layman. Second: A scribe qualified to write out the messages as he dictated them, to edit and publish them. Third: A physician to put him into the hypnotic, or as it was then called, the magnetic condition, in which he was to dictate his messages.

The first lecture was given November 28th, 1845, and the last June 21st, 1847. During this time 157 lectures were given, varying in length from forty minutes to four hours, and they were all carefully written out by the scribe. To 140 of these manuscripts were attached 267 names of persons who listened to them and subscribed their names as witnesses at the end of each lecture—to some a single signature was affixed, to some, many. Any person really desirous of knowing the purport of these lectures and the manner of their delivery could be admitted by making application beforehand.

At each sitting the speaker was first put into the deep hypnotic trance in which he was rigid and unconscious; but his sub-conscious or second self was active and lucid, and associated with the principles and knowledge which he needed and which he was to communicate. From this condition he came back to the somnambulic state in which he dictated that which he had acquired in the deep trance, or what he called the “superior condition”; and the transition from one of these states to the other took place many times during each lecture. Such were the conditions under which Andrew Jackson Davis produced the Principles of Nature—Her Divine Revelation—a book of nearly 800 pages, divided into three parts:—First, a setting forth of first principles, which served as a philosophical explanation or key to the main work. Second, a cosmogony or description of the method by which the universe came to its present state of development, and third, a statement of the ethical principles upon which society should be based and the practical working of these principles. It assumes to be thoroughly scientific and philosophical. It has literary faults, and there is plenty of opportunity for cavil and scientific fault-finding; but these remarkable facts remain.

A poor boy, thoroughly well known and vouched for by his neighbors for his strict integrity, having had only five months of ordinary district school instruction for his education, having never read a scientific or philosophical book, and not a dozen all told of every kind, having never associated with people of education except in the most casual way, yet in the manner just described he dictated a book containing the outlines of a thoroughly sound and reasonable system of philosophy, theology, and ethics, and a complete system of cosmogony representing the most advanced views in geology, which was then in its infancy—astronomy, chemistry, and other departments of physical science, criticising current scientific opinions, and in points where he differed from these opinions giving full and cogent reason for that difference.

On March 16th, 17th, and 20th, 1846, he announced the fact of the motion of our sun and solar system about a still greater centre, in harmony with the Nebular Hypothesis by which he explained the formation of the whole vast system. He also announced the existence of an eighth and ninth planet, and the apparently abnormal revolution of the satellites of Uranus. Neptune, the eighth planet, had not then been discovered and was not found until six months later. On the 29th of April he announced the discovery and application of diamagnetism by Faraday, concerning which none of his associates had any knowledge, and which I believe had not then been noticed in this country. He gave a distinct and vivid description of the formation of the different bodies constituting the solar system, of the introduction of life upon our planet, and of its evolution from grade to grade from the lowest to the highest—all in minute detail, in general accord with established scientific deduction and in scientific and technical language. In several particulars he differed from the received opinions, and gave his reasons for so doing. No claim was made to inspiration nor to the presentation of absolute or infallible truth, but when hypnotized and in what he termed the “superior condition,” his perceptive faculties were vastly increased, and that which he then perceived he made known. He simply gave the truth as he saw it, and he commended it to the judgment and reason of mankind for reception or rejection. In other words, the subliminal self was brought into action by hypnotism, and then by means of its greatly increased perceptive powers he gathered knowledge from various sources quite inaccessible to him in his ordinary state, and seemingly inaccessible also to others.

Concerning the truth or falsity of the revelations beyond what was already known or has since been confirmed by science, I do not assume to pronounce judgment; but that this also, as well as the first chapter of Genesis, from either a literary or scientific standpoint, is one of the most remarkable productions of this or of any age, will not be denied by any competent and candid examiner; while the remarkable character of the book will be still better appreciated when the status of the theory of evolution and of the science of geology fifty years ago is taken into the account.

Here are presented two prominent examples of supranormal mental activity—one in the early ages of man’s development, when everything was supernatural, the immediate work of a god—the other in man’s later development when natural law is found intervening between phenomena and their cause, and when it is found possible for men to comprehend the fact that truth, extraordinary and even that which had previously been unknown or was beyond the reach of the senses in their ordinary state, may nevertheless be discovered or revealed by other means than direct communications from Deity.

It is seen, then, how various and how wonderfully important are the mental phenomena grouped under the general designation of automatism.

Many examples of this and other classes of unusual mental action have been given in previous chapters, not as cumulative evidence of their verity—that would require volumes, but simply to illustrate the subject and give some degree of definiteness to our reasoning regarding them. Not even all the classes of facts properly belonging to our subject have here been represented; but taking them as they have been enumerated and hastily described, they constitute a body of well observed and well authenticated facts and phenomena of undeniable interest, and if received as true their importance is certainly to be compared with the greatest discoveries of modern science. They are, however, the very facts which the science and philosophy of to-day hesitates to accept. The only exception to this statement is found in the treatment lately accorded to hypnotism, which after a hundred years of hesitation, rejection and even ridicule, has at length been definitely received as regards its main facts. It is true, however, that in numerous other instances the evidence regarding unusual mental states and phenomena is equally weighty and unimpeachable; but because these phenomena are unusual, marvelous or seemingly miraculous, belonging to no recognized class of mental action, therefore it is argued, they cannot be genuine; there must be some flaw in the evidence and they cannot be accepted.

It is tedious going over the arguments which reduce this mode of reasoning to an absurdity. The same reasoning has been applied to every important discovery in physical science for the past three hundred years; and if it were carried out to its logical conclusions no substantial advance in human knowledge could ever take place, since every discovery or observation of phenomena outside of known laws must on that ground be rejected. And the history of scientific discoveries shows that this has actually been the case. The announcement of the discovery of the movements of the planets around the sun, of the attraction of gravitation, of the identity of lightning with electricity, of the relation and derivation of species in the world of living forms—of the discovery of living toads in geological strata of untold antiquity, and scores of other now accepted facts, were accounted visionary and were received with scoffs and jeers by the accredited leaders of science, because they were outside of any known natural laws; and it was only after the study and contemplation of the new discoveries had educated and enlarged the minds of a new generation of men to a better understanding of the extent and magnitude of nature and her laws that the scoffs subsided and the new facts quietly took their places as accredited science.

The same process is going on regarding mental phenomena to-day. It may require a generation for men unused to think in this direction to become familiarized with the thought that telepathy, clairvoyance, and the subliminal self, with its augmented powers, are facts in nature; but thousands of intelligent people, and many accustomed to examine facts critically and according to approved methods, are already so interpreting nature, and their number is constantly increasing.

Such are some of the facts discovered by the pioneers in this outlying field of psychology. In attempting to explain or account for them it is useless to take refuge in the hazy definitions of the old psychologists, or to imagine that the secret is bound up in the vital processes which occupy the biologist and physiologist, interesting and important as those studies are; even the neurologist can help us comparatively little—he can tell us all about diseases of the nervous system and how they manifest themselves, and his labor has earned for him the gratitude of mankind; but he cannot tell us how thinking is accomplished, nor what thought is; he cannot tell the cause of so normal and easily observed a phenomenon as ordinary sleep, much less of the new faculties which are developed in somnambulism. In all these related departments of science, in considering mental phenomena it is found convenient to deny the existence of that for which they cannot account. Nature’s processes, however, are simple when once we comprehend them, so much so that we wonder at their simplicity, and wonder that we ever could have failed to understand them; and we learn to distrust explanations which are involved and complicated, knowing that error often lies that way. And of this kind for the most part, the attempted explanations of mental processes in terms of physiology have proved to be; they are complicated, inapplicable, and unsatisfactory; and they give no aid in the generalizations which have hitherto been so much needed.

The phenomena in this new field at first sight seem heterogeneous, without system or any common bond; they seem each to demand a separate origin and field. But let the idea of the subliminal self, intelligent, and endowed with its higher perceptive faculties, be presented, and lo! all these refractory phenomena fall into place in one harmonious system. The subliminal self is the active and efficient agent in telepathy—it is that which sees and hears and acts far away from the body, and reports the knowledge which it gains to the ordinary senses, sometimes by motor and sometimes by sensory automatism—by automatic writing, speaking, audition, the vision, the phantasm. It acts sometimes while the primary self is fully conscious—better and most frequently in reverie, in dreams, in somnambulism, but best of all when the ordinary self is altogether subjective and the body silent, inactive, and insensible, as in that strange condition which accompanies the higher phases of trance and lucidity, into which few enter, either spontaneously or by the aid of hypnotism. Then still retaining its attenuated vital connection, it goes forth and sees with extended vision and gathers truth from a thousand various and hidden sources.

Will it act less freely, less intelligently, with less consciousness and individuality when that attenuated vital connection is severed, and the body lies—untenanted?

THE END.