At the point at which we are now arrived, the attitude assumed by the materialists toward psychical phenomena being perfectly defined, we may assert with safety that were this key lying loose on the threshold of the “chasm” not one of our Tyndalls would stoop to pick it up.

How timid would appear to some kabalists these tentative efforts to solve the GREAT MYSTERY of the universal ether! Although so far in advance of anything propounded by contemporary philosophers, what the intelligent explorers of the Unseen Universe speculate upon, was to the masters of hermetic philosophy familiar science. To them ether was not merely a bridge connecting the seen and unseen sides of the universe, but across its span their daring feet followed the road that led through the mysterious gates which modern speculators either will not or cannot unlock.

The deeper the research of the modern explorer, the more often he comes face to face with the discoveries of the ancients. Does Elie de Beaumont, the great French geologist, venture a hint upon the terrestrial circulation, in relation to some elements in the earth’s crust, he finds himself anticipated by the old philosophers. Do we demand of distinguished technologists, what are the most recent discoveries in regard to the origin of the metalliferous deposits? We hear one of them, Professor Sterry Hunt, in showing us how water is a universal solvent, enunciating the doctrine held and taught by the old Thales, more than two dozen centuries ago, that water was the principle of all things. We listen to the same professor, with de Beaumont as authority, expounding the terrestrial circulation, and the chemical and physical phenomena of the material world. While we read with pleasure that he is “not prepared to concede that we have in chemical and physical processes the whole secret of organic life,” we note with a still greater delight the following honest confession on his part: “Still we are, in many respects, approximating the phenomena of the organic world to those of the mineral kingdom; and we at the same time learn that these so far interest and depend upon each other that we begin to see a certain truth underlying the notion of those old philosophers, who extended to the mineral world the notion of a vital force, which led them to speak of the earth as a great living organism, and to look upon the various changes of its air, its waters, and its rocky depths, as processes belonging to the life of our planet.”

Everything in this world must have a beginning. Things have latterly gone so far with scientists in the matter of prejudice, that it is quite a wonder that even so much as this should be conceded to ancient philosophy. The poor, honest primordial elements have long been exiled, and our ambitious men of science run races to determine who shall add one more to the fledgling brood of the sixty-three or more elementary substances. Meanwhile there rages a war in modern chemistry about terms. We are denied the right to call these substances “chemical elements,” for they are not “primordial principles or self-existing essences out of which the universe was fashioned.”[317] Such ideas associated with the word element were good enough for the “old Greek philosophy,” but modern science rejects them; for, as Professor Cooke says, “they are unfortunate terms,” and experimental science will have “nothing to do with any kind of essences except those which it can see, smell, or taste.” It must have those that can be put in the eye, the nose, or the mouth! It leaves others to the metaphysicians.

Therefore, when Van Helmont tells us that, “though a homogeneal part of elementary earth may be artfully (artificially) converted into water,” though he still denies “that the same can be done by nature alone; for no natural agent is able to transmute one element into another,” offering as a reason that the elements always remain the same, we must believe him, if not quite an ignoramus, at least an unprogressed disciple of the mouldy “old Greek philosophy.” Living and dying in blissful ignorance of the future sixty-three substances, what could either he or his old master, Paracelsus, achieve? Nothing, of course, but metaphysical and crazy speculations, clothed in a meaningless jargon common to all mediæval and ancient alchemists. Nevertheless, in comparing notes, we find in the latest of all works upon modern chemistry, the following: “The study of chemistry has revealed a remarkable class of substances, from no one of which a second substance has ever been produced by any chemical process which weighs less than the original substance ... by no chemical process whatever can we obtain from iron a substance weighing less than the metal used in its production. In a word, we can extract from iron nothing but iron.”[318] Moreover, it appears, according to Professor Cooke, that “seventy-five years ago men did not know there was any difference” between elementary and compound substances, for in old times alchemists had never conceived “that weight is the measure of material, and that, as thus measured, no material is ever lost; but, on the contrary, they imagined that in such experiments[319] as these the substances involved underwent a mysterious transformation.... Centuries,” in short, “were wasted in vain attempts to transform the baser metals into gold.”

Is Professor Cooke, so eminent in modern chemistry, equally proficient in the knowledge of what the alchemists did or did not know? Is he quite sure that he understands the meaning of the alchemical diction? We are not. But let us compare his views as above expressed with but sentences written in plain and good, albeit old English, from the translations of Van Helmont and Paracelsus. We learn from their own admissions that the alkahest induces the following changes:

“(1.) The alkahest never destroys the seminal virtues of the bodies thereby dissolved: for instance, gold, by its action, is reduced to a salt of gold, antimony to a salt of antimony, etc., of the same seminal virtues, or characters with the original concrete. (2.) The subject exposed to its operation is converted into its three principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury, and afterwards into salt alone, which then becomes volatile, and at length is wholly turned into clear water. (3.) Whatever it dissolves may be rendered volatile by a sand-heat; and if, after volatilizing the solvent, it be distilled therefrom, the body is left pure, insipid water, but always equal in quantity to its original self.” Further, we find Van Helmont, the elder, saying of this salt that it will dissolve the most untractable bodies into substances of the same seminal virtues, “equal in weight to the matter dissolved;” and he adds, “This salt, by being several times cohobated with Paracelsus, sal circulatum, loses all its fixedness, and at length becomes an insipid water, equal in quantity to the salt it was made from.”[320]

The objection that might be made by Professor Cooke, in behalf of modern science, to the hermetic expressions, would equally apply to the Egyptian hieratic writings—they hide that which was meant to be concealed. If he would profit by the labors of the past, he must employ the cryptographer, and not the satirist. Paracelsus, like the rest, exhausted his ingenuity in transpositions of letters and abbreviations of words and sentences. For example, when he wrote sutratur he meant tartar, and mutrin meant nitrum, and so on. There was no end to the pretended explanations of the meaning of the alkahest. Some imagined that it was an alkaline of salt of tartar salatilized; others that it meant algeist, a German word which means all-spirit, or spirituous. Paracelsus usually termed salt “the centre of water wherein metals ought to die.” This gave rise to the most absurd suppositions, and some persons—such as Glauber—thought that the alkahest was the spirit of salt. It requires no little hardihood to assert that Paracelsus and his colleagues were ignorant of the natures of elementary and compound substances; they may not be called by the same names as are now in fashion, but that they were known is proved by the results attained. What matters it by what name the gas given off when iron is dissolved in sulphuric acid was called by Paracelsus, since he is recognized, even by our standard authorities, as the discoverer of hydrogen?[321] His merit is the same; and though Van Helmont may have concealed, under the name “seminal virtues,” his knowledge of the fact that elementary substances have their original properties, which the entering into compounds only temporarily modifies—never destroys—he was none the less the greatest chemist of his age, and the peer of modern scientists. He affirmed that the aurum potabile could be obtained with the alkahest, by converting the whole body of gold into salt, retaining its seminal virtues, and being soluble in water. When chemists learn what he meant by aurum potabile, alkahest, salt, and seminal virtues—what he really meant, not what he said he meant, nor what was thought he meant—then, and not before, can our chemists safely assume such airs toward the fire-philosophers and those ancient masters whose mystic teachings they reverently studied. One thing is clear, at any rate. Taken merely in its exoteric form, this language of Van Helmont shows that he understood the solubility of metallic substances in water, which Sterry Hunt makes the basis of his theory of metalliferous deposits. We would like to see what sort of terms would be invented by our scientific contempories to conceal and yet half-reveal their audacious proposition that man’s “only God is the cineritious matter of his brain,” if in the basement of the new Court House or the cathedral on Fifth Avenue there were a torture-chamber, to which judge or cardinal could send them at will.

Professor Sterry Hunt says in one of his lectures:[322] “The alchemists sought in vain for a universal solvent; but we now know that water, aided in some cases by heat, pressure, and the presence of certain widely-distributed substances, such as carbonic acid and alkaline carbonates and sulphides, will dissolve the most insoluble bodies; so that it may, after all, be looked upon as the long-sought for alkahest or universal menstruum.”

This reads almost like a paraphrase of Van Helmont, or Paracelsus himself! They knew the properties of water as a solvent as well as modern chemists, and what is more, made no concealment of the fact; which shows that this was not their universal solvent. Many commentaries and criticisms of their works are still extant, and one can hardly take up a book on the subject without finding at least one of their speculations of which they never thought of making a mystery. This is what we find in an old work on alchemists—a satire, moreover—of 1820, written at the beginning of our century when the new theories on the chemical potency of water were hardly in their embryonic state.

“It may throw some light to observe, that Van Helmont, as well as Paracelsus, took water for the universal instrument (agent?) of chymistry and natural philosophy; and earth for the unchangeable basis of all things—that fire was assigned as the sufficient cause of all things—that seminal impressions were lodged in the mechanism of the earth—that water, by dissolving and fermenting with this earth, as it does by means of fire, brings forth everything; whence originally proceeded animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.”[323]

The alchemists understand well this universal potency of water. In the works of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Philalethes, Pantatem, Tachenius, and even Boyle, “the great characteristic of the alkahest,” “to dissolve and change all sublunary bodies—water alone excepted,” is explicitly stated. And is it possible to believe that Van Helmont, whose private character was unimpeachable, and whose great learning was universally recognized, should most solemnly declare himself possessed of the secret, were it but a vain boast![324]

In a recent address at Nashville, Tennessee, Professor Huxley laid down a certain rule with respect to the validity of human testimony as a basis of history and science, which we are quite ready to apply to the present case. “It is impossible,” he says, “that one’s practical life should not be more or less influenced by the views which we may hold as to what has been the past history of things. One of them is human testimony in its various shapes—all testimony of eye-witnesses, traditional testimony from the lips of those who have been eye-witnesses, and the testimony of those who have put their impressions into writing and into print.... If you read Cæsar’s Commentaries, wherever he gives an account of his battles with the Gauls, you place a certain amount of confidence in his statements. You take his testimony upon this. You feel that Cæsar would not have made these statements unless he had believed them to be true.”

Now, we cannot in logic permit Mr. Huxley’s philosophical rule to be applied in a one-sided manner to Cæsar. Either that personage was naturally truthful or a natural liar; and since Mr. Huxley has settled that point to his own satisfaction as regards the facts of military history in his favor, we insist that Cæsar is also a competent witness as to augurs, diviners, and psychological facts. So with Herodotus, and all other ancient authorities, unless they were by nature men of truth, they should not be believed even about civil or military affairs. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. And equally, if they are credible as to physical things, they must be regarded as equally so as to spiritual things; for as Professor Huxley tells us, human nature was of old just as it is now. Men of intellect and conscience did not lie for the pleasure of bewildering or disgusting posterity.

The probabilities of falsification by such men having been defined so clearly by a man of science, we feel free from the necessity of discussing the question in connection with the names of Van Helmont and his illustrious but unfortunate master, the much-slandered Paracelsus. Deleuze, though finding in the works of the former many “mythic, illusory ideas” perhaps only because he could not understand them—credits him nevertheless with a vast knowledge, “an acute judgment,” and at the same time with having given to the world “great truths.” “He was the first,” he adds, “to give the name of gas to aerial fluids. Without him it is probable that steel would have given no new impulse to science.”[325] By what application of the doctrine of chances could we discover the likelihood that experimentalists, capable of resolving and recombining chemical substances, as they are admitted to have done, were ignorant of the nature of elementary substances, their combining energies, and the solvent or solvents, that would disintegrate them when wanted? If they had the reputation only of theorists the case would stand differently and our argument would lose its force, but the chemical discoveries grudgingly accorded to them, by their worst enemies, form the basis for much stronger language than we have permitted ourselves, from a fear of being deemed over partial. And, as this work, moreover, is based on the idea that there is a higher nature of man, that his moral and intellectual faculties should be judged psychologically, we do not hesitate to reaffirm that since Van Helmont asserted, “most solemnly,” that he was possessed of the secret of the alkahest, no modern critic has a right to set him down as either a liar or a visionary, until something more certain is known about the nature of this alleged universal menstruum.

“Facts are stubborn things,” remarks Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his preface to Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. Therefore,[326] as facts must be our strongest allies, we will bring as many of these forward as the “miracles” of antiquity and those of our modern times will furnish us with. The authors of the Unseen Universe have scientifically demonstrated the possibility of certain alleged psychological phenomena through the medium of the universal ether. Mr. Wallace has as scientifically proved that the whole catalogue of assumptions to the contrary, including the sophisms of Hume, are untenable if brought face to face with strict logic. Mr. Crookes has given to the world of skepticism his own experiments, which lasted above three years before he was conquered by the most undeniable of evidence—that of his own senses. A whole list could be made up of men of science who have recorded their testimony to that effect; and Camille Flammarion, the well-known French astronomer, and author of many works which, in the eyes of the skeptical, should send him to the ranks of the “deluded,” in company with Wallace, Crookes, and Hare, corroborates our words in the following lines:

“I do not hesitate to affirm my conviction, based on a personal examination of the subject, that any scientific man who declares the phenomena denominated ‘magnetic,’ ‘somnambulic,‘ ‘mediumic,’ and others not yet explained by science, to be impossible, is one who speaks without knowing what he is talking about, and also any man accustomed, by his professional avocations, to scientific observations—provided that his mind be not biassed by preconceived opinions, nor his mental vision blinded by that opposite kind of illusion, unhappily too common in the learned world, which consists in imagining that the laws of Nature are already known to us, and that everything which appears to overstep the limit of our present formulas is impossible, may require a radical and absolute certainty of the reality of the facts alluded to.”

In Mr. Crookes’ Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritual, on p. 101, this gentleman quotes Mr. Sergeant Cox, who having named this unknown force, psychic, explains it thus: “As the organism is itself moved and directed within the structure by a force—which either is, or is not controlled by—the soul, spirit, or mind ... which constitutes the individual being we term ‘the man,’ it is an equally reasonable conclusion that the force which causes the motions beyond the limits of the body is the same force that produces motion within the limits of the body. And, as the external force is often directed by intelligence, it is an equally reasonable conclusion that the directing intelligence of the external force is the same intelligence that directs the force internally.”

In order to comprehend this theory the better, we may as well divide it in four propositions and show that Mr. Sergeant Cox believes:

1. That the force which produces physical phenomena proceeds from (consequently is generated in) the medium.

2. That the intelligence directing the force for the production of the phenomena (a) may sometimes be other than the intelligence of the medium; but of this the “proof” is “insufficient;” therefore, (b) the directing intelligence is probably that of the medium himself. This Mr. Cox calls “a reasonable conclusion.”

3. He assumes that the force which moves the table is identical with the force which moves the medium’s body itself.

4. He strongly disputes the spiritualistic theory, or rather assertion, that “spirits of the dead are the sole agents in the production of all the phenomena.”

Before we fairly proceed on our analysis of such views we must remind the reader that we find ourselves placed between two extreme opposites represented by two parties—the believers and unbelievers in this agency of human spirits. Neither seem capable of deciding the point raised by Mr. Cox; for while the spiritualists are so omnivorous in their credulity as to believe every sound and movement in a circle to be produced by disembodied human beings, their antagonists dogmatically deny that anything can be produced by “spirits,” for there are none. Hence, neither class is in a position to examine the subject without bias.

If they consider that force which “produces motion within the body” and the one “which causes the motion beyond the limits of the body” to be of the same essence, they may be right. But the identity of these two forces stops here. The life-principle which animates Mr. Cox’s body is of the same nature as that of his medium; nevertheless he is not the medium, nor is the latter Mr. Cox.

This force, which, to please Mr. Cox and Mr. Crookes we may just as well call psychic as anything else, proceeds through not from the individual medium. In the latter case this force would be generated in the medium and we are ready to show that it cannot be so; neither in the instances of levitation of human bodies, the moving of furniture and other objects without contact, nor in such cases in which the force shows reason and intelligence. It is a well-known fact to both mediums and spiritualists, that the more the former is passive, the better the manifestations; and every one of the above-mentioned phenomena requires a conscious predetermined will. In cases of levitation, we should have to believe that this self-generated force would raise the inert mass off the ground, direct it through the air, and lower it down again, avoiding obstacles and thereby showing intelligence, and still act automatically, the medium remaining all the while passive. If such were the fact, the medium would be a conscious magician, and all pretence for being a passive instrument in the hands of invisible intelligences would become useless. As well plead that a quantity of steam sufficient to fill, without bursting, a boiler, will raise the boiler; or a Leyden jar, full of electricity, overcome the inertia of the jar, as such a mechanical absurdity. All analogy would seem to indicate that the force which operates in the presence of a medium upon external objects comes from a source back of the medium himself. We may rather compare it with the hydrogen which overcomes the inertia of the balloon. The gas, under the control of an intelligence, is accumulated in the receiver in sufficient volume to overcome the attraction of its combined mass. On the same principle this force moves articles of furniture, and performs other manifestations; and though identical in its essence with the astral spirit of the medium, it cannot be his spirit only, for the latter remains all the while in a kind of cataleptic torpor, when the mediumship is genuine. Mr. Cox’s first point seems, therefore, not well taken; it is based upon an hypothesis mechanically untenable. Of course our argument proceeds upon the supposition that levitation is an observed fact. The theory of psychic force, to be perfect, must account for all “visible motions ... in solid substances,” and among these is levitation.

As to his second point, we deny that “the proof is insufficient” that the force which produces the phenomena is sometimes directed by other intelligences than the mind of the “psychic.” On the contrary there is such an abundance of testimony to show that the mind of the medium, in a majority of cases, has nothing to do with the phenomena, that we cannot be content to let Mr. Cox’s bold assertion go unchallenged.

Equally illogical do we conceive to be his third proposition; for if the medium’s body be not the generator but simply the channel of the force which produces the phenomena—a question upon which Mr. Cox’s researches throw no light whatever—then it does not follow that because the medium’s “soul, spirit, or mind” directs the medium’s organism, therefore this “soul, spirit, or mind,” lifts a chair or raps at the call of the alphabet.

As to the fourth proposition, namely, that “spirits of the dead are the sole agents in the production of all the phenomena,” we need not join issue at the present moment, inasmuch as the nature of the spirits producing mediumistic manifestations is treated at length in other chapters.

The philosophers, and especially those who were initiated into the Mysteries, held that the astral soul is the impalpable duplicate of the gross external form which we call body. It is the perisprit of the Kardecists and the spirit-form of the spiritualists. Above this internal duplicate, and illuminating it as the warm ray of the sun illuminates the earth, fructifying the germ and calling out to spiritual vivification the latent qualities dormant in it, hovers the divine spirit. The astral perisprit is contained and confined within the physical body as ether in a bottle, or magnetism in magnetized iron. It is a centre and engine of force, fed from the universal supply of force, and moved by the same general laws which pervade all nature and produce all cosmical phenomena. Its inherent activity causes the incessant physical operations of the animal organism and ultimately results in the destruction of the latter by overuse and its own escape. It is the prisoner, not the voluntary tenant, of the body. It has an attraction so powerful to the external universal force, that after wearing out its casing it finally escapes to it. The stronger, grosser, more material its encasing body, the longer is the term of its imprisonment. Some persons are born with organizations so exceptional, that the door which shuts other people in from communication with the world of the astral light, can be easily unbarred and opened, and their souls can look into, or even pass into that world, and return again. Those who do this consciously, and at will, are termed magicians, hierophants, seers, adepts; those who are made to do it, either through the fluid of the mesmerizer or of “spirits,” are “mediums.” The astral soul, when the barriers are once opened, is so powerfully attracted by the universal, astral magnet, that it sometimes lifts its encasement with it and keeps it suspended in mid-air, until the gravity of matter reässerts its supremacy, and the body redescends again to earth.

Every objective manifestation, whether it be the motion of a living limb, or the movement of some inorganic body, requires two conditions: will and force—plus matter, or that which makes the object so moved visible to our eye; and these three are all convertible forces, or the force-correlation of the scientists. In their turn they are directed or rather overshadowed by the Divine intelligence which these men so studiously leave out of the account, but without which not even the crawling of the smallest earth-worm could ever take place. The simplest as the most common of all natural phenomena,—the rustling of the leaves which tremble under the gentle contact of the breeze—requires a constant exercise of these faculties. Scientists may well call them cosmic laws, immutable and unchangeable. Behind these laws we must search for the intelligent cause, which once having created and set these laws in motion, has infused into them the essence of its own consciousness. Whether we call this the first cause, the universal will, or God, it must always bear intelligence.

And now we may ask, how can a will manifest itself intelligently and unconsciously at the same time? It is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of intellection apart from consciousness. By consciousness we do not necessarily imply physical or corporeal consciousness. Consciousness is a quality of the sentient principle, or, in other words, the soul; and the latter often displays activity even while the body is asleep or paralyzed. When we lift our arm mechanically, we may imagine that we do it unconsciously because our superficial senses cannot appreciate the interval between the formulation of the purpose and its execution. Latent as it seemed to us, our vigilant will evolved force, and set our matter in motion. There is nothing in the nature of the most trivial of mediumistic phenomena to make Mr. Cox’s theory plausible. If the intelligence manifested by this force is no proof that it belongs to a disembodied spirit, still less is it evidence that it is unconsciously given out by the medium; Mr. Crookes himself tells us of cases where the intelligence could not have emanated from any one in the room; as in the instance where the word “however,” covered by his finger and unknown even to himself, was correctly written by planchette.[327] No explanation whatever can account for this case; the only hypothesis tenable—if we exclude the agency of a spirit-power—is that the clairvoyant faculties were brought into play. But scientists deny clairvoyance; and if, to escape the unwelcome alternative of accrediting the phenomena to a spiritual source, they concede to us the fact of clairvoyance, it then devolves upon them to either accept the kabalistic explanation of what this faculty is, or achieve the task hitherto impracticable of making a new theory to fit the facts.

Again, if for the sake of argument it should be admitted that Mr. Crookes’ word “however” might have been clairvoyantly read, what shall we say of mediumistic communications having a prophetic character? Does any theory of mediumistic impulse account for the ability to foretell events beyond the possible knowledge of both speaker and listener? Mr. Cox will have to try again.

As we have said before, the modern psychic force, and the ancient oracular fluids, whether terrestrial or sidereal, are identical in essence—simply a blind force. So is air. And while in a dialogue the sound-waves produced by a conversation of the speakers affect the same body of air, that does not imply any doubt of the fact that there are two persons talking with each other. Is it any more reasonable to say that when a common agent is employed by medium and “spirit” to intercommunicate, there must necessarily be but one intelligence displaying itself? As the air is necessary for the mutual exchange of audible sounds, so are certain currents of astral light, or ether directed by an Intelligence, necessary for the production of the phenomena called spiritual. Place two interlocutors in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, and, if they could live, their words would remain inarticulate thoughts, for there would be no air to vibrate, and hence no ripple of sound would reach their ears. Place the strongest medium in such isolating atmosphere as a powerful mesmerizer, familiar with the properties of the magical agent, can create around him, and no manifestations will take place until some opposing intelligence, more potential than the will-power of the mesmerizer, overcomes the latter and terminates the astral inertia.

The ancients were at no loss to discriminate between a blind force acting spontaneously and the same force when directed by an intelligence.

Plutarch, the priest of Apollo, when speaking of the oracular vapors which were but a subterranean gas, imbued with intoxicating magnetic properties, shows its nature to be dual, when he addresses it in these words: “And who art thou? without a God who creates and ripens thee; without a dæmon [spirit] who, acting under the orders of God, directs and governs thee; thou canst do nothing, thou art nothing but a vain breath.”[328] Thus without the indwelling soul or intelligence, “Psychic Force” would be also but a “vain breath.”

Aristotle maintains that this gas, or astral emanation, escaping from inside the earth, is the sole sufficient cause, acting from within outwardly for the vivification of every living being and plant upon the external crust. In answer to the skeptical negators of his century, Cicero, moved by a just wrath, exclaims: “And what can be more divine than the exhalations of the earth, which affect the human soul so as to enable her to predict the future? And could the hand of time evaporate such a virtue? Do you suppose you are talking of some kind of wine or salted meat?”[329] Do modern experimentalists claim to be wiser than Cicero, and say that this eternal force has evaporated, and that the springs of prophecy are dry?

All the prophets of old—inspired sensitives—were said to be uttering their prophecies under the same conditions, either by the direct outward efflux of the astral emanation, or a sort of damp fluxion, rising from the earth. It is this astral matter which serves as a temporary clothing of the souls who form themselves in this light. Cornelius Agrippa expresses the same views as to the nature of these phantoms by describing it as moist or humid: “In spirito turbido HUMIDOQUE.”[330]

Prophecies are delivered in two ways—consciously, by magicians who are able to look into the astral light; and unconsciously, by those who act under what is called inspiration. To the latter class belonged and belong the Biblical prophets and the modern trance-speakers. So familiar with this fact was Plato, that of such prophets he says: “No man, when in his senses, attains prophetic truth and inspiration ... but only when demented by some distemper or possession ...” (by a daimonion or spirit).[331] “Some persons call them prophets; they do not know that they are only repeaters ... and are not to be called prophets at all, but only transmitters of vision and prophecy,“he adds.

In continuation of his argument, Mr. Cox says: “The most ardent spiritualists practically admit the existence of psychic force, under the very inappropriate name of magnetism (to which it has no affinity whatever), for they assert that the spirits of the dead can only do the acts attributed to them by using the magnetism (that is, the psychic force) of the mediums.”[332]

Here, again, a misunderstanding arises in consequence of different names being applied to what may prove to be one and the same imponderable compound. Because electricity did not become a science till the eighteenth century, no one will presume to say that this force has not existed since the creation; moreover, we are prepared to prove that even the ancient Hebrews were acquainted with it. But, merely because exact science did not happen before 1819 to stumble over the discovery which showed the intimate connection existing between magnetism and electricity, it does not at all prevent these two agents being identical. If a bar of iron can be endowed with magnetic properties, by passing a current of voltaic electricity over some conductor placed in a certain way close to the bar, why not accept, as a provisional theory, that a medium may also be a conductor, and nothing more, at a seance? Is it unscientific to say that the intelligence of “psychic force,” drawing currents of electricity from the waves of the ether, and employing the medium as a conductor, develops and calls into action the latent magnetism with which the atmosphere of the seance-room is saturated, so as to produce the desired effects? The word magnetism is as appropriate as any other, until science gives us something more than a merely hypothetical agent endowed with conjectural properties.

“The difference between the advocates of psychic force and the spiritualists consists in this,” says Sergeant Cox, “that we contend that there is as yet insufficient proof of any other directing agent than the intelligence of the medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of the ‘spirits’ of the dead.”[333]

We fully agree with Mr. Cox as to the lack of proof that the agency is that of the spirits of the dead; as for the rest, it is a very extraordinary deduction from “a wealth of facts,” according to the expression of Mr. Crookes, who remarks further, “On going over my notes, I find ... such a superabundance of evidence, so overwhelming a mass of testimony ... that I could fill several numbers of the Quarterly.”[334]

Now some of these facts of an “overwhelming evidence” are as follows: 1st. The movement of heavy bodies with contact, but without mechanical exertion. 2d. The phenomena of percussive and other sounds. 3d. The alteration of weight of bodies. 4th. Movements of heavy substances when at a distance from the medium. 5th. The rising of tables and chairs off the ground, without contact with any person. 6th. The levitation of human beings.[335] 7th. “Luminous apparitions.” Says Mr. Crookes, “Under the strictest conditions, I have seen a solid self-luminous body, the size and nearly the shape of a turkey’s egg, float noiselessly about the room, at one time higher than any one could reach on tiptoe, and then gently descend to the floor. It was visible for more than ten minutes, and before it faded away it struck the table three times with a sound like that of a hard, solid body.”[336] (We must infer that the egg was of the same nature as M. Babinet’s meteor-cat, which is classified with other natural phenomena in Arago’s works.) 8th. The appearance of hands, either self-luminous or visible by ordinary light. 9th. “Direct writing” by these same luminous hands, detached, and evidently endowed with intelligence. (Psychic force?) 10th. “Phantom-forms and faces.” In this instance, the psychic force comes “from a corner of the room” as a “phantom form,” takes an accordeon in its hand, and then glides about the room, playing the instrument; Home, the medium, being in full view at the time.[337] The whole of the preceding Mr. Crookes witnessed and tested at his own house, and, having assured himself scientifically of the genuineness of the phenomenon, reported it to the Royal Society. Was he welcomed as the discoverer of natural phenomena of a new and important character? Let the reader consult his work for the answer.

In addition to these freaks played on human credulity by “psychic force,” Mr. Crookes gives another class of phenomena, which he terms “special instances,” which seem (?) to point to the agency of an exterior intelligence.[338]

“I have been,” says Mr. Crookes, “with Miss Fox when she has been writing a message automatically to one person present, whilst a message to another person, on another subject, was being given alphabetically by means of ‘raps,’ and the whole time she was conversing freely with a third person, on a subject totally different from either.... During a seance with Mr. Home, a small lath moved across the table to me, in the light, and delivered a message to me by tapping my hand; I repeating the alphabet, and the lath tapping me at the right letters ... being at a distance from Mr. Home’s hands.” The same lath, upon request of Mr. Crookes, gave him “a telegraphic message through the Morse alphabet, by taps on my hand” (the Morse code being quite unknown to any other person present, and but imperfectly to himself), “and,” adds Mr. Crookes, “it convinced me that there was a good Morse operator at the other end of the line, WHEREVER THAT MIGHT BE.”[339] Would it be undignified in the present case to suggest that Mr. Cox should search for the operator in his private principality—Psychic Land? But the same lath does more and better. In full light in Mr. Crookes’ room it is asked to give a message, “ ... a pencil and some sheets of paper had been lying on the centre of the table; presently the pencil rose on its point, and after advancing by hesitating jerks to the paper, fell down. It then rose, and again fell.... After three unsuccessful attempts, a small wooden lath” (the Morse operator) “which was lying near upon the table, slid towards the pencil, and rose a few inches from the table; the pencil rose again, and propping itself against the lath, the two together made an effort to mark the paper. It fell, and then a joint effort was made again. After a third trial the lath gave it up, and moved back to its place; the pencil lay as it fell across the paper, and an alphabetic message told us: “We have tried to do as you asked, but our power is exhausted.”[340] The word our, as the joint intelligent efforts of the friendly lath and pencil, would make us think that there were two psychic forces present.

In all this, is there any proof that the directing agent was “the intelligence of the medium”? Is there not, on the contrary, every indication that the movements of the lath and pencil were directed by spirits “of the dead,” or at least of those of some other unseen intelligent entities? Most certainly the word magnetism explains in this case as little as the term psychic force; howbeit, there is more reason to use the former than the latter, if it were but for the simple fact that the transcendent magnetism or mesmerism produces phenomena identical in effects with those of spiritualism. The phenomenon of the enchanted circle of Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, is as contrary to the accepted laws of physiology as the rising of a table without contact is to the laws of natural philosophy. As strong men have often found it impossible to raise a small table weighing a few pounds, and broken it to pieces in the effort, so a dozen of experimenters, among them sometimes, academicians, were utterly unable to step across a chalk-line drawn on the floor by Du Potet. On one occasion a Russian general, well known for his skepticism, persisted until he fell on the ground in violent convulsions. In this case, the magnetic fluid which opposed such a resistance was Mr. Cox’s psychic force, which endows the tables with an extraordinary and supernatural weight. If they produce the same psychological and physiological effects, there is good reason to believe them more or less identical. We do not think the deduction could be very reasonably objected to. Besides, were the fact even denied, this is no reason why it should not be so. Once upon a time, all the Academies in Christendom had agreed to deny that there were any mountains in the moon; and there was a certain time when, if any one had been so bold as to affirm that there was life in the superior regions of the atmosphere as well as in the fathomless depths of the ocean, he would have been set down as a fool or an ignoramus.

“The Devil affirms—it must be a lie!” the pious Abbé Almiguana used to say, in a discussion with a “spiritualized table.” We will soon be warranted in paraphrasing the sentence and making it read—“Scientists deny—then it must be true.”