ON FORCE, 
 
 ITS 
 
 MENTAL AND MORAL CORRELATES; 
 
 AND ON THAT WHICH IS 
 
 SUPPOSED TO UNDERLIE ALL PHENOMENA: 
 WITH SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM, 
 
 AND OTHER ABNORMAL CONDITIONS OF MIND. 
 
 BY CHARLES BRAY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE " PHILOSOPHY OF NECESSITY," THE " EDUCATION OF 
 THE FEELINGS," ETC. 
 
 " He who, believing that the search for truth can never be offensive to the 
 God of truth, pursues his way with an unswerving energy, may not unrea- 
 sonably hope that he may assist others in their struggle towards the light, and 
 may in some small degree contribute to that consummation when the professed 
 belief shall have been adjusted to the requirements of the age, when the old 
 tyranny shall have been broken, and the anarchy of transition shall have 
 passed away." Lecky's History of nationalism. 
 
 "In the present state of science, of all subjects that on which we know least 
 is, perhaps, the connection of our bodily and mental nature, the action of the 
 one on the other," &c. Professor the Rev. Baden Powell. 
 
 "Metaphysics revolve in an endless circle of abstractions, ethics have 
 scarcely made any permanent advance since the introduction of Christianity." 
 Time's, January 1st, 1866. 
 
 " All our conceptions are based on the implied postulate that the world is 
 as it appears. * * * The advance of knowledge consists in the substitution 
 of accurate conceptions for natural ones." Man and his Ihcelling Place, by 
 James Hint on. 
 
 " It remains for philosophers to place Physiology and Mental and Moral 
 Philosophy in the same position as positive science reached by induction." 
 If. G.Atkinson, F.G.S. 
 
 " Men rarely recount facts simply as they happened, but mingle their own 
 opinions with them ; more especially if the facts are above their comprehen- 
 sion, and connected with religious interests." Spinoza. 
 
 "There are few delusions that a man cannot be brought to believe if they 
 injure neither his stomach nor his purse." Times, April 27th, 1863. 
 
 " If the Critic speaks, it is not to tell the reader what the Philosopher 
 thinks, but what he thinks of the Philosopher : a quite uninteresting matter." 
 Fortnightly Review. 
 
 LONDON : 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYEE. 
 
 THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION IS RESERVED. 
 
 20151S5
 
 W. P. TAUNTON, PBINTEB, COVENTBT.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, notwithstanding its 
 supposed horrible tendency to sap the foundation of morals, 
 has been elevated from the regions below, where, according to 
 Milton, its discussion furnished fit occupation and amusement 
 for devils only, to form the base of Social Science. 
 Philosophical Necessity is only another name for " Law" or a 
 fixed order of Nature in the department of Mind, and there 
 can be no Social Science without it. This I have endeavoured 
 to make plain in my work on " The Philosophy of Necessity," 
 and it is my purpose now to show that the doctrine of the 
 Con-elation and Persistence of Forces, when thought out to its 
 legitimate consequences, gives us a Science of Psychology 
 based on Physiology, by which alone we can attain to the 
 same command over mind, as we already have over physical 
 force. The Irishman's direction for making a cannon, " Take 
 a long hole, and pour metal round it," has been followed by 
 Metaphysicians in making their canons, and the " method"
 
 IV. PREFACE. 
 
 has produced results such as might have been expected. 
 Consciousness, their round hole, has no substantial existence 
 out of the individual mind reflecting upon it, and it is difficult 
 to pour metal round it, and the canons so founded result only 
 in the ipse dixit of the founder, which every succeeding 
 philosopher thinks is necessary to burst before he proceeds to 
 cast any of his own. Mind is force, and it must be studied as 
 all other forces are, as well as by "reflection on conscious- 
 ness," and then Metaphysics may take the place to which it 
 is entitled at the head of all other Sciences. 
 
 The Correlation of Forces shows that in the cycle of forces 
 we can always return to the same starting point without a 
 break, and the Persistence of Force shows that this is always 
 done without loss; now these truths, not stopping short in 
 Physics, but carried, as they ought to be, into the higher field 
 of Mind, furnish, I think, the most probable explanation of 
 "the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism, " at the present 
 time so much puzzling earnest investigators. My speculations 
 however are given only as speculations; I have no wish to 
 dogmatise, I merely present an hypothesis to be rejected or 
 affirmed by observation and experience. History now has 
 shown that we must not be deterred from the acceptance of 
 any truth from its supposed consequences. Friar Bacon was 
 cast into prison as a magician by the Superior of his Order, 
 and the mysteries of physical science were treated then very 
 much as the mysteries of mental science are now. Mr.
 
 PEEFACE. V. 
 
 Lewes says, (Fortnightly Revieiv, Feb. 1, 1866), " We are 
 warned against Materialism as cold and desolating. The 
 real warning should be against materialism as erroneous; in 
 point of fact, we do not find materialists are cold and 
 desolated, any more than spiritualists are hot and happy." 
 We must not ask then, " To what will this lead? but is it 
 true?" No truth is really at variance with other truth, and 
 if it should appear to be so, we must be content to wait 
 till we understand the whole matter. We are not bound, 
 however, to attach every new truth to some old error or 
 superstition and then wait till we can reconcile the two, 
 before we reason it out to its legitimate consequences: this 
 would be to make it powerless and inoperative. Thus Pro- 
 fessor Mansel, in the Contemporary Eevieic, No. 5, for May, 
 1866, says, "Eternity and continuous duration immu- 
 tability and creation in time perfect action, yet unexhausted 
 power to act everlasting purpose and accessibility to prayer 
 general law and special providence complete fore-know- 
 ledge co-existing with human freedom, we cannot combine 
 these several elements together into a consistent whole, yet 
 we can believe that they are capable of combination : " but 
 I confess I find in myself no such wonderful power of 
 belief; on the contrary, the propositions appear to me as 
 contradictory as that a thing may be and may not be at the 
 same time. Some of the propositions may lie beyond our 
 depth, but I certainly cannot conceive how an occurrence can 
 be fore-known which is contingent, that is, if man is really
 
 VI. PREFACE. 
 
 free, may happen or may not happen ; neither do I feel myself 
 called upon to believe in any such freedom, for if it really 
 existed it would completely paralyse man's action, as there 
 could be no prevision either in God or man. 
 
 This short Treatise is dedicated to those, and to those 
 only, who love truth above all things, for its own sake.
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I. Os FOBCE 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. FORCE; ITS MENTAL CORRELATES . . 7 
 
 SECTION 1. The Psychology of Phrenology . . 23 
 SECTION 2. The Persistence of Force ... 35 
 
 CHAPTER III. UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA 47 
 
 CHAPTER IV. SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM AND OTHER 
 
 ABNORMAL CONDITIONS OF MIND ... 69 
 
 The Correlation of Force in Living Structures. Matter and 
 Spirit the same in Essence. Time and Space. The 
 Correlation of the Vital and Mental Forces. The Condi- 
 tions attending Influx or Inspiration. Memory. 
 
 SPIRITUALISM. Genuineness of the Phenomena. Appli- 
 cation of the Theory: Physical Force, Table Moving, 
 Rapping, Levitation, &c. Intelligence. Investigators 
 into Spiritual Manifestations vrho have rejected the Notion 
 of Spirits. History Confirms the Existence of the Pheno- 
 mena. The Manifestations in the Catholic Church. 
 "Witchcraft. The Abnormal Mental Powers of the Founders 
 of Sects. The Constitution of the Medium. The Spirits; 
 their Abodes and Occupations. The Rationale of the 
 Spiritual Phenomena. The Coming Spirit World evolved 
 from the Spirit Atmosphere, the result of Cerebration.
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 THERE is but one thing known to us in the universe; this, Physical Philosophers hare 
 called " Force." The Reality or Entity underlying it, or that of which it is the Force, 
 Metaphysiciaas have called " Noumenon." It is the "Substance" of Spinoza, and the 
 " Being " of Hegel. 
 
 Everything around us results from the mode of action or motion, or correlation of 
 this one force, the different Forms of which we call Phenomena. 
 
 The difference in the mode of action depends upon the difference in the Structure it 
 passes through ; such Structure consisting of concentrated Force, or centres of Force, and 
 has been called Matter. " Every form is force visible ; a form of rest is a balance of 
 forces ; a form undergoing change is the predominance of one over others." Huxley. 
 
 Heat, Light, Magnetism, Electricity, Attraction, Repulsion, Chemical Affinity, Life, 
 Mind or Sentience, are modes of action or manifestations of Force, and die or cease to 
 exist when the Force passes on into other forms. 
 
 Cause and Effect form this sequence or correlation ; and each cause and effect is a new 
 Life and a oew Death : each form being a new creation, which dies and passes away, 
 never to return ; for " nothing repeats itself, because nothing can be placed again in the 
 same condition : the past being irrevocable." W. B. Grove. " There is no death in the 
 concrete, what passes away passes away into its own self only the passing away passes 
 away." Hegel. 
 
 Force passing through a portion of the structure of the brain, creates the "World" 
 of our intellectual consciousness, with the " ego," or sense of personal identity ; passing 
 through other portions the world of our likes and antipathies called the Moral world ; 
 Good and Evil being purely subjective. 
 
 The character and direction of Volition depend upon the Persistent Force and the 
 structure through which it passes. Every existing state, both bodily and mental, haa 
 grown out of the preceding, and all its Forces have been used up in present phenomena. 
 Thus, " everything that exists depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is related 
 to the whole." Oersted. 
 
 As no force acts singly, but is always combined with other forces or modes of action 
 to produce some given purpose or particular result, we infer that Force is not blind but 
 intelligent : as it is One, we infer it is the force of an intelligent Being possessing 
 personality ; and that Being we have called God. " He is the universal Being of which 
 all things are the manifestations." Spinoea. 
 
 All force or power is Will power, the will of God. " Causation is the will, Creation 
 the act of God." W. R. Grove. The will which originally required a distinct conscious 
 volition has passed, in the ages, into the unconscious or automatic, constituting the fixed 
 laws and order of nature. 
 
 Vital Force exists in excess in some constitutions, and may be transferred to other 
 living organisms, often constituting a curative agent. 
 
 Brain Force, the result of cerebration, also exists in excess in some nervous constitu- 
 tiotas ; it then forms a sphere or atmosphere around individuals by which one brain is 
 brought into communication with others and mind becomes a unity. Individual will- 
 power can act through thia medium beyond the range of individual body. In this way 
 may be explained the Mysteries of Magic and Witchcraft, the Phenomena of Mesmerism, 
 of so-called Spiritualism, and the Curative Power of Individuals.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 " THERE is nothing underlying phenomena phenomena are correlates of force, and force 
 is all," p. 48. By this the author simply means that motion cannot be separated from the 
 thing moving, or force or power be delegated, or separated from that which it is the force 
 of, that is, the source of all power. " God's power," as Spinoza says, " is the same as hia 
 essence," and all change therefore is but "the varied God." Properties, qualities, or 
 attributes, are powers, and when said to exist per se, it is in the same sense. They 
 have no separate existence, and are therefore untransferable. 
 
 For "emotion," p. 14, line 4, read " motion." 
 
 For " perception," p. 14, line 7, read " succession ; " and for "pass," same line, read 
 " passes." 
 
 For "heaps," p. 47, line 2, read "harps." 
 
 In p. 67, line 3, " if" is omitted. 
 
 For "assume," p. 71, line 17, read " resume." 
 
 For " figures/' p. 86, line 24, read " forms." 
 
 For " anthropological," p. 98, liue 27, read " anthropomorphical." 
 
 For " Tyara," p. 117, line 11, read " Tyana." 
 
 For "he," p. 128, last line bnt one, read " have been." 
 
 For " lectation," p. 129, line 8, read " lactation."
 
 FORCE, AND ITS MENTAL AND MORAL 
 CORRELATES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON FORCE. 
 
 NOT very long ago all the world believed that the sun went 
 round the earth ; they saw that it did ; now all the world (with 
 a very small exception) believes in the existence of matter ; 
 they see it, they feel it, and that is enough. But paro- 
 doxical as it may seem, philosophers, after the most diligent 
 research have failed to find matter anywhere, and whereas 
 Ave were wont to speak of the impenetrability and indestruc- 
 tibility of matter, we now speak only of the persistence 
 and conservation or indestructibility of Force. The assump- 
 tion that the force which acts upon us, and of which 
 only therefore we know anything, belongs to something else 
 which we call matter, is gratuitous, unwarrantable, and 
 altogether unnecessary. Heat and Light were until very 
 recently thought to be matter, but the material theory with 
 respect to those is now given up. Count Bumford boiled 
 water by thumping upon iron, and Sir Humphrey Davy 
 produced heat by rubbing two pieces of ice together. As 
 concussion and friction therefore produced heat, heat was 
 
 B
 
 2 FORCE. 
 
 thought to be not matter, but motion. But motion is 
 nothing, it is the mere mode of action of Force and the 
 transference of it in greater or less intensity, from one point 
 of space to another. The heat from friction and arrested 
 motion is merely an illustration of the persistence of force, 
 of its varying action in different conditions, and of the 
 transference of it from one centre of force (which we call 
 body) to another. Heat and Light are the same, that is, 
 different modes of action or motion of the same force, as are 
 also electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity; that is 
 to say, they are correlates, and all change readily into each 
 other without loss of quantity of the original Force. These 
 forces, or rather this force, since all are convertible, is 
 the source of the delusion we are under with respect to 
 matter, when we say we see and feel it. For what do we 
 see? Light, which is force, photographs a minute inverted 
 image on the bottom of the eye on the retina, which 
 acting on the Brain produces consciousness of an object. 
 All that is known to us is the mental conception, 
 the reality of which our conception is composed is Force. 
 It is evident there is no matter here. But surely we feel 
 matter if we do not see it? The sense of Feeling is mere 
 repulsion resistance to motion. When we speak of 
 matter as subtle, or as solid, liquid, or aeriform, we simply 
 mean that it presents more or less resistance to motion. 
 "When the question arises," says J. S. Mill, "whether 
 something which affects our senses in a peculiar way, as for 
 instance whether Heat or Light, or Electricity, is, or is not 
 matter, what seems always to be meant is, does it offer any, 
 however trifling, resistance to motion ? If it were shown 
 that it did, this would at once terminate all doubt." But 
 Resistance is repulsion or force, which acting on the sense 
 causes a sensation; when acting on the brain, an idea.
 
 ITS DIFFEKEKT MODES OF ACTION. 8 
 
 In Chemistry we find only circles or centres of force 
 the ultimate atoms, which this force is supposed to 
 surround, are an uncalled for and altogether unnecessary 
 invention. When I speak of body therefore or substance, 
 I mean these circles of force in a more or less intense or 
 condensed condition. The way in which force acts depends 
 upon its relation to these bodies, or what have been called 
 "potential energies"; going in at one end of a row of 
 billiard balls it comes out at the other, with little or no 
 change even in quantity, but it varies according to the com- 
 plexity of the substance or organization through which it 
 passes, that is, to the relation it bears to previously arranged 
 forces. But when we speak of either matter or force we 
 speak only of the external cause of our sensations and ideas, 
 and these tell us nothing of the real nature or essence of 
 either; why not then continue to use the term matter as 
 heretofore? We answer because the more general term force 
 may include and does really include both what has hitherto 
 been called Matter and Spirit also. We are told that " Force 
 viewed separately from matter is nothing." I think it more 
 correct to say that matter viewed separately from force is 
 nothing, because we know that force passes into or changes 
 into mind, as heat into light, and we thus include both sides 
 of creation Matter and Spirit. Force, in its different modes 
 of action as Light, Heat, Electricity, Galvanism, Chemical 
 Affinity, Attraction and Repulsion, is sufficient to produce 
 half the phenomena around us. Life and Mind, which are 
 correlates of Force, or other modes of its action, are sufficient 
 to produce the other half. There is but One simple, primor- 
 dial, absolute Force, with varying relations and conditions. 
 The modes of Force or Effects now in existence are neither 
 more nor less than such as have previously existed, changed 
 only in form. They have not merely acted upon each other,
 
 4 FORCE. 
 
 according to the common supposition with respect to matter, 
 
 BUT HAVE CHANGED INTO EACH OTHEE. This will be found 
 
 to be a very important distinction. Each change is a new 
 creation of something which in that form or mode has never 
 existed before a new life, and as it passes into another form 
 or mode, a new death "nothing repeats itself, because 
 nothing can be placed again in the same condition : the past 
 is irrevocable." * And may we not add irrecoverable. 
 
 Motion or change is constantly producing new relations 
 and conditions. We cannot speak of motion as existing 
 by itself, as it is merely a mode of action of Force, and 
 Force therefore cannot be separated from it, but must 
 always attend it; the same may be said of all the Impon- 
 derables, which are mere modes of action, or Force in 
 motion. It is in this way, probably, that Force itself 
 escapes us, because it is only with its modes or motions that 
 we have to do: for we know nothing of Force in itself, we 
 know it only by its effects, and when we say therefore that 
 something takes place by the force of attraction, repulsion, 
 electrical or chemical affinity, &c., we only mean that a 
 certain group of phenomena occur in a certain order, and 
 that they occur uniformly and invariably in that order. 
 
 Cause and Effect are mere correlation of Force, produced 
 by organization or the manner in which forces are concen- 
 trated and arranged. 
 
 Mr. Grove says, "I use the term force in reference to 
 them (the affections of matter), as meaning the active prin- 
 ciple inseparable from matter which is supposed to induce 
 its various changes,"! But as "the various changes" are 
 the only things known to us, why assume that they are inse- 
 parable from matter, or that there is any matter at all ? 
 
 Correlation of Physical Forces, p. 22, by W. R. Grove. 
 + Ibid, p. 16.
 
 MATTER UNNECESSARY. 5 
 
 Again, Professor Tyndall says, " We know no more of 
 the origin of force than of the origin of matter ; where matter 
 is, force is, for we only know matter through its forces." * 
 
 Is it not better then to dispense with matter altogether? 
 For if all action, change, or motion, is owing to force, and it is 
 impossible to conceive of force without antecedent force, what 
 then becomes of matter? This doctrine of the Persistence of 
 Force seems to me, not only to make matter altogether unne- 
 cessary, hut to exclude even the very idea. I shall use its 
 nomenclature therefore only as signs indicating Force. 
 
 Professor John Tyndall says in the eloquent peroration to 
 his work on Heat: " The discoveries and generalizations of 
 modern science constitute a poem more sublime than has ever 
 yet been addressed to the imagination. The natural philoso- 
 pher of to-day may dwell amid conceptions which beggar those 
 of Milton. So great and grand are they, that in the contem- 
 plation of them a certain force of character is requisite to preserve 
 us from bewilderment. Look at the integrated energies of our 
 world the stored power of our coal-fields, our winds and 
 rivers, our fleets, armies, and guns. What are they? They 
 are all generated by a portion of the sun's energy, which 
 does not amount to one thousand three hundred millionth 
 part of the whole. This is the entire fraction pf the sun's 
 force intercepted by the Earth, and we convert but a small 
 fraction of this fraction into mechanical energy. Multiplying 
 all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the 
 sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous 
 drain, in the lapse of human history we are unable to detect 
 a diminution of his store. Measured by our largest terres- 
 trial standards, such a reservoir of power is infinite; but it 
 is our privilege to rise above these standards, and to regard 
 
 * The Constitution of the Universe. Fortnightly Recieic,
 
 the sun himself as a speck in infinite extension, a mere drop 
 in the universal sea. We analyze the space in which he is 
 immersed, and which is the vehicle of his power. We pass 
 to other systems and other suns, each pouring forth energy 
 like our own, but still without infringements of the law, 
 which reveals immutability in the midst of change, which 
 recognizes incessant transference, conversion, hut neither final 
 gain nor loss. This law generalizes the aphorism of Solomon, 
 that there is nothing new under the sun, by teaching us to 
 detect everywhere, under its infinite variety of appearances, 
 the same primeval force. To nature nothing can be added ; 
 from nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her 
 energies is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pur- 
 suit of physical truth, or in the application of physical know- 
 ledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. 
 The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and 
 annihilation. Waves may change to ripples, and ripples 
 to waves magnitude may be substituted for number, and 
 number for magnitude asteroids may aggregate to suns, suns 
 may tesohe themselves into flora, and fauna, and florae, and 
 f aunts melt in air the flux of power is eternally the same, 
 it rolls in music through the ages, and all terrestrial energy 
 the manifestations of life as well as the display of pheno- 
 mena are but modulations."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FORCE; ITS MENTAL CORRELATES. 
 
 It is probable that at the origin of our globe, the con- 
 centration of force previously diffused in the form of so- 
 called nebulous matter, produced an amount of heat which 
 gradually took the shapes we have now around us. Certain 
 forces were chemically united, as in our primary rocks, 
 others were divorced, as the oxygen from the carbon in the 
 coal. By bringing the carbon and the oxygen in our atmo- 
 sphere together again we have the same amount of force, in 
 the shape of heat, which it originally took to separate them. 
 It takes an immense amount of force to separate magnesia 
 into oxygen and magnesium, and their reunion is propor- 
 tionately intense, as is now so beautifully and easily illustrated 
 in the burning of magnesium wire. It is by the action of 
 these forces that most of the changes we see around us are 
 still produced. The force derived from the union of oxygen 
 with the coal annually dug from the British mines is cal- 
 culated to be equal to that of the whole human race. The 
 light and heat of the sun's rays separated the carbon and 
 oxygen in plants and vegetables, and an immense amount 
 of force is generated whenever the carbon and oxygen again 
 meet, whether it be in the fire-place, or, more amicably 
 and less energetically, in the animal body. Thus Dr. Neil 
 Amott says: " James Watt, when devising his great engine, 
 knew well that the rapid combination of the oxygen of
 
 8 
 
 FORCE, AND ITS MENTAL CORRELATES. 
 
 atmospheric air with the combustible fuel in the furnace, 
 produced the heat and force of the engine; but he did not 
 know that in living bodies there is going on, only more 
 slowly, a similar combination of the oxygen of the air with 
 the like combustible matter in the food, as this circulates 
 after digestion in the form of blood through the lungs, 
 which combination produces the warmth and force of the 
 living animal. The chief resemblances of the two objects 
 are exhibited strikingly in the following table of comparison, 
 where, in two adjoining columns, are set forth nearly the 
 same things and actions, with difference only in the names : 
 
 The Steam Engine in action 
 takes 
 
 1. Fuel, viz. : coal and wood, both 
 being old or dry vegetable mat- 
 ter, and both combustible. 
 
 2. Water. 
 
 3. Air. 
 
 And produces. 
 
 4. Steady boiling heat of 212 de- 
 grees by quick combustion. 
 
 5. Smoke from the chimney, or air 
 loaded with carbonic acid and 
 vapour. 
 
 6. Ashes, part of the fuel which 
 does not burn. 
 
 7. Motive force, of simple alternate 
 push and pull in the piston, 
 which, acting through levers, 
 joints, bands, &c., does work 
 of endless variety. 
 
 The animal body in life, takes 
 
 1. Food, viz. : recent or fresh vege- 
 table matter and flesh, both be- 
 ing of kindred composition, and 
 both combustible. 
 
 2. Drink, (essentially water). 
 
 3. Breath, (common air.) 
 
 And produces 
 
 4. Steady animal heat of 98 de- 
 grees, by slow combustion. 
 
 5. Foul breath from the windpipe, 
 or air loaded with carbonic acid 
 and vapour. 
 
 6. Animal refuse, part of the food 
 which does not burn. 
 
 7. Motive force, of simple alternate 
 contraction and relaxation in the 
 muscles, which, acting through 
 the levers, joints, tendons, &c., 
 of the limbs, does work of end- 
 less variety.
 
 LIFE NOT A PECULIAR PRINCIPLE. 9 
 
 8. A deficiency of fuel, water, or 8. A deficiency of food, drink, or 
 air, first disturbs, and then stops breath, first disturbs, then stops 
 the motion. the motion and the life. 
 
 9. Local damage from violence in 9. Local hurt or disease in a living 
 a machine is repaired by the body is repaired or cured by the 
 makers.* action of internal power given by 
 
 the Creator. 
 
 We have here illustrated the mode only in which the 
 force in animals is generated; the form it ultimately takes 
 depends entirely upon the organization through which it has 
 to pass. Life was thought to be a peculiar principle ; but it 
 depends for its development and manifestation entirely upon 
 the union of the ordinary physical forces with a peculiar 
 structure or arrangement of forces ; for what are called vital 
 forces are only the correlate of physical forces. 
 
 In a very small part of the acorn lies the structure that 
 can develop only into an oak, and the human germ, in which 
 lie folded up the wondrous powers of man, is invisible without 
 the aid of the microscope. Life then is only Force acting 
 through special organizations, which organizations, so far as 
 we yet know, are formed only by transmission from parent 
 to offspring; they are always hereditary. 
 
 But seeds might remain for ever unchanged as the 
 wheat in the pyramids, for 8,000 years, until quickened into 
 being by forces from without. " Thus, for example, when 
 a seed is placed in the ground, the first process which takes 
 place within it is one of decomposition. The mass of the 
 seed consists of starch and albumen, in the midst of which 
 is placed a small cellular body, called the germ. This germ 
 will grow, and develop into the future plant, but only on 
 condition that a process of decay goes on in the starchy and 
 albuminous matter with which it is in connection. Part of 
 
 * A Survey of Human Progress, p. 159.
 
 10 FORCE, AND ITS MENTAL COERELATES. 
 
 the latter sinks into the inorganic state, uniting with oxygen, 
 and passing off as carbonic acid. The young plant is at 
 first of less weight than the seed or root which has disap- 
 peared in generating it. When it arrives at the surface 
 of the soil, a new process commences. The rays of the 
 sun, falling on its leaves, maintain in them a continuance of 
 the same process (one of chemical change) by which the first 
 development of the germ was determined. Thus new ma- 
 terials are added to the plant, the light exciting those chemical 
 processes which produce the organic arrangement of fresh 
 portions of matter. The leaves, under the stimulus of the 
 sun's rays, decompose carbonic acid, giving off part of 
 the oxygen, and ' fix, ' as it is said, the carbon in union with 
 hydrogen, and sometimes with nitrogen, &c., to form the 
 various vegetable cells and their contents. 
 
 " An animal now consumes this plant. In digestion 
 there takes place again a precisely similar process to that 
 with which we started the germination of the seed. The 
 substance of the plant partially decomposes ; a portion of it 
 sinks into a state approximating to the inorganic, while 
 another portion (doubtless by means of the force thus 
 generated) becomes more highly vitalized, and fitted to form 
 part of the animal structure. The germination of the seed, 
 and animal digestion, are parallel processes. Each of them 
 is two-fold a decomposing and a vitalizing action going on 
 together, the latter having its origin in and depending on the 
 other. Having formed part of the animal structure for a 
 time, this living matter decomposes yet again, and again 
 gives off its force. But now, instead of effecting, as in the 
 previous cases, a vitalizing action, the force produces a 
 mechanical action in the muscles, or a nervous action in the 
 brain, or, ha short, the function of whatever organ the matter 
 we are tracing may have been incorporated with; the
 
 VITAL FORCE. 11 
 
 function being but another, mode of operation of the same 
 force which caused the nutrition. And thus, supposing the 
 action to have been a muscular exertion, say the lifting of a 
 weight, we shall have traced the force, which came from the 
 inorganic world at first, in the form of the sun's rays, and 
 was embodied in the substance of the plant, back again into 
 the inorganic world in the form of motion. * * * The 
 plant yields up its life to nourish the animal body, as that 
 body, so nourished, in its activity yields up its life to impart 
 force to the world around. * * * Every giving oft' 
 of force has for its necessary effect the storing up of force in 
 equal amount elsewhere. The two halves of this process 
 cannot be divided."* f 
 
 * Physiological Riddles. Cornhill Magazine. 
 
 t There is an admirable paper on ''Vitality", illustrating this 
 subject, in the "Header" of October 29th, 1864, signed " J. T.", evi- 
 dently Professor Tyndall. As the subject is of so much importance 
 we make no apology for quoting at some length. 
 
 " In what sense, then, is the sun to be regarded as the origin of 
 the energy derivable from plants and animals ? Let us try to give an 
 intelligible answer to this question. Water may be raised from the 
 sea-level to a high elevation, and then permitted to descend. In 
 descending it may be made to assume various forms to fall in cas- 
 cades, to spurt in fountains, to boil in eddies, or to flow tranquilly along 
 a uniform bed. It may, moreover, be caused to set complex machinery 
 in motion, to turn millstones, throw shuttles, work saws and hammers, 
 and drive piles. But every form of power here indicated would be 
 derived from the original power expended in raising the water to the 
 height from which it fell. There is no energy generated by the ma- 
 chinery; the work performed by the water in descending is merely 
 the parcelling out and distribution of the work expended in raising it. 
 In precisely this sense is all the energy of plants and animals the par- 
 celling out and distribution of a power originally exerted by the sun. 
 In the case of the water, the source of the power consists in the forcible 
 separation of a quantity of the liquid from the lowest level of the earth's 
 surface and its elevation to a higher position, the power thus expended 
 being returned by the water in its descent. In the case of vital pheno- 
 mena, the source of power consists in the forcible separation of the
 
 12 FORCE, AND ITS MENTAL CORRELATES. 
 
 Thus we see that not a peculiar agent, called Life, but a 
 peculiar mode of operation is required to produce the special 
 results we call vital forces, and as Life is thus the mere 
 correlate of Physical forces, so Mind is the correlate of 
 
 atoms of chemical compounds by the sun of the carbon and hydrogen, 
 for example, of the carbonic acid and water diffused throughout the 
 atmosphere, from the oxygen with which they are combined. This 
 separation is effected in the leaves of plants by solar energy. The con- 
 stituents of the carbonic acid and water are there torn asunder in spite 
 of their mutual attraction, the carbon and hydrogen are stored up in 
 the wood, and the oxygen is set free in the air. When the wood is 
 burned the oxygen recombines with the carbon, and the heat then given 
 out is of the precise amount drawn from the sun to effect the previous 
 " reduction" of the carbonic acid. The reunion of the carbon with the 
 oxygen is similar to the reunion of our falling water with the earth from 
 which it had been separated. We name the one action ' gravity ' and 
 the other ' chemical affinity ' ; but these different names must not mis- 
 lead us regarding the qualitative identity of the two forces. They are 
 both attraction, and, to the intellect, the falling of carbon atoms against 
 oxygen atoms is not more difficult of conception than the falling of 
 water to the earth. 
 
 " The building up of the vegetable then is effected by the sun through 
 the reduction of chemical compounds. All the phenomena of animal 
 life are more or less complicated reversals of these processes of reduc- 
 tion. We eat the vegetable, and we breathe the oxygen of the air, and 
 in our bodies the oxygen which had been lifted from the carbon and 
 hydrogen by the action of the sun again falls towards them, producing 
 animal heat and developing animal forms. Through the most compli- 
 cated phenomena of vitality this law runs : the vegetable is produced 
 by the lifting, the animal by the falling of a weight. But the question 
 is not exhausted here. The water which we used in our first illustration 
 produces all the motion displayed in its descent, but the form of the 
 motion depends on the character of the machinery interposed in the 
 path of the water. And thus the primary action of the sun's rays is 
 qualified by the atoms and molecules among which their energy is dis- 
 tributed. Molecular forces determine the form which the solar energy 
 will assume. In the one case this energy is so conditioned by its atomic 
 machinery as to result in the formation of a cabbage ; in another case 
 it is so conditioned as to result in the formation of an oak. So also as
 
 VITAL FORCE. 18 
 
 Vital forces. " That no idea or feeling arises, save as a 
 result of some physical force expended in producing it, is 
 fast becoming a common-place of science; and whoever duly 
 weighs the evidence will see, that nothing but an over- 
 
 regards the reunion of the carbon and the oxygen the form of their 
 reunion is determined by the molecular machinery through which the 
 combining energy acts. In one case the action may result in the 
 formation of a man, while in another it may result in the formation 
 of a grasshopper. 
 
 " But whence comes the power on the part of the molecules to compel 
 the solar energy to take determinate forms ? The matter of the animal 
 body is that of inorganic nature. There is no substance in the animal 
 tissues which is not primarily derived from the rocks, the water, and 
 the air. Are the forces of organic matter, then, different in kind from 
 those of inorganic matter ? All the philosophy of the present day nega- 
 tives the question. It is the compounding in the organic world of forces 
 that belong equally to the inorganic that constitutes the mystery and the 
 miracle of vitality. Every portion of every animal body may be reduced 
 to purely inorganic matter. A perfect reversal of this process of reduc- 
 tion would carry us from the inorganic to the organic; and such a 
 reversal is at least conceivable. The tendency, indeed, of modern 
 science is to break down the wall of partition between organic and inor- 
 ganic, and to reduce both to the operation of forces which are the same 
 in kind, but whose combinations differ in complexity. 
 
 " The mode in which these combinations have been brought about is 
 a perfectly legitimate subject of scientific speculation ; and in this we 
 will here so far indulge as to ask a single speculative question. It is 
 generally supposed that our earth once belonged to the sun, from which 
 it was detached in a molten condition. Hence arises the question 
 ' Did that incandescent world contain latent within itself the elements 
 of life ? ' Or, supposing a planet carved from our present sun, and set 
 spinning round him at the distance of our earth, would one of the con- 
 sequences of its refrigeration be the development of organic forms? 
 Structural forces certainly lie latent in the molten mass, whether or 
 not those forces reach to the extent of forming a plant or an animal. 
 All the marvels of crystalline force, all those wonderful branching frost- 
 ferns which cover our window-panes on a winter morning the exquisite 
 molecular architecture which is now known to belong to the ice of our 
 frozen lakes all this ' coustructiveness ' lies latent in an amorphous
 
 14 FOKCE, AND ITS MENTAL CORRELATES. 
 
 whelming bias in favour of a pre-conceived theory, can 
 explain its non-acceptance. How this metamorphosis takes 
 place how a force existing as emotion, heat, or light, can 
 become a mode of consciousness how it is possible for aerial 
 vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the 
 forces liberated by chemical changes, in the brain to give rise to 
 motion these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom. 
 But they are not profounder mysteries than the transformation 
 of the physical forces into each other. They are not more 
 completely beyond our comprehension than the natures of 
 Mind and Matter. They have simply the same insolubility 
 as all other ultimate questions. We can learn nothing more 
 than that here is one of the uniformities in the order of 
 phenomena." * 
 
 The peculiar mode of operation which force assumes, 
 whether as mechanical force or motion, heat, magnetism, or 
 feeling, emotion, or thought, depends, as we have said, upon 
 organization or structure, that is, upon the arrangement of 
 
 drop of water, and comes into play when the water is sufficiently cooled. 
 And who will set limits to the possible play of molecular forces in the 
 cooling of a planet? / 
 
 " In discussing these questions it is impossible to avoid taking side- 
 glances at the phenomena of intellect and will. Are they, by natural 
 evolution, capable of being developed from incandescent matter ? Whe- 
 ther they are or not, we do not seem to possess the rudiments of an 
 organ which could enable us to comprehend the change ; we are utterly 
 incompetent to take the step from the phenomena of physics to those 
 of consciousness. And, even granting the validity of the above explana- 
 tion, the questions still remain, ' Who or what made the sun and gave 
 his rays such power ? Who or what bestowed upon the ultimate par- 
 ticles of matter the forces whose interaction, combined with the energy 
 of the solar rays, produces plants and animals ? ' Science does not 
 know : the mystery, though pushed back, remains as deep as ever." 
 * First Principles, by Herbert Spencer, p. 280.
 
 PECULIARITIES OF STRUCTURE. 15 
 
 permanent centres of force. The Natural Philosopher is 
 constantly coming near to this fact, without seeing its full 
 significance. Thus Liehig says, "Isomorphism, or the 
 quality of form of many chemical compounds having a dif- 
 ferent composition, tends to prove that matter consists of 
 atoms, the mere arrangement of which produces all the 
 properties of bodies. But when we find that a different 
 arrangement of the same elements gives rise to various physical 
 and chemical properties, and a similar arrangement of 
 different elements produces properties very much the same, 
 may we not inquire whether some of those hodies which we 
 regard as elements, may not be merely modifications of the 
 same substance, whether they are not the same matter in 
 different states of arrangement ?" * All we have to consider 
 is Force as it passes through the living structure of the 
 human body, in its various modes of operation. 
 
 The peculiarities of structure which modify the form and 
 action of force in the human body depend principally upon the 
 stock, or race, from which the individual is descended. 
 Among animals almost any form and quality of the species can 
 be produced by crossing, but whether these changes can be said 
 to be improvements upon the original type is another thing. 
 Certainly mongrels among dogs and horses are not considered 
 to be any improvement, and the same may almost invariably be 
 said of mixed races of men ; the higher type loses what the 
 inferior gains. The mixing of English and Hindoo blood 
 often results in feebleness of brain bordering on fatuity or 
 insanity. The modern Mexican a mixture of the Spaniard 
 and the native Indian, is an inferior race, &c. We are 
 familiar with this influence of stock in what is called budding 
 and grafting in trees. A bud of one tree introduced into the 
 
 * Chemical Lectures, p. 54.
 
 16 FORCE, AND ITS MENTAL CORRELATES. 
 
 bark of another retains all the peculiarities of its original 
 parentage, and a small branch of one tree transferred to 
 another retains all the specialities that distinguish its fruit, 
 although dependent entirely upon the root, stock, and circu- 
 latory system of another tree. Although we can trace no 
 difference of structure between the graft and the branch to 
 which it is attached, no doubt it is there that the difference 
 lies, it is upon that difference of arrangement that the 
 modification of the vital force depends. That the new branch 
 should retain all the specialities of its parent stock under 
 such circumstances is both wonderful and instructive, for 
 the same kind of budding and grafting is constantly going 
 on in the intermarriages of human beings, although the 
 fruit individuals bear in consequence passes almost unnoticed. 
 There are certain broadly- marked constitutional qualities, 
 however, which have not escaped notice. These have been 
 called by Phrenologists the Temperaments. " There are four 
 temperaments," we are told by Mr. George Combe, " accom- 
 panied by different degrees of strength and activity in the 
 brain the lymphatic, the sanguine, the bilious, and the 
 nervous. The temperaments are supposed to depend upor 
 the constitution of particular systems of the body : the brain 
 and nerves being predominantly active from constitutional 
 causes, seem to produce the nervous temperament; the lungs, 
 heart, and blood-vessels being constitutionally predominant, 
 to give rise to the sanguine; the muscular and fibrous sys- 
 tem to the bilious; and the glands and assimilating organs 
 to the lymphatic." * These differences and their combina- 
 tions are very obviously marked and indicate great differences 
 in the bodily and mental characters of individuals. There is 
 a very wide field, however, open for observation beyond; the 
 
 * System of Phrenology, p. 50.
 
 GALVANIC STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN. 17 
 
 bilious or fibrous temperament, for instance, is said to give 
 endurance, but it is by no means sufficient to account for 
 the great power of endurance of bodily fatigue that distin- 
 guished such men as Napoleon Buonaparte; the nervous 
 temperament is supposed to give great mental activity, but 
 this does not account for the kind of memory said to be 
 possessed by Sir Walter Scott and others, by which they 
 were enabled to remember almost ah 1 they read. These 
 and many similar powers probably depend upon some pecu- 
 liar quality or structure of body and brain yet unobserved. 
 
 The Brain is the organ of mind, that is, it is in the 
 brain and nervous system that the correlation or change of 
 force takes place which distinguishes thought and feeling 
 from heat, electricity, magnetism, &c., and we have the 
 equivalent of that force again in muscular action, heat, 
 electricity, &c. 
 
 The brain has a peculiar structure fitting it for its 
 peculiar electrical and galvanic operations; thus, Professor 
 Ehrenberg asserts that by means of the microscope he has 
 discovered the fibres of the encephalon, spinal chord, and 
 nerves, to be tubular, i. e., that they do not consist of solid 
 fibres, but of parallel or fasciculated tubes, dilated at inter- 
 vals or jointed, and from one-ninety-sixth to one-three- 
 thousandth parts of a line in diameter. Also, that they 
 contain a perfectly transparent tenacious fluid, never visibly 
 globular, the liquor nervens, which differs from the nervens 
 medulla as the chyle does from blood. * f 
 
 * Human Physiology, p. 466. Dr. Elliotson. 
 
 + To what extent the more recent researches of Dr. Lionel Beale, 
 as given in his paper on " the Paths of Nerve-currents ", in the Pro- 
 ceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xiii., p. 386, confirm those of 
 Ehrenherg, I am not able to say, as I have not the book at hand. 
 But Mr. Bain tells us that " for every fibre coming up from the senses, 
 and every fibre going out to the limbs and moving organs there must 
 
 c
 
 18 FOKCE, AND ITS MENTAL CORKELATES. 
 
 The dependance of the mind upon the bodily organization, 
 and upon the force derived from the food acting through it, 
 now needs no proof. The mind like the body has its several 
 ages it is childish in childhood, strong in manhood, weak in 
 sickness, frenzied in madness, and doting in old age. It 
 sympathises with digestion, and changes with each change 
 in the blood. If the circulation is rapid it quickens thought, 
 so that in fever we have delirium, and from excess of alcohol 
 delirium tremens. "With excess of carbonic acid the action 
 ceases altogether, and with excess of oxygen (nitrous oxygen 
 or laughing gas) the action is greatly increased. If the 
 purifying organs are out of order we have serious mental 
 depression, and if we abstract heat or give chloroform, first 
 mental action and then vitality ceases altogether ; but mental 
 action first. 
 
 The dependence of the thinking power upon the food 
 requires no proof, as thinking ceases altogether if food is too 
 long withheld; but close observation shows that not only do 
 alcohol, opium, and hashish* act upon the mind in the mode 
 
 be at least 10,000, perhaps 100,000 traversing the hrain, involving a 
 great and rapid multiplication in the progress through the cerehral 
 substance. The Fortnightly Review, January, 1866. 
 
 * Besides the various effects which are common to all the principal 
 narcotics, each has characteristics of its own. Hashish produces real 
 catalepsy, and exaggerates rather than prevents the report of the external 
 senses as to external objects ; the thorn-apple, on the other hand, 
 causes truly spectral illusions, and enables the Indian to converse with 
 the spirit of his ancestors. The Siberian fungus gives insensibility to 
 pain without interfering with consciousness. The common buff-ball 
 stops all muscular action, and leaves the perceptive powers untouched. 
 Cocculus indicus makes the body drunk, without affecting the mind. 
 Coca has the wonderful power of sustaining muscular strength in the 
 absence of food, and of preventing th wasting of the tissues of the body 
 during the greatest and most prolonged exertion. The effects of the
 
 THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM PREDOMINANT. 19 
 
 with which we are familiar, but all kinds of food affect the 
 mind differently, causing difference in action. But if the food 
 acts upon the mind, so does the mind upon the food; " When 
 the pneumo-gastric or chief nerve of the stomach is tied 
 or cut through, and its end separated so as to interrupt 
 the flow of nervous energy towards that organ, digestion is 
 either entirely arrested or greatly impaired. * 
 
 But the brain and nervous system dominate in all parts 
 of the system, and influence both its action and form. 
 The brain is nourished by the heart, and if it ceased for one 
 instant to send its blood to the brain, Sensibility would 
 cease; and the heart equally depends for motive power 
 upon the brain. " Powerful mental shocks momently arrest 
 the heart, and sometimes arrest it for ever. That which a 
 powerful current will do applied to a pneumogastric nerve, 
 will be done by a profound agitation of grief or joy 
 truly called a heart-shaking influence. The agitation of the 
 great centres of thought is communicated to the spinal 
 chord, and from it to the nerves which issue to different 
 parts of the body; the limbs are violently moved, the 
 glands are excited to increased activity, the tears flow, the 
 facial muscles contract, the chest expands, laughter or sobs, 
 dances of delight and shouts of joy, these and the manifold 
 expressions of an agitated emotion are the after results 
 the first effect is an arrest, more or less fugitive, followed 
 
 different narcotics are not only peculiar, but often opposed. Opium and 
 Hashish, common in most of their effects, are opposite in this, that the 
 former diminishes sensibility to external impressions, whereas the latter 
 almost infinitely increases it. Betel is even an antidote to opium, as 
 tea is to alcohol. Tobacco suspends mental activity ; opium and hashish 
 increase it a thousand fold. National Review, p. 94, Jan., 1858. 
 * Dr. A. Combe on Digestion and Dietetics, p. 77.
 
 20 FORCE, AND ITS MENTAL CORRELATES. 
 
 by an increase of the heart's action. If the organism be 
 vigorous, the effect of a powerful emotion is a sudden pale- 
 ness, indicating a momentary arrest of the heart. This 
 may be but for an instant: the heart pauses, and the lungs 
 pause with it ' the breath is taken away.' This is succeeded 
 by an energetic palpitation; the lungs expand, the blood 
 rushes to the face and brain with increased force. Should 
 the organism be sickly or highly sensitive, the arrest is of 
 longer duration, and faulting, more or less prolonged, is 
 the result. In a very sensitive or very sickly organization 
 the arrest is final. The shock of joy and the shock of 
 grief have both been known to kill."* 
 
 The Brain and Nervous System influence not only the 
 functions, but the growth of the whole body, regulating 
 the form both of the muscles and bones of expression and 
 action, and thus physiognomy and chirognomy are legitimate 
 sciences.! 
 
 But it is a limited quantity of force that is derived 
 from the food, and the mode of its action depends upon 
 its distribution over the body, and the functions it has 
 there to perform. This is regulated, as we have seen, greatly 
 by the Temperaments. While digestion is going on the 
 powers of thinking and feeling are proportionately decreased ; 
 so also great bodily exercise and great mental activity are 
 incompatible. Again, the great activity of one portion of 
 the brain decreases the energy of another a predominating 
 intellect weakens feeling, and an active propensity the moral 
 sentiments. This distribution of force explains many hitherto 
 
 * The Heart and the Brain, by G. H. Lewes. The Fortnightly 
 Review. 
 
 t See Psychonomy of the Hand, according to MM. D'Arpantigny 
 and Desborralles, by Richard Beamish, F.R. S. London, F. Pitman, 
 20, Paternoster Bow.
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF MENTAL FORCE. 21 
 
 mysterious physiological phenomena. In the nomad tribes 
 and the agricultural population, where great muscular out- 
 door exercise is required, and the vital system consequently 
 greatly predominates, the vis.jnedicatrix, or natural healing 
 power, is much stronger than in people of sedentary and 
 studious habits, and the one class recovers from accidents 
 that would be death to the other. So also studious habits 
 or strong feelings impair vital power. The sexual feeling 
 is generally the strongest in the system and absorbs the 
 largest amount of force, and when it comes into too early 
 activity, it stops the growth of the body, and a large ama- 
 tiveuess is generally attended with deficient locomotive or 
 muscular power. The emasculated London cats grow to 
 greater size than their unmutilated brethren in the country, 
 and geldings and oxen have much more working power, that 
 is, enduring muscular force, than stallions and bulls. 
 When the important vital action, the renovation of the 
 body by putting in new tissue, is going on, the action of 
 the Mind ceases altogether, and what we call sleep more 
 or less perfect, supervenes. 
 
 But the Brain, as the organ of Mind, is not a single 
 organ, but a congeries or bundle of organs, manifesting a 
 plurality of faculties, with force in proportion to the size 
 and quality of the organ. 
 
 Mind as a force, as a function or power of Brain, should 
 be studied as other forces, in its manifestations in its 
 attributes by what it does. 
 
 Examined in this way, Dr. Gall discovered that a strong 
 verbal memory was always accompanied by a prominent 
 eye, which prominence he found to depend upon the large 
 size of a convolution of the brain, lying at the back of the 
 eye. Pursuing his investigations he found that the special 
 talents of the musician, the sculptor, the artist, the mathema-
 
 22 FORCE, AND ITS MENTAL CORRELATES. 
 
 tician, the calculator, the metaphysician, &c., were dependent 
 upon different parts of the brain, and he and his followers, 
 after long and repeated observation, have come to the know- 
 ledge of what faculties and feelings and what parts of the 
 brain are mutually connected. 
 
 As all organizations differ, and that which is true of one 
 mind, therefore, can only be relatively true of another, reflec- 
 tion upon the consciousness which such organization 
 supplies, cannot alone be the true method of investigating 
 mind, it can be pursued only in conjunction with external 
 observation. 
 
 Following this method Phrenologists have established the 
 following chart of our Intellectual Faculties : 
 
 INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES, which perceive existence. 
 Individuality Takes cognizance of existence and simple facts. 
 Form Renders men observant of Form. 
 
 Size Renders men observant of dimensions, and aids perspective. 
 Weight Communicates the perception of momentum, weight, resist- 
 ance, and aids equilibrium. 
 Colouring Gives perception of colour. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES, which perceive the relations of external 
 
 objects. 
 
 Locality Gives the idea of space and relative position. 
 Number Gives the talent for calculation. 
 Order Communicates the love of physical arrangement. 
 Eventuality Takes cognizance of occurrences and events. 
 Time Gives rise to the perception of duration. 
 Tune The sense of melody arises from it. 
 Language Gives a facility in acquiring a knowledge of arbitrary signs 
 
 to express thoughts readiness in the use of them ; and a power 
 
 of inventing them. 
 
 REFLECTIVE FACULTIES, which Compare, judge, and discriminate. 
 Comparison Gives the power of discovering analogies, resemblances, 
 and differences.
 
 THE WORLD CREATED WITHIN US. 23 
 
 Causality Traces the dependencies of phenomena, and the relations 
 of cause and effect, 
 
 The External Senses of Feeling or Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing, 
 and Sight, are necessary to connect these faculties with the 
 external world, and to hring them into activity. 
 
 The above phrenological organs furnish what are called 
 by metaphysicians the a priori forms of thought. The raw 
 force, if I may use the expression, taken in with the food 
 at one part of the machine, is by the action of external 
 force upon these organs, manufactured into the beautiful 
 phantasmagoria of the external world. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 
 
 " We are such stuff, 
 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded by a sleep." Shakspeare. 
 
 " Omne quod cognoscitur non secundum sui vim, sed .secundum 
 cognoscentium potius comprehenditur facultatem." " All that is known 
 is comprehended, not according to its own force, but according rather 
 to the faculty of those knowing." Boethius. 
 
 " For man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things. 
 On the contrary all the perceptions, both of the sense and of the mind, 
 have reference to Man, and not to the universe." Bacon, Nov. Org., 
 Aph. 41. 
 
 By careful observation of the action of the primitive 
 faculties we are able to determine most of those psychological 
 questions upon which metaphysical philosophers are still dis- 
 puting, as Mill on Hamilton, Herbert Spencer on Mill, &o.
 
 24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 The facts observed by the cerebral physiologists or phreno- 
 logists, however at present ignored and repudiated, furnish 
 the test of the truth of these various conflicting systems. 
 The Intellectual Faculties supply us with ideas, which ideas 
 are only slight feelings or sensations, differing from our 
 other feelings only in intensity. 
 
 A perception of ideas and feelings pass through the mind, 
 or rather constitute the mind; upon this succession we 
 reflect or are conscious, and the only objects of knowledge 
 are these ideas and feelings. We are conscious of nothing 
 but these changes, and we never really advance one step 
 beyond ourselves, or can know any kind of existence but those 
 perceptions that lie in that narrow compass. 
 
 We infer, however, that these ideas are connected with 
 the brain, that the brain is in connection with the senses, and 
 that the senses are acted upon by something external. 
 
 But it is ideas only of which we are conscious, and it is 
 these only therefore we can be said to know; of this " some- 
 thing external " we know nothing, and by what name we call 
 it therefore signifies little. Matter and Force are the names 
 we give to this non-ego. The properties of matter which are 
 supposed to distinguish it from force, are, as we shall see, 
 mere forms of thought, " clusters of sensations"; correlated 
 force. 
 
 The combination of forces which compose our own bodies, 
 certain centres or reservoirs of which constitute the reality 
 of the external world, clearly exist independently of percep- 
 tion, and are not mere abstractions, and if we disconnect 
 the percipient from these external forces perception ceases. 
 The organs of the Brain, through which the correlation of 
 vital force to mental takes place, are of two kinds; those 
 which are acted upon by external causes, through the medium 
 of the senses, and the ideas belonging to which, therefore are
 
 THE COMBINED ACTION OF THE FACULTIES. 25 
 
 modified by the sense; and those faculties which act upon 
 these ideas when so furnished by the first class. They have 
 been divided into ideas of Simple and Relative Perception. 
 
 All the knowledge we have therefore of an external world 
 is of its action through the medium of the senses upon only 
 a few of the mental faculties, and which perceptive faculties 
 alone would be quite insufficient to give us the idea of nature 
 as we now conceive of it. The world, as it appears to us 
 as it exists in the region of our consciousness, is created in 
 our own minds by the action of the faculties of Eelative Per- 
 ception and of Reflection upon the comparatively few ideas 
 furnished by the faculties of Simple Perception. 
 
 Our ideas of things result from the relation between the 
 object or cause, the sense, and the three classes of intellectual 
 faculties, and the vain effort to untie this untieable synthesis 
 has caused most of the errors of the metaphysician. 
 
 " What we term the properties of an object, are the 
 powers it exerts of producing sensations in our conscious- 
 ness." * The object acts upon the sense, and the sense upon 
 the perceptive faculties of Form, Size, Weight, Colour, &c., 
 and we have ideas of shapes and sizes and colours, of exten- 
 sion, of weight, of solidity, hardness, strength, &c., and these 
 we call the properties of matter. The idea of extension and 
 solidity, which is supposed peculiarly to distinguish matter, 
 is derived from the faculties of form, size, and colour, which 
 give the shape, and weight, the sense of resistance. Indivi- 
 duality unites these qualities into one, and gives the idea 
 of the individual or substratum or nournenon upon which 
 they are supposed to depend. " The name ' rose ' is the 
 mark of the sensation of colour, a sensation of shape, a sen- 
 sation of touch, a sensation of smell, all in conjunction 
 
 * J. S. MM.
 
 26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 (an action of the senses and intellectual faculties combined). 
 * * * Of those names (such as rose) which denote 
 clusters of sensation, it is obvious that some include a greater 
 some a less, number of sensations. * * * We not 
 only give names to clusters of sensations, but to clusters of 
 clusters, that is to a number of minor clusters united 
 into a greater cluster. Thus we give the name ' wood ' 
 to a particular cluster of sensations, the name canvas to ano- 
 ther, the name rope to another. To these clusters and 
 many others, joined together in one great cluster, we give 
 the name ship. * * * And again, in using the 
 names tree, horse, man, the names of what I call objects, 
 I am referring only to my own sensations (and to other 
 people's sensations); in fact, therefore, only naming a cer- 
 tain number of sensations, regarded as in a particular state 
 of combination; that is, in concomitance."* Accordingly, 
 we name only our own sensation or idea, but this idea is 
 compounded equally of the object, the sense, and the intel- 
 lectual faculties, each of which we know can exist separately. 
 Thus the noise which we say we hear in the street, is a 
 sensation really in our own head, although the cause of the 
 sensation is in the street and each has a separate and dis- 
 tinct existence. The cause in the street may affect other 
 people in the same way, and have numberless other effects, 
 while the sensation is a correlate of physical forces, proceeding 
 from or put in motion in the street, which may again become 
 physical force and take its place in the external world. The 
 ego and the non-ego thus pass and repass into each other 
 and are constantly changing places. 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. It is the form of thought peculiar to 
 the organ of Individuality that gives oneness or unity to 
 
 * James Mill.
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ITS RELIABILITY. 27 
 
 these clusters of sensations. We individualize all our own 
 parts and functions, and call it our body ; we do the same 
 with reference to the succession of our ideas, and call it 
 our mind. 
 
 IDENTITY. The feeling of Personal Identity which wo 
 attach to this evanescent "cluster of ideas" which we call 
 body and mind, results from a primitive mental faculty, or 
 instinct, connected with its special organ in the brain. This 
 is evidenced by the organ sometimes becoming diseased, 
 when the feeling of Identity the "I" of consciousness, 
 becomes lost, or double, or otherwise deranged. 
 
 BELIEF. Each intellectual faculty and feeling supplies 
 us with an instinct or intuition, and it is in the action of 
 these faculties, in the intuitions supplied by them, that 
 mankind necessarily believe. They furnish our fundamental 
 truths. Faith or belief is not an action of the intellectual 
 faculties, but a sentiment or feeling, and it is as easy to 
 believe in one order of nature, or set of sequences, as in 
 another, until experience or the intellect has determined 
 what are permanent or invariable. Of course we can believe 
 only in what we understand; when we are said to believe in 
 the incomprehensible, we believe only in the testimony, or 
 in so much only as we do understand. 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ITS EELIABILITY. And now comes 
 the question : are our Instincts or Intuitions worthy of 
 belief? These intuitions, resulting from the action of our 
 primitive faculties, constitute our Consciousness; is the 
 verdict of consciousness to be accepted without appeal, 
 or can we reject its testimony? First, we must examine 
 what is consciousness, and what is the nature of its verdict. 
 James Mill says, " To have a feeling is to be conscious ; 
 and to be conscious is to have a feeling;" and J. S. Mill 
 says, " To feel and not to know that we feel is an impossi-
 
 28 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHKENOLOGY. 
 
 bility." Now the brutes have feelings, but there is no 
 evidence that they are conscious of them; they feel, but 
 do not know that they feel. They have consciousness, but 
 are not conscious; for consciousness is used by most writers 
 to mean sensibility or feeling; but to be conscious is to 
 reflect on this sensibility or feeling. The brute when it 
 chews the cud has a succession of slightly pleasurable feelings, 
 the aggregate of which constitute a mild kind of happiness. 
 It cannot be said to be conscious of this, but there is not less 
 happiness because it does not reflect upon it. The faculties 
 by which we know and feel, and those by which we know 
 that we know and feel, are different, and one class the 
 reflective faculties judges of the trustworthiness of the 
 other. But there is no more a distinct act of consciousness 
 attending every act of mind, than there is a distinct act of 
 Will attending every act of body. Nature consists of " what 
 perceives and what is perceived," but this is merely one class 
 of mental faculty acting upon another that is, reflection on 
 consciousness. " What we perceive under the condition of 
 contact or touch, say the Berkelians, are sensations only, and 
 not the causes of sensations." Now the cause is certainly 
 contained in the sensation perceived, which is the resultant 
 equally of the cause or object, the sense, and the mental 
 faculty, that is, the sensation is the correlate or exact equiva- 
 lent of the force without and the nervous force within. 
 
 BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. The generality of 
 mankind believe in an External World as it appears to them, 
 as something without and entirely independent of them- 
 selves; they know nothing of consciousness and of sensa- 
 tions. They understand nothing and believe nothing about 
 the " objects of knowledge being ideas," they believe only in 
 things which are hot or cold, rough or smooth, hard or soft, 
 coloured, &c. They have " an instantaneous and irresistible
 
 THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 29 
 
 conviction of outward objects," but they know nothing of 
 " Permanent Possibilities of Sensation." They believe in 
 material objects, and not in modifications of our sensibility, 
 or the Relativity of our Knowledge. It is the non-ego, and 
 not the mind perceiving, in which we first believe, and this 
 conviction is not slowly acquired, but is instinctive or intui- 
 tional the result of our primitive faculties.* It is doubt 
 
 * "What do mankind in general believe? They believe that the 
 material world is exactly and in every respect the world which our senses 
 report to us as external to ourselves. They believe that the rocks, the 
 hills, the trees, the stars, that we all see, are not mere hieroglyphics 
 of a something different from themselves and from us, but are really 
 what is there. That outer vastness of space in which orbs are shining 
 and wheeling is no mere representation or visionary allegory of some- 
 thing ; it is the thing itself. This is, and always has been, the popular 
 belief of mankind in general. All mankind may therefore be described, 
 generally, as Natural Realists. But, strange to say, Natural Realism 
 has been the system of but one or two modern philosophers among 
 whom Reid is named as a type. Nay, more, among these philosophers 
 it is not the popular form of the belief that is entertained. Mankind in 
 general suppose sweetness, shrillness, colour, &c., to be qualities inhe- 
 rently belonging to the objects to which they are attributed, while the 
 philosophers who are Natural Realists admit that at least these so-called 
 ' secondary qualities ' of objects have no proper outness, but are 
 only physiological affections, affections of the organs of taste, hear- 
 ing, sight, &c., produced by particular objects. Thus the Natural 
 Realism of philosophers is itself a considerable remove from the 
 Natural Realism of the crude popular belief. It does not, with the 
 crude popular belief, call the whole apparent world, of sights, sounds, 
 tastes, tacts, and odours the real world that would be there whether 
 man were there or not ; true, it descries in that apparent world a block 
 or core, if I may so say, which would have to be thought of as really 
 existing, even if there were swept away all that consists in our rich 
 physiological interactions with it. 
 
 " According to this system. (Constructive Idealism) we do not per- 
 ceive the real external world immediately, but only mediately that is, 
 the objects which we take as the things actually perceived are not the real 
 objects at all, but only vicarious assurances, representatives, or nuntii 
 of real unknown objects. The hills, the rocks, the trees, the stars, all 
 the choir of heaven and earth, are not, in any of their qualities, primary,
 
 80 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHKENOLOGY. 
 
 that is acquired, and we ask ourselves, Are these intuitions to 
 be relied on ? For as Fichte says, speaking of a tree and things 
 external, " there is in fact nothing there, but only a manifes- 
 tation of Power from something that is not I." Kant also 
 observes " that there is an illusion inherent in our constitu- 
 tions ; that we cannot help conceiving as belonging to Things 
 themselves, attributes with which they are only clothed by the 
 laws of our sensitive and intellectual nature." To affirm so 
 much, however, is not to reject the testimony of consciousness ; 
 for when one class of faculties the reasoning faculties, tests 
 the testimony of another class, any resulting contradiction is 
 the testimony of consciousness. 
 
 " The action of the intellectual faculties in imparting 
 knowledge, is much more simple in its character than the 
 infinite variety of ideas would at first induce us to sup- 
 
 secondary, or whatever we choose to call them, the actual existence out 
 of us, but only the addresses of a ' something ', to our physiology, 
 or eductions by our physiology out of a ' something.' They are all 
 Thoughts or Ideas, with only this peculiarity involved in them, that 
 they will not rest in themselves, but compel a reference to objects out 
 of self, with which, by some arrangement or other, they stand in relation. 
 Difficult as this system may be to understand, and violently as it 
 wrenches the popular common sense, it is yet the system into which the 
 great majority of philosophers in all ages and countries hitherto are seen, 
 more or less distinctly, to have been carried by their speculations. 
 While the Natural Realists among philosophers have been very few, and 
 even these have been Realists in a sense unintelligible to the popular 
 mind, quite a host of philosophers have been Constructive Idealists. 
 These might be farther subdivided according to particular variations in 
 the form of their Idealism. Thus, there have been many Constructive 
 Idealists who have regarded the objects rising to the mind in external 
 perception, and taken to be representative of real unknown objects, as 
 something more than modifications of -the mind itself as having their 
 origin without. Among these have been reckoned Mallebranche, Berke- 
 ley, Clarke, Sir Isaac Newton, Tucker, and possibly Locke." Recent 
 British Philosophy, p. 68, et seq. Professor Masson.
 
 THE SIMPLE ACTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 81 
 
 pose. Thus we perceive qualities of form, size, colour, 
 &c., and we attach these qualities to individual existences: 
 we perceive the number, arrangement and relative position 
 of such existences, and conceive of them as existing in space; 
 we have ideas also of motion and active phenomena, and 
 conceive of their existence in time: we trace also resem- 
 blances and differences, and relations of antecedence and 
 consequence, and distinguish between invariable antecedents 
 called causes, and such as are not permanent. Now some 
 of the faculties that produce this mental action have direct 
 relation to external objects, and others have relation only to 
 the ideas furnished by them; so that part of our ideas only 
 being furnished by external causes, and part by the action 
 of the mental faculties upon these ideas, we cannot say that 
 all our knowledge comes through the senses. Certain im- 
 pressions received from without are by the mind itself worked 
 up into a picture which we suppose to belong, or to have its 
 prototype, hi the external world, but which is, in fact, manu- 
 factured in the mind, and exists only in minds similarly 
 constituted." * 
 
 Kow what say our Reasoning powers of a world thus 
 created? Contrary to the impressions supplied by Individu- 
 ality, they tell us that there are no such things as individuals ,f 
 We find a world of effects, no causes a succession of per- 
 sistent forces: 
 
 " Nothing in this world is single, 
 All things by a law divine 
 In one another's being mingle." 
 
 The solidified gases which constitute man's bodily indivi- 
 
 * Philosophy of Necessity, p. 192. 
 
 + As we have said, every correlation or change of force creates a 
 now existence or individuality, but it is part only of the great whole, and 
 could have no existence separately.
 
 82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 duality are in constant flux and change with all around, 
 and his mind is a succession of separate correlated forces or 
 ideas. As Hume says, " 'Tis still true, that every distinct 
 perception, which enters into the composition of the mind, 
 is a distinct existence, and is different, and distinguishable, 
 and separable from every other perception, either contem- 
 porary or successive." If there be any individuality here, it 
 belongs to every separate thought; but this individuality is 
 absorbed, as we shall find, in the One Substance, the only 
 Unity. 
 
 EXTENSION AND SPACE. But the external world is sup- 
 posed to be extended ; but what is Extension ? It results from 
 the joint action of the organs of Form, Size, and Weight, that 
 is, it is a compound idea. As Hume says, " The very idea 
 of extension is copied from nothing but an impression, and 
 consequently must perfectly agree to it." But he also says, 
 " Can any one conceive a passion of a yard in length, a foot 
 in breadth, and an inch in thickness? Thought therefore 
 and extension are qualities wholly incompatible, and never 
 can incorporate together into one subject." The same must 
 be said of Space, so far as the idea of it is based upon 
 Extension. But is not our idea of Space derived from the 
 existence of other beings, of things without ourselves whose 
 nature or essence is thought and force ? The idea of extension 
 is excluded from thought and force. The ego and non-ego 
 must occupy different positions, and it is this that gives us 
 the idea of Space. It is the form of thought furnished by 
 the organ of locality, joined, perhaps, to the idea of extension. 
 
 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY 
 QUALITIES NOT TENABLE. The distinction which meta- 
 physicians make between the Primary and Secondary Qualities 
 of bodies is untenable ; the external cause of colour is equally 
 existent with those which give the ideas of solidity and
 
 PBIJIARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES. 33 
 
 extension, and equally existent whether the percipient be 
 present or not. Mr. J. S. Mill, however, says, " The 
 sensations answering to the Secondary Qualities are only 
 occasional, those to the Primary, constant. The Secondary, 
 moreover, vary with different persons, and with the primary 
 sensibility of our organs: the Primary, when perceived at 
 all, are, as far as we know, the same to all persons and at all 
 times." Now the fact is, that the strength of these percep- 
 tions is exactly in proportion to the size of the organs with 
 which they are connected. People are met with who cannot 
 distinguish one colour from another, and others are equally 
 blind as to forms and sizes, and who could no more be taught 
 to draw than a person with a small organ of colour could 
 paint, or one with a deficient organ of Tune could be taught 
 music. Mr. Mill, however, elsewhere says truly, " How do 
 we know that magnitude is not exclusively a property of our 
 sensations of the states of subjective consciousness which 
 objects produce in us? (It certainly is quite as much so as 
 colour.) Or, he continues, if this supposition displeases, 
 how do we know that magnitude is not, as Kant considered it, 
 a form of our minds, an attribute with which the laws of 
 thought invest every conception that we can form, but to 
 which there may be something analagous in the Noumenon, 
 the Thing in itself?" Kant's categories are his mode of 
 arriving by Reflection on consciousness at the list of Intel- 
 lectual Faculties or modes of thought which Gall and his 
 followers have arrived at by observation, and they correspond, 
 more correctly than in any other system, to the faculties of 
 Simple and Relative Perception and Reasoning Powers. Our 
 ideas of Relative Perception are not derived from experience; 
 they are innate ideas or intuitions not derived from without, 
 and have therefore no objective reality. These faculties act 
 upon those which perceive existence, give to their modes of 
 
 D
 
 84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHREXOLOGY. 
 
 thought symmetry and order; each adds its part, the pecu- 
 liar form it is its province to create, and the picture is painted 
 in our consciousness, which we call the external world. 
 
 RELATIVITY OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. We know then only 
 how we are affected by things external; we know only the 
 world which such affections create in us ; what effect the same 
 causes may have acting on other beings, differently consti- 
 tuted, it is impossible to say, neither -can we tell what worlds 
 so created lie without the sphere of our consciousness, and 
 we cannot be too modest in our ignorance. 
 
 THE WILL. The Will is the trigger of the mind. Upon 
 the " last dictate of the understanding" it lets off the accu- 
 mulated mental force in the direction of the object or purpose 
 aimed at. The strength of the Will is in proportion to the 
 force to be discharged, which force depends upon the size and 
 quality of the organs of the brain in which the determination 
 originates. The Will has an organ of its own, lying, according 
 to Mr. Atkinson, behind the "Ego" or "I" of conscious- 
 ness and close to Firmness; thus we get its characteristic 
 expression "I will", and its excess or abuse " wilfulness ", 
 and when joined to large Firmness it is determined or per- 
 sistent Will. When Combativeness governs the Will, the 
 force is generally discharged outwardly ; when Cautiousness or 
 Secretiveness prevail, inwardly; often then disturbing the 
 balance of other vital and mental forces. The Will no more 
 lets off itself than the trigger 'of a gun does: it is generally 
 pulled by the stronger motive, as understanding or mere 
 feeling may prevail.
 
 THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 35 
 
 SECTION II. 
 THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 
 
 " Human Liberty of which all boast, consists solely in this, that 
 man is conscious of his will, and unconscious of the causes by which it 
 is determined." Spinoza. 
 
 But if the generality of mankind have deceived themselves 
 in believing in the real existence of an external world as it 
 appears to them, and their intellectual faith is untenable, 
 so is their moral belief equally unsound and fallacious. They 
 believe in Free Will, that is in the power of originating 
 volitions of an absolute commencement of action in them- 
 selves whereas in nature there is no beginning, merely pre- 
 existent and persistent force and its correlates. All tendencies, 
 all volition and action, are manifestations of effects. " For 
 each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the 
 effect of some antecedent force: no matter whether it be an 
 inorganic action, an animal movement, a thought or feeling." 
 First Principles, by Herbert Spencer. We know nothing 
 of cause but as the immediate antecedent in the great chain 
 of events going back to eternity, and centring in the One 
 only originating and efficient cause of all things. It is easy 
 to see how this error on the Freedom of the Will originates. 
 The Will, is governed by the last dictate of the understanding, 
 or of our impelling instincts our propensities and senti- 
 ments; and we are conscious that our volitions originate in 
 ourselves. By ourselves we mean the aggregate of all our 
 mental powers. Now we are conscious of the action of 
 our mental powers, but not of the external forces in which
 
 36 THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 
 
 they originate and upon which they depend; hence arises 
 the delusion. * Again, we believe we are free because we 
 can do as we please, but what we please to do depends 
 upon our natural powers, which of course are derived, as we 
 did not endow ourselves with them, f 
 
 " It is true that, in common language, the will is spoken of as the 
 first cause of conscious thoughts and acts, but no act of will (that is, of 
 mental energizing) can occur without its necessary co-existents and ante- 
 cedents that is, its causes ; and such as these are, so will the act of 
 will be. There is, in fact, no more a spontaneous act of will than there 
 is spontaneous generation. Strictly such an act is a creation and belongs 
 only to creative power." Mind and Brain, p. 275. Dr. Lay cock. 
 
 t The Spectator in an article on Science and Miracle, January 
 27, 1866, says, " It is probably true indeed that in some sense the 
 physical forces of the Universe are an invariable quantity, which only 
 alter their forms and not their sum total. If I move my arm, the motion, 
 says the physiologist, is only the exact equivalent of a certain amount of 
 heat which has disappeared and taken the form of that motion. If I do 
 not move it, the heat remains for use in some other way. In either case 
 the stock of force is unchanged. This is the conviction of almost all 
 scientific men and is probably true. But whether the stock of physical 
 force is constant or not, the certainty that human will can change 
 its direction and application can transfer it from one channel to 
 another is just the same. And what that really means, if Will be 
 ever free and uncaused, though of course not unconditioned, which 
 is, we take it, as ultimate and scientific a certainty as any in the Uni- 
 verse, is no less than this, that a strictly supernatural power alters 
 the order and constitution of nature, takes a stock of physical force 
 lying in a reservoir here and transfers it to a stream of effort there, in 
 short, that the supernatural can change the order and constitution of the 
 natural, in its essence 'pure miracle, though miracle of human, and 
 not of divine origin." When the writer says that the Will is free but 
 not "unconditioned" we might suppose that he means what we do, 
 that we can all do as we please subject to the laws of our own being and 
 the circumstances in which we are placed ; but how that can be " condi- 
 tioned" and yet " uncaused" it is difficult to say. Sir William Hamilton 
 who invented the word, says (Discussions, p. 8,) he means by Condi- 
 tioned, determined thought. How can that be uncaused then, or " free", 
 which is "determined"? How this is to be reconciled we are told by 
 Sir William Hamilton when he comes to explain the Philosophy of the
 
 ETHICS ON A FALSE BASE. 87 
 
 Upon this assumed Freedom a whole system of error and 
 superstition has been raised, but it is time now that Ethics 
 were put upon the same footing as all other departments of 
 science. The airs that man has given himself, and his 
 assumption of superiority over all his brethren of the sentient 
 
 Conditioned " Things there are, he tells us (Discussions, p. 624,) which 
 may, nay must, be true, of which the understanding is wholly unable to 
 construe to itself the possibility." " The Conditioned is the mean 
 between the two extremes two unconditionates, exclusive of each other, 
 neither of which can be conceded as possible, but of which, on the princi- 
 ples of contradiction and excluded middle, one must be admitted as neces- 
 sary." (Ibid. p. 15.) Of the two irreconcileable propositions Necessity 
 and Free Will, the exigencies of the Spectator's creed require that he 
 should accept the latter, although " his understanding may be wholly 
 unable to construe to itself the possibility." The principles of all men 
 of Science equally require that they should accept the former. How, 
 therefore, the Spectator can assume that half the phenomena in the 
 Universe those dependent on Volition or Will, are uncaused, is a 
 scientific certainty, it is difficult to say. Science, on the contrary, 
 determines that every effect has a cause, an invariable antecedent, 
 which is always equal, in the same circumstances, to produce the same 
 effect. But an effect without a cause is to produce something from 
 nothing, and this is constantly being repeated in every act of volition ; 
 a fact of which the " understanding is wholly unable to construe to 
 itself the possibility." but it is the more to be believed by a Hamiltonian 
 I suppose in consequence. It would indeed be a miracle, as the Spec- 
 tator affirms ! The power or cause, we are told, that " changes' the 
 order and constitution of the natural" is super-natural, but that which 
 determines this power to act is nothing, or no cause ! To say that the 
 Will determines itself is no way of escape from the difficulty, as there 
 must be a cause why it determines to act in one way rather than in 
 another. In fact a free will is an absurdity, if not an impossibility, for 
 as long as it remains free, that is, undetermined by some motive or 
 cause, it must be perfectly passive and useless or rather no will at all, 
 but merely a conflicting state of mind : the mind may deliberate, but 
 while it deliberates there is no will. How can a man will that about 
 which he is undecided or uncertain and when will is thus determined 
 and prepared for action how can it be free ? If free it is not will, if
 
 88 THE PEKSISTENCE OF FOECE. 
 
 creation are a little ridiculous viewed in this light of the 
 persistence of force. 
 
 As we are obliged to admit the Relativity of our Know- 
 ledge, and we know things only as they affect us intellectually, 
 so, morally, we judge of actions only as they affect us. As, 
 however, all actions are the necessary result of pre-existent 
 force, they are all morally alike in themselves right ancl 
 
 determined it is not free. " Assurance only breeds resolve." But free 
 wiith most libertarians, means self-determined, not uncaused, as with tbe 
 Spectator, but self in this case, means all the attributes and powers we 
 have derived from Nature and the action upon them of the then existing 
 circumstances. I am not surprised that " free will " has been consigned 
 to the region of the supernatural, for there is nothing free in nature, all 
 there is determined according to calculable law. It is not very long since 
 the most ordinary physical effects the causes not being evident or 
 understood were supposed to be supernatural and each nation had 
 its own peculiar way of propitiating the unknown Agent : now, in civilized 
 countries, the supernatural is retained only in the department of mind, 
 where the same ignorance exists as formerly in physics, and people try 
 to avert a moral eclipse by observances and noises differing in kind only 
 from that clashing of pots and pans still made by certain African tribes 
 to keep off an eclipse of the moon. The Spectator says that every 
 accurate thinker will see at once, that free will, Providence, and Miracles 
 do not differ in principle at all, but are only more or less startling 
 results of the same facts.' 1 '' In this, I believe, every " accurate thinker " 
 among the Necessitarians will be disposed perfectly to agree with him. 
 
 In the Spectator of the following week (February 3,) we have 
 another writer on the same subject in a notice of Dr. Travis and Sir 
 William Hamilton. Dr. Travis in " Moral Freedom ^Reconciled with 
 Causation ", lays down the rather startling proposition that acts may be 
 seJ/"-determined while they are caused by something else, a position 
 rather difficult to reconcile with the ordinary use of logic. Although, 
 says the Dr., we cannot control the affections acting upon our organiza- 
 tion at any particular moment, we may indefinitely increase or diminish 
 the force of any one, by dwelling or refusing to dwell upon the thoughts 
 adapted to keep it before our minds. By this spontaneous power, says 
 Dr. Travis, man can gradually mould his character, and is therefore
 
 THE RELATIVITY OF MORALITY. 89 
 
 wrong, virtue and vice, having no existence but as they affect 
 the wellbeing of the sentient creation. Truth, justice, and 
 wisdom are only relations to finite things, and cannot there- 
 fore be infinite or absolute in their own nature. 
 
 In the natural world we have strong likes and antipathies, 
 and we call some things nice and others nasty, as they affect 
 us pleasurably or the reverse, but on examination we find 
 
 a free agent, not in the sense of being able to withdraw himself from the 
 law of causality, but because these acts of attention are one of the 
 causes by which his character at any particular instant is formed. Now, 
 as the Dr. admits that there is "a cause for dwelling or refusing to 
 dwell " and that the spontaneous power is under causality, the difference 
 between him and the necessitarians is evidently a distinction without 
 a difference. " To make Dr. Travis's position thoroughly defensible, 
 (says E. V. N.,) we require to show that there is some internal principle 
 of action belonging to our minds, which accounts for our acts of atten- 
 tion without recourse to any external motive. We think that such a 
 principle may be proved to exist, by the fact that what the mind takes to 
 pieces it has always first put together, that the reflections of thought 
 always relate to previous constructions of the imagination. Our space 
 forbids our doing more than state this principle, which, simple as it may 
 appear, nevertheless casts a marvellous light on many of the obscurest 
 questions of metaphysics, not least on this question of the freedom of 
 the will. Construction implies selection and arrangement. Now these 
 are essentially free acts, because they involve the power of rejection. 
 The bird chooses and combines the materials for its nest according to 
 an idea supplied by its own mind, throwing aside those unsuitable to its 
 purpose. The range of selection may be limited, but within these 
 limits its choice is free. Now in man this constructive power is un- 
 limited. His imagination determines alike ends and means, under the 
 guidance of principles admitting the widest scope, ideas of utility, 
 beauty, harmony, unity, &c. If the will which sways such a faculty 
 is not free, what does freedom mean ? " What indeed ! I should say 
 the absence of any possibility of either reason or science, both of which 
 are built on " law." The very words selection, and arrangement, and 
 rejection, imply a reason for their exercise, that is a governing power 
 to the will. The bird even has its own reasons for what he does,
 
 40 THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 
 
 them all composed of the same simple elements of oxygen, 
 hydrogen, and carbon; and the same simple forces, or their 
 correlates, acting through different parts of the brain, pro- 
 duce all the phenomena of the moral world. If we love the 
 rose and avoid assafoetida it is not from any supposed free 
 will in the rose to smell sweet and look beautiful, but because 
 its attributes affect us pleasurably. It is the same in the 
 moral world, we judge of things as they affect us, and of 
 people by their attributes. We put the human rose in our 
 bosom, and we avoid the ugly and disagreeable person as 
 we would assafoetida, and for the same reason. We cannot 
 love that which is disagreeable because we know it did not 
 make itself, and the merit we ascribe both to things and 
 persons is according to qualities or attributes without refei*ence 
 to the fact that all qualities are derived. Upon these 
 affections and antipathies, upon our likes and dislikes, 
 our moral systems have been formed, calling that good 
 which affects us pleasurably, and that evil which affects 
 us painfully. It is true we have called things by very high 
 sounding names, and have gone up to Heaven and down to 
 Hell to aid us in force of expression, but the truth of this 
 simple position has not been in the least affected, it has 
 
 limited we are told, while man's constructive power is unlimited. It 
 may have " the widest scope " but unless it is infinite it cannot he un- 
 limited. It seems that according to E. V. N.'s new principle, of which 
 I am sorry he cannot tell us more, the will sways the determining power, 
 not the determining power the will. It does not matter whether it is 
 an " internal principle of action," or " external motive," that governs 
 the will, and the acts dependent upon it, so that it is governed. Rea- 
 sonable motive ought to govern the will, and the nearer we approach 
 the madman and the idiot the nearer we get to freedom ; not that any 
 one, unless it be the Spectator, supposes even their acts or volitions to 
 be uncaused.
 
 MORALITY BASED ON UTILITY. 41 
 
 onlv been obscured by thus putting words in the place of 
 things. Language is a most imperfect instrument for the 
 expression of ideas, even with the most philosophical; with 
 the many the names are a part of the things themselves; 
 and as things were named when they were imperfectly 
 known, errors are retained and perpetuated from generation 
 to generation. " All moral rules are derived originally from 
 utility, but the pleasures and pains, or likes and antipathies 
 on which they are based are transmitted to offspring and 
 thus become intuitions, similar to the feelings with which 
 the kitten regards a dog; it sets up its back and spits at it 
 directly it opens its eyes ; the cow also from the same cause, 
 from its having been the custom years ago to bait her fore- 
 fathers, keeps making imaginary tosses of the dog, whenever 
 she sees one ; and the bull himself is still made furious by 
 the sight of a red colour, although the feeling may have been 
 derived ages ago in the bull-fights of Spain. In this way are 
 mixed the tendencies of actions and the feelings with which 
 in a long course of time we intuitively come to regard them, 
 and their original source is thus sometimes lost. What is 
 called the Intuitive School of Moralists bases its conclusions 
 partly on utility, and partly on such internal convictions, 
 for which no reason can be assigned, except a certain feeling 
 on the subject, and which usually takes the shape of * all 
 men think,' ' we cannot help feeling,' &c. To recognize how- 
 ever, the obligations of morality is simply to recognize the 
 conditions on which it is desirable men should live, and the 
 authority is enforced by pains and penalties which all are 
 forced to attend to whether the obligations are recognized 
 and acknowledged or not. 
 
 "It is often said that it is impossible to speak definitely 
 of the objects of creation, that happiness is not a sufficiently 
 worthy object, but that development seems more the end and
 
 42 THE PERSISTENCE OP FORCE. 
 
 aim of the Creator than happiness. But what is the use 
 of ' development ' unless attended by consciousness, and that 
 a pleasurable consciousness? a painful consciousness would 
 be worse than nothing. World on world in infinite beauty 
 would be the same as none without beings conscious of their 
 existence, and unless that beauty gave pleasure a happy 
 consciousness, it would be useless. Were a universe de- 
 veloped in all possible power and beauty and but one little 
 fly conscious of its existence, that little fly would be of 
 vastly more importance than the universe. Beings might 
 be ' developed ' in infinite number, size, and power, but of 
 what use would their existence be if they were not happy, 
 or at least a source of happiness? Pain checks development, 
 and all legitimate development is attended with pleasure, and, 
 in fact, we can see no good in development unless it produces 
 happiness. We cannot see or even understand any other 
 purpose in creation : to be without consciousness is the same 
 as not being; and consciouness that was neither pleasurable 
 nor painful would be no consciousness, for there is no 
 negation or state of indifference, no sensation, or feeling, or 
 idea, attending either the intellect or sentiments that is not 
 slightly either one or the other. Certainly pain would 
 not be worth living for, and happiness is the only thing 
 left. People speak of pleasure with contempt, because by 
 it is usually meant something carnal and resulting from the 
 lower feelings, but happiness is simply the aggregate of 
 pleasurable sensation from whatever source derived: again, 
 you hear people decry happiness as poor and paltry, 
 as something scarcely worth having, and speak of blessed- 
 ness as the end to be attained; but by blessedness they 
 evidently mean a refined kind of happiness, composed prin- 
 cipally of the religious and aesthetic feelings. We hear much 
 also in the present day of ' Law, Order, and Unity ; ' but
 
 MORAL BESPONSIBILITY. 43 
 
 law, order and unity, that serve no purpose, are no evidence 
 of wisdom of design.' * * * The obligation, then, that 
 a man is under to act in one way rather than in another, 
 is owing to its tendency to happiness or to the avoidance of 
 pain, and Morality may be defined as the ' the science which 
 teaches men to live together in the most happy manner 
 possible.' (Helvetius.y * Bentham says, "No man ever 
 had, can, or could have a motive differing from the pursuit 
 of pleasure or the avoidance of pain." 
 
 J. S. Mill says, " A volition is a moral effect, which 
 follows the corresponding moral causes as certainly and 
 invariably as physical effects follow their physical causes." 
 To present these moral causes then is the object of the 
 moralist. " To prove that the immoral action is a miscal- 
 culation of self-interest ; to show how erroneous an estimate 
 the vicious man makes of pains and pleasures, is the purpose 
 of the intelligent moralist." Bentham. Man's freedom con- 
 sists in being able to do as he pleases, which is all-sufficient; 
 the object then must be to present such motives as will make 
 him please to do that which will be most for the lasting 
 interest of himself and society. 
 
 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. But if no action of our lives 
 in the then state of our minds, and the circumstances in 
 which we were placed, could have been different, what 'be- 
 comes of our Accountability or Responsibility ? It consists 
 in the consequences of our actions, which are pleasurable or 
 painful as they are right or wrong, that is, as they tend to 
 benefit or injure ourselves or society. It is for the moralist 
 then to guard, and if necessary to increase, these pains and 
 pleasures, and as man necessarily seeks that which is plea- 
 surable and avoids that which is painful, the interests of 
 
 * Philosophy of Necessity, p. 87 to 89-90.
 
 44 THE PERSISTENCE OF FOECE. 
 
 morality are sufficiently assured. But if all actions are the 
 same, per se, and could not possibly have been otherwise 
 under the circumstances, what have we to preach about? 
 What becomes of sin and iniquity, &c. ? All that may be 
 safely buried, and all we have to do in morals as in physics, 
 is to show the consequences of our actions. The laws of 
 morality are as fixed, and determinate, and unvarying, as are 
 those that keep the planets in their sphere. 
 
 The common and erroneous idea of Kesponsibilty of 
 man's being an accountable agent is the rightfulness of in- 
 flicting punishment, that is, of apportioning a certain amount 
 of suffering to a certain amount of sin, which he is supposed 
 to have desemed because he could have done differently; 
 but as this is not the case as he could not have acted dif- 
 ferently, all responsibility in this sense would be unjust, 
 and as such actions are already past and could not be recalled, 
 it would be as useless as unjust. The pains and penalties, 
 or punishments, attending our actions, are for our good; to 
 show us when we have done wrong, that is, done that which 
 will injure us ; and to prevent our doing it again ; and we are 
 so punished whether our actions are voluntary or not, that is, 
 whether they are what is called free, or merely accidental. 
 Whether we fall into the fire or put ourselves in voluntarily, 
 the pain is the same, the object being to make us get out 
 again as soon as possible and thus avert the consequences 
 of being burned. It is the same in other penalties, whether 
 the pains are those of conscience or merely bodily. Forgive- 
 ness of sins then, or to be relieved from that punishment which 
 is for our good, would be simply doing us an injury, and 
 not to forgive, if no good comes from punishment, would be 
 mere vengeance. The myriads of human beings whom, it is 
 said, God has " fore-ordained," that is, designed beforehand, 
 to be punished to all eternity, " to the praise of his glorious
 
 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 45 
 
 justice," as the "Westminster Confession has it*, may con- 
 sistently with that justice be safely released. Moral Respon- 
 sibility, so much contended for, is merely the supposed right 
 to take revenge for injuries done to us. 
 
 * See also the sermon of Jonathan Edwards, the unanswerable 
 champion of Philosophical Necessity, on the " Justice of God in the 
 damnation of Sinners," and the diary of Mr. Carey on the " pleasure" 
 and " sweetness " he had experienced in reading that sermon. 
 
 Surely Free Will would be a most undesirable gift if accompanied 
 by such possible consequences ; surely God could never make his crea- 
 tures " free " thus to injure themselves irretrievably ! Infinite power 
 and benevolence and eternal punishments are contradictions. But men 
 are better than their creeds, they do not realize or really believe this 
 horrid dogma ; if they did it would put a stop to all action in this world 
 who could go about his daily work with such a possible doom hanging 
 over him? or who but a selfish brute beast, acting upon mere brute 
 instinct, would dare to bring children into the world whose possible and 
 even probable fate was endless torment. To me it appears the blackest 
 libel on the name of the Creator that Hell itself could invent, and 
 wherever we find that the doctrine is received in any seriousness, it 
 has, as we might expect, the most brutalizing tendency. Mr. Lecky, 
 in his History of Rationalism, shows how completely this effect was 
 produced in Scotland in the sixteenth century, in the torturing and 
 burning of supposed witches, and in persecution generally. He says : 
 " The Reformed clergy all over Scotland applauded and stimulated 
 the persecution. The ascendancy they had obtained was boundless ; 
 and in this respect their power was entirely undisputed. One word 
 from them might have arrested the tortures, but that word- was 
 never spoken. Their conduct implies not merely a mental aberration, 
 but also a callousness of feeling which has rarely been attained in a 
 long career of vice. Yet these were men who had often shown, in the 
 most trying circumstances, the highest and the most heroic virtues. 
 They were men whose courage had never flinched when persecution was 
 raging around men who had never paltered with their consciences to 
 attain the favour of a king men whose self-devotion and zeal in their 
 sacred calling had seldom been surpassed men who, in all the private 
 relations of life, were doubtless amiable and affectionate. It is not on 
 them that our blame should fall : it is on the system that made them 
 what they were. They were but illustrations of the great truth, that 
 when men have come to regard a certain class of their fellow creatures
 
 46 THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 
 
 As motives govern our volitions, we praise or blame, 
 reward or punish, as motives to induce one line of conduct 
 rather than another. A man who sets up his free will and 
 refuses to be governed by motives is either a madman or a 
 fool, and his actions are not the less caused. If a man 
 could refuse to be governed by the strongest motive, all 
 moral influences, and praise and blame, would be useless, 
 and all reasoning upon his conduct impossible, for we should 
 never be able to predict what he would do from what he 
 had done. We judge of acts by their tendency; but as all 
 mental action originates in motives, it is by motives that 
 character must be judged, and an act is moral, not because it 
 is free, but because it arises in moral motives. 
 
 as doomed by the Almighty to eternal and excruciating agonies, and 
 when their theology directs their minds with intense and realizing ear- 
 nestness to the contemplation of such agonies, the result will be an 
 indifference to the suffering of those whom they deem the enemies of their 
 God, as absolute as it is perhaps possible for human nature to attain." 
 Of course under such a dogma, if only half believed, intolerance and 
 persecution become the highest duty, and all human sympathy must be 
 made to stand aside. The Spaniards, .with their Inquisition, and the 
 Scotch, only showed that they were more earnest in their belief than 
 other nations who professed to hold the same faith. Mr. Lecky says, 
 " If men believe with an intense and untiring faith that their own view 
 of a disputed question is true beyond all possibility of mistake if they 
 further believe that those who adopt other views will be doomed by 
 the Almighty to an eternity of misery, which with the same moral des- 
 peration, but with a different belief, they would have escaped, these 
 men will, sooner or later, persecute to the extent of their power. If you 
 Bpeak to them of the physical and moral sufferings which persecution 
 produces, or of the sincerity and unselfish heroism of its victims, they 
 will reply that such arguments rest altogether on the inadequacy of 
 your realization of the doctrine they believe what suffering that men 
 can inflict can be comparable to the eternal misery of all who embrace 
 the doctrine of the heretic ? what claim can human virtues have to our 
 forbearance, if the Almighty punishes the mere profession of error as a 
 crime of the deepest turpitude ? "
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 " And what if all of animated nature 
 Be but organic heaps diversely framed, 
 That tremble into thought, as over them sweeps, 
 Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, 
 At once the soul of each, and God of all ? " 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was : and the spirit 
 shall return to God who gave it." Ecclesiastes. 
 
 " In all phenomena the more closely they are investigated the more 
 we are convinced that, humanly speaking, neither matter nor force can 
 be created or annihilated, and that an essential cause is unattainable. 
 Causation is the will, Creation the act of God." W. R. Grove. Corre- 
 lation of Physical Forces. 
 
 should have no grounds for supposing that matter existed 
 if matter did not exert force, and the popular idea is, that 
 matter could be separated from this force, or from its 
 manifestations or accidents, and that the laws which govern 
 matter are external to itself. But, as we have seen, it is most 
 probable that the force, or manifestations, or accidents, or laws, 
 are all that really exists. 
 
 Our faculties make us acquainted with qualities or attri- 
 butes without ourselves, and we assume that these must be 
 qualities or attributes of something, and we have called it 
 Matter; we have feelings and ideas, and we equally assume 
 that they also must belong to something, and we call it
 
 48 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 Mind ; but there is in reality nothing to which these 
 mental and physical attributes belong, they exist per se 
 as force and its correlates. THEBE is NOTHING UNDERLYING 
 
 PHENOMENA PHENOMENA ARE CORRELATES OF FORCE, AND 
 
 FORCE is ALL. When we speak of Qualities, we indicate only 
 how we are affected by Force external; vital force is the 
 correlate of this physical force ; and ideas and feelings are the 
 correlate of vital force, not existing m anything, but each idea 
 or feeling existing separately ; and when it ceases to exist as 
 an idea or feeling, it merely takes some other form, and is still 
 persistent. What form it may possibly take we shall 
 speculate upon in another chapter. Hume says, " Since all 
 our perceptions are different from each other, and from every- 
 thing else in the universe, they are also distinct and separable, 
 and may be considered as separably existent, and may exist 
 separately, and have no need of anything else to support their 
 existence." And again, "We have no perfect idea of any- 
 thing but a perception. A substance is entirely different from 
 a perception. We have therefore no idea of a substance. 
 Inhesion in something is supposed to be requisite to support 
 the existence of our perceptions. * Nothing appears requisite 
 to support the existence of our perceptions. We have there- 
 fore no idea of inhesion. What possibility, then, of answering 
 that question, Whether perceptions inhere in a material or 
 immaterial substance, when we do not so much as understand 
 the meaning of the question ? * It would appear then, that 
 that which underlies phenomena, and the phenomena the 
 noumenon and the phenomenon the non-ego and the ego in 
 their Inmost Nature are the same ; that is, " Mind and Matter 
 are only phenomenal modifications of the same common 
 substance," viz., of force. This is the true doctrine of 
 
 * A Treatise of Human Nature, vol. i., p. 311, et. seq.
 
 POWER NOT SEPARABLE FROM GOD. 49 
 
 "Absolute Identity," taught in another form by Schelling, 
 Hegel, and Cousin. " There is no fact," says Fichte, " no 
 Tree there, but only a manifestation of Power from something 
 that is not 7," that is, a certain amount of force was received 
 into the system, and, meeting other forces from without, was 
 changed into that compound idea called a tree, and having 
 done that, would pass into some other form or modification. 
 There is not, however, an Absolute Identity between the 
 external power and the idea of the tree, since to complete the 
 idea other powers are supplied from within, or from the ego. 
 The thing known and the mind knowing are one in quality or 
 essence, but not in quantity. 
 
 We find then but one thing in the world, Force; and 
 what is that? Force and Power are the same, and Power we 
 cannot separate from that source of all power, from God, 
 Power is God. We say the power of God, as if it could be 
 separated from Him, or delegated; but this is clearly incon- 
 ceivable. The one only thing we find anywhere is God. 
 
 The fundamental principle in the doctrine of Spinoza is 
 the simplicity of the Universe, and the unity of that sub- 
 stance, in which he supposes both thought and matter to 
 inhere. He says, " Whatever we discover externally by 
 sensation ; whatever we feel internally by reflection ; all these 
 are nothing but modifications of that one simple and necessarily 
 existent being, and are not possessed of any separate and 
 distinct existence."* "There is but one infinite Substance, 
 and that is God. Whatever is, is in God ; and without 
 Him nothing can be conceived. He is the universal Being 
 of which all things are the manifestations. * * * 
 Extension and Thought are the objective and subjective, of 
 which God is the Identity. Every thing is a mode of God's 
 attribute of Extension; every thought, wish, or feeling, a mode 
 
 * Home on Human Nature, vol. i., p. 319. 

 
 60 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 of his attribute of Thought. *#'."* God is the one 
 'idea immanens' the One and All."* 
 
 The one infinite Substance and the "Force" of our 
 modern Scientific conceptions are identical, and the question is, 
 what do we and can we actually know of it ? First, then, 
 Science shows its Unity. " The simplest germination of a 
 lichen is," says Lewes, "if we apprehend it rightly, directly 
 linked with the grandest astronomical phenomena; nor could 
 an infusory animalcule be annihilated without altering the 
 equilibrium of the universe. Plato had some forecast of this 
 when he taught that the world was a great animal ; and 
 others, since Plato, when they considered the universe the 
 manifestation of some transcendent life, with which every 
 separate individual life was related, as parts are to the whole." 
 Emerson says, " Every thing in nature contains all the powers 
 of nature; everything is made of one hidden stuff. The 
 true doctrine of Omnipresence is, that God re-appears in all 
 his parts, in every moss and cobweb; thus the Universe 
 is alive." 
 
 The Rev. J. White Mailler, M.A., says, "When we view 
 the world as one universal effect, we are at once led to the 
 contemplation of a universal Divine Agency. Does not the 
 Infinite act on every atom ? God never delegates his power ; 
 He cannot transfer divinity to a substance : there is no power 
 therefore separate from Himself. In Him all things have 
 their being, "f 
 
 Science, then, proves the Unity of* Force ; throughout the 
 Universe, as far as our observation extends, every atom is 
 pulling at every other atom; it also equally shows that it is 
 not what we call dead, passive, or blind force, but universally 
 active and intelligent, that is, it partakes of the attributes which 
 
 * Lewes' History of Philosophy, vol. iii., p. 146. 
 + The Philosophy of the Bible, pp. 35 and 40.
 
 FOKCE NOT BLIND BUT INTELLIGENT. 61 
 
 we ascribe only to mind. If the One simple, homogeneous 
 substance or force did not partake of the nature of mind, 
 what could at first have originated change in it ? whereas we 
 now know it to be the cause of all things, and that all these 
 changes tend to definite purposes. We are accustomed only 
 to acribe Intelligence to sensitive beings, whereas every atom 
 is equally intelligent and tending towards a given purpose*, 
 and one is no more an independent agency than the other, 
 for all things that begin to be, whether in mind or matter, must 
 have a cause why they begin to be, and they are not therefore 
 self-existent, but the foundation of their existence must be 
 without themselves, and the intelligence shown in either mind 
 or atom is no part of either, but is something separate and 
 beyond. There is nothing in nature exercising an inde- 
 pendent agency. A cause must be uncaused ; if produced as 
 all things around us by the persistence of force, it is an effect. 
 There can be only one cause, therefore, and all the rest are 
 passive results. 
 
 All things in nature being thus derived, the original from 
 which they are derived must exist somewhere. 
 
 This is what we call the Great First Cause. 
 
 " The meaning of a First Cause is, (says Mill,) that all 
 other things exist, and are what they are by reason of it 
 
 * " There lies all the difficulties about these atoms. These 
 same ' relations ' in which they stand to one another are anything but 
 simple ones. They involve all the 'ologies' and all the ' ometries,' 
 and in these days we know something of what that implies. Their 
 movements, their interchanges, their ' hates and loves,' their 'attractions 
 and repiilsions,' their ' correlations,' their what not, are all determined 
 on the very instant. There is no hesitation, no blundering, no trial 
 and error. * * * The presence of MIXD is what solves the whole 
 difficulty; so far, at least, as it brings it within the sphere of our own 
 consciousness, and into conformity with our own experience of what 
 action is." Sir J. F. W. Herschel.
 
 52 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 and of its properties, but that it is not itself made to exist, 
 nor to be what it is, by anything else. It does not depend for 
 its existence or attributes, on other things: there is nothing 
 upon the existence of which its own is conditional: it exists 
 absolutely." * 
 
 But there are those who say that there is no First Cause, 
 but that the chain of causation goes back to all eternity 
 an infinite non- commencement. They assert that qualities 
 and properties and attributes are inherent, that they have 
 always existed, and they see no evidence of purpose or design 
 in creation, but think that in the infinite concourse and 
 commingling of atoms or forces in infinite time and space, 
 the present order of things has arisen; everything inharmo- 
 nious having a natural and necessary tendency to destroy 
 itself, and only that which is good and harmonious being 
 permanent or having power to continue in existence at all. 
 But even supposing qualities to be inherent, and laws, or 
 the longest observed order of facts, to be necessary and 
 permanent, still it is difficult to see how anything but 
 chance could result from the joint action of one set of laws 
 upon another, if force were blind. It is with results, and 
 not with the primary laws or qualities that we have to 
 do. Sir John Herschel tells us, that "among all the 
 possible combinations of the fifty or sixty elements which che- 
 mistry points to as existing on this earth, that some have 
 never yet been formed" and who can say, when such com- 
 bination does take place what the result will be? It may 
 take a million chances to effect one purpose an almost 
 infinite series to bring about one reciprocity, and then one 
 more turn of the necessary screw one adverse combination, 
 might take us back to chaos. " No one law determines 
 anything that we see happening or done around us. It is 
 
 * Mill on Hamilton, p. 36.
 
 THE COMBINATION OF FORCES. 53 
 
 always the result of differing or opposing forces nicely balanced 
 against each other. The least disturbance of the proportion 
 in which any one of them is allowed to tell, produces a total 
 change in the effect. The more we know of nature, the 
 more intricate do such combinations appear to be. The 
 existence of laws, therefore, is not the end of our physical 
 knowledge. What we always reach at last in the course of 
 every physical inquiry, is the recognition, not of individual 
 laws, but of some definite relation to each other, in which 
 different laws are placed, so as to bring about a particular 
 result. But this is, in other words, the principle of adjust- 
 ment, and adjustment has no meaning except as the instru- 
 ment and the result of purpose. * * * The motion of the 
 earth might be exactly what it is, every fact in respect to our 
 planetary position might remain unchanged, yet the seasons 
 would return in vain if our own atmosphere were altered 
 in any one of the elements of its composition, or if any 
 one of the laws regulating its action were other than it 
 is. Under a thinner air even the torrid zone might be 
 wrapped in eternal snow. Under a denser air, and one 
 with different refracting powers, the earth and all that is 
 therein might be burnt up. * * * Then, the relations 
 in which these inorganic compounds stand to the. che- 
 mistry of life, constitute another vast series in which the 
 principle of adjustment has applications infinite in number, 
 and as infinite in ^beauty. How delicate these relations 
 are, and how tremendous are the issues depending on their 
 management, may be conceived from a single fact. The 
 same elements combined in one proportion are sometimes 
 a nutritious food or a grateful stimulant, soothing and sus- 
 taining the powers of life ; whilst, combined in another 
 proportion, they may be a deadly poison, paralysing the 
 heart and carrying agony along every nerve and fibre of
 
 54 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 the animal frame. This is no mere theoretical possibility. 
 It is actually the relation in which two well-known sub- 
 stances stand to each other Tea and Strychnia. The 
 active principle of these two substances, " Theine " and 
 "Strychnine," are identical so far as their elements are 
 concerned, and differ from each other only in the proportions 
 in which they are combined. Such is the power of numbers 
 in the laboratory of Nature ! What havoc in this world, 
 so full of life, would be made by blind chance gambling 
 with such powers as these!"* It is impossible to conceive 
 that inherent forces working blindly could produce the 
 unity of purpose we everywhere see, or if by a million 
 chances to one they did, what is to secure its permanence ? 
 Were properties inherent, then it would be impossible to 
 escape the conviction that there is a higher force controlling 
 then" individual tendencies ; but recent science shows that 
 there is nothing inherent : the very name itself implies that 
 such forces are inherited or derived. The force, or rather 
 " form" in an acorn, by which it can only become an oak, 
 or the difference between an acorn and the seed of a scarlet 
 runner or a gourd, is, as we have seen, dependent upon 
 organization, which is derived from the parent stock. Even 
 what we call properties, and which are assumed to be inhe- 
 rent, are, as we have seen, formed in the mind itself, the 
 result of organization. The law of the Persistence of Force 
 and the law of Evolution are the same. Every existing 
 state has grown out of the preceding, and all its forces 
 have been used up in present phenomena, the change from 
 physical to sentient and mental greatly increasing with each 
 succeeding age; as Oersted says, " Everything that exists 
 depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is related 
 to the whole." 
 
 * The Reign of Law. By the Duke of Argyle. Good Words.
 
 CAUSE AND EFFECT NOT A NECESSAKY CONNECTION. 55 
 
 Comte is of opinion that, when properly converted to the 
 positive mode of thought, " mankind will cease to refer the 
 constitution of Nature to an intelligent will and Supreme 
 Governor of the world;" on the contrary, Science finds only a 
 universe of effects, nothing is what it is in itself, everything 
 is derived; the Universal Cause is everywhere without, not 
 inherent, and what we see the Vital Force is to the Acorn, 
 we may suppose God is to the Universe. 
 
 Oersted says, " The world is governed by an eternal reason, 
 which makes known to us its actions by unalterable laws." 
 
 It is true the Laws of Nature are unalterable, but is the 
 connection between each cause and effect a necessary one, or 
 dependent only upon the volition of the Eternal Reason? 
 Those who believe in inherent properties believe also in an 
 indissoluble necessary connection. But Hume is supposed to 
 have clearly shown that there is no proof whatever of any 
 necessary connection ; but that all we know and can speak of 
 is the invariableness ; and J. S. Mill says, " What experience 
 makes known, is the fact of the invariable sequence between 
 every event and some special combination of antecedent 
 conditions, in such sort that wherever and whenever that union 
 of antecedents exists, the event does not fail to occur. Any 
 must in this case, any necessity, other than the unconditional 
 universality of the fact, we know nothing of." And again, 
 "Whether it must do so, I acknowlege myself to be entirely 
 ignorant, be the phenomenon moral or physical; and I 
 condemn, accordingly, the word Necessity as applied to 
 either case. All I know is, that it always does."* But if we 
 can show why it always does; that the connection is a moral 
 rather than a physical one ; then I think the higher probability 
 is that such invariable connection has been established to 
 answer a special purpose, and is not necessary, but in other 
 * Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, pp. 500, 501.
 
 56 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 circumstances might be dissolved. All the purposes in 
 creation evidently point to one object the production of the 
 largest amount of sensitive existence. The whole surface of 
 the earth is one net- work of nerves, so that, as in the human 
 body, so in the body of the world, you can scarcely insert the 
 point of a needle where there is no sentience. Life is always 
 preserved at a high pressure. " There is no exception to the 
 rule," says Darwin, " that every organic being naturally 
 increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, this earth 
 would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair." 
 Without respect to individuals, the object seems to be to keep 
 the greatest number possible in the best possible state for 
 enjoyment : 
 
 " So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life." 
 
 Now the enjoyment, and indeed we may say the existence 
 of this mass of life, depends upon the uniformity of nature's 
 laws. The exercise of the highest reasoning power in 
 man, equally with the lowest instinct of the brute, depends 
 upon the order of nature to-day being as yesterday; upon 
 the being able to calculate what will be from what has been ; 
 upon the delicate relationship between instinct and object being 
 sustained. It has been said " That the testimony of con- 
 sciousness must be believed, because to disbelieve it, would be 
 to impute mendacity and perfidy to the Creator," but Locke 
 truly observes, " How short soever our knowledge may be 
 of a universal or perfect comprehension of whatever is, it 
 yet secures our great concernments," and that " God has 
 given us assurance enough as to the existence of things with- 
 out us; since by their different application we can produce 
 in ourselves both pleasure and pain." In fact in whatever 
 way the world is created within us, and however far short our
 
 DEATH THE PARENT OF LIFE. 57 
 
 consciousness may come of absolute truth, our relation to the 
 outer world is quite sufficient to guide us to the objects of our 
 desires, upon the gratification of which our happiness depends ; 
 our consciousness is therefore no deception, but all that is 
 necessary, and all that it was intended to be; but if after 
 attaining that knowledge of the " order of nature," upon which 
 our safety and wellbeing depended, that order were changed, 
 or altered, or interfered with, by what is called Free Will, or a 
 special Providence, that would certainly be a breach of faith. 
 Whether then the connection between cause and effect in the 
 order of nature be a necessary one, or mere invariable ante- 
 cedence and consequence, it is certainly desirable for all the 
 purposes of life that such connection should be unaltered and 
 unalterable, it is therefore most probably established and 
 maintained by the Will of the Creator; based upon the 
 volition of the Absolute. 
 
 We find, then, but one infinite Substance, and that is the 
 same with the Force or Power we see everywhere around us. 
 We find only Force changing into Life, and Life into Sen- 
 tience a great aggregated pleasurable Consciousness guarded 
 by pain. Death and Birth are the great waste and repro- 
 ductive system of this great Sentient body, and the one is as 
 necessary as the other, as Death may be said to be the 
 Parent of Life.* Advancing Science shows that the Cosmos, 
 both sentient and insentient, is one and indivisible, and 
 viewed in this light, as a whole it is ever progressing towards 
 increasing happiness. By the Natural law of Progress, called 
 " Natural Selection," the weak and bad and ugly are con- 
 stantly making room for the strong and good and beautiful. 
 Pleasure is the rule, pain the exception, and the aggregate of 
 
 * " There is no death in the concrete, what passes away passes 
 away into its own self only the passing away passes away. The con- 
 sciousness abides the essential being Is." Hegel. .
 
 58 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 pleasurable sensation constitutes happiness, and this taken as 
 a whole must be sufficient completely to obliterate the pain, 
 which man calls evil.* 
 
 Thus the warp and woof of the Mind of God may be 
 made up of the totality of the individual threads of con- 
 sciousness, extending through the countless worlds of which 
 this is a mere speck a grain of sand. " The phenomenal 
 is the life of the Absolute." I am not disposed, therefore, to 
 join men of science in their Altar to " The Unknown and 
 Unknowable God," because I cannot separate God from 
 
 *' Man in judging of the purposes of creation and of what he 
 calls evil, confines his strictures either to himself individually, or at the 
 widest range to that of the human race. In both he errs, he must 
 take in the whole of sentient existence. Theodore Parker supplies an 
 admirable illustration of this limitation of our view. Thus, " An oak 
 tree in the woods appears quite perfect. The leaves are coiled up and 
 spoiled by the leaf-roller ; cut to pieces by the tailor beetle ; eaten by 
 the hay-moth and the polyphemus, the slug, caterpillar, and her nu- 
 merous kindred; the twigs are su<5ked by the white-lined tree-hopper, 
 or cut off by the oak-pruner ; large limbs are broken down by the seven- 
 teen-year locust ; the horn-bug, the curculio, and the timber-beetle, eat 
 up its wood ; the gadfly punctures leaf and bark, converting the forces 
 of the tree to that insect's use ; the grub lies in the young acorn ; fly- 
 catchers are on its leaves : a spider weaves its web from twig to twig ; 
 caterpillars of various denominations gnaw its tender shoots ; the creeper 
 and the wood-pecker bore through the bark; squirrels, striped, flying, 
 red, and grey, have gnawed into its limbs, and made their nests ; the 
 toad has a hole in a flaw in its base ; the fox has cut asunder its fibrous 
 roots in digging bis burrow ; the bear dwells in its trunk, which worms, 
 emmets, bees, and countless insects have helped to hollow : ice and the 
 winds of winter have broken off full many a bough. How imperfect and 
 incomplete the oak tree looks, so broken, gnarled, and grim ! ... 
 But it has served its complicated purpose ; ... no doubt the good 
 God is quite content with His oak, and says : ' Well done, good and 
 faithful servant ! ' 
 
 " We commonly look on the world as the carpenter and millwright 
 on that crooked oak : and because it does not serve our turn completely, 
 we think it an imperfect world."
 
 THE WORLD A MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 59 
 
 Nature, but believe that what we can learn of one, we know 
 also of the other : I would simply transfer our Theology, as 
 distinguished from Religion, from the Pulpit to the Lecture- 
 room. Our Priests must be one with our men of science, 
 our Prophets are the Poets : their Inspiration tells us truly 
 that: 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 
 
 " These as they change, Almighty Father, these, 
 Are but the varied God." 
 
 " But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze, 
 Man marks not thee," &c. 
 
 To him who thus " sees God in clouds and hears him in 
 the wind," who cannot separate Him from one atom of the 
 living universe of which he is the author and supporter, 
 the orthodox, but ignorant disparagement of this beautiful 
 world, appears impious, libellous, and above all things un- 
 grateful. 
 
 On this subject the ancient Hindoo and Greek mind 
 arrived at the same results. They came to the conclusion, 
 as we learn from the profound and condensed work of Dr. 
 J. W. Draper, that the world is a manifestation of God, 
 emanating from Him, and being re-absorbed into Him again ; 
 they held also, that the soul is immortal, but as it issued 
 from the Deity so would it be re-absorbed. "As a drop of 
 water pursues a devious course in the cloud, in the rain, in 
 the river, a part of a plant, or a part of an animal, but 
 sooner or later inevitably finds its way back to the sea 
 from which it came, so the soul, however various its fortunes 
 may have been, sinks back at last into the Divinity from 
 which it emanated." A little rivulet of force has been taken 
 from the general ocean to turn our little mill ; it again hastens
 
 60 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 back to regain its source, again and again to be raised by the 
 Great Sun to go its round as before. Man's early intuitions 
 made him feel that everything was the work of the Great 
 Spirit; now his intuitions, generally so right at first, are 
 obscured by secondary causes which he calls science and 
 laws of nature ; and thus " Nature, which is the Time- vesture 
 of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the 
 foolish."* 
 
 * The following letter from Mr. H. G-. Atkinson, P. G. S., which I 
 have permission to insert, may I think interest many of my readers: 
 
 " I have been deep into the mystery of things this morning 
 comparing Plato with the Kahbalah. One thing occurs to me as funda- 
 mental to almost all religious schemes and principles of faith, including 
 the modern spiritualists, that the form of the faith or creed is little more 
 than a mere reflex of the course of nature as we observe it about us and 
 within us. At one time we have a God representing the first principles 
 of things, as a man or an architect framing the universe and Father 
 of all mankind. And again, the Great Frst Cause is proclaimed to be 
 a profound mystery and hidden secret. The unknown and unknowable 
 of philosophers and men of science and the En Soph of the Kabbalah, 
 and inconceivable Trinity in Unity of the Christian representing the 
 secret subtle source or principle of action and formative power in nature. 
 And even could we discover the nature of God, says Plato, it would be 
 impossible to explain it ; and yet he tells you that God is mind acting 
 upon matter, somewhat after the manner of a watchmaker milking a 
 watch the intractible nature of the material being the origin of evil; 
 with arguments for the immortality of the soul, not very logically con- 
 vincing. But in the Kabbalah we have the original cause without mind, 
 representing insensible matter, from out of which mind develops. Now 
 these different ideas do but reflect the form and nature of things about 
 us. The fact and process of observed natural action either in respect 
 to our own nature or the nature without us, and in a roundabout way 
 we have simply emanations falling back again upon their source, and as 
 in the Kabbalah and with the Buddhist, a longing for peace in rest and 
 eternal sleep a re-absorption, and in fact annihilation as the end most 
 devoutly to be wished ; in fact the getting quit of ourselves as a very 
 good riddance to bad rubbish, and which is actually the sum and sub- 
 stance of the pervading idea of the Buddhist religion. And the notion 
 forcibly presents itself to my mind, that it is the tendency under an
 
 NATURE AN INFINITELY DIVIDED GOD. 61 
 
 The ^highest minds seem everywhere to have come, by 
 very different roads, very much to similar conclusions : 
 thus Schelling says, " The world is but a balancing of con- 
 tending powers within the sphere of the absolute." The 
 Ego in Fechte's system is a finite Ego it is the human 
 soul. In Schiller's it is the Absolute the Infinite the all 
 which Spinoza called Substance ; and this Absolute manifests 
 itself in two forms : in the form of the Ego and in the form 
 of the Non-Ego as Nature and as Mind. The Ego produces 
 the Non-Ego, but not by its own force, not out of its own 
 nature ; it is the universal Nature which works within us and 
 which produces from out of us ; it is the universal Nature 
 which here is conscious of itself. Men are but the innu- 
 merable individual eyes with which the Infinite World-spirit 
 beholds himself.* Schiller says "Nature is an infinitely 
 
 ignorance of real causes and the sources of particular effects, to mis- 
 take (as in the belief in ghosts and spirits, extraneous or sympa- 
 thetic) the effects for causes, and hence we have the affections ascribed 
 to the heart, and called heart to this day; whilst the actor upon the 
 stage still puts his hand to his heart as a natural action in the 
 expression of the warmth of his affections, though no such action is 
 ever observed in real life. Plato plants ' the irascible passions which 
 originate in pride and resentment,' in the breast, because under 
 their action sensations are experienced in that region ; ' the love of 
 pleasure or concupiscent part of the soul,' he seats in the belly and 
 inferior parts of the body-"-, taking the means for the origin or ' final 
 cause', &c. ; but in placing the reasoning and judging powers in 
 the head as ' a firm citadel, and of which the senses are its guides and 
 servants,' he was right, because every man is sensible of the fact now 
 verified by so many other tests and reasons ; and without being misled 
 by the sympathy with other parts of the system. To collect, analyse, 
 and record all such specious notions and speculative anticipations 
 misleading illusions of long ages of error, before the true principles 
 of a real science burst upon us, is extremely interesting and profoundly 
 instructive." 
 
 * Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. iv., p. 189.
 
 62 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 divided God," and again, " The Divine One has dispersed 
 itself into innumerable sensible substances, as a white beam 
 of light is decomposed by the prism into seven coloured rays. 
 And a divine being would be evolved from the union of all 
 these substances, as the seven coloured rays dissolve again 
 into the clear-light beam. The existing form of nature is the 
 optic glass, and all the activities of spirit are only an infinite 
 colour-play of that simple divine ray. Should it ever please 
 the Almighty to shatter this prism, then the barrier between 
 himself and the world would fall to ruin ; all spirits would 
 disappear into one infinite spirit, all accords would melt into 
 one harmony, all streams would rest in one ocean. The 
 attraction of the elements gave to nature its material form. 
 The attraction of spirits, multiplied and continued to infinity, 
 must finally lead to the abolition of the separation, or (may 
 I utter it,) create God."* 
 
 The Universe, according to Hegel, is a thought, a beat, 
 a pulse, of the Absolute Mind. * * * In the minutest 
 act of our mind is the same secret logical, physical, meta- 
 physical as in the entire Universe.! And again, "Being 
 underlies all modes and forms of being," and in creation, 
 "Being Becomes." Emerson says, "Everything in nature 
 contains all the powers of nature ; everything is made of one 
 hidden stuff. The true doctrine of Omnipresence is, that God 
 reappears in all his parts in every moss and cobweb ; thus the 
 universe is alive." J Theodore Parker says, "If God be In- 
 finite, then he must be imminent, perfectly and totally present 
 in Nature and in Spirit. Thus there is no point in space, no 
 atom of matter, but God is there ; no point of spirit, no atom 
 of soul, but God is there. And yet finite matter and finite 
 
 * Philosophical Letter, p. 40. 
 
 + Masson's Recent British Philosophy, p. 279. 
 
 J Essay on Compensation.
 
 GOD IS ALL IN ALL. 68 
 
 spirit do not exhaust God. He transcends the world of matter 
 and of spirit ; and in virtue of that transcendence continually 
 makes the world of matter fairer, and the world of spirit 
 wiser. So there is really a progress in the manifestation of 
 God, not a progress in God the manifesting." Professor 
 Ferrier, of St. Andrew's, says, "All absolute existences are 
 contingent except one; in other words, there is One, but only 
 one, Absolute Existence which is strictly necessary; and that 
 existence is a supreme and infinite and everlasting Mind in 
 synthesis with all things."* 
 
 Carlyle also : " This fair universe, in the meanest pro- 
 vince thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God ; 
 through every star, through every grass-blade, and most 
 through every living soul, the glory of a present God still 
 beams : But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and 
 reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish." f 
 
 The Christian doctrine is, that "In Him (God) we live and 
 move and have our being." That God is all in all, and the 
 Devil something besides, is only the unanswerable logic of 
 the pulpit. I 
 
 * Institutes of Metaphysics : The Theory of Knowing and Being. 
 
 + Sartor Resartus, p. 274. 
 
 J We are told repeatedly by those who support this influence or 
 personage that we are not to rest in second causes, and yet they make 
 the Devil the " Origin of Evil " and not his Maker. The fact is that a 
 Being who is always in pursuit of pain, that is, of evil, who, with above 
 ordinary intelligence, is always systematically acting in opposition to 
 his own interest, is an impossibility. We know of no creature who 
 is not seeking the greatest apparent good, in the " pursuit of pleasure 
 or the avoidance of pain." God is the Great First Cause the Author 
 of all things, and if He could have made a world like this earth, with all 
 the happiness it now contains, without pain, no doubt he would have 
 done so. We must limit either His Goodness or His Power, and we 
 prefer the latter, as it is not derogatory to the character of God that he 
 cannot perform impossibilities. He could not make that not to have
 
 64 UPON THAT WHICH UNDEBLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 The Duke of Argjle, in the admirable paper on the Reign 
 of Law, from which we have already quoted, says : " Science, 
 in the modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, and 
 Convertibility of Forces, is already getting something like a 
 firm hold of the idea that all kinds of force are but forms and 
 manifestations of some one central Force, issuing from some 
 one fountain-head of power. Sir John Herschel has not 
 hesitated to say that ' it is but reasonable to regard the force 
 of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a conscious- 
 ness and a will existing somewhere.' And even if we cannot 
 assume that force, in all its forms, is due to the direct working 
 of the Creator, at least let us not think or speak of the forces 
 of nature as if they were independent of, or even separate 
 from, His Power. * * * Nothing is more remarkable 
 in the present state of physical research than what may be 
 called the transcendental character of its results. And what 
 is transcendentalism but the tendency to trace up all things to 
 the relation in which they stand to abstract ideas? And 
 what is this but to bring all physical phenomena nearer and 
 nearer into relation with the phenomena of mind? The old 
 speculations of philosophy which cut the ground from 
 materialism by showing how little we know of matter, are now 
 being daily reinforced by the subtle analysis of the physi- 
 ologist, the chemist, and the electrician. Under that analysis 
 matter dissolves and disappears, surviving only as the phe- 
 nomena of Force ; which again is seen converging along all its 
 lines to some common centre sloping through darkness up to 
 God." * * * Creation by Law Evolution by Law 
 
 been, which has been, or the half equal to the whole, or give finite 
 beings infinite attributes, which is the same thing. Limited intelligence 
 therefore must be always liable to error, and we cannot conceive of a 
 more effectual check to error than pain.
 
 BISHOP BERKELEY. 65 
 
 Development by Law, or as including all these kindred ideas, 
 the Reign of Law, is nothing but the Reign of Creative 
 Force, directed by Creative Knowledge, worked under the 
 control of Creative Power, and in fulfilment of Creative 
 Purpose." 
 
 Mr. R. S. Wyld, in a paper read before the Royal Society 
 of Edinburgh, says, " Recent discoveries have established that 
 heat is mechanical force, the two being mutually convertible 
 without loss. The attraction of gravity and chemical attrac- 
 tions and repulsions are all the same physical force, and the 
 entire external world is nothing but a manifestation of it, a 
 simple and grand conception, and one which enters alike the 
 domain of physics, of speculative philosophy, and of theology, 
 and which in all of these sciences is equally important. It 
 represents the external world and its Creator as possessed of 
 one immaterial and spiritual essence power and intelligence 
 being the attributes of the Creator, and power subordinate and 
 sustained the characteristic of the Creation." * 
 
 Bishop Berkeley holds that Deity inspires or causes the 
 various mental sensations, and that there is no external 
 world ; Mr. Wyld that there is no such thing as matter, 
 but that the world is a manifestation of Divine power 
 exhibited in space so that the outer world has a real 
 existence. For myself, I am not able to see how it is 
 possible to separate thfe power of God from God himself; 
 this conception may suit the exigencies of an ethical creed 
 not based on Law, but as mind and matter are only the 
 phenomenal modifications of the same common substance, so 
 God and the power of God are equally inseparable, and I 
 know nothing of poicer subordinate and sustained as something 
 
 * On the World as a Dynamical and Immaterial World. Pro- 
 ceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. v., 1864-5. No. 67, 
 p. 387. 
 
 F
 
 66 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 separate from the Creator Himself. I can arrive at no other 
 conclusion but that God and Nature the Creator and the 
 Creation are One and Indivisible. 
 
 And need we fear to accept this conclusion ? If we have 
 God manifest in the flesh, surely the Universe in its Unity 
 and Beauty is a not less worthy representation of the Absolute. 
 " All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we call laws 
 of Nature are attributes of Deity."* We feel that : 
 
 " The awful shadow of some unseen Power 
 Floats tho' unseen among us." Shelley. 
 
 " And I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." Wordsworth. 
 
 " There lives and works 
 A soul in all things, and that soul is God." Cowper. 
 
 " Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood ! 
 If our great Mother have imbued my soul 
 With aught of natural piety to feel 
 Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ; 
 If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, 
 With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, 
 And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ; 
 If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, 
 And winter robing with pure snow and crowns 
 Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs 
 
 * Philosophy of Necessity, p. 445.
 
 THE NEW PANTHEISM. 67 
 
 If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes 
 Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me ; 
 
 no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast, 
 I consciously have injured, but still loved 
 And cherished these my kindred; then forgive 
 This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw 
 No portion of your wonted favour now !" Shelley. 
 
 " Neither is it only to the Old Pantheism, and nothing more, that 
 we have been destined to return after all ; but surely to something much 
 higher : something higher, in degree at least, if not in kind, than that 
 to which the purest wisdom of antiquity was able to attain. For the 
 self-knowledge which we may now say that our whole of Nature has 
 gained of itself, is that it is the farthest possible from being entitled to 
 claim absolutely for itself the proud name of the Whole of Things! 
 That is to say, the utmost that man is enabled to embrace even in his 
 vaguest conceptions, is immeasurably inferior to the actual to pan. Out- 
 side and beyond that which is the Whole to us, is always the unknown 
 and unknowable that belongs to GOD only. The clear separation of the 
 ideas, the Whole that is our's, and the Whole that is not our's, but 
 that includes our's as a part, is our great gain over those highest 
 minds of antiquity that may still have been dimly conscious of it. That 
 Deity which was the Pan in the highest form to the philosophic world in 
 general, has become to us subordinate to the still higher conception of 
 the Divine Mystery that never can be unveiled to men. 
 
 "And the lower domain of Pantheism, that which we call lower 
 because it is accessible, though to them it was the higher because they 
 had yet no means of estimating the degrees of remoteness : this present 
 belief which has come again to agree with that of Old, in recognizing 
 that through the entirety of the Universe exists the whole of Deity that 
 we can either know or conceive, has at the same time the advantage 
 over it, by all that the ages of experience have added. It is a Pantheism 
 which contains within itself the rich contents of all the Religions and all 
 the Philosophies the world has hitherto possessed ; and yet farther, 
 having the power now seen to be contained in it, the blessed necessity, 
 of going on to make more and better ! Say we are returned to a parallel 
 condition with that of the world in the time of Xenophanes ; what is 
 there other than reason for rejoicing if we have also before us, in pro- 
 phetic anticipation, a parallel repetition to be undergone, on a higher 
 stage, of that succession of reigning mythologies whose early phase has
 
 68 UPON THAT WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENA. 
 
 imprinted so much of permanent delight in 'immortal song'! Nay, 
 is it not actual experience, and of a lovely sort, that instantly the mind 
 recurs to the recognition of this Religion of Universal Nature, it seems 
 instinctively to feel the living return of all the ' liebliches Geschlecht ' of 
 the ' Goiter Griechenlands ! ' Schiller was false to those inner breath- 
 ings of true and present Deity which were the soul of his poetry, when 
 he could lament for the ' entgotterte Natur ! ' The old cry of the elder 
 deities, the dispossessed genii of mountain, stream, and wood, that sent 
 forth their plaintive wail when the triumphant personality of the lord of 
 creation asserted itself in its first engrossing egoism: the cry which 
 the followers of the newly-incarnate Christ exulted in as the woe of 
 departing demons, when it mourned ' Ai, the great Pan is dead ! ' 
 comes back to our ears with a sense of beauty altogether new, now that 
 we are no longer obliged to pervert its music by transposing it into the 
 mythic representation of fact for which Christian Realism has taken it. 
 Knowing, now, that the great Pan is not dead, and can never die ; and 
 seeing that what that Christian Realism took for fact was fancy, and that 
 what it took for fancy was fact; we listen to the far- subdued plaint aa 
 pouring itself from the genuine pang of ancient severed faith, torn from 
 that which was truly substance of its substance : a reverberating moan 
 that has never hushed, sighing along the ages, a night-wind through 
 primaeval pines, until its exquisite discord in a minor key is now once 
 more resolving itself into the full harmony of an universal religion ! 
 
 " And attuned to the spirit of religion such as this, has it not been 
 always that a Wordsworth, an Emerson, and every true poet-nature has 
 loved to stroll back into the world's early pastime, and see, forgetting all 
 its store of grown-up acquisitions, ' what wisdom to the berries went ' ; 
 silencing with ' pleasant fancies ' the over-inquisitive self- ism that asks 
 
 ' What influence me preferred 
 Elect to dreams thus beautiful ? ' 
 
 Ungratefully-contemned Nature ! what happy return of innocent child- 
 like truth, the lovely opposite of childish conceit, is it to feel how 
 far superior is her own naturalness to that which we had esteemed 
 super-natural, only because we were slow to believe how much greater 
 Nature could be in herself than that which we had imagined ! In this 
 sense, truly farthest from us be the notion of passing out of the range 
 of the supernatural, and sitting down contented with the mere actual 
 and present! Only, into our heaven, not alone the ' faithful dog', but 
 this little daisy, budding into spring-life, must bear us company ! " 
 " Thoughts in aid of Faith," by Sara S. Hennell,
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM AND OTHER ABNORMAL 
 CONDITIONS OF MIND. 
 
 " The perfect observer in any department of science, will have 
 his eyes as it were opened, that they may be struck at once by any 
 occurrence, which, according to received theories ought not to happen, 
 for these are the facts which serve as clues to new discoveries." Sir 
 J. Herschel. 
 
 " He who ventures to treat, a priori, a fact as absurd, wants pru- 
 dence. He has not reflected on the numerous errors he would have 
 committed in regard to many modern discoveries." Arago. 
 
 " With regard to the miracle question, I can only say that the word 
 ' impossible ' is not to my mind applicable to matters of philosophy. 
 That ' the possibilities of nature are infinite ' is an aphorism with which 
 I am wont to worry my friends. And if John Smith tells me to-morrow 
 that by a word he can make a stone fall upwards, or cause the Record to 
 speak with decency and fairness, or (say) the Bishop of Oxford, I may 
 not think it worth while to go into the question, the value of Jdhn 
 Smith's critical faculty being unknown to me, while the general course 
 of experience is terribly against him, but I will not declare what he says 
 to be a priori impossible. But if my friend Professor Tyndall should 
 make either or both of the same assertions, I should feel bound at least 
 to suspend my judgment until such time as the matter could be fully 
 investigated." Professor Huxley. 
 
 " In the last number of the Spectator (February 10, 1866), Professor 
 Huxley has paid me the great compliment of stating that were I to tell 
 him to-morrow that I could by a word cause a stone to fall upwards, he 
 would feel bound to suspend his judgment until such time as the matter 
 could be fully investigated. It is not often that I find myself unable to 
 reciprocate the sentiments of my eminent friend. But on the present
 
 70 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 occasion I feel bound to say, that were he to confide to me the statement 
 of his ability to reverse by a word the action of gravity, my judgment 
 regarding him would find mournful expression in the line : 
 ' what a noble mind is here o'erthrown.' " * 
 
 Professor Tyndall. 
 
 The Correlation of Force in Living Structures. 
 
 WHETHER the egg came before the chicken, or the chicken 
 before the egg; whether organization depends upon life, or 
 life upon organization, is still under dispute. What took 
 place "In the beginning" it is difficult to say, but at the 
 present time there seems to be a mutual dependence of 
 organization upon life and life upon organization. Life 
 the vital spark, is, as far as we know, in all cases hereditary 
 for I hold the "spontaneous generation" theory to be at 
 present " not proven." Life is transmitted from parent to 
 offspring, and that offspring is dependent upon organization 
 for the peculiar vital forces it displays; and with the 
 organization perishes the life, at least in that form. As we 
 have seen, however, the vital spark may lie dormant in 
 
 * It will be seen that I look upon Huxley's as by far the more phi- 
 losophical position. We see a stone " fall upwards " when projected by a 
 word or volition, or nervous force, from the arm. Now is it certain that 
 mental force, a correlate of physical, can act upon the stone through no 
 other medium but the nerves and muscles of the arm? Huxley says, 
 " let me see it, that's all" ; Tyndall says, " I won't look, the man's mad 
 that asks me." Has gravitation then no correlate like the other forces ? 
 We find whole seas ascending from their basins, and descending again 
 with a force sufficient to turn all the machinery in the world. In the 
 following pages I wish it to be distinctly understood that personally I 
 cannot vouch for the truth of what are called the spiritual manifesta- 
 tions; I have seen enough to induce me to believe they may be true, 
 and the testimony of such men as Professor de Morgan, and many 
 others equally honest, if not equally competent, I hold to be sufficient 
 to warrant full investigation, and to " speculate " as I have done on 
 their cause.
 
 FUNCTION DEPENDENT UPON STBUCTUKE. 71 
 
 the seed for thousands of years until quickened into growth 
 by heat and moisture; whether the same thing can take 
 place in animals as for instance in the toad said to be 
 found alive in the red sandstone, is very problematical. 
 Force, passing through the organization of the human body, 
 accomplishes a great variety of work, according to the pecu- 
 liarity of the structure through which it passes; and that 
 which it does unconsciously through the stomach, liver, lungs, 
 heart, circulation, muscles, &c., is quite as wonderful, and 
 attended with quite as much intelligence as that which passes 
 consciously through the brain. The perfection with which 
 the different functions of the body are performed depends upon 
 the condition of its organ. " The highest degree of organiza- 
 tion giving the highest degree of thought." If the structure 
 is impaired, disease takes place, and what is called the vis 
 medicatrux natura, is probably nothing but the strong tendency 
 that all vital structure has to assume its natural form 
 or type. 
 
 The usual inlets to the mind for the forces without, are 
 said to be the five senses of Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, 
 and Feeling; but the whole body is an inlet to the mind, 
 and we have besides a sense of temperature, of pleasure and 
 pain, and a muscular sense.* The bat, and somnambules 
 
 * See " Man's Nature and Development," p. 97, et sec., by H. G. 
 Atkinson, F.G. S., and Harriet Martineau. I consider this work the 
 most valuable contribution towards Psychology based on Physiology 
 which we have had since Gall and Spurzheim's works on Cerebral 
 Physiology, or Phrenology. Professor Gregory, in the Preface to his 
 work on Mesmerism says " The reader will find, in the work recently 
 published by Mr. Atkinson and Miss Martineau, many striking facts 
 connected with animal magnetism, which is one of the subjects treated 
 of. Mr. Atkinson's observations on the functions of different parts of 
 the brain as exhibited in the magnetic sleep are of the highest value, 
 from that gentleman's great experience and intimate knowledge of the
 
 72 SPECULATIONS ON SPIBITUALISM. 
 
 and mesmerised people see without ey6s; that is, the same 
 force of light is conveyed to the brain through a different 
 medium. Heat and electricity pervade the whole nervous 
 system, and light, heat, and electricity, are but differing con- 
 ditions of the same force or influence, and this seeing with- 
 out eyes therefore may be accounted for. Dr. Howe, in his 
 education of Laura Bridgman, showed how possible it was to 
 reach the mind through other than its ordinary inlets. The 
 sense of pleasure and pain must be distinguished from the 
 feeling that attends the propensities and sentiments and other 
 mental faculties and sensations. Mr. Atkinson, very properly, 
 I think, gives them their separate organs in the brain. In 
 accordance with this we find that as each organ can manifest 
 only a limited amount of force according to its peculiar func- 
 tion, so only a certain amount of pain can at one time be 
 endured. I know a lady who lately had eight teeth taken 
 out at a sitting; after the first three she says she felt very 
 little pain ; and martyrs at the stake and criminals on the rack 
 fortunately could only feel a limited amount of pain. Pain 
 and Pleasure are transformed force mental correlates; and 
 Mr. Atkinson in mesmerising found that he could hold pain 
 as it were, in the hollow of his hand; he could transfer it 
 from another body to his own, and from one person to another, 
 and " sleepers " who were so insensible that you might cut 
 off their limbs without their knowledge, would feel instantly 
 any pain inflicted on the mesmeriser. 
 
 subject. I should have made use of them but his work did not appear 
 until the whole of the first part of mine was written." I have received 
 several communications from Mr. Atkinson relating to the subjects of 
 this work, while it has been going through the press, which I think are 
 valuable, and which I have given in the Appendix.
 
 THE OBSERVATION OF UNBOUNDED SPACE. 73 
 
 Hatter and Spirit the same in Essence^ 
 
 As we have seen, external force, acting upon our peculiar 
 organization, produces the phantom which we call the world : 
 how, then, can spirit be more ethereal than this external force ? 
 or how can ghosts be more ghosts than what we call gross 
 material matter / Spirits, therefore, if they exist, cannot be 
 more ethereal ; they may, however, be unseen, or we may be 
 unconscious of their existence, because they may have no 
 relation to our senses. 
 
 Time and Space. 
 
 That Time and Space are only " modes of thought," and 
 can have no objective existence, or rather that the reality 
 cannot accord with our conception, is evident from the fact 
 that, according to our idea, the half of either Time or Space 
 is as great as the whole ; thus we have the infinite divisibility 
 of atoms, and a past, as long as a future eternity. * We know 
 
 * Professor Tyndall tells us that, " Though we are compelled to 
 think of space as unbounded, there is no mental necessity to compel 
 us to think of it either as filled or as empty; whether it is filled or 
 empty must he decided hy experiment and observation." (" Constitu- 
 tion of the Universe." P\j-tnightly Review.) Now this may be very 
 true, still we must admit that the ground would take some time to get 
 over : he, in fact must be a fast traveller who could go over infinite 
 space in less than infinite time ; particularly, if as the Professor tells us, 
 the luminous ether the interstellar medium, although infinitely more 
 attenuated than any gas, has definite mechanical properties those of 
 a solid rather than a gas, " resembling jelly rather than air." We are 
 told that we are by no means to consider this as a vague or fanciful 
 conception on the part of scientific men, for that of its reality most of 
 them are as convinced as they are of the existence of the sun and 
 planets. Now although this "jelly" may be necessary to the exigen- 
 cies of the vibratory theory with respect to light and beat, it must be 
 evident that it renders the "observation" as to whether unbounded
 
 74 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 only of thought, and of the force its correlate or equivalent ; 
 and can a thought be a mile long or a yard square ? What, 
 
 space is filled or not, still more difficult. I do not think that the term 
 infinite or boundless can be used in any other sense than as exceeding 
 the bounds of our knowledge ; whenever it is attempted to be used 
 otherwise our first philosophers immediately fall into contradictions and 
 absurdities. Righteousness, Holiness, Purity, Goodness, have only a 
 relative existence, that is, can exist only in relation to finite things, 
 how then can they be infinite ? In fact Infinite Goodness and Infinite 
 Wisdom are contradictions, for goodness must be good to something, 
 and knowledge must be of something, that is of some limited thing. 
 Suppose there to have been a time when these things did not exist, these 
 attributes could not have existed either. According to J. S. Mill there is 
 no incorrectness of speech in the phrase Infinite Power but in speaking 
 of Knowledge, absolute is the proper word and not infinite. The highest 
 degree of knowledge that can be spoken of with a meaning only amounts 
 to knowing all that there is to be known : when that point is reached, 
 knowledge has attained its utmost limit. So of goodness or justice : 
 they cannot be more than perfect. To which the learned critic (Mansel 
 I am told,) in the Contemporary Review replies, " Surely whatever 
 Divine Power can do, Divine Knowledge can know as possible to be 
 done. The one therefore must be as infinite as the other." Quite so, 
 none of these attributes can be more than relative manifestations and 
 therefore finite, for as the writer says, " Will Mr. Mill have the kindness 
 to tell us what he means by goodness and knowledge ' out of all relation,' 
 i. e., a goodness and knowledge related to no object on which they 
 can be exercised ; a goodness that is good to nothing, knowledge which 
 knows nothing?" As attributes then must be finite, that is, can be 
 exercised only in relation to finite objects, God is without attributes, that 
 is, Pure Being. But that which has no attributes and nothing, to finite 
 capacity is the same thing. The object then of the Hegelian Philosophy 
 is to show how this nothing could become something ; nothing however 
 meaning not non-existence, but existence independent of sense or pheno- 
 mena. " Being underlies all modes or forms of being." God creates, 
 that is, Being becomes, and the fundamental principle of Hegelism is 
 said to be " That God awoke to consciousness, and acquired a will, in 
 the consciousness and will of man." 
 
 But " what can we reason, but from what we know" on this or on 
 any other subject. And what do we know? Perhaps as much as
 
 EXTENSION NOT AN ATTRIBUTE OF THOUGHT. 75 
 
 then, is distance ? and can it apply to thought and feeling, 
 that is, to what we call spirit ? and need there be space, 
 therefore, necessarily separating mind from mind ? 
 
 The Correlation of the Vital and Mental Forces. 
 
 We are told, on what I believe to be good authority, 
 that : " Generally speaking, the average amount of daily 
 
 this: the world was without form and void, that is nebulous, and 
 as the force or heat concentrated, it gradually took first the inorganic 
 and then the special living forms that now lie deep buried in the earth's 
 crust, and with each stratum or layer, was a fresh correlation of mind 
 or sentiency an evolution, which covering the whole earth with a net- 
 work of nerves, and passing again and again through different forms was 
 refined and spiritualized till after countless ages it culminated in man, 
 and " God became conscious in Humanity." But with respect to man, 
 the highest intelligence here: 
 
 " Think you this mould of hopes and fears 
 Could find no statelier than his peers 
 In yonder hundred million spheres ? 
 
 This truth within thy mind rehearse, 
 
 That in a boundless universe 
 
 Is boundless better, boundless worse."' Tehnyson. 
 
 " Go to ! You know nor this nor that ; 
 
 Man has no measuring rod 
 For Nature, Force, and Law, and what 
 The best of men call God. 
 
 For law, and life, and all the course 
 
 Of lovely, shifting Nature, 
 Are but the play of one wise Force, 
 
 Which Moses called Creator. 
 
 Think on your knees : 'tis better so, 
 
 Than without wings to soar ; 
 What sharp-eyed Logic thinks to know 
 
 We find when we adore. 
 
 " J. S. B. 
 
 College, Edinburgh."
 
 76 SPECULATIONS ON SPIBITUALISM. 
 
 food necessary for healthy men is estimated at twelve ounces 
 of beef, twenty ounces of bread, with about half-an-ounce of 
 butter. These articles contain a force capable, if applied 
 by a machine, of raising fourteen million pounds weight to 
 a height of one foot; that is, the oxidation of the elements 
 contained in them would give rise to an amount of heat 
 equivalent to that effect. But in the human body, though 
 it far surpasses all machines, in economy of force, the utmost 
 amount of power attainable from them is not more than 
 equivalent to three-and-a-half millions of pounds raised to 
 the height of a foot ; and an average day's labour does not 
 exceed two millions of pounds thus raised. The difference 
 is mainly due, doubtless, to the number of internal actions 
 which are carried on in the living body; such as the circu- 
 lation, the movements of respiration, and the production of 
 animal heat. These consume a great part of the force of the 
 food, and leave only a remainder to be disposed of in muscular 
 exertion." * 
 
 Of course there must be great difference of opinion, not 
 only as to the amount of force generated by the food, but 
 also as to the mode of its expenditure. Thus we have Dr. 
 Carpenter, supported by Helmholtz and Joule, differing from 
 Professor Playfair, and the Professor differing from the above 
 writer in the Cornhill, and we are prepared to receive the 
 latter statement, therefore, only as a very wide approximation. 
 But the question is, since force is indestructible, how is this 
 force immense in every estimate expended ? It will be 
 found, I think, that thinking and feeling absorb a larger 
 portion than the vital powers, and the vital than the merely 
 muscular. In a notice of Dr. Playfair's book on " Food and 
 Work," in the Reader of June 3, 1865, the writer says with 
 
 * Cornhill Magazine, September, 1861.
 
 DISTRIBUTION OF FORCE IN THE BODY. 77 
 
 reference to the distribution of this force: "In the steam- 
 engine there are only two forces to he considered, the me- 
 chanical and the thermal. In man's body there are many 
 different forces, but the study of them is rendered in one 
 sense easy, and in another difficult, by the fact that, however 
 varied they may be within the economy, they pass away into 
 the external world in two phases only, the same phases in 
 which they leave the steam-engine viz., heat and movement. 
 We speak of mental or cerebral force, of plastic or organic 
 force, we look in upon the forces that go whirling round in 
 our bodies, threading a devious path amid countless changes, 
 working through most intricate machinery ; but there are only 
 two ways in which their effects can be measured by one 
 standing without. They either produce muscular movements, 
 or increase the temperature of the body. Intense mental effort 
 cannot by itself be measured by the physiologist. The slight 
 muscular movements through which it strives to express itself, 
 are in no way to be thought of as gauging its intensity. Its 
 only true measure is the amount of heat produced by that 
 combustion of cerebral tissue, which is the condition of its 
 development. So, also, the true measure of the force con- 
 cerned in the fashioning of a hand, or of any other piece of 
 wonderful organic work, is that heat which is the outcome of 
 all the molecular processes busied therein. We may, if we 
 like, divide the work of the body into various kinds. We 
 may speak of the opus meehanicum, the muscular labour or 
 useful work; of the opus mentale, or brain work; of the opus 
 meehanicum internum, or inner muscular woi'k, such as the 
 heart's beat, the breath's play, the intestinal roll, and the 
 arterial grasp ; of the opus vitale, or chemical and fashioning 
 work; of the opus calorijicum, or the labour of keeping the 
 body warm. Yet all these issue from the body as two kinds 
 of work only, the opus meehanicum, the amount of foot-pounds
 
 78 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 a man can lift in a hard day's work, and the opus caloriftcum, 
 the quantity of ice his body will cause to melt during the 
 same time." 
 
 I believe this will prove to be a very inadequate account 
 of the way in which the force received into the body again 
 passes from it. The body is a system of solidified gases, or 
 concentrated forces, (for particulars, see them as bottled up 
 separately at the Kensington Museum,) in constant flux 
 influx and efflux with everything around. No mention is 
 here made of the electricity which is constantly flowing from 
 the body in quantities more or less, as the nervous or other 
 temperaments predominate in its structure. Nothing is said 
 of the Odyle, to Reichenbach's sensitives visibly streaming 
 from the extremities, and other parts of the body; or of the 
 nervous force, composed perhaps of both the above, and which 
 constitutes the peculiar strength of the magnetiser. 
 
 But the most elaborate apparatus in the body is that for 
 the production of mental force. Here no doubt is the expen- 
 diture of the greater part of the fourteen million pounds lifting 
 force that enters through the food, and the great question is 
 what becomes of it ? The writer above truly says, " Intense 
 mental effort cannot by itself be measured by the physiologist," 
 and yet in this direction lies the future course of a psychology 
 based on physiology. And also Herbert Spencer ''Those 
 modes of the unknowable which we call motion, heat, light, 
 chemical affinity, &c., are alike transformable into each other, 
 and into those modes of the unknowable which we distin- 
 guish as sensation, emotion, thought : these, in their turns, 
 being directly or indirectly re-transformable into the original 
 shapes." Exactly, "re-transformable!" but when, where, 
 and how ? What becomes of every thought, as it is turned out 
 of its " form" or mould in the brain ? We know it is the exact 
 equivalent of the physical force expended in producing it, and
 
 THE SPIRITUAL OB THOUGHT MEDIUM. 79 
 
 sometimes, to our cost, if we make a man angry, we get its 
 exact equivalent in physical force again : but where it takes 
 the form of muscular motion or of heat, is, I think, the 
 exception, not the rule. Many facts now point to an atmos- 
 phere, or reservoir of thought, the result of cerebration, into 
 which the thought and feeling generated by the brain is con- 
 tinuously passing. The brains and nervous systems of the 
 whole sensitive existence are increasing and intensifying this 
 mental atmosphere. The question is, does force exist more 
 commonly as physical force or as mental ? Does thought 
 passing from us become free thought, or does it join some 
 odylic or other medium ? and does each separate thought 
 retain its identity, that is, the form impressed upon it by 
 our organization ; or does it change its form, lose its con- 
 sciousness, and thus no longer be thought and feeling ? The 
 Manifestationists, we are told by Professor Masson, hold the 
 doctrine, "which, if developed, would assert nothing less than 
 the phenomenal recoverability within the Cosmos of all sen- 
 tiency that had ever belonged to it." * It is the general belief 
 that force cannot exist by itself, but must belong to something 
 else must be the force of something ; but I think I have 
 previously shown that this belief is untenable. Bacon says : 
 " The magnetic or attractive energy allows of interposed 
 media without destruction, and, be the medium what it may, 
 the energy is not impeded. But if that energy or action has 
 nothing to do with the interposed body, it follows that there 
 is, at an actual time and in an actual place, an energy or 
 natural action subsisting without body ; since it subsists 
 neither in the terminal nor in the intermediate bodies. 
 Wherefore magnetic action may serve as an Instance of 
 Divorce in relation to corporeal nature and natural action. 
 
 * Recent British Philosophy, p. 297.
 
 80 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 To this may be added, by way of corollary, tbe following 
 important result : that a proof thus be had, even by the mere 
 philosopher of sense, of the existence of separate and incor- 
 poreal entities and substances. For if natural energy and 
 action emanating from a body can exist, at a time and in a 
 place, entirely without body, it is pretty clear that it may 
 originally emanate from an incorporeal substance. For a 
 corporeal nature seems just as much required for supporting 
 and conveying as for exciting or generating natural action."* 
 
 "We have no difficulty in conceiving of electricity as 
 existing freely throughout space; but thought or mind, and 
 electricity, are the same force in different forms or modes 
 of manifestation. Electricity, although apparently in existence 
 everywhere, only manifests itself to us through some kind of 
 machine or body, so free thought can only manifest itself 
 to us through some kind of organization. We know that 
 physical force everywhere is in direct communication; that 
 the remotest star is influencing our earth and our earth it; 
 that every centre of force or body is acting upon every other 
 body. It is not less so in the force which we call mind. 
 Mind is in connection with all other mind. 
 
 There are certain individuals and nomadic tribes, in whom 
 the vital system so predominates and the vital powers are 
 so strong that they may literally be cut in two lose legs 
 and arms and life not be destroyed; and there are others 
 in whom the nervous system so predominates that thought 
 and feeling are generated so rapidly and in such quantities 
 that there is no time for their re-correlation or re-trans- 
 formation through the bodily organization, and they flow 
 over into the general reservoir of mind. Nervous force may 
 also be made to overflow into other bodily systems. To 
 
 * Kovum Organon, Lib. xi., Aph. 37.
 
 THE MENTAL, NERVOUS, AND OTHER FORCES. 81 
 
 what extent, and in what way conscious thought and feeling, 
 nervous force, electricity, and odyle, differ from each other 
 or are necessary to each other, has not, I think, been cor- 
 rectly determined. 
 
 The interesting experiments of Duhois Eaymond demon- 
 strate the difference between nervous force and electricity, 
 but Matteucci shewed that nervous force is capable of being 
 transformed into electricity, under the influence of a pecu- 
 liar structure, as illustrated in electrical fishes. Raymond's 
 instruments may correctly measure the rate of the current 
 along the nerve, but such experiments only show forcibly 
 how much requires to be done. It is a step only in the 
 right direction. When our philosophers, like Tyndall, pay 
 the same attention to vital and mental forces as they now 
 do to physical, we may hope to advance rapidly. 
 
 I know that it is the general belief, even of the spiritualists, 
 that mind cannot exist apart from organization, but if force 
 can exist apart from body, mind, which is only another form 
 of force, may do so also. Thought and feeling are transformed 
 force and cannot cease to exist, and the question is when it 
 passes from us, in what form does it exist? Does it retain 
 consciousness, that is, remain thought and feeling? In sleep 
 what becomes of it? There I think it takes another forai 
 and is added to the vital force, as I have said before; but 
 under a slight pressure on the brain, or temporary stoppage 
 of the action of the heart, what becomes of it then? It is 
 impossible to say what mind may be out of the body, as 
 nothing can be known to us but in its action upon us 
 that is relatively mind therefore cannot be known to 
 us but in connection with organization, that is, our own 
 organization. Sentiency is known to us only in connection 
 with the brain and nervous system, and consciousness is 
 reflection upon this sentiency, and is known to us only in 
 
 G
 
 82 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 connection with the highest intelligence here, that is, Man. 
 That some kind of feeble sentiency attends the vitality of 
 plants I think is very probable. We cannot go further down, 
 for although every atom acts intelligently, that is, towards a 
 given purpose, the consciousness is of it, not in it. 
 
 When I speak then of a "thought" atmosphere, a 
 "mental" atmosphere, or a "general" mind, I mean either 
 mind or sentiency, or that condition of force which immediately 
 precedes mind or consciousness, and which must exist in the 
 brain, when from a slight pressure upon it, consciousness 
 ceases. 
 
 To the transference of nervous force, and even mental 
 states with it, from one body to another, and to the union 
 of individual mind with the mental atmosphere, are owing 
 I think it will be found, all the varied phenomena of som- 
 nambulism, mesmerism, and clairvoyance, and of what is 
 called spiritualism. 
 
 The Senses are considered to be the only inlets of the 
 world without to the mind within, but they are also the 
 regulators by which no more of the influx of the general mind 
 is admitted than is good for our conduct and happiness in 
 common life, in the sphere of duties in which we are placed. 
 A Somnambule is enabled to do without the senses, and in a 
 state of trance or mesmerism the barrier between individual 
 and general mind seems partially broken down. 
 
 Tlie Conditions attending Influx or Inspiration. 
 
 The bodily conditions requisite to induce this state seem 
 to be that the "meddling senses" should be laid asleep, and 
 that all other parts of the body should have as little to do as 
 possible. Prayer and fasting and solitude are particularly 
 efficacious to this end. In solitude the senses are quiet, and 
 under long and continued fasting the vital system having
 
 ABSORPTION IN UNIVERSAL BEING. 83 
 
 little to do, becomes partially absorbed in the nervous, and 
 prayer induces a concentration of mental action on subjects 
 that have no direct connection with the body. 
 
 The bodily conditions we are considering predominate 
 much more in some races than in others in the Eastern and 
 sunny, than in the Western and more Northerly. Among 
 the Hindoos they are most prevalent. The Hindoos are 
 much better subjects for mesmerism than Europeans, and the 
 arts of Divination and Magic, which are based on this partial 
 breaking down of the barrier between general and individual 
 mind, have always been much more in practice. To be 
 absorbed in universal Being is the great aim of the religious 
 fanatic in India, and many succeed in becoming partially so, 
 even in the body. " The one infallible diagnostic of 
 Buddhism is a belief in the infinite capacity of the human 
 intellect. * * * The idea of Deified man is there; 
 but this loses itself in another, that there is in man, in 
 humanity, a certain Divine Intelligence, which at different 
 times and in different places manifests itself more or less 
 completely." * * * The natural eye takes account 
 only of appearances; it requires the severest discipline for a 
 man to behold the Eeality. * * * Wisdom is viewed as 
 wholly social and experimental in one; internal and mystical 
 in the second; strangely mixed with what is superhuman 
 and eternal in the third." * 
 
 The Buddhist Priest by the aid of irdhi is represented 
 as being able to listen to all sounds, and know all thoughts, 
 and see all former births, and watch' the course of all 
 transmigrations, and learn the cause of all causes. The next 
 stage the great desideratum, is, that having been subject to 
 
 * The Religions of the World and their Relation to Christianity, 
 pp. 76, 85, 93, by Rev. F. D. Maurice.
 
 84 SPECULATIONS ON SPIEITUALISM. 
 
 birth, decay, sorrow, weeping, grief, discontent, and vexation 
 the consummation of the whole series of births and deaths 
 is now attained, and that is, to pass again into " Nothing- 
 ness." * This doctrine originated some 623 years before the 
 Chiristian Era, and yet we might almost suppose that the 
 doctrine of eternal torments had cast its shadow before. 
 
 Important news travels faster in India by Mental Telegraph 
 than by the Electric Telegraph. The results of important 
 battles have been known days before the intelligence could 
 arrive by the ordinary or official means. The source of these 
 tidings cannot be traced; the natives say "it is in the air," 
 and there has often been a generally uneasy feeling pervading 
 mens' minds preceding ill news, when nothing definite has 
 been known. 
 
 The weakening of the vital force by disease, or partial 
 paralysis, often intensifies the mind and sustains it in fuller 
 action. 
 
 Bacon tells us that " when the mind is withdrawn and 
 collected within itself, and not diffused into the organs of the 
 body, is the state which is most susceptible of divine 
 influxions." 
 
 In trance, and seeing in the crystal, and under hypnotism 
 and mesmerism, " The mind is withdrawn and collected within 
 itself, and not diffused into the organs of the body," and it is 
 thus intensified, and the barriers between it and other minds, 
 and between it and the general mind, are partially broken 
 down. "The internal faculties appear to be loosened from 
 the sense, and to receive impressions direct from without. "f 
 
 * The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists, by B. Spencer 
 Hardy. 
 
 t " Each sense faculty is adapted to receive the peculiar influence 
 or impression to which it relates : but the instrumentality or intervention 
 of the external sense does not seem always requisite. The internal
 
 INSPIRATION. 85 
 
 Of course any influx of mind can only act in and through the 
 human faculties, and cannot overstep the limits of their 
 power or function, that is, it can give no kind of knowledge 
 
 faculties seem to be loosened from the sense, and to receive impressions 
 direct from without ; to be open to conditions to which the senses were 
 not fitted. It does not seem to be any strain upon reason to suppose 
 this. Few can give any account of the process by which they came at 
 many of their conclusions. Clairvoyance or prophecy is no greater step 
 from our ordinary condition than seeing would be to a blind person, who 
 would say, ' I could only take up Nature bit by bit before, and put 
 these bits together, and then form but a very imperfect conception : 
 but now I recognize all at once ; the distant, as well as that which is 
 near.' You set free the inner faculties, and open ' the eye of the mind ' 
 to the outward influences of a grosser sense; and knowledge flows in 
 unobstructed. You are as one who was blind, but can now see. The 
 new sense and the old are equally intelligible, and both inexplicable. 
 You cannot explain a process where there is none. The imperfect sense, 
 the blind have a process to explain : but in clear-seeing there is no 
 process but the fact." Han's Xature and Development, p. 276. 
 
 Mr. Atkinson also says, " I think it is worthy of remark what Bacon 
 has suggested, that we might receive other and fuller information from 
 external objects had we other senses fitted to receive the impressions, 
 and I think this may be demonstrated to be true, and hence if the inner 
 sense can be brought in relation to the whole truth by shutting up the 
 ordinary sense media and by mesmeric action, &c., enabling such inner 
 powers to be brought in ^ direct contact with the entire fact, a deeper in- 
 sight would be attained, as seems to be the case, and men acquire a more 
 intuitive perception and clairvoyant character, under such irregular and 
 abnormal conditions. And certainly things do become often, as it were, 
 reversed under unusual conditions ; a dog attaining the instinct to seek 
 the medicine it requires when sick ; the stem of a tree throwing out 
 root, the root developing into flowers, and so on. The instances are 
 innumerable and the laws of the normal action would be brought to light 
 by such irregular actions and transformations under unusual conditions, 
 just as the irregular or exceptional phenomena of the planets have given 
 a knowledge of the laws of their motion the rule proved in the 
 exception."
 
 86 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 which it is not their province to bestow. What is the limit 
 of that power when the organs are very large or very much 
 excited has by no means been determined. What is the 
 power that enabled Sir Isaac Newton and George Bidder to 
 make their algebraic, geometric, and arithmetical calculations, 
 giving at a glance results that it took long to work out 
 on paper? What peculiar constitution of the organ of 
 Locality is it that guides the carrier pigeon on its homeward 
 progress, or the blind seal that found its long way home, or 
 dogs that have come home from abroad, without, as far as we 
 know, consulting any of the finger posts ? What is it in the 
 more excitable brain of woman that enables her, on a first 
 interview, often to read character correctly, and which in the 
 larger organs of such men as Shakspeare and Scott has 
 enabled them to read the natural language of the mind, and 
 paint character so correctly without any principle or knowledge 
 of mental Science ? Again, we have the action of the organ 
 of Wonder or Faith. The senses call the Perceptive faculties 
 into action, and Wonder gives a sense of reality a belief in 
 the real objective existence of something corresponding to the 
 ideas which they furnish. In the abnormal or greatly 
 excited state of this organ, a reflex action takes place; 
 Wonder itself calls the Perceptive faculties into play, and 
 figures are produced which appear just as real as when the 
 action on the Perceptives comes through the senses. Many 
 ghosts may be accounted for in this way. The ^Esthetic 
 faculties also when isolated from worldly cares and pas- 
 sions or when naturally predominant, or unusually active 
 or excited, seem to bring the mind into direct union with 
 nature. 
 
 Heat and electricity are constantly passing off from the 
 body; so is mind. We influence every one and every thing 
 about us, and are influenced by them. We photograph our
 
 THE EYE OP THE MIND. 87 
 
 mental states on all the rooms we inhabit. * We have probably 
 some organ that takes cognizance of such " emanations," and 
 which places us en rapport with the general mind. What 
 Mr. Atkinson calls the " Eye of the Mind" may exercise some 
 such function, f This faculty is supposed to bear the same 
 relation to the internal action of the mind, as the mind itself 
 does to external objects or forces. It sees at a glance, and 
 generalizes the action of all the mental faculties, and is there- 
 fore the highest of all our powers. As the Perceptive 
 faculties, aided by the Senses, take cognizance of body or the 
 action of physical forces, this takes cognizance of Spiritual 
 or Mental forces. It is a sort of inner sense, through whose 
 medium we may be put in communication with mind without 
 oui-selves as well as the mind within. This organ, if existing 
 at all, which I think highly probable, seems but very partially 
 
 * A madman may be detected by the smell, and the diseased condition 
 of his mind influences even healthy brains injuriously. With respect to 
 bodily emanations we must remember that a bloodhound will follow a 
 man over fifty or even one hundred miles of country what would these 
 emanations have been if confined to a single room ! These emanations 
 also have a distinctive character, for a dog seeking his master knows if he 
 has been in a room although fifty other men may be there. 
 
 + " Beneath the central organ of Comparison, lying under Benevo- 
 lence, is what has been termed by a somnambule the ' Eye of the Mind '. 
 This seems to be power of judgment: we might call it the Intuitive 
 faculty ; for it is this whi^h is chiefly concerned in clairvoyance. * * * 
 This faculty, this mental eye, seems to receive the results of the doings 
 of the other faculties, and to be, properly speaking, perhaps the mind 
 sense, joining as it does with the Conscious power. Here seems to 
 be the organ of the suggestive faculty of Genius. This seems to be 
 the true Mind power, or intellect. It seems to split off into the senses, 
 as light divides off into colours, or sound into notes, but to contain 
 within itself the power of mind concentrated, when cut off from the ordi- 
 nary character of sense and reason. Then all time seems to become as 
 one duration ; space seems as nothing ; all passions and desires become 
 bushed; truth becomes an insight, or through-sight ; and life a law." 
 Nature and Development, p. 76. (See also Appendix A.)
 
 88 SPECULATIONS ON SPIEITUALISM. 
 
 developed in the bulk of mankind, and its action is altogether 
 misconstrued in those in whom it is fully developed. In our 
 blindness and ignorance we have but one term for such powers 
 ' ' imagination all imagination overstrained imagination," 
 &c., as we call the action of our higher feelings, sentimental. 
 The ordinary habits and intercourse of the world, where all 
 are absorbed in mere externals ordinary sense and per- 
 ception, and little carking cares and animal impulses, give but 
 little chance for the growth and activity of such an inner 
 sense, and it is not surprising that its promptings should be 
 misunderstood and misinterpreted. Of course we can know 
 only what our faculties tell us, and we can sympathize only 
 with what we have feelings to sympathize with ; our strongest 
 feelings induce us to protect and take care of our own bodies ; 
 we have feelings also that make us a part of the body of 
 Society; we have feelings that place us in relation to the 
 beauties and harmony of Creation ; and we have this faculty 
 that places us in relation to the general mind or spirit. Mr. 
 Atkinson says, Clairvoyants call it the " Eye of the Mind," 
 Spiritualists call it " The Spiritual Eye," it is the principal 
 source of Influx or Inspiration, and probably places us in 
 the same relation to the Universal Spirit as our other faculties 
 do to our fellow creatures. 
 
 By the general mind I mean the general mind of humanity, 
 or perhaps I ought to say of the whole of sensitive existence, 
 for I have not seen evidence of any knowledge that can be 
 said to be superhuman, 
 
 To say that force is everywhere connected, atom with 
 atom, and world with world, is to say that mind, its correlate, 
 is everywhere connected is one and indivisible; but what 
 we can see in the great mirror of mind when in union with it, 
 remains to be investigated: so far as that investigation has 
 proceeded, I think what we can see in no case exceeds the
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE. 89 
 
 combined intellectual power of the whole human mind. 
 Whatever has been, or is, in the human mind, or which our 
 natural powers can reach, that we can see, and that only. 
 What we can see cannot exceed the power of the instrument. 
 The prescriptions by clairvoyants for the cure of disease in 
 Mesmer's time were always in accordance with the fashionable 
 modes of cure of that time ; and Andrew Jackson Davis, and 
 other Seers, although often reaching the highest rounds in 
 philosophy, never go past what has been already known, or 
 what human faculty can teach or comprehend. They can 
 read the mind of the age, but they rarely if ever anticipate 
 scientific discovery. They give us, as in Davis's case, what 
 the Edinburgh Review (October, 1865), calls " a mad jumble 
 of Spinozaisrn, Fourierism, Saint Simonianism, Swedenbor- 
 gianism, and Rationalism," and although here may be found 
 the most important psychological truths and the most advanced 
 social science, yet there is so much nonsense mixed with sense 
 that observation and experience is as much required to sift the 
 true from the false in these revelations, as in any that come 
 through the ordinary means of knowing. By union of mind 
 with the general thought medium, and of mind with mind, 
 that is seen which cannot be seen by the natural eye, both 
 near and distant, time and space forming no impediments. 
 I have heard a young'-girl, in the mesmeric state, minutely 
 describe all that was seen by a person with whom she was en 
 rapport, and in some cases more than was seen or could be 
 seen, such as the initials in a wateh which had not been 
 opened, and also describe persons and scenes at a distance, 
 which I afterwards discovered were correctly described, beyond 
 a possibility of doubt. But Prevision! surely there are 
 instances of prevision that are superhuman ? Science enables 
 us to anticipate the future; there is an established order of 
 nature everywhere, and it is a correct calculation of cause and
 
 90 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 effect that enables us to prophesy. It is the organ of causality 
 that takes cognizance of this invariable sequence, and we 
 have only to suppose that organ from largo size or excitement, 
 to be as abnormal in its action and power of calculation as the 
 organ of number often is in arithmetical calculation, and we 
 might see very far into the future. * Perhaps one of the most 
 singular and best authenticated cases of preternatural mental 
 power is that related by Zschokke of himself, in his Auto- 
 biography, pp. 169, 172. He says, " It has happened to me, 
 sometimes on my first meeting with strangers, as I listened 
 silently to their discourse, that their former life, with many 
 trifling circumstances therewith connected, or frequently some 
 particular scene in that life, has passed quite involuntarily, 
 and, as it were, dream-like, yet perfectly distinct before me. 
 * * * For a long time I held such visions as delusions 
 of the fancy, and the more so as they showed me even the 
 dress and motions of the actors, rooms, furniture, and other 
 accessories. * * * I myself had less confidence than 
 any one in this mental jugglery. So often as I revealed my 
 visionary gifts to any new person, I regularly expected to hear 
 the answer: ' It was not so.' I felt a secret shudder when my 
 auditors replied that it was true, or when their astonishment 
 
 * " It is, however, admitted that this foresight does not extend to 
 the influence of external circumstances by which the ordinary course 
 of the phenomena may be interrupted. Thus, a patient may predict 
 that on a certain day and at a certain hour he may have an epileptic fit, 
 but in the mean time he may be accidentally killed or intentionally mur- 
 dered. His predictions of the phenomena of his own disease are to be 
 understood in the same sense as the prediction of the astronomer of the 
 rise and fall of the tides in a particular port, that is, subject to the im- 
 plied condition, that the natural course of things shall not be deranged 
 by any external and irregular disturbing cause." Monthly Chronicle, 
 vol. i., p. 298. It would thus seem, as I have said, that the pre- 
 vision does not exceed the preternatural power of the organ of causality. 
 (See also Appendix B.)
 
 MEMORY. 91 
 
 betrayed my accuracy before they spoke. * * * I shall 
 not say another word of this singular gift of vision, of which 
 I cannot say it was ever of the slightest service; it manifested 
 itself rarely, quite independently of my will, and several times 
 in reference to persons whom I cared little to look through. 
 Neither am I the only person in possession of this power." 
 He met, he tells us, with an old Tyrolese, who for some time 
 after fixing ft is eyes upon him, read him as he had read others. 
 What has been called Socrates's Demon was an intuition of a 
 similar kind, although quite different in its function, as by it 
 Socrates was repeatedly made acquainted with events about to 
 happen. He is said to have regarded it in very much the 
 same light as Zschokke did; he was, however, an implicit 
 believer in supernatural communications. We have previously 
 said that whatever has been, or is, in the human mind, 
 clairvoyants can recognize; but what should turn the atten- 
 tion and apparently confine the power to this one particular 
 direction? Here in Zschockke's case, was a mental indi- 
 viduality the whole of a man's previous existence, presented 
 to him and retained in such perfect form that it could be 
 recognized by a separate and indifferent person, and had 
 its possessor not been still living, it might have been, and 
 no doubt would havf been, claimed as the soul of the 
 departed " communicating." 
 
 What is Memory? 
 
 The consideration of the nature of memory may perhaps 
 help to throw some light upon this question. It is a 
 difficult subject this of Memory, of which we must not speak 
 too confidently, and cannot speak too modestly. Ah 1 the 
 powers in nature could not make the acorn grow into anything 
 else than an oak. Yet what can we see or recognize in the
 
 92 SPECULATIONS ON SPIEITUALISM. 
 
 small, soft, apparently homogeneous germ in the acorn that 
 can give it this power of action and resistance ? Life, and 
 the entire character and direction of that life, depend upon 
 structure, so do the forms of thought, and any subject or 
 object of attention and interest acting upon the brain, pho- 
 tographs itself there, that is, it slightly alters its structure ; 
 and fresh mental force passing over these " moulds," turns 
 out similar thoughts and feelings to those that formed them. 
 This it is, joined to certain powers of Association, or auto- 
 matic action of the brain, by which thoughts and feelings are 
 blended and made to follow each other in a definite order, which 
 possibly constitutes memory. It is probably these old 
 photographs which Zschokke's "Eye of the Mind," or other 
 organ which gives "the intuition of character," as he himself 
 seemed to suppose, could read. The youthful brain is the 
 most easily impressible, and the memory becomes bad and 
 retains few impressions as the brain ossifies and its plastic 
 power decreases in age ; that part going first which came the 
 earliest into activity the memory for names, &c. On the 
 other hand there is a tendency in nature to rebuild the early 
 structure to produce the original type on which a particular 
 kind of memory depended, and the memory of youth 
 returns. 
 
 Mr. A. Bain makes memory to depend on " specific 
 growth;" he says, "For every act of memory, every exer- 
 cise of bodily aptitude, every habit, recollection, train of 
 ideas, there is a specific grouping, or co-ordination, of sensa- 
 tions and movements, by virtue of specific growths in the 
 cell junctions, and of separate nervous growths for each new 
 and separate acquisition." * 
 
 * The Intellect viewed Physiologically. Fortnightly Review, 
 February 1, 1866.
 
 THE FACTS OF SPIRITUALISM. 93 
 
 SPIRITUALISM.- 
 
 Genuineness of the Phenomena, 
 
 But is the above hypothesis, and the normal and abnor- 
 mal condition of mind described, sufficient to account for the 
 phenomena of Spiritualism? Of such phenomena as are 
 genuine I think they are. But are any of the alleged facts 
 genuine ; are not fraud and superstition and self- delusion suf- 
 ficient to account for them all ? Although a great deal may 
 be accounted for in this way still a large residue remains of 
 most important psychological phenomena. The spiritualists 
 have a theory to support, for the good, as they suppose, of 
 all mankind; we must not be surprised therefore if the facts 
 require a little forcing to fit that theory, and if the theorists 
 often think they see what they so strongly wish to see. For 
 most of the alleged facts we may readily find the testimony 
 of twelve honest witnesses, and we must not reject that testi- 
 mony, because in ignorance of mental science, and the bodily 
 conditions upon which it depends, such facts are used to support 
 superstitions which are vanishing before the advancing light of 
 the age. The strength of intolerance and bigotry is generally 
 in proportion to ignorance, but I do not think any candid 
 person, after examination, can resist the testimony in favour 
 of the facts themselves. The article in the Corn/rill Magazine, 
 " Stranger than Fiction," is rightly attributed I believe to 
 Robert Bell, and Dr. Gully, of Malvern, says of it, "I can 
 state with the greatest positiveness that the record made in 
 that article is, in every particular correct," and " that no 
 sleight-of-hand, or other artistic contrivance produced what 
 we heard or beheld." So it may be presumed that Dr. Gully 
 was present on this occasion, and as Mr. Home is stated in
 
 94 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 that account in the Cornhill to have floated about the room, 
 over the heads of the persons present, witches riding about 
 on broom-sticks maybe "founded in fact" after all. The 
 above statement of Dr. Gully's is to be found in " Incidents 
 of my Life," by D. D. Home; of which book a " Friend" in 
 the " Introductory Remarks," says, " whatever be the pre- 
 conceptions of the reader regarding Mr. Home, he will scarcely 
 fail after reading this volume, to acknowledge that the author 
 writes as a man thoroughly in earnest, and who has himself 
 no doubt of the phenomena that attend him." In this I most 
 heartily concur; still Mr. Home may not be altogether free 
 from the unconscious effort to make facts square to his 
 theory, or, when "the spirits", on some important occasion, 
 were not sufficiently demonstrative, from giving to them some 
 little assistance. 
 
 Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope, writing from Florence to the 
 Aihenaum, March 21, 18G3, says, " I have been present at 
 very many ' sittings ' of Mr. Home in England, many in my 
 own house in Florence, some in the house of a friend in 
 Florence. * * * I have seen and felt physical facts 
 wholly and utterly inexplicable, as I believe, by any known 
 and generally received physical laws. I unhesitatingly reject 
 the theory which considers such facts to be produced by means 
 familiar to the best professors of legerdemain. I have 
 witnessed also very surprising and extraordinary metaphysical 
 manifestations. But I cannot say that any of these have 
 been such as wholly to exclude the possibility of their being 
 deceptive, and indeed, to use the honest word required by 
 the circumstances, fraudulent. 
 
 " This is my testimony reduced to its briefest possible 
 expression. 
 
 "If it be asked what impression, on the whole, has been 
 left on my mind by all that I have witnessed in this matter, I
 
 PROFESSOR DE MORGAN'S TESTIMONY. 95 
 
 answer, one of perplexed doubt, shaping itself into only one 
 conviction that deserves the name of an opinion, namely, that 
 quite sufficient cause has been shown to demand further patient 
 and careful inquiry from those who have the opportunity and 
 the qualifications needed for prosecuting it ; that the facts 
 alleged and the number and character of the persons testifying 
 to them are such that real seekers for truth cannot satisfy 
 themselves by merely pooh-poohing them." 
 
 But the testimony most to be relied on for the reality of 
 the phenomena is that of perhaps one of the most acute and 
 hard-headed philosophers of this day, not a spiritualist but 
 a Professor of Mathematics, Augustus de Morgan. In the 
 admirable Preface to Mrs. de Morgan's book, " From Matter 
 to Spirit", he says " I am perfectly convinced that I have 
 both seen and heard, in a manner which would make unbelief 
 impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by 
 a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, 
 coincidence or mistake." He says " there has been a sudden 
 and general recognition of the existence of phenomena which 
 historical enquiry shows never to have been entirely 
 unknown." The base of the spiritualist hypothesis he tells 
 us is " tiat some intelligence, which is not that of any human 
 beings clothed in flesh and blood, has a direct share in the 
 phenomena." And again, " My state of mind which refers 
 the whole either to unseen intelligence, or something which 
 man has never had any conception of, proves me to be out 
 of the pale of the Royal Society," (p. 27,) but, he says, 
 " if these things be spirits, they show that pretenders, cox- 
 combs, and liars are to found on the other side of the grave 
 as well as on this." (p. 44.) " When it comes to what is 
 the cause of these phenomena, I find I cannot adopt any 
 explanation which has yet been suggested. If I were bound 
 to choose among things that I can conceive, I should say that
 
 96 SPECULATIONS ON SPIEITUALISM. 
 
 there is some sort of action of some combination of will, 
 intellect, and physical power, which is not that of any of the 
 human beings present. But thinking it very likely that 
 the universe may contain a few agencies say half-a-mil- 
 lion about which no man knows anything, I cannot but 
 suspect that a small proportion of these agencies say five 
 thousand may be severally competent to the production of 
 all the phenomena, or may be quite up to the task among 
 them. The physical explanations which I have seen are easy, 
 but miserably insufficient ; the spiritual hypothesis is suffi- 
 cient, but ponderously difficult." Of the possible existence 
 of such occult forces Mr. W. E. Grove, writing however not 
 on Spiritualism, but on Light, says, " The conviction that 
 everv transient gleam (of light) leaves its permanent impress 
 on the world's history, also leaves the mind to ponder over 
 the many possible agencies of which we of the present day 
 may be as ignorant as the ancients were of the chemical 
 character of light."* 
 
 Dr. Ashburner tells us (quoted in "An Exposition of 
 Spiritualism," p. 290), that "A force which is a material 
 agent, attended by or constituting a coloured light, emanates 
 from the brain of man, when he thinks that his will can 
 direct its impingement and that it is a motive power." f 
 Mr. Atkinson also, in the same work, (p. 295,) says, " The 
 so called spiritual manifestations arise from a force projected 
 and directed by the unconscious sphere of the mind or 
 soul": and before the occurrence of such manifestations he 
 
 * Correlation of Physical Force, p. 152. 
 
 t The Catholics tell us that the heads and countenances of Saints in 
 their Church have shone out with a glorious brightness, as the face of an 
 angel. No douht the " auriole " was the odylic light of Reichenbach, 
 or this coloured light of Dr. Ashburner, much more evident, even to 
 "sensitives", in some persons than in others.
 
 MEXTAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES. 97 
 
 remarked, (Letters, p. 114,) " amongst matter to be inquired 
 into are all cases of persons who cast off an influence which 
 causes motion in surrounding objects," &c.# 
 
 Mr. D. D. Home's explanation is, " That the spirits 
 accomplish what they do through our life-sphere, or atmo- 
 sphere, which was permeated by our wills ; and if the will 
 was contrary the sphere was unfit for being acted upon," f 
 consequently scepticism marred the forces at work. He tells 
 us "One of his friends was converted from previous unbelief, 
 by seeing a female hand, which was visible to all in the room, 
 slowly forming in the air a few inches above the table, until it 
 assumed all the apparent materiality of a real hand, (p. 132) ; 
 but he tells us, spirits have great difficulty in presenting, and 
 thus inccirnating these hands out of the vital atmosphere of 
 those present, and that their work was spoilt, and had to be 
 recommenced, when they were interfered with." (p. 77.) 
 
 We are also told in "Incidents in my Life," that Dr. 
 Carpenter " thinks these phenomena are produced by ' uncon- 
 scious cerebration,' " and Mr. J. D. Morell refers them to "reflex 
 action of the mind"; we may presume, therefore, that both 
 these gentlemen accept the genuineness of the phenomena, 
 and their explanation, taken jointly, with Dr. Ashburner's, 
 does not much differ, probably, from my own, although they 
 
 * " Every fragment or material we can hold or see is a storehouse 
 of force. In the case of certain compounds like gunpowder, we know 
 how to unlock chemical forces of affinity and cohesion, and to ohtain 
 by a sudden expansion and re-arrangement of atoms, a mechanical 
 power that rends the rock or propels the ball ; but it is startling to think 
 that the most quietly-behaved bodies we find on the globe, the granite 
 frames of mountains, or the very dust particles on the road, are like 
 sleeping lions, full of potential force, which they can give out the mo- 
 ment the balance of their affinities are disturbed." " Physical Forces.'' 
 The Intellectual Observer, April, 1866. 
 
 t Incidents of my Life, p. 75. 
 H
 
 98 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 might repudiate it. What I have called a mental or thought 
 atmosphere is the result of cerebration, and as far as we 
 know it is devoid of consciousness, until it becomes so as 
 " reflected" in our own organizations. Conscious cerebration, 
 or mind, as we have seen, is transformed force, received into 
 the body in the food, and is, like all force, persistent or 
 indestructible, and when it passes from us, it probably becomes 
 unconscious cerebration, and joins other force of the same 
 nature, and through its medium all bfains are brought into 
 union, so that what one brain is conscious of another may be, 
 and what is in the mind of sentiency becomes common pro- 
 perty. This "unconscious cerebration," the produce of the 
 whole of sentient existence, may again become sentiency in 
 animals and consciousness in man, and thus we have so 
 much as is true in the doctrine of transmigration of souls. 
 The light of the soul beams brightly for a time in our 
 consciousness, but the rays although scattered never cease to 
 exist, but form a gradually intensifying atmosphere of their 
 own. As the individual constituents of our bodies take new 
 forms, so no one particle of mind is lost. 
 
 Application of the TJieory : Physical Force, Table Moving, 
 Bopping, Levilation, dc. 
 
 Now let us see how the facts of Spiritualism accord with 
 our Theory. Mrs. de Morgan's record of these facts in 
 "From Matter to Spirit," is on the whole fair, and even 
 philosophical, when not encumbered by old superstitions and 
 an anthropological theology. 
 
 We have to account for physical force and intelligence 
 supposed to be not that of any human beings present. 
 With respect to physical force, gravitation and nervous force 
 or "unconscious cerebration," are con-elates, that is, trans-
 
 GRAVITATION AND NERVOUS FORCE. 99 
 
 fortnable, like heat and electricity, into each other, and, 
 like heat and electricity, although quantitatively the same, 
 they are qualitatively different, that is, they differ in their 
 mode of action, and when a table becomes charged with the 
 nervous force it seems to dispossess or change the character of 
 gravitation, and it acts less as a downward attraction. The 
 rising and moving of tables and other articles of furniture 
 exactly accords in the mode of action with this loss of 
 gravitation or weight. When intelligence appears, and this 
 nervous force or "cerebration" acts more or less consciously 
 under the power of the Will, we are told in the history of 
 "Mary Jane"*, that the physical force ceases; as in the 
 animal body it is changed in its form of manifestation. 
 I say, .more or less consciously, because the rapping is 
 sometimes the effect of conscious but more often of uncon- 
 scious cerebration. As an illustration of the conscious, Mrs. 
 de Morgan says, " As each rap seemed to be shot through my 
 arm, it was accompanied by a feeling like a slight blow or 
 shock of electricity, and an aching pain," &c. " This 
 experiment," she says, " seemed to prove that the nerves of 
 the human body were necessary, if not for the production, at 
 least for the propagation of the sounds." f Her maid Jane 
 described the effect produced, as "first a throbbing, then a 
 creaking, then a full-formed sound like a concussion of air, 
 which she said passed through her arms like an electric 
 shock" (p. 21.) I have not seen much of these phenomena, 
 but what I once saw by a celebrated medium was of this 
 character: he took my umbrella and held it at arm's length 
 against the looking glass and the door and other things, and 
 got three distinct throbbing pulsations, but he could not do 
 
 Mary Jane ; or Spiritualism Chemically Explained. 
 From Matter to Spirit, p. 17.
 
 100 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 the same with his own small stick till a gentleman took hold 
 of his other hand. That the raps were always three, neither 
 more nor less, showed, I inferred, that they were to some 
 extent under the control of the will. That these raps are 
 subjective, and not made by spirits, I think is evidenced by 
 their attending only upon some people, and those of peculiar 
 constitution, and that these people, as in Mr. Home's case, 
 sometimes lose the power, and that for months together. 
 The author of " Spiritualism Chemically Explained," says, 
 "But now a further progressive phase took place; it was not 
 necessary to sit at the table ; if my wife lay on the sofa, the 
 responsive taps would come apparently from behind the sofa ; 
 and even in bed, the conversation was carried on by Mary 
 Jane, (the name he gave to the supposed cause of or instru- 
 ment in these manifestations, -as he did not believe in ' the 
 spirits,') either by raps over our heads, or apparently on a 
 chest of drawers close by the bed. One night, after we were 
 in bed, I was talking with Mary Jane, and I perceived that 
 my wife was getting sleepy, and it entered my mind to test 
 whether the emanations continued during sleep, so I continued 
 the conversation. By degrees, the responses became slower 
 and fainter, and by the time I was convinced that my wife was 
 fast asleep, they ceased altogether." (p. 310.) Generally 
 Mary Jane would rap anywhere she was asked to do. 
 (p. 319.) During his wife's illness, from whom he supposed 
 Mary Jane to be an Odylic emanation, the manifestations 
 were very feeble. (p. 823.) 
 
 When we consider the power generated by the food in the 
 body, a power equal to raising fourteen millions of pounds 
 one foot, the consumption of not half of which is at present 
 accounted for; and considering the great number of purposes 
 to which this power is applied, and the different forms it 
 takes in the human body, we ought not to feel surprised
 
 THE FORCE OF WILL. 101 
 
 that individuals should possess this power of rapping. When 
 we throw a stone the motion is owing to force derived from our 
 bodies, which force is again given out as heat when the motion 
 ceases, the arm is merely the leverage by which the force 
 is used. Why may not force be used, projected as this is 
 by the Will, without such leverage? We are accustomed 
 to a visible and tangible medium, and we confound this mere 
 medium with the force itself. Professor Tyndall, in a corre- 
 spondence on Science and Prayer, in the Pall Mall Gazette, 
 (October, 1865,) says, " The external motion of your arm 
 is derived immediately from a motion within your arm, it 
 is in fact this motion in another shape. While you were 
 pushing your inkstand a certain amount of oxidation occurred 
 in the muscles of your arm, which oxidation, under normal 
 circumstances, produces a certain definite amount of heat. 
 To move the inkstand, a certain quantity of that heat has 
 been consumed which is the exact amount of the work done. 
 You could do the same work with the same amount of heat 
 from an ordinary fire. The force employed is the force of 
 your food which is stored up in your muscles. The motor 
 nerves pull the trigger and discharge the force. You have 
 here a series of transformations of purely physical energy, 
 with one critical point involved in the question, " what causes 
 the motor nerves to pull the trigger? Is the cause physical 
 or super-physical? Is it a sound or a gleam, or an external 
 prick or purpose, or some internal uneasiness that stimulates 
 the nerves to unlock the muscular force or is it free will?" 
 There can, I think, be no doubt as to the source of the force 
 causing the rapping the body lets off a series of percus- 
 sion caps, it does not discharge the whole machine, and the 
 question is through what medium out of the body this is 
 effected, and what pulls the trigger? for it is evident that the 
 rapping is not always voluntary, or under the control of
 
 102 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 the will. Mr. Home declares that the manifestations that 
 attend upon him are quite without his own control. They are 
 sometimes voluntary, however, as Mary Jane would rap when- 
 ever she was asked, and the power of the will, inside the 
 body as well as outside, has yet to be ascertained. The 
 Spectator, in the article we have already quoted, " Science 
 and Miracle," says " almost every physiologist will admit 
 the power which pure Will has over the nervous system, 
 that it can prolong consciousness and even life itself for 
 certain short spaces, by the mere exertion of vehement pur- 
 pose. Physicians tell you constantly that such and such 
 a patient may no doubt, if it be sufficiently important, by a 
 great effort command his mind sufficiently to settle his affairs, 
 but that it will be at the expense of his animal force, in 
 short, that it will be a free transfer of force from the diges- 
 tive and so to say vegetating part of his system, to that part 
 of his physical constitution, his nervous system, which lies 
 closest, as it were, to the will, (and which in fact is changed 
 in form and becomes will). Nay, we have heard physicians 
 say that patients, by a great effort of pure will, have, as they 
 believe prolonged then- own lives for a small space, that is, 
 have imparted we suppose, through the excitement produced 
 by the will on the nervous system and so downwards, a 
 certain slight increase of capacity to assimilate food to the 
 failing organic powers of the body. In other words, we 
 conclude, just as the organism is failing to draw supplies 
 of physical force from the outward world, its power of doing 
 so may be slightly prolonged, the outward world drained of 
 a small amount of force it would otherwise have kept in 
 stock, and the organism compelled to absorb it by a pure 
 volition. Can there be a clearer case of action of the super- 
 natural on the natural, even granting that the sum total 
 of physical force is not altered, but only its application
 
 AN EMANATION FROM ALL BRAINS. - 103 
 
 changed?" No doubt the will has all the power that physi- 
 cians thus ascribe to it and more, but there is nothing in 
 such power supernatural, as the Spectator supposes. " A 
 pure volition " is the correlate or equivalent of so much phy- 
 sical force, and this change of vital or vegetative force to 
 mental, and of mental back to vital, is seen to be one of 
 the commonest facts in nature when once observed. There 
 is always a sufficient mental force in reserve, if the will be 
 strong enough to bring it into action, to act upon the vital, 
 that is, the digestive and assimilative powers, and thus to 
 gain new force for a time from the world without. 
 
 Intelligence. 
 
 Besides the "levitation" and rappings, the Spiritualist 
 hypothesis assumes " the co-operation of an Intelligence which 
 is not that of any human being," and Professor de Morgan's 
 state of mind he says "refers the whole either to unseen 
 intelligence or to something which man has never had any 
 conception of." My own opinion is that there is an 
 emanation from all brains, the result of both conscious and 
 unconscious cerebration, forming, not spirits, but a mental or 
 spiritual atmosphere, by means of which peculiar constitutions 
 mediums and others, are put en rapport with other brains 
 or minds, so as to become conscious of whatever is going on 
 there. I believe the intelligence which manifests itself in 
 a " circle," which is not that of any person present, or as 
 Mrs. de Morgan expresses it, "the elementary idea or truth 
 sought to be conveyed, and which does not originate with the 
 medium," is the simple result, upon an enlarged and more 
 general state, of that "thought reading" which we see every 
 day in clairvoyants. This spiritual atmosphere is also able to 
 bring the mind into immediate contact, without the aid of the
 
 104 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 senses, with whatever it pervades, so that people can see both 
 near and distant what they could not see with ordinary 
 eyesight. This is only another well known phase of Clair- 
 voyance. Indeed Mrs. de Morgan tells us " that every 
 wonderful effect produced by mesmerism has since found its 
 explanation or its counterpart in spiritual phenomena." 
 (p. 49.) Again she says " It is indisputable that the medium 
 is under mesmeric influence, but what is that influence ? and in 
 these cases whence does it proceed?" 
 
 To what extent, and under what conditions, through this 
 atmosphere of cerebration, mind can act on mind, can only be 
 matter of observation and experiment. 
 
 First we have to consider the conditions under which we 
 can be put into contact or communication with this " atmo- 
 sphere." The bodily constitutions requisite seem greatly to 
 vary both in power and the mode of manifestation, and among 
 what are called "mediums" there seems to be a power of 
 both efflux and afflux, as we have the mesmeriser and the 
 mesmerised the giver and receiver. Some mediums have 
 the power of intensifying the spiritual atmosphere, others of 
 receiving whatever this atmosphere may contain. " Great 
 exercise of mediumship," Mrs. de Morgan tells us, "is likely 
 to exhaust the more delicate constitution of the nervous 
 sanguine, (p. 4,) while great activity in the brains of those 
 concerned interferes with the experiment," (p. 6,) the one 
 state referring to the first class of mediums, the other 
 to the latter. " The unseen power," we are told, "prefers a 
 passive state to a positive action of the brain," (p. 39,) and 
 our own force requires to be exhausted by physical effort, 
 by illness, by watching, fasting, or prayer, before we can 
 become the recipient of the new, and that thus the condi- 
 tion necessary for impression is one in the medium and the 
 inspired prophet. "In such a case I have seen," says the
 
 WHENCE THE INTELLIGENCE IS DERIVED. 105 
 
 author of " From Matter to Spirit," " every limb thrown 
 into strong convulsive action, as if the <unseen influence must 
 permeate every nerve and fibre before the power wielding it 
 could obtain full control of the wires of the human electric 
 telegraph." *(p. 276.) The ancient oracles were generally 
 thrown into convulsions before they gave utterances, and 
 convulsions often precede the trance, a state particularly 
 favourable to the influx of this spirit. This influx " is often 
 disturbed by the entrance of a third person." (p. 295.) 
 The sun, the source, as we have seen, of all power, physical 
 and mental, in the human body, " is always given in modern 
 spiritual experience as the material outbirth of the Highest 
 Power, the first remove from pure spirit." (p. 298.) 
 
 As -regards the nature of the Intelligence it appears to 
 depend entirely upon the character of the brain from which 
 it emanates, and upon the knowledge possessed by the mind 
 with which the medium or other member of the circle may 
 at the time be en rajtport. There is ground also for ren- 
 dering it highly probable that whatever knowledge man has 
 once possessed, whatever discoveries he has once made, are 
 preserved in the spirit atmosphere, or in some organizations 
 with which this atmosphere is in union. Of course then the 
 revelations we receive are various in proportion to the organ- 
 izations through which they come to us, and the source from 
 which they are received; and no wonder therefore that they 
 are very conflicting. First as to the instruments through 
 which we may receive them. The author of "Adam Bede" 
 observes, " we do not hear that Memnon's statue gave forth 
 its melody at all under the rushing of the mightiest wind, 
 or in response to any other influence divine or human than 
 certain short-lived sunbeams of morning; and we must learn 
 to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those 
 cunningly- fashioned instruments called human souls have only
 
 106 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the 
 least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture 
 or quivering agony." * So also, although some, as we have 
 seen, have superior power, the great majority of organizations 
 tinder the influx of the spirit atmosphere have quite as limited 
 a range, and they can reflect only so much of other minds as 
 the peculiar structure of their own permits. Thus we are 
 told by Mrs. de Morgan " that no surname could be given 
 through Jane's mediumship," (" From Matter to Spirit," 
 p. 21,) and that a similar limitation of faculty applies to every 
 phase of mediumship. " We have reason, then, to believe," 
 she says, " that the spirit or communicating power is 
 cognizant of all the different forms in which truths may be 
 conveyed through a variety of mediums, but that each 
 medium is chosen for a special quality, which enables him to 
 transmit the sentiment required." (72.) "I would say 
 then that the elementary idea or truth sought to be conveyed 
 does not originate with the medium ; the language, spelling, 
 and form of expression are his or hers." (31.) As to the 
 mode of inspiration or influx, we are told that " Spirits take 
 the place of an earthly mesmeriser." (116.) 
 
 As touching the source from which "Intelligence" is 
 derived, Mrs. de Morgan tells us, " Many considerations yet 
 remained, and many experiments were still to be tried, before 
 we could have full reason for believing that another intelligence 
 was concerned, or, in other words, that an invisible being 
 directed the operations of the telegraph wire, whose mechanism 
 was in our own organisation." (p. 33.) * * * "The 
 instances already given, and which might be supported by 
 hundreds besides, prove that their source is not to be found 
 in the medium or in any other member of the circle. The 
 
 * Adam Bede, vol. i., p. 177.
 
 THE SPIRITS DISAGREE AMONG THEMSELVES. 107 
 
 communications are coherent and intelligible; often too, quite 
 new to every person present. It see'rns then not a hasty 
 assumption that they are the work of an intelligent unseen 
 being, acting by means of a force similar to mesmerism upon 
 the system of the medium." (p. 96.) " The mesmeric force 
 or fluid, or one whose effects on the system are precisely 
 similar, but perhaps more refined, is that by which all the 
 operations of mediumship are carried on, and the source from 
 which it immediately flows is an unseen and intelligent being, 
 asserting itself to be a spirit, which has quitted the material 
 earthly form." (p. 100.) 
 
 May not then this force be an emanation from all brains, 
 the medium increasing its density so as to allow others pre- 
 sent to come into communion with it, and the intelligence, 
 " new to every person present," that of some brain in the 
 distance acting through this source upon the mind of the 
 medium or others of the circle? A. J. Davis, the Seer, 
 says, " My information is not derived from any persons that 
 exist in the sphere into which my mind enters; but is the 
 law of truth, emanating from the Great Positive Mind. * * * 
 I pass from the body with a desire for a particular kind of 
 information. This desire attracts the particular kind of truth 
 of which I would be informed, separates it from all other 
 things, and causes it to flow into the mind." * 
 
 The " Spirits " no more seem to agree among themselves 
 in the disembodied state than they did while in the body, in 
 fact they reflect every shade of opinion, and every creed in 
 religion, and " Mary Jane " was quite as communicative 
 when appealed to as Mary Jane, as when addressed as dear 
 Spirit; she also played a good hand at whist, and dominoes 
 with the faces turned down, and we are told that the more 
 
 * " Principles of Nature."
 
 108 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 the room was inhabited during the day the stronger the 
 power. It is found that the Mahomedan can " communicate " 
 with Mahomed, and a Catholic with every Saint in the 
 calendar; and the Archangel Raphael and St. Michael are 
 quite as willing to hold converse as St. Paul; and friends 
 living with friends and relatives departed, and even with 
 those it has turned out were not departed ; and we are 
 told by Allen Kardic, (p. 376,) that even " if a person 
 invoke a myth or allegorical person, he will get an answer in 
 the name of that person." In fact, the "spirits" are more 
 given to " personation" than our most corrupt electoral con- 
 stituencies. What really seems to take place is, that the 
 "communications" represent or reflect the mind of the me- 
 dium, or of others present, or of absent persons with whom 
 they most sympathise in feeling and idea, and with whom, 
 from certain other natural causes, they are most en rapport. 
 As A. J. Davis tells us, they desire a particular kind of 
 information, and the desire attracts the particular kind, and 
 causes it to flow into the mind, from some other mind in 
 which such ideas are prominent. Thus we get " Scripture" 
 reflected in every varying sect and denomination, and all its 
 facts and allusions, and then reasoning in the usual vicious 
 circle we find Scripture brought as a proof of the truth of 
 those " reflections," and the " reflections" as evidences of the 
 truth of revealed religion. In this way also Spiritualism is 
 made use of as a means for retaining and supporting all the 
 childish superstitions of the infancy of the race. We know 
 that the world, and all of which we are conscious, is the 
 manifestation of One Divine Power everywhere present " of 
 one great central force, whose origin is in the will of the 
 Most High." We know that our likes and antipathies, our 
 personal and social relations, and our ideas of good and evil, 
 are purely subjective, and have no existence out of ourselves;
 
 THE SPIRITUALIST HEAVEN. 109 
 
 and vet all these feelings and prejudices, which are merely 
 human relations, and have no existence per se, are carried 
 by the " spirits" into their upper spheres, and we hear of 
 " earth-clinging" and " earth-tending" spirits, and that matter 
 is "gross" and spirit "pure"; and that the farther we get 
 away from earth, the nearer we are to heaven, for that heaven 
 is above, although, with reference to this earth and the move- 
 ment on its axis, what is above one twelve hours is below the 
 next. " Souls quite earthly," we are told by Mrs. de Morgan, 
 " wrap themselves in the nerve-spirit, and give thereby the 
 characteristic form to their spirit. By the aid of this sub- 
 stance, they can make themselves seen, heard, and felt by 
 men." (" From Matter to Spirit," p. 135.) 
 
 Professor de Morgan tells us in his admirable Preface 
 that " the worthy Priest, Jean Meslier, (the author of a book 
 called ' Good Sense,' which had a considerable circulation in 
 its day,) to whom there was no God, knew how the universe 
 would have been fashioned if there had been one: he looked 
 at the First Cause from an earlier point of view." (Ibid, 
 p. 35.) So the Spiritualists are not satisfied with what they 
 see of God's work here, they think that hi many things he 
 was evidently in the wrong, and they have created a very 
 superior world indeed, and called it heaven. Here the great 
 sustaining and directing Power, of which the whole Universe, 
 with its countless suns and systems, is but a manifestation, is 
 represented as sitting upon a throne, with ministering angels, 
 in the style of an Eastern monarch, with feelings and ideas 
 not greatly differing. It is into this sphere, I presume, that 
 Professor de Morgan finds it so "ponderously difficult" to 
 enter with his wife and the " Spirits," and it is here certainly 
 that Mrs. de Morgan, so candid and philosophical in her 
 remarks, so correct generally in her observation, appears to 
 lose herself, seeking a resting place for all her better feelings
 
 110 SPECULATIONS ON SPIKITUALISM. 
 
 and higher aspirations in company with the female mind in 
 general. I agree with her, however, entirely in what follows : 
 " I have tried to show, that both by reasoning from the 
 phenomena, and by the assertions of the unseen influences, we 
 are led to conclude that the world of spirit is as the vitalizing 
 and forming soul of which the outer world is the material husk. 
 If this be so, it follows as a consequence that every object in 
 creation outlies and typifies its animating cause in the world 
 of spirit. And so every created thing represents some spirit 
 power, each power being a modification of the one great 
 central force, whose origin is in the will of the Most High." 
 (p. 298.) 
 
 But here the " animating cause" is said to be " spirit " 
 "a modification of the one great central force," not spirits, 
 and hi case of the natural birth, life and the "spirit" are 
 always transmitted through organization; but there is no 
 evidence of continued organization in the supposed birth into 
 the spirit world. We find no evidence of any intelligent 
 "object," or individuality "outlying and typifying its 
 emanating cause," except the human body, and such perhaps 
 as the human will may have the power of forming out of what 
 I have called the mental, thought, or spirit atmosphere, the 
 result of general cerebration. If also spirits existed, in the 
 number they are supposed to do by spiritualists, in and 
 around our atmosphere, would not the fact become evident 
 to our men of science, by their action on light and other 
 imponderables? It is true that we may ask the same with 
 respect to our "cerebration" atmosphere; but the existence 
 of such atmosphere is being made more and more evident 
 through the " sensitives" of Baron Reichenbach and by mes- 
 merisers generally. 
 
 It is true that the believers in the "Spirits" are greatly 
 on the increase both in this country and America. The New
 
 INVESTIGATORS WHO REJECT THE SPIRITS. Ill 
 
 England Spiritualists' Association affirms that half the mem- 
 bers of Congress and the State Legislates, as well as half 
 the scientific and literary men of America, are Spiritualists.* 
 Probably far the greater number of these, having witnessed 
 the phenomena, and finding that they cannot all be ascribed 
 to fraud or self- delusion, believe in spirits, because they do 
 not know to what else the power and intelligence manifested 
 can be ascribed. 
 
 Investigators into Spiritual Manifestations who have rejected the 
 Notion of Spirits. 
 
 But there are many investigators who discard the notion 
 of spirits. Thus the author of " Mary Jane; or, Spiritualism 
 Chemically Explained." He believes the influence to be an 
 Odylic emanation from his wife, and entirely dependent upon 
 her for its existence. He says, " I have seen a table move, 
 totally alone ; and a chair move, totally alone ; move, just as 
 you see a leaf carried along by the wind on a turnpike-road, 
 and I have reasonable conversations with Mary Jane whenever 
 I please; but I have neither seen nor heard anything to 
 convince me, in the slightest degree, that Mary Jane is the 
 spirit of a deceased person. It is only a hitherto unexplained 
 phenomenon of nature, which, until chemists and scientific 
 men analyse, will be made use of to get money from the 
 many." (p. 301.) * * * " What, then, is this myste- 
 rious being ? I will explain to you my version of it pre- 
 mising that science has an immense, an enormous, and a most 
 invaluable field for discovery in its researches into the nature 
 of it ; and that if ever it is taken up by scientific men in the 
 manner it deserves to be, more light will be thrown on the 
 generation and subsequent changes and progressive perfection 
 
 * Edinburgh Renew, October, 1865.
 
 112 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 of organic bodies of all sorts, and in the action of food and 
 medicines, and very probably on the causes of the motions of 
 the planetary bodies, than by any study that has hitherto 
 occupied the scientific world." (p. 325.) The writer then 
 lays down sixteen propositions that he considers proved by 
 the phenomena he has not only witnessed but apparently 
 investigated. I need give only a few of these : 
 
 4. "When these vapours (which Reichenbach calls 
 Odylic,) emanate from certain persons, who appear to have 
 phosphorus in excess in the system, they form a positively 
 living, thinking, acting body of material vapour, able to move 
 a heavy table, and to carry on a conversation, &c., &c., &c. 
 
 8. " That this Odylic being thinks and feels exactly as the 
 persons from whose bodies it emanates: that it possesses all 
 the senses seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and 
 thinking; that it makes up for the muscular organs of 
 speech, by either an electrical power of rapping, or by guiding 
 the medium's hand, or by direct writing with pen and pencil. 
 
 9. " That its power of sight is electrical, for it can see 
 under a domino, or what is in the adjoining room in short, 
 where the human eye cannot. 
 
 14. " That its conversations with different persons will be 
 responsive to the affections, the sentiments, and the religious 
 belief of each person it is talking with, although they are 
 drawn from one common source the Odylic vapour concen- 
 trated at, or with which the table is charged and although 
 those religious creeds are entirely at variance. And if asked 
 for the name of the (pre- supposed) spirit, it will give the name 
 either of the desired relative, or of some high authority (on 
 religious matters) in the specific creed of the person making 
 the enquiry. 
 
 15. " That, from various concurrent testimony, it appears 
 fully proved that this Odylic vapour possesses the power of
 
 THE COMING MILLENNIUM. 118 
 
 taking the shape of hands, arms, dress, &c., and even of an 
 entire person, dressed, &c. 
 
 16. " That, nevertheless, the high thought, philosophy, 
 independence, conciseness, and deep reflection evinced by 
 many of the answers and sentiments expressed by the Odylic 
 fluid, point to its connection with a general thought atmo- 
 sphere, as all-pervading as electricity, and which possibly is 
 in itself, or is in intimate connection with, the principles of 
 causation of the whole universe." * 
 
 But this Author is not the only person who has inves- 
 tigated these " modern spiritual manifestations," and who, 
 seeing and believing the phenomena, yet does not believe in 
 " the spirits." A Mr. William Robert Bertolacci has written 
 a little book, called " Christian Spiritualism," in which he 
 details his experiences. He seems to think that the time 
 is come, or fast coming, when God is about " to pour out 
 His Spirit on all flesh." He says, " It is thus that, at this 
 time, when the resources of material science, in their all but 
 miraculous nature and the astounding rapidity of their suc- 
 cession, seem to be drawing to a close, that the most wide- 
 spread manifestations of an invisible power that have ever 
 been heard of, are sent to this globe of ours, to show us 
 that there still exists an order of things far surpassing the 
 sphere of our temporal reason, and capable of subverting 
 all the theories which we, in the vanity of our material 
 science, have laid down as the ' laws of nature.' " 
 
 " Should we not consider these uncalled-for, spontaneous 
 manifestations as forming, at least, a portion of those " signs 
 of the times" which are immediately to precede the spiritual 
 reign of Christ on earth ?"f 
 
 * Mary Jane ; or, Spiritualism Chemically Considered, p. 354. 
 + Christian Spiritualism, p. 86.
 
 114 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 He rejects the intervention of " Souls of the departed," 
 hut ascribes most of the phenomena to our own occult spiritual 
 power. This power he considers is to be developed by train- 
 ing, and he has used it in the education of his own family, in 
 the extension and quickening of their natural powers. " Alter 
 some trials," he says, " my young people were thrown into 
 the magnetic sleep, and in that state could read in books with 
 their eyes bandaged and well padded up could see and hear 
 things in far-distant places were made insensible to pain, 
 and deprived of their memory on being awakened, or retained 
 a perfect recollection of all that had passed during their 
 somnambulic state." * * * It was made known 
 to us by the spirit, (not the spirits,) that this power to 
 obstruct or retain the memory could be vastly extended; 
 that the memory with the faculties of perception could be 
 so strengthened as to make the education of our young peo- 
 ple the easiest of all things an amusement, a real recreation 
 instead of being, as it is now, a slow, tedious and fatiguing 
 process." * * * The acquirements of the somnam- 
 bulic condition could, with a little pains and perseverance, 
 in the great majority of subjects, be transferred to their 
 normal waking state." By this species of training, by the 
 use of hypnotism, and the power of faith, the abnormal 
 conditions of mesmerism were brought into common daily 
 use, without, so far as I understand, injuring the health or 
 weakening the natural faculties. We are told that whole 
 pages can be retained in the memory by a process of instan- 
 taneous " Psychotyping," and the whole process of this kind 
 of clairvoyant education is given at some length. I give only 
 an illustration. " The students are also by the faculty they 
 acquire for receiving inspiration, so perfectly identified with 
 everything belonging to the places spoken of in their study 
 of geography, that they feel as though they were on the
 
 CURES BY THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNION. 115 
 
 spot. So correct are the impressions made by the ubiquitous 
 power of their souls on all the organs -of the body in their 
 temporarily perfected condition, that they appear to them- 
 selves to be, not where the lessons are going on, but in the 
 very places therein referred to; seeing, hearing, and feeling 
 all that they are required or desirous to see, hear, or feel." 
 
 But Mr. Bertolacci not only aided the development of 
 our " latent spiritual faculties" by training and " initiation", 
 but he alleviated pain and cured diseases by communion 
 of the souls of the living. He tells us that " the most 
 miraculous cures can be, and have been lately performed 
 upon persons whose maladies had set at nought all medical 
 science." This has been brought about by the " laying on 
 of hands " or by a certain number of persons forming a chain 
 round the sufferer. Of these cures he gives many instances 
 both within his own family and upon persons without, whose 
 faith in his " spirit of communion " was sufficiently strong. 
 " It is manifest," he says, " that the souls of two or more 
 persons can, during their life on earth, unite and form 
 one soul union is strength; and when that strength is con- 
 stituted upon the conditions laid down by the Christian 
 Doctrine, it becomes divine power, omnipotent in its prin- 
 ciples, and without any limitation in its effects other than 
 that imposed upon it at the time by the degree of the 
 faith of its constituents." 
 
 " In consequence of the present degeneration and helpless 
 state of that Church of Redemption, primitively established 
 by Jesus' direct disciples, but divided at the present day into 
 all sorts of sects, and totally absorbed in vain forms, every 
 new demonstration of invisible forces is termed, improperly, 
 supernatural, by a very great majority of those who witness 
 them, and who, having sought for the cause of them in the 
 erroneous philosophies of bygone ages, have adopted the
 
 116 SPECULATIONS ON SPIBITUALISM. 
 
 fallacious creed, that these things are produced by the inter- 
 vention of the Souls of the departed, to the exclusion of all 
 participation in them by our own occult spiritual power." 
 (p. 82.) " The Communion of Saints," he Bays, " although 
 on the lips of Christians, has never lately been understood and 
 appreciated, and therefore not in their hearts. They have 
 been taught to understand that Saints are exclusively such 
 persons as, having led a very pious and pure life on earth, 
 are after their death, received up into a local heaven in the 
 presence of God infinite, who, however, is there seated on a 
 throne surrounded on all sides by angels, &c. (p. 62.) 
 Whereas the Apostles taught that they and their strict 
 adherents and followers were Saints. " Our Saviour," he 
 says, " told the Samaritan woman at the well of Sichar, that 
 ' God is Spirit,' (not a Spirit, which he shows from the Greek 
 to be a misinterpretation), and that what should be worshipped 
 as God teas the Spirit of Truth. Among the teachings we 
 have received in the inspired writings given to us by the spirit 
 of our communions, has been the following: ' God is not 
 an extraneous, individual, isolated Being, but the internal 
 collective, and contiguous life and constitution of all things; 
 not a heterogeneous force, but the intrinsic strength; not 
 concrete, but abstract; not relative but absolute, as to the 
 principle. I trust that what I have said will go some way 
 towards dispelling, in my readers' minds, those narrow ideas 
 of a materialistic education which leads them to look upon the 
 Deity as of a 'nature distinct' from that of creation; a 
 species of outward looker-on, instead of being, as He is, the 
 intimate constitution, action, life, and intelligence of all 
 things." Mr. Bertolacci admits that it is only by the most 
 determined Will, of which strong faith is the main ingre- 
 dient, that we can hope to attain to and to persevere in, the 
 " new life in the Spirit." " I have, he says, had to arm
 
 DIVINATION AND MAGIC. 117 
 
 myself with the most undaunted determination," a "Will and 
 determination, I fear, to which very few at present will be 
 found equal; but as I have said before, the power of Will, 
 and of joint Wills, has yet to be tested. 
 
 History Confirms the Existence of tJie Phenomena. 
 
 But speaking of the phenomena to which we have 
 adverted, Professor de Morgan tells us very truly, " that 
 historical enquiry shows their existence never to have been 
 entirely unknown." 
 
 Thus we have it on the best authority that the Brahmins 
 exhibited before Apollonius of Tyara, who was born four years 
 before Christ, most of the phenomena of modern spiritualism, 
 such as the moving of furniture, levitation, &c., and Apollonius 
 himself is reported to have performed many miracles, and to 
 have wrought many cures. In the East, in his time, these 
 things were Divination and Magic; in the west, especially 
 during the middle ages, Witchcraft. The practice of Magic by 
 the Magi or wise men of the East, was originally the develop- 
 ment of the occult powers to which we have referred; it was 
 a reference to a certain vital or spiritual sympathy in the 
 universe, and the attracting of, or union with, these influences 
 or invisible powers, by devotion, and religious rites. Taylor? 
 in his Notes to Pausanias, observes: "He whose intellec- 
 tual eye is strong enough to perceive that all things sympathise 
 with all, will be convinced that magic, cultivated by the 
 ancient philosophers, is founded on a theory no less sublime 
 than rational and true. Such a one will consider, as Plotiuus 
 observes, the nature of soul everywhere easy to be attracted, 
 when a proper subject is at hand which is easily passive to its 
 influence."
 
 118 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISE 
 
 Mesmerism, clairvoyance, divination, and magic were also 
 known to the Egyptians, and formed a considerable part of the 
 mysteries of their Religion. 
 
 Of the truth of the prophecies and responses of the 
 Oracles of Greece and the Roman Sybils, the testimony of 
 the Historians is unanimous; the only question was how to 
 account for them. Thus Rollin says, " admitting it to be 
 true some oracles have been followed precisely by the events 
 foretold, we may believe that God, to prevent the blind and 
 sacrilegeous credulity of pagans, has sometimes admitted 
 demons to have knowledge of things to come, and to foretel 
 them distinctly enough. Which conduct of God, though very 
 much above human comprehension, is frequently attested in 
 the Holy Scripture." Dr. Rogers accounts for the oracles as 
 the result of " local mundane emanations," acting upon the 
 nervous system of the Pythia, and developing to a wonderful 
 degree the pre-sension, or divining power of the brain, 
 standing, as he affirms it did, in a general relation to all 
 matter. He holds that the controlling action of mind being 
 suspended, her brain became entirely subject to a specific 
 mundane influence, which being reflected back upon the outer 
 world, was called the oracle of the gods, as in the modern 
 medium it is called " communications from the invisible spirit 
 world." * And Dr. Rogers has probably made a very good 
 guess. 
 
 Plato and Pythagoras believed in a " Luciform ajtherial 
 vehicle," and Plato says " man does not participate in the 
 divinely-inspired and true prophecy as a reasoning being, 
 but alone when he is either deprived, during sleep, or through 
 sickness, of the exercise of reason, or when by some inspira- 
 tion, he cannot command himself." 
 
 The Two Worlds, p. 26.
 
 MANIFESTATIONS AMONG THE NEO-PLATONISTS. 119 
 
 But it was at Alexandria, among the Neo-Platonists as 
 they were called, that we had the fullest development of 
 these phenomena. " We have here," says the Eev. Charles 
 Kingsley, in his Exposition of the Alexandrian Philosophy, 
 " the very phenomena which are puzzling us so now-a-days. 
 They are all there, these modern puzzles, in those old books 
 of the long bygone seekers for wisdom." The Neo-Platonists 
 taught that the soul may in ecstacy attain to divine visions, 
 see beyond the present, and predict the future. Plotinus, 
 generally regarded as the founder of that school, says : 
 "You ask, how can we know the Infinite? I answer, not 
 by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. 
 The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. 
 You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior 
 to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your 
 finite self no longer, in which the Divine Essence is com- 
 municated to you. This is ecstacy But this sublime 
 
 condition is not of permanent duration. It is only now and 
 then that we can enjoy this elevation (mercifully made pos- 
 sible for us) above the limits of the body and the world. I 
 myself have realised it but three times as yet, and Porphyry 
 hitherto not once. All that tends to purify and elevate the 
 mind will assist you in this attainment, and facilitate the 
 approach and recurrence of these happy intervals. There 
 are then, different roads by which this end may be reached. 
 The love of beauty which exalts the poet; that devotion to 
 the One and that ascent of science which makes the ambition 
 of the philosopher ; and that love and those prayers by which 
 some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards 
 perfection. These are the great highways conducting to that 
 height above the actual and the particular, where we stand 
 in the immediate presence of the infinite, who shines out as 
 from the deeps of the soul."
 
 120 SPECULATIONS ON SPIKITUALISM. 
 
 lamblichus, or the writer of the treatise that bears his 
 name, says: " The pomp of emperors becomes as nothing 
 in comparison with the glory that surrounds the heirophant. 
 His nature is the instrument of Deity who fills and impels 
 him. Men of this order do not employ in the elevation they 
 experience, the waking senses as do others. They have no 
 purpose of their own, no mastery, over themselves. They 
 speak wisdom they do not understand, and their faculties 
 absorbed in a divine power become the utterance of a superior 
 will. * * * Frequently, not merely the ordinary 
 exercise of reason, but sensation and animal life would 
 appear to have been suspended; and the subject of the 
 afflatus has not felt the application of fire, has been pierced 
 with spits, cut with knives, and not been sensible of pain. 
 Yea, often, the more the body and the mind have been alike 
 impeded by vigils and fasts, the more mentally imbecile and 
 ignorant a youth may be who is brought under this influence, 
 the more freely and unmixedly will the divine power be made 
 manifest. So clearly are these wonders the work, not of 
 human skill and wisdom, but of supernatural agency ! Cha- 
 racteristics, such as these I have mentioned are the marks of 
 the true inspiration." 
 
 Victor Hugo also bears his testimony on this subject 
 he says, " There is a time when the unknown reveals itself 
 in a mysterious way to the spirit of man. A sudden rent in 
 the veil of darkness will make manifest things hitherto un- 
 seen, and then close again upon the mysteries within. Such 
 visions have occasionally the power to effect a transfiguration 
 in those whom they visit. They convert a poor camel-driver 
 into a Mahomet; a peasant girl tending her goats into a 
 Joan of Arc. Solitude generates a certain amount of sublime 
 exaltation. It is like the smoke arising from the burning 
 bush.
 
 INSPIRATION ACCORDING TO VICTOB HUGO. 121 
 
 " A mysterious lucidity of mind results, which converts 
 the student into a seer, and the poet kito a prophet: herein 
 we find a key to the mysteries of Horeb, and Ebron, and 
 Ombos; to the intoxication of Castalian laurels, the revela- 
 tions of the month Busion. Hence too, we have Peleia at 
 Dodona, Phernonoe at Delphos, Trophonius in Zebadea, 
 Ezekiel on the Chebar, and Jerome in the Thebais. 
 
 " More frequently this visionary state overwhelms and 
 stupifies its victim. There is such a thing as a divine 
 besotedness. The Hindoo fakir bears about with him the 
 burden of his vision, as the Cretin his goitre. Luther hold- 
 ing converse with devils in his garret at Wittenburgh ; Pascal 
 shutting out the view of the infernal regions with the screen 
 of his cabinet; the African Obi conversing with the white- 
 faced god Bossurn; are each and all the same phenomena, 
 diversely interpreted by the minds in which they manifest 
 themselves, according to their capacity and power. Luther 
 and Pascal were grand, and are grand still ; the Obi is simply 
 a poor half-witted creature, &c. 
 
 *** + ** 
 
 " Reverie, which is thought in its nebulous state, borders 
 closely upon the land of sleep, by which it is bounded as by 
 a natural frontier. The discovery of a new world, in the 
 form of an atmosphere filled with transparent creatures, 
 would be a beginning of a knowledge of the vast unknown. 
 But beyond opens out the illimitable domain of the pos- 
 sible, teeming with yet other beings, and characterised by 
 other phenomena. All this would be nothing supernatural, 
 but merely the occult continuation of the infinite variety of 
 creation."* 
 
 * Toilers of the Sea, v. i., c. 7.
 
 122 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 The Manifestations in the Catholic Church. 
 
 It is in the history of the Catholic Church among its 
 saints and martyrs that we find the most numerous illus- 
 trations and the fullest confirmation of the phenomena of 
 modern spiritualism, but these were misunderstood and mis- 
 interpreted by the Church, as they are in the present day 
 by spiritualists. By Protestants they have all been regarded 
 as pious frauds. The study of the subject, however, as a 
 branch of physiology will teach us to be more discriminating. 
 The fact of persons being raised from the ground and borne 
 through the air has been variously attested. " The fact is 
 authentically attested of St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Dominick, 
 St. Dunstan, St. Francis of Assissium, St. Teresa, St. 
 Cozetan, St. Bernard Ptolasmaei, St. Catharine of Ricci, and 
 several others." Calmet remarks, among other instances 
 which came under his own observation: " I knew a nun, to 
 whom it has often happened, in spite of herself, to see herself 
 thus raised up in the air to a certain distance from the earth ; 
 it was neither from choice, nor from any wish to distinguish 
 herself, since she was truly confused at it."* 
 
 With respect to what were thought to be miraculous cures, 
 the testimony of the Church is overwhelming. Mr. Lecky, 
 with Middleton, rejects the old Protestant theory, that 
 " miracles became gradually fewer and fewer, till they at last 
 entirely disappeared ;" and accepts without reserve the state- 
 ment of this intrepid writer in his " Free Inquiry," that as far 
 as the Church historians can illustrate or throw light on 
 anything, "there is not a single point in all history so 
 constantly, explicitly, and unanimously affirmed by them all 
 
 * The Two Worlds, p. 58.
 
 CURATIVE POWERS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 123 
 
 as the continual succession of these (miraculous) powers 
 through all ages, from the earliest Father who first mentions 
 them down to the time of the Reformation." So far from 
 being " rare and exceptional phenomena," miracles were 
 supposed to be of familiar and daily occurrence in the lives of 
 the early and mediaeval saints. * The British Quarterly 
 Review for October, 1861, in an article on " Christianity 
 and the true Civilizations," remarks: " The frequent inter- 
 vention of supernatural agencies in human affairs was an 
 admitted fact in the faith of the Ancients, and hardly less so 
 in the faith of the Middle Ages. To reject all credence of that 
 nature is peculiar to modern times." Mr. Morison, in his 
 "Life of Saint Bernard," observes: "Miracles, ghostly 
 apparitions, divine and demoniac interference with sublunary 
 affairs, were matters which a man of the twelfth century would 
 less readily doubt of than of his own existence. To disbelieve 
 such phenomena would have been considered good primd 
 facie evidence of unsoundness of mind." 
 
 " Saint Bernard, the most marked representative and 
 fitting type of that central period of the middle ages, had 
 visions and revelations, in which future events were revealed 
 to him, and which he predicted with the greatest particularity 
 and accuracy." His healing power was most extraordinary. 
 Herman, Bishop of Constance, and nine others, kept a diary of 
 what they saw with their own eyes, during his progress through 
 the Rhine country. " Many miracles," they say, " from this 
 time shone forth, which, if we should pass over, the very 
 
 stones would proclaim The halt, the blind, the 
 
 deaf, and dumb, were brought from all parts to be touched by 
 Bernard." f We learn that Bernard himself became perplexed 
 
 The Contemporary Review, p. 375. 
 + The Two Worlds, p. 53.
 
 124 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 and uneasy at these wonders. He knew that they were not 
 done by his own power, and disclaimed all merit in them. 
 He said: " I can't think what these miracles mean, or why 
 God has thought fit to work them through such a one as I. 
 I do not remember to have read, not even in Scripture, of 
 anything more wonderful. Signs and wonders have been 
 wrought by holy men and by deceivers. I feel conscious 
 neither of holiness nor deceit. I know I have not those 
 saintly merits which are illustrated by miracles. I trust, 
 however, that I do not belong to the number of those who do 
 wonderful things in the name of God, and yet are unknown 
 to the Lord." * 
 
 But we are not dependent upon what are considered to be 
 the fabulous ages of the Roman Catholic Church for an illus- 
 tration of the curative power that belongs to some individuals. 
 Mr. Valentine Greatrakes, a Protestant gentleman of the county 
 of Waterford, born in 1628, a thoroughly sound Christian and 
 good man, but no Saint, occupying a highly respectable place 
 in society, showed a power quite equal to that related of St. 
 Bernard. An account is given of this gentleman in Chambers' 
 Journal, No. 314, and quoted in the Appendix to the Atkinson 
 and Martineau's Letters ; Mr. Atkinson having himself consi- 
 derable mesmeric power in the same way. Mr. Greatrakes, 
 after practising with great success at home, went to England 
 for the purpose of curing the Viscountess Conway of an inve- 
 terate headache, in which he failed. But while residing at 
 Ragley, with the Conway family, he cured many hundreds 
 afflicted with various diseases. Lord Conway, in a letter to 
 his brother, thus speaks of the healer: "I must confess 
 that, before his arrival, I did not believe the tenth part of 
 those things which I have been an eye-witness of. * * * 
 After all, I am far from thinking that his cures are all 
 * Ibid, p. 55.
 
 CUBATIVE POWER OF MR. GREATRAKES. 125 
 
 miraculous. I believe it is by a sanative i-irtue and a natural 
 efficiency, which extends not to all diseases, but is much more 
 proper and effectual to some than to others, as he doth also 
 despatch some with a great deal of ease, and others not 
 without a great deal of pains." 
 
 He was invited by the King to London, whither he 
 went, curing very many by the way. There the Royal 
 Society, evidently then young and green, threw the light 
 of their countenance and wisdom upon the matter, publishing 
 some of the cures in their Transactions, and accounting for 
 them as produced by " a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrake's 
 body, which had an antipathy to some particular diseases and 
 not to others." The " sanative contagion" had an " anti- 
 pathy" to diseases mostly connected with the nervous system, 
 upon which Mind and "Will are known to exercise most in- 
 fluence, the nervous fluid from one body being infused into 
 another. We are told by a contemporary writer, Henry More, 
 mentioned by Southey in his " Omneana," that Greatrakes 
 was successful in " cancers, scrofula, deafness, king's evil, 
 headache, epilepsy, fevers, (though quartan ones^) leprosy, 
 palsy, tympany, lameness, numbness of limbs, stone, con- 
 vulsions, ptysick, sciatica, ulcers, pains of the body, nay, 
 blind and dumb in some measure, and I know not but he 
 cured the gout." 
 
 Mr. Atkinson tells us that " Any change in the nervous 
 condition affects others. I have told you," he says, " how 
 distinctly I felt the commencement of the mesmeric condition 
 in my patient, as of a slight electric shock ; and I have been 
 sensible of each change during the sleep, and of the flowing 
 away of disease. "When diseases are dying out, they influence 
 others. It is even so with a common cold, which passes away 
 to another. And so, likewise, the state of a dying person 
 influences : flies off, as it were ; disturbs or influences the
 
 126 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 universal medium, and thus reaches those in whom there was 
 rapport, if they be in a fit condition to receive."* f It seems 
 from Greatrake's case, that if we can take disease a feat 
 which is not denied so also can we take health. J 
 
 * Man's Nature and Development, p. 279. 
 
 t The only ghosts that were considered to be " established" by the 
 " Oxford Ghost Club" a body formed expressly for the investigation 
 of such supposititious phenomena, -were those that appeared at death. 
 The Brain contains a whole reservoir of correlated force called soul or 
 spirit, and as the vital functions cease it must pass away through 
 some other medium. " I have known," says Mr. Atkinson, " a dying 
 child mesmerise a powerful man," (Letters, p. 278,) and from the nu- 
 merous well-authenticated cases of people appearing to others at their 
 deaths, it would seem that such force was able for a tune at least, to 
 retain some kind of identity and individuality and to impress it on 
 others. The most modern ghost of this sort on record with which I am 
 acquainted is the one seen by Dr. Pusey: " I was," says the reverend 
 doctor, " passing down a somewhat crowded street in Oxford, when I waa 
 surprised to perceive at my elbow a man whom I believed to be too ill at 
 the time to leave his bed ; he said ' Dr. Pusey, I have been burning in 
 Hell the last hour for that lie I told you (it is supposed in the confes- 
 sional).' I turned round," the doctor went on to say, "to ask an 
 explanation, but the people pressed npon me, and I lost sight of the 
 figure of the man who accosted me. In great surprise, I hastened to 
 his residence and learnt at his door, that he had been dead about an 
 hour." This anecdote was told to the Sisters in Osnaburg Street, and 
 is taken from the as yet uncontradicted statement made by Miss Good- 
 man, in her " Sisterhoods in the Church of England," p. 25. It is 
 impossible that a man of the well-known character of Dr. Pusey, can have 
 wholly invented this story. The " passing away" of the mental force of 
 his acquaintance may have impressed itself on his mind, with even hia 
 last thought; or the ghost only may have been a reality, and the 
 " Hell and Purgatory" the produce merely of a strong faith and imagina- 
 tion. See Appendix C. 
 
 J Since this was written, that is, on May 7th, 1866, I attended a 
 lecture at Saint Mary's Hall, Coventry, by a Mr. George Powell, who 
 styles himself Practical Mesmerist, Phrenologist, and Medical Elec- 
 trician. The lecturer, after a few preliminary remarks to show that 
 vital power was transmissible, as in the well known case of young people 
 sleeping with old ones, &c., &c., proceeded to mesmerise about twenty
 
 CURATIVE POWER OF MR. POWELL. 127 
 
 Witchcraft. 
 
 Witchcraft is now generally believed to be entirely a 
 delusion. But we must recollect that the belief was current 
 throughout, not only Christendom, but the whole world, for 
 many centuries. So late as 1664, two women were con- 
 demned at Suffolk, by Sir Matthew Hale, for witchcraft, on 
 the ground first, that Scripture had affirmed the reality of 
 
 of the audience, all but one of whom he put to sleep immediately. 
 He then selected six of the most sensitive to illustrate electro-biology, 
 phreno-ruesmerism, and mesmerism, in which he showed great power, 
 and was completely successful, to the great amusement, delight, and 
 wonder of the spectators. He then said that if there were any there suf- 
 fering from pain he could probably dismiss it at once. Only one young 
 gentleman came forward, who had been suffering from tooth ache, he 
 said, all day; the pain was dismissed with a touch, and had certainly 
 not returned when we left the room, probably an hour after. After the 
 lecture, while I was waiting for Mr. Powell, in about a quarter of an 
 hour, he cured two people of tooth ache, one of rheumatism and 
 greatly relieved another, one lady of a pain and lameness in the foot, 
 and another old lady of a bad head ache to which she was subject, 
 and from which she had been suffering all day. I had no opportunity of 
 ascertaining how far these cures were permanent, but Mr. Powell has 
 since supplied me with a number of testimonials and letters of gratitude 
 from persons who profess to have been cured of the most obstinate 
 diseases, of the class mentioned above as cured by Mr. Greatrakes, and 
 which, it was said, had previously resisted all medical treatment. Mr. 
 Powell is a self-educated man, with a full development of the coronal 
 region of the brain, a very large chest, and highly sanguine tempera- 
 ment. He discovered his power by accident, while staying at a farm- 
 house and pretending to mesmerise a gentleman's knee for rheumatism. 
 His bodily system seems to generate immense vital power, which he can 
 transmit to others ; and we must infer, I think, from these experiments 
 that in most nervous cases it is the want of vital power in the part 
 affected that causes the disease.
 
 128 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 witchcraft ; and secondly, that the wisdom of all nations had 
 provided laws against persons accused of the crime. Sir 
 Thomas Browne, the well-known author of the " Eeligio 
 Medici," was called as a witness at the trial, and swore " that 
 he was clearly of opinion that the persons were bewitched." 
 Not only so, but More and Cudworth, both of them belonging 
 to the enlightened band of Cambridge Platonists, strongly 
 expressed their belief in the reality of witchcraft ; and more 
 than all, Joseph Glanvil, the author of the " Scepsis Scientifica," 
 and the most daring theological thinker, perhaps, of his time, 
 wrote a special defence of the decaying superstition, under the 
 name of " Sadducismus Triumphatus," probably the ablest 
 book ever published in its defence. So far as mere arguments 
 were concerned, the divines seemed to have it all their own 
 way. " The books in defence of the belief were not only far 
 more numerous than the later works against it, but they also 
 represented far more learning, dialectic skill, and even general 
 ability." The mass of evidence seemed in favour of it. 
 " Those who lived when the evidences of witchcraft existed in 
 profusion, and attracted the attention of all classes and of all 
 grades of intellect, must surely have been as competent judges 
 as ourselves of the question, were it merely a question of 
 
 evidence It is, I think, difficult to examine the 
 
 subject with impartiality without coming to the conclusion, 
 that the historical evidence establishing the existence of 
 witchcraft is so vast and varied, that it is impossible to 
 disbelieve it without what, on other subjects, we should deem 
 the most extraordinary rashness."* It is highly probable, in- 
 deed, that the people of those times were not such fools as we 
 take them to be. "Witchcraft appears to have been based upon 
 the occult powers to which we have referred, and which were 
 
 Lecky on Rationalism, from The Contemporary Review, part 3.
 
 INSPIRATION OF QUAKERS, SHAKERS AND JUMPERS. 129 
 
 then as much misinterpreted as they are now and have always 
 been. " The facts, misunderstood, were ridden by theories, 
 and viewed in the light of a baneful superstition, compounded 
 of Paganism, Judaism, and a corrupted Christianity." * The 
 author of " Mary Jane" (p. 361) thus identifies witchcraft 
 with the modern phenomena; he says : " The female of all 
 animals, as well as man, is so constituted for the purposes of 
 gestation and lectation as to eliminate more liquids, and pro- 
 bably consequently more vapours that hence more women 
 are mediums than men. That old women, from their sedentary 
 habits, probably secreted more phosphorus, or at least elimi- 
 nated it in confined rooms, where it produced those effects 
 which we witness, and so becoming conscious of a power 
 which they understood nothing of the nature of, they used it 
 to get a livelihood, and thus, poor things, from Moses's time 
 downwards, got burnt as witches ; and there is no doubt, that 
 when they saw the extraordinary phenomena they could 
 produce, and that the church, and the magistrates, and the 
 judges, and the mob, all declared that they were witches and 
 possessed by evil spirits, that the poor things really believed 
 it the wrong persons were burned, in my opinion." Still 
 there was Scripture warrant for what was done, for we are 
 told (Lev. xx. 27) that " a man also, or woman, that hath a 
 familiar spirit, shall surely be put to death." 
 
 The Abnormal Mental Powers of the Founders of Sects, <fc. 
 
 Abnormal powers attended many great and good men and 
 founders of sects, some phase of such powers being more 
 strongly developed in some cases than in others, giving the 
 name to particular sects, such as Quakers, Shakers, Jumpers, 
 
 * The Two Worlds, p. 102. 
 K
 
 180 SPECULATIONS ON SPIKITUALISM. 
 
 Methodists, &c., according as the powers of efflux and influx 
 first displayed themselves, and which were afterwards thought 
 necessary and therefore took that form in the disciples. For 
 the history of such cases, and of many others connected with 
 this subject, I must refer the reader to the admirable com- 
 pendium from which I have previously quoted, called " The 
 Two "Worlds, the Mental and the Spiritual," published by 
 Pitman, Paternoster Row. This book shows great research 
 and is admirably and candidly written, although in support of 
 individual spirit manifestations; but I think the facts will 
 better bear the interpretation that I have put upon them. 
 I would especially call attention to the fact that all the mani- 
 festations, whether subjective or objective, reflected the 
 opinions of either the district, country, or age, and were warm 
 from the minds of persons living, and not from such as had 
 passed into another sphere, where they might be supposed to 
 have gained fresh knowledge. The only " spirit" with which 
 the world can really be said to be familiar is one having a 
 goat's head with the extremities of the satyr of the heathen 
 mythology, and whether he, or she most probably, is a reflex 
 of our own minds " a foregone conclusion established and 
 favoured by the then dominant theology," or a real objective 
 existence, must be left for each person to determine for 
 himself. The author of "The Two Worlds" says, "True 
 Spiritualism is God in the Soul;" in this at least I heartily 
 agree with him. The same writer, speaking of Irving's time, 
 says: " ]S"or is the healing by spiritual power the only 
 point of correspondence in the spiritual manifestations of Mr. 
 Irving's time and of our own. In both periods we have 
 spiritual utterances independent of the volition of the speaker, 
 in the native, in foreign, and in unknown tongues; writing 
 under spiritual influence and from spiritual dictation; sud- 
 den inward illumination and impression; and discernment
 
 JOHN WESLEY OX THE MANIFESTATIONS. 131 
 
 of thoughts, and answers to questions, both mental and oral. 
 In the spiritual utterances then and now we find the same 
 general character of virtue and piety, with occasional incon- 
 sistencies and discrepancies, and other indications of a ' vary- 
 ing origin ' ; evidencing that the same differences in character 
 and state which we find among men in the natural world 
 prevail also in the spiritual world." Irving himself, we are 
 told by Mr. Baxter, regarded the manifestations as of " varying 
 origin, that the utterances at one time might be of God, 
 and at another time of Satan, even in the same person." 
 
 John Wesley's opinion of the manifestations that attended 
 his church appear to have been very similar. The following 
 is an extract from his Journal: "I. God suddenly and 
 strongly convinced many that they were lost sinners; the 
 natural consequences whereof were sudden outcries and strong 
 bodily convulsions. II. To strengthen and encourage them 
 that believed, and to make his work more apparent, He 
 favoured several of them with divine dreams, and others with 
 trances or visions. III. In some of these instances, after a 
 time, nature mixed with grace. IV. Satan likewise mimicked 
 the work of God in order to discredit the whole work; and 
 yet it is not wise to give up this part any more than to give 
 up the whole. At first it was doubtless wholly from God. 
 It is partly so at this day; and he will enable us to discern 
 how far, in every case, the work is pure, and where it mixes 
 or degenerates." This very correctly characterises what takes 
 place at Revivals at the present time. It is a spirit circle 
 on a large scale, and influx or inspiration, or what is " borne 
 in " on the mind is the reflex of the public opinion present, 
 often mixed with other occult powers. 
 
 One of the most peculiar outbreaks of this kind is what 
 has been called, the " Preaching Epidemic," of Sweden, in 
 1842, described by Mary Howitt. Fortunately we have the
 
 182 SPECULATIONS ON SPIBITUALISM. 
 
 aid of a very sensible man in the investigation of this psycho- 
 logical phenomenon, who, if it was of divine origin as was 
 generally supposed, was yet bent upon determining the condi- 
 tions under which it took place. Dr. J. A. Butsch, bishop of 
 Skara, in Westgothland, reports to the archbishop of Upsala, 
 on the subject. " The bishop was of opinion that it was a 
 disease originally physical, but affecting the mind in a pecu- 
 liar manner. He arrived at this conclusion by attentively 
 studying the phenomenon itself. At all events, bodily sick- 
 ness was an ingredient in it, as was proved from the fact that, 
 although every one affected by it, in describing the commence- 
 ment of their state, mentioned a spiritual excitement as its 
 original cause, close examination proved that an internal bodily 
 disorder, attended by pain, had preceded or accompanied this 
 excitement. Besides, there were persons who, against their 
 own wills, were affected by the quaking fits which were one 
 of its most striking early outward symptoms, without any 
 previous religious excitement; and these, when subjected to 
 medical treatment, soon recovered. The bishop said that the 
 effects corresponded very much with what he had heard and 
 read respecting animal magnetism." The probability is that 
 the internal bodily disorder was the " medium," or induced 
 condition, by which the peculiar spiritual atmosphere entered 
 their nervous systems. 
 
 The Constitution of the Medium. 
 
 We are told in the "Two Worlds" " that there are persons 
 in some way peculiarly constituted, whose presence appears to 
 furnish conditions requisite to enable Spirits to act upon 
 Matter, or to manifest their agency in any way cognizable to 
 man. In what this peculiarity consists, whether it be 
 chemical, electrical, magnetic, odylic, or some combination of
 
 A MEDIUM NECESSARY IN EVERY CIRCLE. 183 
 
 these, or somewhat else, it would lead me too far from my 
 present purpose to consider. At present, I would only point 
 out the fact that the presence of one such person at least is 
 necessary in every circle before any spiritual manifestation can 
 be obtained. Such persons in past times have been variously 
 called ' seers,' ' prophets,' ' revelators,' ' inspired persons,' 
 ' gifted persons,' ' instruments,' &c. They are now called 
 Mediums." If our author would say " to enable spirit" the 
 result of cerebration, to act upon matter, and not "spirits," I 
 should agree with him. My theory is that the medium, from 
 peculiarity of constitution, intensifies the spirit atmosphere, 
 so as to bring the other members of the circle into communion 
 with it, * and that the manifestations are the often unconscious 
 
 * As a mere physical illustration of how spiritual force may be en 
 rapport with some minds and not with others, let me mention an in- 
 teresting experiment by Professor Tyndall. He says : " Let me give 
 you one other illustration of the influence of Synchronism on musical 
 vibrations. Here are three small gas-flames inserted in three glass 
 tubes of different lengths. Each of these flames can be caused to emit 
 a musical note, the pitch of which is determined by the length of the 
 tube surrounding the flame. The shorter the tube the higher the pitch. 
 The flames are now silent within their respective tubes, but each of 
 them can be caused to respond to a proper note sounded anywhere in 
 this room. I have here an instrument called a syren, by which I can 
 produce a powerful musical note. Beginning with a low pitch, and 
 ascending gradually to a higher one, I finally reach the note of the 
 flame in the longest tube. The moment it is reached, the flame bursts 
 into song. I stop and re-excite the syren, to enable you to hear that its 
 note and the flame's note are identical. But the other flames are still 
 silent within their tubes. I urge the instrument on six higher notes ; 
 the second flame has now started, and the third alone remains. But a 
 still higher note starts it also. Thus, as the sound of the syren rises 
 gradually in pitch, it awakens every flame in passing, by striking it with 
 a series of waves whose periods of recurrence are similar to its own." 
 Lecture delivered in the Royal Institution, January 19th, 1866, on 
 " The Relations of Radiant Heat to Chemical Constitution, Colour, 
 and Texture." Fortnightly, February 15.
 
 134 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 reflex of their mental states, intensified by the influx from 
 without. This influx or inspiration is poured out only 
 through the organization or vessels present, and is mixed with 
 what is found there. From predominating propensities and 
 active passions we get devilish manifestations, and vice versa 
 when the aesthetic, the religious, or the moral feelings pre- 
 dominate. But we not only have the reflex of the minds 
 forming this circle, but often that of others not present with 
 whom these are en rapport by means of the all pervading 
 spirit atmosphere. Of course the difficulty here, and that 
 which has necessitated the assumption of separate individual 
 spirits, is the existence of consciousness and will without any of 
 the persons present being conscious of exercising either. 
 The difficulty, however, is not greater than in the unconscious- 
 ness that attends somnambules and the mesmeric states, and in 
 the unconscious cerebration which regulates the great majority 
 of all our actions supposed to be voluntary, and which 
 originally were so. From having been drilled hard in Murray 
 in my school days, I can now repeat the whole of my adverbs, 
 prepositions, and conjunctions, while thinking of something 
 else, in the same way that ladies will play polkas and 
 quadrilles, or other familiar tunes, and carry on a conversa- 
 tion at the same time. The difficulty is merely with the Will, 
 because we do not at present understand what is its power, or 
 the nature and extent of its action. Physiologists tell us that 
 although the action of the cerebral hemispheres and many 
 other parts of the nervous system must be attended by 
 sensibility and consciousness, still there must be a great 
 generation of nervous force attended with no consciousness, 
 and that the channels through which this discharges itself 
 depends upon the nature and acquired tendencies of the 
 organism. Can we say what is the Will power of Somnam- 
 bules ? It is Will power that has created and sustains the
 
 THE ABODES OF SPIRITS. 135 
 
 Universe, and who shall say what may he the limit and 
 amount that may be exercised by each individuality, or how 
 this individual force may act when joined to others. But if 
 there is a difficulty attending my explanation, that attending 
 the theory of spirits that have passed away the existence 
 of disembodied sentient being, is " ponderous " indeed. 
 
 The Spirits ; their Abodes and Occupations. 
 
 We are told by Mrs. de Morgan that " Within the body is 
 the soul, which passes away at the first change, death, and, 
 animated by the spirit, becomes the body of the new life. * * 
 The internal of the man, is the external of the spirit, and 
 extending the principle from individuals to the mass, we find 
 that the inner state of the material world forms the outer 
 or phenomenal form of the spiritual sphere." * * * 
 ("From Matter to Spirit," p. 268.) "Clairvoyants also 
 assert," we are told, " that their perceptions resemble those 
 of persons immediately after death, when the soul has be- 
 come the body, and the entranced person holds converse 
 with those dwellers in the spirit spheres with whom he is in 
 harmony or affinity." * * * (Ibid, p. 269.) "Whatever 
 the impressing spirit thinks, the medium sees, and the same 
 idea may be conveyed by saying, that, as every thought or 
 feeling in the earth-life leaves its impress on the soul, the 
 soul, when it becomes the body of the spirit, has only to 
 recall the memory of any particular condition to produce the 
 appearance required." (p. 264.) Bacon thought that the spirit 
 evolved from the body is the body of the mind ; that as the 
 body is to this spirit, so is this spirit to mind. * There seems 
 considerable similarity between the two ideas, but Mrs. de 
 
 * Man's Nature and Development, p. 270.
 
 136 SPECULATIONS ON SPIBITUALISM. 
 
 Morgan goes considerably farther, and describes the whole 
 process of the new birth into the spirit world, which persons 
 whose spiritual eyes are opened have repeatedly witnessed. 
 It has a marked resemblance to our birth into this world, some 
 of the spirits of the departed generally attending as midwives ; 
 and we are told that sensitives can always distinguish these 
 new-born spirits, and also that " a person whose spiritual eye 
 is opened will always see the spirits with whom he is en 
 rapport." (Ibid, p. 247.) However, the whole process of 
 the "new birth" so much resembles the old that the "spirits" 
 cannot be said- to be more than the children of those from 
 whom they had their birth on earth, and can no more be said 
 to be the same people than the son can be said to be his own 
 father. The Spirits so born are not called away, as we might 
 expect, to inhabit other worlds in this illimitable universe, but 
 remain hi different spheres in close contiguity with this earth, 
 the distance varying according as the spirit retains more or 
 less of its gross, "earth-clinging tendencies:" the best among 
 them, however, are not so far off but that for half-a-crown, 
 paid to a medium, they may generally be summoned to 
 "communicate," or to answer any questions that may be put 
 to them, and from their replies we may justly conclude that 
 they strictly limit themselves to the capacity of their ques- 
 tioners. The occupations of those " earth-tending spirits" 
 who continue in close contiguity with this earth, do not seem 
 always of the most dignified or desirable character. They are 
 in attendance on former friends and relations, at the elbow 
 of the new husband or wife who is saying just the same things 
 over again as were said on the former happy occasion ; or they 
 are putting good or evil thoughts into people's minds, or 
 attending the tables of spiritualist circles, or waiting upon 
 the sick or dying. And, as the soul-bodies of all who have 
 existed are present, they must be rather thick upon the
 
 SPIRITUALISM AND A FUTURE STATE. 137 
 
 ground, so that we may soon be again occupied with the 
 questions that so much interested the middle ages, as to how 
 many angels can stand upon the point of a needle at once, or, 
 if a spirit were in vacua, whether the void could truly be called 
 perfect? Mr. Gully says, "spiritual bodies that have quitted 
 fleshly bodies may be at work. I, for one, wish that it may 
 be proved to be so ; for a more solemn discovery than that of 
 a means of communication between embodied and disembodied 
 sentient beings cannot be imagined." The discovery, if it has 
 been made, has certainly not yet been attended with all the 
 solemnity that Mr. Gully anticipated ; and as to the communi- 
 cation between the embodied and the disembodied, one can at 
 least imagine many occasions in which it would not be thought 
 desirable. It is probable that nothing in the world of mind 
 worth retaining has ever been lost to the race : it has been 
 preserved to us in improved organizations, by tradition, and by 
 printing ; and the intercourse we can all have with the minds 
 of the great and good that have departed, in our libraries, 
 furnishes a higher response than anything that has yet been 
 got out of the tables. 
 
 The pictures which the less gross spirits give of " the 
 future life" in their higher spheres, show such a world 
 as poetical young ladies would have made this had they 
 been consulted about it, fall of flowers and green fields and 
 glory ; but when such pictures and other information cannot 
 be received literally by such sensible, grown-up women as 
 Mrs. de Morgan, they are accepted symbolically, that is, they 
 are translated into a language of preconceived ideas. 
 
 But spiritualism, we are told, proves the existence of 
 " a future state " : it certainly may make people doubt, for 
 the first time perhaps, whether such a future state is desirable. 
 It is also said to prove the Immortality of the Soul; now, 
 nothing is better proved than that all force or spirit is per-
 
 188 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 sistent or indestructible; it is the form only that changes; 
 and spiritualism furnishes no evidence that the form the 
 spirit takes in the spirit world is more immutable than the 
 one it had in this world. As to the spirit being born again 
 into another world, the nature of spirit is that it is always 
 being born again, and it is known to us only through such 
 new births or changes. It is the question of identity only 
 that remains, and each person must settle that for himself; 
 only I would suggest that a spirit's knowledge of what took 
 place in this world is no proof that it was in any way 
 connected with the events, much less of its being identical 
 with the person to whom they happened. The Immortality 
 of the Soul, or to what extent our Identity may be retained 
 in the future, as regards proof, is left by spiritualism 
 exactly where it was. The tendency of opinion amongst 
 men of science of the present day, however, is rather against 
 the retention of Identity. They seem rather to agree with 
 Dr. Louis Biichner, who says, " L'immortalite de la force 
 indique, de la meine maniere que la permanence de la matiere, 
 un enchainement sans commencement ni fin de cause primi- 
 tive et d'effet: 1'eternite, la perpetuite et I'immortalite, non pas 
 assurement de 1'etre pris isolement ou de I'individu, mais de 
 la masse ou de tout 1'ensemble. Plus la science naturelle 
 avance dans ces recherches, plus elle apprend a connaitre 
 que rien ne se cree et rien ne disparait, mais que tout reste 
 dans un cercle eternel qui se subvient a luimeme, dans lequel 
 tout commencement est une fin et toute fin un nouveau 
 commencement." * 
 
 The occult powers have been present in the world from 
 the earliest ages, but the world has never yet been able to 
 receive them. In the East in India, they dictated the 
 
 * Science et Nature.
 
 OCCULT POWERS MISINTERPRETED. 139 
 
 Vedas, they being the revelations of Seers "who attained to 
 inspiration in the Trance, in which state they were supposed 
 to attain to inward sight and to communicate directly with 
 God : the highest good, it was thought, to which man can attain 
 on earth. They left a system of castes, based upon their 
 religion, which stereotyped the then existing civilization. In 
 Egypt the same powers were used to extend and confirm the 
 authority of the priesthood, which authority, through Moses, 
 who graduated in their colleges, has been handed down to the 
 present day. In early Christendom among its Saints this power 
 did God's work, among the Witches afterwards it did the 
 Devil's ; and now when it has again broken out under the form 
 of modern " spiritual manifestations," the question is whose 
 work is it doing ? As to checking, as it is supposed to do, the 
 materialistic tendencies of the age, for one convert it makes 
 ten scoffers, and as the power is not understood, it is fast 
 assisting the over brain-work of the age to fill our mad- 
 houses. Mediumship is but too often a form of disease, 
 arising from a too unequal distribution of the force received 
 into the body, the nervous system unduly predominating. 
 The best subjects for spiritual manifestations are already 
 bordering on madness, from exaltation of temperament or 
 nervous susceptibility, and the "influx" or indeed the addi- 
 tional excitement about ghosts and devils and the spirits of 
 departed friends is all that is required to push them over. 
 Our greatest poet says: 
 
 " Great wits are to madness near allied : 
 The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 
 Are of imagination all compact ! " 
 
 And Plato says, " The greatest blessings we have spring from 
 madness, when granted by Divine bounty : " probably alluding
 
 140 SPECULATIONS ON SPIKITUALISM. 
 
 to some of the higher forms of spiritual manifestation in his 
 day. Accordingly we find that the lunatic asylums in 
 America are overcharged with the victims of Spiritualism. 
 In the Times of April 3rd, 1863, is the following: "The 
 Courier of Lyons states, that in one of the private lunatic 
 asylums, in the neighbourhood of that city, there are not less 
 than forty persons confined, labouring under mental aberration 
 caused by spiritualism." And a month before, in the same 
 paper, we had the following : 
 
 " ' Demonosophy'' in France. The lunatic asylums of 
 France have of late received large additions to their inmates 
 from the admission of various patients whose maladies have 
 been the result of the new-fangled doctrines of spiritualism, 
 including the usual accompaniments of table-turning, mediums, 
 rappings, and intercourse with demons." * A lady who signs 
 herself " Comfort," in a letter to Mrs. Newton Crosland, 
 given by Mrs. de Morgan, describes the process by which this 
 kind of monomania one form of this particular kind of 
 insanity, takes place; she says, "I have many and many 
 times started up and walked rapidly into the fresh air, using 
 every power of my mind to withdraw myself from the inner into 
 the external life ; but in vain ; a power far mightier than my 
 own will had commenced its lovely, mysterious work within 
 me, and was moulding my mind and body into that mystic 
 organism for which we at the present day have no other term, 
 or, perhaps, dare use no other, than medium of spirit. So 
 many of these organisms are being developed at the present 
 time that it is the bounden duty, especially of medical men, to 
 calmly and philosophically investigate the phenomena." f 
 
 I think so indeed ! Still if this power were understood and 
 used instead of abused, it might do as much for the cure of 
 
 * Mary Jane, p. 347. + From Matter to Spirit, p. 285.
 
 GRAVITATION AND LEVITATION. 141 
 
 insanity, by supplying healthy brain-power, as it now does to 
 drive people mad. Judge Edmonds, the American great spi- 
 ritualist authority, writes : " I know something of the disease 
 of insanity. My professional and judicial life has compelled 
 me to study it, and I have communed with many who died 
 insane; and I am convinced that there are no means known 
 among men that can do so much to cure and eradicate the 
 disease as spiritual intercourse well understood and wisely 
 guided." If " well understood and wisely guided," instead of 
 " spiritual intercourse " we should use the " influx " of healthy 
 cerebration, then I should quite agree with the Judge in its 
 curative influence, especially in this disease. 
 
 The Rationale of the Spiritual Phenomena. 
 
 The spiritual hypothesis places us in very little better 
 position with respect to mental science than we were with 
 respect to physical science when every unknown cause was 
 supposed to be some God or Spirit ; we had gods of the winds, 
 of the thunder, and of the sea, and smaller spirits for the 
 streams, &c., and subject, not to any known law, but only 
 to their caprice. But if we can lay these spirits, and discover 
 the laws upon which these abnormal powers, and extraor- 
 dinary phenomena are dependent, we may add the most useful 
 chapter of all to the book of science. We have discovered 
 the law of gravitation, and we now want a Newton in the 
 department of mind. We want now to know the law, not of 
 gravitation, but of Levitation, by which Brahmins, and Saints, 
 and Mr. Home, and tables float. We want to know the exact 
 conditions under which vital force becomes mental or con- 
 scious force, and of its re-correlation into unconsciousness in 
 sleep or under pressure on the brain ; or when it passes from 
 the brain into the body through the nerves or directly into
 
 142 SPECULATIONS ON SPIEITUALISM. 
 
 space. Swedenborg tells us that " thought is presence;" but 
 we want to know more definitely how mind is brought into 
 the presence of mind, how brain acts upon brain, through an 
 independent thought or spirit medium, and what is the result 
 in increased power or otherwise by joining brain with brain; 
 and what is the nature and extent of will power automatic 
 or unconscious, and conscious ; under what conditions one passes 
 into the other, and through what mediums will conscious 
 or unconscious, can act, and at what distances ? What also 
 is the healing power possessed by such men as Greatrakes 
 and in a minor degree by modern mesmerists ? These and 
 many other things suggested by mesmerism, clairvoyance, 
 and the " modern spiritual manifestations," apparently within 
 the boundaries of our faculties, are now pressing for explana- 
 tion and reduction to law, and when that is accomplished, or 
 even investigated, the power of mind will be as greatly and 
 rapidly increased as physical power has been by recent disco- 
 veries in steam and electricity. The author of " Spiritualism 
 Chemically Considered" tells us that the "manifestations" 
 increased with use, and decreased, till they entirely disappeared, 
 when no longer attended to; and Mr. Bertolacci used the 
 abnormal powers in his family by training and initiation. The 
 investigation of these psychological phenomena on a physio- 
 logical basis would show us the conditions on which the 
 formation of a strong and healthy mind depends. The general 
 health is dependent on ozone ; where iodine is deficient we have 
 cretinism, and where phosphorus is in excess, madness. Mr. 
 Kyan tells us that " If the brain of a man has only one-and- 
 a-half per cent, of phosphorus, he is an imbecile ; if he has 
 two to two-and-a-half per cent., he is of sound intellect; if 
 three per cent., a degree of eccentricity; if four to four-and-a- 
 half per cent., a madman." As certain elements in the soil 
 are necessary to the growth of wheat, so certain ingredients in
 
 A PSYCHOLOGY BASED ON PHYSIOLOGY. 143 
 
 the food, and even in the atmosphere, are necessary to thought. 
 We want the physical facts hearing on the production of the 
 human intellect. In the dry atmosphere of America the 
 nervous system unduly predominates, and in England John 
 Bull's mind is getting smothered in fat,* and we get genius 
 at the expense of the vital functions. But we must learn how 
 to combine the temperaments of genius with robust health, 
 and bring back Holy to its original meaning healthy. The 
 germ of the oak seems little influenced by the surrounding 
 pabulum in the acorn, upon the chemical changes in which its 
 growth depends ; but the human germ depends more upon the 
 woman than the man. It is fed upon the mental and vital 
 forces of -the mother, and yet there has been no attempt to 
 dictate what those forces shall be. If we would make 
 Shakspeares and Newtons we must begin with the germ 
 and race, but the coming child is left to chance, and when 
 it does come there is no attempt to gauge its capa- 
 bilities, to train its special faculties, and to save it an 
 infinity of pain and labour through life by starting it in the 
 right direction: or at least what effort is made is altogether 
 unscientific in its character, judged even by the light we 
 already possess on such subjects. Few get right aims, and 
 the failures in life are in proportion. No doubt we are 
 
 " We, in our dry atmosphere, are getting too nervous, haggard, 
 dyspeptic, attenuated, unsubstantial, theoretic, and need to be made 
 grosser. John Bull, on the other hand, has grown bulbous, long-bodied, 
 short-legged, heavy-witted, material, and, in a word, too intensely Eng- 
 lish. In a few more centuries, he will be the earthliest creature ever 
 the world saw. Heretofore, Providence has obviated such a result by 
 timely intermixtures of alien races with old English stock ; so that each 
 successive conquest of England has proved a victory, by the revivi- 
 fication and improvement of its native manhood. Cannot America 
 and England hit upon some scheme to secure even greater advantages 
 to both nations?" Our Old Home, vol. i., p. 99. By Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne.
 
 144 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 bordering upon a great advance. With a Psychology based 
 on Physiology we can have any kind of men we like, 
 with any type of body, and any kind of feeling. At present 
 man is little better than an animal of the pig and peacock 
 species; building a golden sty, feeding from silver troughs, 
 and strutting, and spreading his tail, for all the world to 
 admire. But I trust we are about to rise above the mere 
 animal, to the exercise of those faculties that distinguish 
 man as man. God becomes conscious of Himself only in 
 humanity. The supreme good is to be found only in our 
 higher nature ; the inner sense does not open till the outer of 
 the mere animal is closed ; and it is in that serene quiet only 
 that Nature unveils, and admits us to communion and union. 
 
 The Coming Spirit World Evolved from the Spirit 
 Atmosphere, the Result of Cerebration. 
 
 "We have, I think, yet to discover Man's place in Nature, 
 but in " Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," Mr. Huxley 
 tells us " The whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so 
 complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of 
 any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production 
 of all the phenomena of the universe, that, in view of the 
 intimate relations between man and the rest of the living 
 world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all 
 other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are 
 co-ordinated terms of nature's great progression, from the 
 formless to the formed, from the inorganic to the organic, 
 from blind force to conscious intellect and will." As we have 
 seen, I do not recognize blind force anywhere, and the 
 persistence of force shows that in that respect there is no 
 difference between one force and another, either conscious or 
 unconscious. Every atom tends to purpose; then, we have the
 
 MAN'S POSSIBLE SUCCESSOR. 145 
 
 intelligent' but unconscious vital powers ; for vital action is not 
 less intelligent than mental, only it goes on unconsciously; 
 we have instinct or sentient intelligence without reasoning, and 
 conscious and reasoning intellect and will, but all are equally 
 caused, all are effects or second causes. Purely mental states 
 or conscious volitions, when sufficiently repeated, pass into the 
 unconscious, and all the great laws of nature are probably but 
 the automatic or unconscious will of the Great Supreme. 
 But I did not quote Mr. Huxley to show in what I differed 
 from him, but to show that I recognize fully the great law of 
 evolution. " From the formless to the formed, from the 
 inorganic to the organic," we have the conversion of force or 
 power into sentiency, culminating in " the conscious intellect 
 and will of man;" but as Huxley elsewhere tells us, 
 " Naturalists find man to be no centre of the living world, but 
 one amidst endless modifications of life," and that " present 
 existences are but the last of an immeasurable series of 
 predecessors." Undoubtedly man is the highest in the series, 
 but is he to remain so ? The aggregate of mind, as it has been 
 passing and repassing during countless ages through living 
 forms, from the monad to man, has been gradually improving 
 in delicacy and intensity of feeling and consciousness, and what 
 may be the next form it may take who can tell? May not the 
 spiritualist theory be merely casting its shadow before ? 
 Plants prepare the food for animals, and the elaborate machine 
 of the animal body prepares the food for mind, that is, 
 sentiency and conscious intelligence, and may not this result of 
 cerebration, which has been intensifying for centuries, furnish 
 ground for a new start for the existence of mind, in an 
 individual form, without all the present cumbrous machinery 
 for the correlation of force ? "We have a world of spiritual 
 food already prepared, so that there would be no necessity 
 for the old apparatus. If it be true, as is testified by the
 
 146 SPECULATIONS ON SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 spiritualists, that hands and arms are now formed in such an 
 atmosphere, who can tell what will be the ultimate effect of 
 will power for I hold the whole universe to be the effect 
 of will power on certain prepared conditions as the thought 
 or spirit atmosphere intensifies by the greatly increased action 
 of brain now going on? If such an additional link should 
 ever be added to the chain of intelligence, if such a creation 
 of a new being should ever take place, it will probably be 
 evolved and come into existence, as man did, out of the newly- 
 prepared circumstances and conditions, and not individually 
 representing any previously existing living entity. Such 
 beings would be clairvoyant, would certainly require no rail- 
 roads, and no electric telegraph, being governed by a law of 
 levitation, rather than of gravitation, and would possess all the 
 powers in a higher degree of which we have only had a glimpse ; 
 and cerebration having furnished a sufficient atmosphere and 
 food for their existence, might cease, and the world, with all its 
 increased and increasing beauty, be given up to them. The 
 " spheres," the present abode of spirits, according to the 
 Spiritualists, seem very comfortless regions. But, of course, 
 this is mere speculation. What we have now to do is to in- 
 vestigate and test the abnormal powers surrounding us to 
 reduce them to law, and thus to pass them on from Man, by 
 whom they have hitherto been only abused, to Humanity, 
 by which they might be used to make the greatest spiritual 
 advance hitherto achieved. 
 
 THE END.
 
 APPENDIX.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 While these sheets have been going through the press, I 
 have received several communications on the subjects under 
 discussion from Mr. H. Gr. Atkinson, which will be very 
 valuable, I think, to the advanced student in Psychology; I 
 have therefore given them below. They are chiefly in reply 
 to questions by me. 
 
 A. (Page 87.) 
 
 The way we speak points to the position of these faculties. I find 
 the seat of judgment behind comparison, and before the sense of Self, 
 and the Will, and the Attention, which is Mental Concentration, a 
 close attendant. 
 
 I think, therefore I am. There you have the judging or proper 
 thought faculty, the Eye of the Mind and the sense of the individual 
 personality. Again I will, the two organs together again, or ' compare 
 and judge,' the organ of comparison naturally before the judgment 
 or resolution of the forces or elements of the case. The more one 
 reflects on the matter from all directions the more natural and admirable 
 the arrangement seems, and the more clear and absolute necessity for 
 the new organs in question. I hope you will come to see it though 
 doubtless the matter is most difficult and profound, but it is discovery, 
 and no invention of mine. 
 
 The intuition, so to speak of character as with Sir Walter Scott, is 
 really a profound insight or judgment, not mere imitation as in acting, 
 and so thus your observation tallies with mine, and the inner organ above 
 would be raised, as in the case of the protruding eye, from the enlarged
 
 150 APPENDIX. 
 
 organ behind. Then again, those inner powers being essential to life 
 are more protected, being the inner or beneath convolutions, and so the 
 rationale of the matter presents itself on every hand. 
 
 Now if the truth and stamp of all is everywhere, all in each part and 
 each in all, as I have said, (See " Letters," p. 256. Triibner and Co.) 
 the inner sense, assuming the ability, could have the truth within itself 
 instead of merely taking up the sittings of a few particulars through the 
 sense channels. Now do you see it all, and the deep sense of the thing, 
 by a glimpse at the reason for the faith that is in me, the offspring of 
 long and patient experimenting, and no one can say I have been anxious 
 to make a vain display ; and not for lack of the means to do so, as you, 
 I think, know. 
 
 The inner sense is the synthetic power, or formative power and sense, 
 summing-up all mean the same, to define, distinguish, abstract, 
 and realise the truth and law. The process itself being instinctive 
 and indefinite to our senses, or only cognizable in the effect and fact. 
 
 The feeling of motion or sense of moving, combines with its 
 neighbour the impulse towards action, sloping towards the destructive 
 and combative impulses. Here we live the busy life, and very much 
 independent of the will. First we have the sense of being, the moi, 
 the Ego or King; the will we may call prime minister, preceded by 
 the judge, and the impulse or desire of action is the executive. So the 
 mind may find a very pretty simile in a government in the " Letters " 
 it is likened to a republic, and in fact it is a government or republic, and 
 the simile very complete. This will be a point I shall work out because 
 it will fix the map and plan and principle of the arrangement of the 
 organs and of the faculties in the mind of learners and thinkers, and it 
 is a great thing to exhibit a rational order and reason for that order 
 with an evidently more natural and complete analysis of the component 
 parts of the mind, in their true meaning and relations, all which must 
 be set forth in a very clear manner. 
 
 What I have said in the "Letters" was only as a suggestion to 
 aid others in then 1 enquiries, but as they will not inform themselves I 
 must now develop my discoveries and views more fully and in a clear 
 but concise form. If I have been silent it is not from any doubt, but 
 rather in the consciousness of wealth, and that I have made a' very 
 great advance in laying the foundation of a true Psychological science. 
 Phrenology as it stood was hardly that, nor was its method sufficient 
 the very nature of the matter requires other means to aid and 
 correct and complete Gall's discoveries ; but it will be accepted again 
 under proper cautions and with the new aids that can now be offered. 
 I cannot however think so little of Gall's method as you infer, when I 
 hold to so much arrived at by that system alone. Do not let there be
 
 APPENDIX. 151 
 
 the slightest misconception upon this. However thongh the organology 
 be doubted, if I can exhibit a very intelligible order and scheme with an 
 evidently fuller and closer analysis of the faculties than was ever devised 
 before, a great advance will be recognised even by those who remain 
 opposed to phrenology ; and we shall show certain fundamental laws of 
 action and reason, that have never been even thought of, and shall be 
 chiefly indebted to mesmerism, by which we have been able to make 
 man an object of experiment as well as of observation. Now if this be 
 true, and we know that it is so, there can be no question but that we 
 have discovered one of the greatest and most valuable truths ever 
 revealed to man: the means and power of investigating his own nature. 
 Whatever doubt may be cast upon the discoveries already supposed to 
 have been made, there can be no question as to the immense importance 
 of the means discovered, and of the Psychological laws exhibited in such 
 means. Difficulties of course there are in the application of such means ; 
 but the difficulties arise from other new truths discovered not less mar- 
 vellous and important, such as the power of thought reading, clair- 
 voyance, and the like wonders, but only wonderful from the novelty and 
 rarity for in truth no fact in nature is more wonderful than another, 
 or really more intelligible. The facts and conditions and laws are all 
 we can know and all we need to know. 
 
 All dreaming and other abnormal conditions is like nature experi- 
 menting for us, and showing us the way to separate the action of the 
 powers, that we may observe and analyse them better; it is like the 
 opening of a window in the breast, that Momus sighed for; and there is 
 no saying to what extent experiment may reach in extraordinary instances 
 under abnormal conditions. No doubt the faint recurrence of what has 
 occurred in dreams as from another self may cause some persons, with 
 Plato, to fancy they have lived before, and that all we experience is but 
 the recollection of the Past ; but we shall now learn what the tricks of 
 the imagination are, and the reason of the opinions at the root of the 
 different schemes of religion and philosophy. A true science of mind 
 can alone bring men to agree upon sure and rational grounds. 
 
 I have just read in Mason Good's " Book of Nature," on Sleep, 
 that after studying the opinions on dreaming from the days of Aristotle 
 to our own day he has never met with anything in the least degree satis- 
 factory or capable of unsolving the perplexities in which it lies entangled. 
 " Whence comes to pass," he says, " that ideas can at all exist in the 
 brain during sleep, or that all the internal senses are not as much 
 locked-up as the external senses," &c., nor could philosophy previous 
 to my discoveries make any better handle of the subject ; but when we 
 find there are inner parts of the brain a more central group pertaining 
 to the internal senses and individualism, the whole is explained and
 
 152 APPENDIX. 
 
 intelligible at once and the difficulty solved for ever, and every condition 
 of dreaming and trance made clear. But what I am writing to you 
 now will not be very intelligible, and seem but as brittle sticks until fully 
 developed and properly bound together in their true correlations. 
 
 " It was a dream, and yet it was not all a dream." Byron. 
 
 In reply to your question as to whether there is any special action 
 of the inner faculties in dreaming ? Ordinary dreaming does not differ 
 from ordinary thinking, though a more partial life under less control 
 from the incomplete relation on account of the sleeping portion; but 
 we must also consider dreaming to be a special condition of mental 
 action since we attain a clear and real-like vision of objects suggested. I 
 paid you a visit in a large handsomely-furnished apartment I imagined 
 you had taken in my dream last night, and saw you and your wife and 
 the pattern and rich colouring of the carpet and all the objects of the 
 room, with as vivid and exact a sense of their reality, and to infinite 
 particulars as what I see about me at this moment. Here then we find 
 the source of the imagination and invention of the thoughts presenting 
 clear and distinct imagery, but which is all very different from our 
 thinking when awake. The sense power or perceptive faculty would 
 seem to have a double face, one towards the sense channel and the real 
 objects perceived, the other towards the inner discerning powers which 
 decide, imagine and invent, and are more specially intuitive ; and the 
 imagined objects become pictures, on what I may call the plane or 
 sphere of the senses. In thinking when awake the relation is open 
 between the inner power and the senses, but when these are closed the 
 inner powers are thrown upon other relations and have other resources 
 and channels of communicating without. Thus to reflect and perceive 
 by the mind's eye direct is very different from the reception of impres- 
 sions of nature by the channel of the senses. Though to judge or reason 
 is as much perception as the sense of a form, a colour, or similitude 
 in fact, the entire conscious mind is but as a mirror by a congeries of 
 perceptive powers and even so of the will itself, which is not a power 
 at all but the sense of a power of which it is merely the image and con- 
 comitant. But all this is somewhat beside the question, in a dream 
 a man is in an unbalanced and fragmentary state, and by this disar- 
 rangement comes other relations, somewhat as with many tipsy people,
 
 APPENDIX. 153 
 
 or in taking ether. I do not think there is any ahsolnte difference 
 in the action of seeing visions in sleep from seeing objects when 
 awake, because all seeing is by vision, and of which fact the idealist 
 makes the most or rather asserts it to be all and everything ; and when 
 we see extraordinary visions or ghosts when awake and in clear daylight 
 we for a time are so far and partly as in a dream, and on which rests 
 those remarkable facts of electro-biology under which you can make 
 another person believe they see whatever you suggest to them, and in 
 many cases lead them by your silent will, cases which throw great light 
 upon the matter of your enquiry, and help to bring Psychology fairly 
 amongst the inductive and experimental sciences a change coming 
 over the spirit of our dream, or rather a real science founded on material 
 causes and ascertained rules takes the place of mere contentious and 
 metaphysical dreaming. The effects of electro-biology are then similar 
 to the vision in ordinary dreaming, but which though ordinary is yet 
 abnormal as under disjointed and partial condition and in which you may 
 have clairvoyance and direct impressions from without to the inner and 
 central life, and that will occur which so often does occur in sleep, the 
 knowledge of a death taking place at a distance, with a vision of the 
 dying person embodied in their ordinary clothes, or may be in those 
 the sleeper has last seen them wear, or a mere fancy substitute. 
 
 Miss Hardinge accounts for which remarkable fact by a real spirit, 
 and its spiritual biologising or ernpressing the seer with its presence, and 
 in the form it chooses, so that even according to these believers what is 
 seen is but a subjective appearance. Then, omitting the belief in the 
 actuality of the presence of a spirit, I agree very closely with the explana- 
 tion given, and the fact falls in with the general facts of the ordinary 
 action of our minds. Now as the dreamer receives impressions direct 
 to the inner sense so those powers are free to influence others en rapport 
 and induce corresponding dreams, and indeed influence them to an extent 
 we hardly yet suspect and which we may call a mental contagion, and we 
 see the reason of those spiritual epidemics, religious revivals, the spirit- 
 rapping phenomena, and the like. Similar phenomena occurring simul- 
 taneously or in close sequence in different localities so that what 
 occurs more readily in sleep and mesmeric trance when the senses are 
 mostly closed with new relations and conditions of nervous action set 
 up, does occur under favouring and special conditions in the waking 
 state, and hence we have those wonderful records of clairvoyance and of 
 thought-reading by singularly- gifted individuals, such as Swedenborgh 
 and the Swiss historian Zschokke, (See Letters, p. 377,) or in regard to 
 contagious influences, see the case of the Goethe family. (P. 215.) 
 
 Now when we see a vision in broad daylight and clearly have a 
 double action going on, and the inner senses project an image over the 
 place of the ordinary sight, blotting out or covering a part of it, you
 
 104 APPENDIX. 
 
 see how interesting the subject becomes, and that we seem now to be 
 getting to the roots of the difficulty of that which has perplexed the 
 world since men began to think at all : and to deny the possibility of 
 the truth of clairvoyance is but to support those who know the actuality 
 of the fact in the logical conclusion that being unnatural it must be 
 supernatural. But when our new facts have been well digested we shall 
 find that the phenomena which has astonished and really frightened us 
 at first, take their place under the ordinary laws of our nature better 
 understood, and do not essentially differ from the normal processes of 
 our ordinary life. The colour of the rainbow the mystic arch in the 
 heavens, puzzled the world for ages ; we now know its laws and natural 
 causes ; and so it will be with those colours of the mind, that are 
 passed over now as " very strange," or as " supernatural and unac- 
 countable ; " but we shall now give a very good account of them and 
 exhibit man's place in nature and the laws by which he is governed, 
 the destiny he is to fulfil, and be able to say with Quitelet " L'expe- 
 rieace nous apprend dans le fait, avec toute 1'evidence possible, ce qui 
 a premiere vue, parait absurd." 
 
 The real absurdity is to suppose we could ever attain a knowledge 
 of the laws of the human mind by the only methods that have been 
 followed, and by which no advance has been made though the profoundest 
 intellects have ever been engaged in the pursuit, but with a too high an 
 estimating of the power of logical argumentation, omitting altogether 
 the fundamental facts concerned. 
 
 You wish to have some account of the state of the mental faculties 
 during mesmeric sleep. Space will not allow me to enlarge upon this 
 deeply interesting subject, or go into all those marvellous matters to 
 which it relates. I shall therefore attempt no more than just to indicate 
 the general distinguishing characteristic of the state. 
 
 " With the mesmeric sleeper and somnambule, we have the brain 
 awake and the sense dead asleep and generally insensible to touch or 
 sound ; a pistol fired off at the ear will not produce the least effect ; nay 
 you may cut the sleeper to pieces, limb by limb, and he will not awake 
 or be aware of anything going on. I have held a patient's hand and 
 talked to her on indifferent matters while her leg was being amputated, 
 and could not detect the slightest sign of her having any knowledge 
 of the circumstance ; but only pinch the little finger of the mesmeriser
 
 APPENDIX. 155 
 
 and she would feel it intensely as of an action upon herself : becoming 
 a perfect response to the condition of the power that had influenced her. 
 There is then a state induced under which, in a certain sense, instead of 
 being imprisoned the powers are loosened, or at least a sensitiveness 
 to impressions set up for which the ordinary conditions of the nervous 
 system are inadequate. In a similar way the patient will read your 
 thoughts and even revive in herself impressions latent in your own brain, 
 or the memory of things long forgotten : or may be able to receive other 
 subtle impressions as they may be directed according to the particular 
 powers and speciality of the case. 
 
 " So that we may consider the ordinary senses as rather impediments, 
 or as the veiling of the mental powers to prevent excess and confusion 
 and to utilise the powers to the practical requirements of life. Besides, 
 we must remember the imperfections of the senses and the delusions 
 to which they are all subject, and in all cases it is not by a process of 
 reasoning but by the decision of judgment that the errors are reconciled ; 
 reason is but a sort of mental mechanism, whereas judgment is the 
 sense of the result and truth by a higher or thorough perception of tho 
 active elements of the particular case. Now the organ of this power is 
 that central intelligent faculty we have called the inner sense, or eye 
 of the mind, as I have described it it is the judgment seat or tripod 
 on which is seated the high priestess of the ' reasonable soul ' and true 
 source of all real genius and what has ever been termed inspiration. 
 And this inner power, together with the conscious power, the sense of 
 identity, and others discovered by me fill and make good the gap and 
 want that has always been pointed out in the phrenological scheme. 
 The entranced person having no sense of the physical world by the 
 senses, or of the existence of his own body, feels perfectly free from all 
 accidents and fears. Hence many a religious delusion and spiritual 
 notion. Now the medium is in a somewhat different position, there 
 being no mesnieriser, but a self-existent or induced semi-trance condition, 
 from the action of the circle, so that the sense or feeling or voice of the 
 inner power is attributed to a spirit ; a very natural and necessary delu- 
 sion under the circumstances. Wanting the control and tie as it were 
 of the mesnieriser the loosened power has a free course in influencing 
 matters without ; but this is a question too delicate and complicated to 
 go into at this moment. 
 
 " In the last number of the ' Spiritual Magazine ' will be found a 
 most interesting case by William Howitt, of a spiritual clairvoyant, who, 
 alluding to the inner sense says, " He in whom this inner sense, this eye 
 of the spirit, has opened, sees those things invisible to others which are 
 in union with him. From the inner sense religions have proceeded, 
 and so many of- the apocalypses of the olden and present times." The
 
 156 APPENDIX. 
 
 attendant spirit of Socrates, or voice of warning, was but a seeming 
 inward utterance, or 'still small voice' from the inner sense and 
 only look upon the remarkable form of his head in that round swelling 
 protuberance of the higher and central portion of the forehead ; a clear 
 phrenological indication in that extraordinary man. 
 
 " The greatest geniuses have always more or less partaken of the 
 clairvoyant character, whether poet, painter, or philosopher. Lord 
 Bacon was a clairvoyant, and he curiously relates, and thus delivered 
 himself on the distinction between the ordinary powers of sense and 
 reason and of the higher or farther and fuller powers we are 
 considering: 
 
 " ' For though the responses of a divine oracle and of the senses 
 are different, no doubt both in the matter and the mode by which it finds 
 access to the mind ; yet the spirit of man which receives both is one and 
 the same, just as different liquors passing through different apertures are 
 received into one and the same vessel, and that part which seems to fall 
 without the division, prophecy, is itself a species of history with the 
 prerogative of deity stamped upon it, of making all time one duration, 
 BO that the narrative may anticipate the fact.' 
 
 " I would only add the further remark, that those extraordinary 
 powers we are now considering are really not essentially distinct from 
 the ordinary actions of the brain and will be found, and I think I have 
 found them, to be included within the same law; a general law with 
 these exceptional instances : but what has never been done before, 
 cannot be expected to be discovered and revealed by any of the older 
 means and methods. But all we do is natural in its time and place, and 
 distrust or insensibility to what is out of a man's particular line and 
 habitual experience is a law of our nature, and indeed we must confess 
 the matters brought to light do seem very strange and unlikely until 
 investigated. But in fact, being such as they are, if we deny their 
 existence in place of endeavouring to give a rational account of them 
 it can only happen that ignorant people will believe them to be super- 
 natural and cling to them with a blind pertinaciousness and mischievous 
 religious fanaticism. 
 
 " I dare say that I often repeat myself in reply to your questions; 
 but that cannot be helped, from the bearing of your enquiries to a 
 particular end."
 
 APPENDIX. 157 
 
 B. (Page 90.) 
 
 The clairvoyance or other exalted or additional sense or power of 
 the more sensitive to impressions in divers directions must be guided 
 and used as the other powers and ordinary senses are and in no 
 other way that is, simply as instrumental to discovery and so the 
 abnormal states made to become lights by which to detect the laws 
 of the normal condition, as I have shown and exemplified in the 
 Letters to Miss M. ; and just as we use the additional power derived 
 from the telescope which at first professors pertinaciously refused to 
 look into, to see a little farther, or of the microscope, to see a little 
 clearer into that which is before us otherwise it is merely another con- 
 dition of dreaming, with sense and nonsense, truth and folly, clear- 
 seeing and illusions commingling fantastically together. The extra sense 
 and power must be also tested as to its truth, speciality and limits, as 
 with all other powers, and cross-questioned as with any foreign or doubt- 
 ful witnesses in court, by our common senses and previous knowledge 
 and by the result as it shall be made to appear in fact, opposed by other 
 truths and tested in every possible or known way; and just as the 
 ordinary senses are made each to correct each or to witness to each 
 other, so we shall find as in all other matters, that the exceptional 
 phenomena duly weighed and examined will, in the end, exhibit the rule 
 of ordinary action in the reason of the exception. But to wait upon the 
 revelations of clairvoyants, and their grand and pretentious utterances 
 brings you to nothing but a contradictory confusion of ideas often to 
 what is both extremely beautiful and most true but to nothing that is 
 super- excellent or actually new, for the somnambule left to itself is in a 
 similar position to the metaphysicians in their subjective waking dreams, 
 each producing a scheme reflecting his imbibed notions and special nature 
 and after thousands of years of such metaphysical scheming and spin- 
 ning out of cobwebs, as Bacon calls it, they have come to no agreement, 
 but are going over the same ground in the same contentioiis and ineffectual 
 way, showing great power and learning but depending upon the light 
 from within with a mistaken estimate of the mind's nature and powers, 
 instead of referring to the real physical causes and facts of objective 
 nature bearing upon the special enquiry, as in every other correctly 
 scientific method of proceeding, for instance, when a somnambule or 
 entranced person is so sensitive that the organs of the brain will respond 
 to the magnetic touch which I discovered to be the fact and just aa 
 the keys of the piano answer to the pressure of the finger, so also another 
 instrument near at hand and in perfect accord will often respond again
 
 158 APPENDIX. 
 
 to the particular note, as the sensitive patient responds or becomes 
 influenced as by a contagion, with the thoughts and feelings or even 
 latent conditions of another en rapport with them ; and so on, I could 
 recount to you a whole volume of such beautiful and deeply interesting 
 facts in illustration of these profound truths the most choice and 
 precious lights of philosophy to all future ages when men have awakened, 
 and ceased to be entranced by their prejudices and pre-conceptions, 
 anticipating in place of interpreting nature deeming clairvoyance and 
 the like extraordinary powers to be impossible, and yet to know which 
 most astonishing fact as to the limits of the possible in nature they must 
 themselves be possessed of clairvoyance. However what is said by Dr. 
 Buchner, in his " Matter and Force," to be impossible, you and I 
 know to be true, and not very difficxtlt to comprehend either. As to the 
 belief in spirits, the entire history of science and of mankind exhibits a 
 progress of knowledge advancing over spiritual belief. However the 
 modern spiritualist does not mean by spiritual anything supernatural, 
 but that the spirits after passing through the shadow of death are as 
 much a part of nature as before, and the released spirit not essentially 
 different from when enclosed and imprisoned in the body, like a bird in 
 a cage, fretting against the wires, longing to be set free. But the 
 besetting notion of the all glorious nature of spiritual substance and 
 power as contradistinguished from GKOSS materiality, when not mere 
 clap-trap is very foolish nonsense, just as when they suppose man 
 degraded by his so-called animal faculties and propensities and the 
 like, I had almost said, insult nature by ignorant and impious senti- 
 mentalities to please man's conceit and fancies tending to his own 
 glorification. Whereas the real noble thought, and the noblest perhaps, 
 is in a sense of our own insignificance in the immensity of nature and 
 of powers unknown and beyond our ken. In such intellectual humility 
 the man is most exalted, rising in the calm satisfaction of having con- 
 quered his own irrational pride, which may well be designated the vanity 
 of vanities, and whatever we do, let us not be ridiculous but show our 
 superiority in the attainment of knowledge and by rendering a true 
 account of the gift of reason loving truth in the faith that it ever 
 must conduce to man's highest and noblest inspirations under all life's 
 trials, and the battle we should make from first to last to conquer self. 
 
 Whilst this week's Reader is before you (May 12th), I would call 
 your attention to the clairvoyance of the celebrated Bottineau, which Mr. 
 Trood endeavours to account for; but if the facts he relates were even 
 possible and true, they would not in the least account for the sight of a 
 ship 400 miles away. To accept snch-like explanations would be indeed 
 to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Now, Mr. Bottineau declared 
 that strength of eyesight had nothing to do with his observations, and
 
 APPENDIX. 159 
 
 he might have added that indeed his eyes had nothing at all to do in the 
 matter; that he perceived by an inner sense that he conld not account 
 for. But I think I have accounted for it, and traced the power to its 
 source and seat. The case is so clear and well authenticated that I 
 think you would do well to refer to it ; and in presence of such notorious 
 historical evidence, Coleridge wisely remarks that "It is impossible to 
 say whether an ' inner sense ' does not really exist in the mind, seldom 
 developed indeed, but which may have a power of presentment. All the 
 external senses have their correspondent in the mind; the eye can see an 
 object before it is distinctly apprehended. Why may there not be a corre- 
 sponding power in the soul ? The power of prophecy might have been 
 merely a spiritual excitation of this dormant faculty." (" Table Talk," 
 vol. 1, pp. 36-7). I do not hold with Coleridge that the exhibition of clair- 
 voyance is from any so-called spiritual excitation of a dormant faculty, 
 but that it may be accounted for, as experiment seems to show, from an 
 extraordinary action of the ordinary faculties under special conditions, 
 by which the 'eye of the mind,' or 'inner sense,' receives impressions 
 independent of the sense channels, and arrives at conclusions without the 
 intervention, or at least without a recognition, of the intellectual process 
 leading to such conclusions, and which is more or less the case with the 
 "most of our determinations under ordinary circumstances ; and when 
 remarkably displayed, is what we call inspiration, or intuition, or genius ; 
 and thus the astonishing facts that men are apt to discredit are but extra- 
 ordinary after all, and are all to be reduced to a general and uniform law. 
 It is clear that many of the lower animals bird, beast, and insect 
 have such impressions from a distance, and are so guided, as we say, by 
 instinct ; instances will immediately occur to every one. Then is it hard 
 to suppose that more highly- developed man should under all circum- 
 stances be wholly free from such so-called instinct, but which in fact is 
 but another or inner sense set free? The ordinary sense channels, 
 indeed, seem rather to be impediments to avoid confusion and for the 
 selection of special actions, and as a means by which to direct the atten- 
 tion to particular facts or qualities, and may be dispensed with as, for 
 instance, in the case of the bat with its eyes removed, and yet able to 
 avoid objects even in the dark with equal precision. In fact, we are still 
 confounded by the false notion that the perception is in the organs of the 
 sense. Once quite clear of this error, and the difficulty of understanding 
 the existence of finer sensibilities and higher powers ceases ; and we may 
 well feel ashamed of the foolishness of our objections. I cannot too 
 often repeat this: that the course of our enquiries is simply to show that 
 what seems so wonderful and at first to be impossible is really not essc-n- 
 tially different from the ordinary action of the mind in its purely normal 
 state.
 
 160 APPENDIX. 
 
 C. (Page 126.) 
 
 Here we have an undoubted case of clairvoyance, happening to a 
 learned divine and leader of the great High Church party. A man still 
 living in our midst and able to answer for the truth of the statement, 
 and which is not denied. And how does the matter stand ? There is 
 certainly no actual bodily presence such as the ordinary senses could 
 take cognizance of, but an impression by the passing off of a certain 
 vital nervous force from the dying man, affecting the inner sense of one 
 in sufficient rapport with his special condition, and from which inner 
 sense and abstract self is projected on the sense plain as it were the 
 image of the person in question, and even to an echo of the sense within 
 in the sound and utterance as of a voice, and conveying an intelligent 
 meaning, the intelligence of the death and of the lie : but the truth 
 conveyed mingling with the particular convictions of the recipient in 
 his belief of Hell. In this we may read an analysis of the Psychical 
 fact and the anatomy of ghosts, there is a clear impression on the 
 inner sense from a force without upon one in sympathetic relations or 
 rapport with the distant dying person, and an embodiment from such 
 impression, but with a colouring and fashioning by the special convic- 
 tion of the recipient ; a fiction founded on fact ; with the vision and all 
 just as in a dream, like the fancy when it plays tricks with fact in our 
 waking moments, and really there is very little difference, all happening 
 under one and the same law. 
 
 No doubt Dr. Pusey believes that he has seen a spirit bringing him 
 immediate intelligence of Hell, and the spiritualists would claim him as 
 a medium only they do not believe in a Hell, but only in a gradual 
 progression, and that sin is simply imperfection, under universal law 
 at least such is the "inspired" doctrine of that marvellously eloquent 
 lady Miss Hardinge, whose impressions and promptings (when in a 
 " semi-trance,") from the inner sense she takes to be a spirit are 
 really replete with profound learning and most admirable sense, come by 
 it how she may; from her own very excellent nature under certain 
 abnormal conditions I believe ; and that she is perfectly serious in her 
 conviction that she is inspired by a spirit. Men who are so ready to 
 deem all those who differ from them to be insincere impostors would 
 do well to remember that in such judgment they do bxit reflect their 
 ignorance, stupidity, and own unenviable qualities and bad natures. I 
 say then, "judge not, lest ye be judged." 
 
 It often happens to me as I walk along the streets that I imagine 
 I see a friend approaching, but on nearer inspection I see it is some one
 
 APPENDIX. 161 
 
 else not having the least resemblance to the Mend supposed ; but imme- 
 diately after, perhaps within a minute, I do really meet the friend I had 
 just supposed I had seen as it were covering the figure of the stranger ; 
 and I never have made the mistake except when it has been followed by 
 the presence of the friend supposed. The explanation is that you have a 
 real impression from the approaching friend whilst not yet in sight an 
 impression taken up by the inner sense and which impression is projected 
 and embodied upon the first form that approaches, somewhat as forms 
 in the dusk will shape themselves in accordance with imaginary fears, in 
 fact we exhibit for the time a similar power to the somnambule and 
 clairvoyant who has such a sensitive impression of the physical condi- 
 tion of the mesineriser even when he is at a distance as to produce a 
 reflexion of his thoughts and even latent memories. 
 
 I have just seen a Ghost! I was thinking of friends just dead as 
 reported to me by Miss M., buried amidst the spring's primroses, and 
 turning my face to the window I saw on the opposite side a woman 
 carrying a basket on her head, full of flowers, (common enough now in 
 London,) oh ! so beautiful, with a mass of yellow primroses in the 
 midst, I thought I had never seen any look so bright and beautiful. I 
 turned my head away but for an instant, I looked again, and lo there 
 was no woman or flowers at all it was just a vision as in a dream, 
 occurring maybe from having a cold and liver out of order and some 
 head-ache, but there was the vision sure enough or seeming appear- 
 ance, even brighter than reality, and in the midst of sunshine. I think I 
 told you that I have marvellous visions of objects in my sleep, with every 
 minute particle and variety of object as clear as possible, and palpable 
 as real objects seen in daylight, and I have recalled the clear impression 
 in every minute particular and delicate difference of shade and colour, 
 and painted it in the morning. Now does not all this open a window for 
 us and give us some light into the inner sense and Psychology of the 
 mind and as depending on physical conditions similar to the effect 
 under electro-biology ? Indeed our ordinary perceptions are not essen- 
 tially different, being entirely visionary though corresponding with the 
 object producing the impression, and this again causing the vision or 
 perception much as a picture represents its subject, and so of the vital 
 photography and reflected imagery of the mind we call seeing. 
 
 M
 
 162 APPENDIX. 
 
 Shakspeare was right about the causes, the indwelling upon thought 
 and " heat-oppressed brain," and the action and reflex is from the 
 mirror of the sense power just as when the sense channels are closed by 
 sleep, and yet the interior faculties awake in the dream, with the sense 
 power reversed as it were and producing all that inner and other world 
 by remembering and reflection a mere pictorial exhibition with occa- 
 sional intuitive presentments and clairvoyance such as we produce 
 under mesmerism and by which we do but produce artificially what 
 occurs under certain conditions in special subjects in the normal state ; 
 I mean we create no new faculty or power, but only produce conditions 
 under which the ordinary power may act in an extraordinary way; 
 indeed in mesmerism we have the power of experimenting on man and 
 mind as the chemist and electrician deals with inanimate matter. Any 
 one who does not see the deep importance of such a power must be 
 either very ignorant or very stupid. 
 
 In regard to the slight and somewhat doubtful instances I Lave 
 given to you by way of explaining the general nature of visual illusions, 
 I must again repeat that in gathering facts by which to arrive at the 
 true laws of vision we cannot be too curious in recording exceptional 
 and seeming trivial instances, or what may be called deviating instances, 
 tinder unusual conditions when as it were you catch nature out of 
 bounds. Foolish critics have pointed ridicule at me for saying this, never- 
 theless the method applies to all science, and the history of every science 
 will exhibit the truth and value of the principle, but which applies with 
 infinitely greater force in regard to the study of the more complex and 
 varied phenomena of mind, whose mysterious and hidden truths have 
 escaped detection by all the means and methods and modes of demonstra- 
 tion hitherto practised. The fact is, man himself has been regarded as an 
 exceptional instance in nature, degraded in one sense as a creature 
 incapable of attaining any excellence of itself, and on the other haud 
 exalted into a free agent and almost supernatural being, apart and 
 essentially different from other living creatures, so that the real man has 
 remained unrevealed in bis true nature to this hour. But we must now 
 consider man as a natural body, producing individual effects according to 
 particular laws in harmony with general and universal principles, and 
 whilst omitting none of the facts concerned we must be careful to avoid
 
 APPENDIX. 163 
 
 hasty generalising, a glaring instance of the folly of which may be noticed 
 in Berkeley's celebrated theory of vision founded upon the appearance 
 of the rising moon he had made a gness at what looked like the truth 
 and never followed up the inquiry into all the circumstances of the case, 
 never, in fact, cross- questioned his witnesses; but indeed his entire 
 theory and argument is fallacious throughout. And again, he incon- 
 sistently denies the existence of the material external world whilst 
 dogmatically insisting on a universal immaterialism and world of spirits 
 not seeing that the sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If I 
 were dying I think my last words of admonition to the student in Psy- 
 chology should be look out for the exceptional instance, and for similar 
 facts occurring in other creatures and under different conditions ; but 
 there is nothing new in this, which was urged with so much force and 
 sagacity by Bacon ; but proud man has scorned the application to his 
 own nature, and yet it is a principle that none with a genius for scientific 
 enquiry would for a moment dispute, and is in fact no more than a very 
 general rule which may be exemplified as I have said in- all and each of 
 the sciences from the extraordinary instances in regard to the motions 
 of the planets to the trifling action of the Frog's leg, that in a natural 
 sequence resulted in the Electric Telegraph the most wonderful achieve- 
 ment of modern science. So let no one despair of magnificent and 
 useful results from the study of Psychology after a true method and 
 similar line of investigation. But Psychology must be based on Phy- 
 siology, must be regarded as a physical science a science of pheno- 
 mena traced to their material and real causes, or it will end as it has 
 ever done, in mere disputation, and in fact would be no science at all. 
 
 For if a tree be cut away from its roots, no wonder if it shall perish, 
 and there be no further growth. Metaphysical schemes always remind 
 me of the bunches of wild flowers that children gather in the fields, each 
 declaring that his own bunch is the best ; but alas ! they are all of little 
 value, and wither in the poor children's hot hands ere they reach 
 home. And so it is with those children of thought, the metaphysicians, 
 who take up the flowers of the mind irrespective of the causes that pro- 
 duce them, the source from which they emanate, the roots from which 
 they develop, the soil in which they grow, the atmosphere by which they 
 are surrounded and light that is shed upon them, and much besides 
 that is disregarded, and with a proud exalting of the unassisted power 
 of the human mind, far beyond the fact unmindful of the faulty nature 
 and inequality of the mirror and imperfections of the instrument 
 searching into its own nature. And as a child in regard to its 
 parents, the metaphysician is necessarily unconscious of the causes of 
 the phenomena he reflects upon, and hence insensibly passes over the 
 true reason of the differences and speciality of men's nature and of
 
 164 APPENDIX. 
 
 the opinions they incline to on account of such differences. The whole 
 aim of science is a search into causes to ascertain on what effects depend 
 and the laws by which they are governed, and the entire relations and 
 correlations hi the analogy of knowledge, in those general laws which 
 link the phenomena together in the eternal and universal chain of 
 existence, and the uniform rule, since all truth is necessary truth so far 
 as like causes must always produce like effects, or they would not be 
 like, but something else. 
 
 Metaphysicians are aptly compared in that valuable periodical the 
 Reader to the Kilkenny cats, that fought and ended in eating each other 
 up, leaving only their tails behind ; for metaphysicians are pretty much 
 engaged, each in destroying the argument of his opponent, and the very 
 universe and Great Cause inherent therein is lost in the argument between 
 them and reduced to the merest shadow, without the slightest shame or 
 remorse on their part ; so that the reviewer pointedly and justly remarks 
 that " the ground has been cleared, and he who can prove the existence 
 of God will inherit it." Now Mr. Mill, after feasting upon Hamilton, 
 has in turn been gobbled up himself, leaving only a metaphysical tail 
 behind, in the form of a remarkable expression, namely, " Permanent 
 Possibilities " : but what is in a name with only folly and illogical reasons 
 behind it, and at the end of it ? For a very clear refutation and lucid 
 exposure of which folly see an admirable little work published by Newby, 
 called " Odd Bricks," by a very acute reasoner and learned friend of 
 mine, who goes into such questions con amore having a special gift 
 for logical reasoning and no theory of his own to defend, which is a 
 blinding influence with most men, Mr. Mill certainly not excluded, 
 whose ignorance of Race, and inability to discern the value of physiology 
 as the necessary and essential baais of mental science, is most lament- 
 able, and from his reputation and authority now most obstructive and 
 -mischievous. 
 
 W. F. TAUNTON, PEINTEK, COVENTRY.

 
 University of California 
 
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