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