< The Relations of the Human Brain to Spiritual Phenomena (continued from page 3-205) >
terious impressions and presentiments of good or evil; in dreams that seem prophetic, and in sadden reminiscences, as though the subject had heard this conversation or been in this place before, for it seems strangely familiar; in dreams of the departed, holding conversations with them which some times appear real and natural; in waking visions, when they seem to be near us, teem to speak to us or become actually visible; in the frequent presence and conversation of our departed friends, who come to us to sympathize, counsel, or warn, sometimes invisibly, sometimes visibly; in ability to commune with absent friends by their manuscript, by the psychometric method, and know their true character; in a realizing sense of the present condition of our departed friends as they come near us.
In all these results of a predominant psychic constitution of the brain, there is an inexpressible degree of intellectual delicacy and refinement. The more spiritual faculties are all poetical and bright. Hence, those who have the finer spiritual endowments are generally delicate, sensitive, modest and poetical in their nature. A large number of them in this coot try are capable of improvisation, and I have often heard improvised poetry from persons of moderate intellectual culture, which would be creditable to our best known authors. Few have any idea of the transcendant beauty, the delicacy and dashing intellectuality of the higher psychic powers, because, in the present condition of prevalent ignorance on such subjects, persons of superior capacity and social position are generally careful to conceal their spiritual endowments.
Intercourse with departed friends—with the loved and lost of the family circle—is not so rare as generally supposed, and is not at all confined to public mediums. It is common with thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, who keep such experience as something sacred in their own bosoms, or confide it only to their nearest friends.
The first scientific determination of the modus operandi of this intercourse was in the winter of 1841-42, when by exciting the most spiritual region of the front lobe (on the temporal arch, just in front of its intersection with the coronal suture) in the head of a young lady of great brilliance and intellectuality (Miss K.), I made her see the spirit of her mother in the midst of a circle of friends, in the brilliant parlors of Mr. Sin Louisville. At first, I deemed the vision entirely subjective, or imaginary, but in prosecuting my researches I found the results too rational and consistent to be simply imaginary. The most resolutely skeptical materialist who possessed the psychic constitution could see and describe the spirits which appeared, as positively as those who had previously believed in the existence of the soul.
After determining the objective reality of the spirits of the departed as seen and heard by those of finer psychic endowments, the question arose as to the extent to which these objective spirits, visible only to the psychic faculty, could influence a sympathizing human being. It soon appeared that the spirit was capable of influencing their minds by suggestions and that if the subject was of the impressible or mesmerizable temperament, the spirit power could operate upon and control him as human operators do, making him a passive subject of its will, through which it could speak and act as if still living in the body; the intelligence of the subject being kept in abeyance while under control and ideas or language being used by the spirit which the subject would not have been capable of originating.
This was still higher evidence of the objective reality of the spirits, to those who, not having the psychic vision could only rely upon facts and testimony. But there has been so much of this kind of evidence from the days of Socrates and of Paul, to the nineteenth century, which has not been entirely satisfactory to those who were skeptical, that it was extremely desirable to hare tangible, ponderable, material evidence from spirits capable of affecting matter and moving heavy bodies, as well as controlling mind.
Since 1848, these phenomena, begining in the Fox family, have appeared all over the globe, and the “psychic force”, as some please to call it, has displayed mechanical power greater than that of any bunan being, accompanied by an intelligence of every conceivable degree, from blundering verbiage and falsehood. to the profoundest and most elevated-utterances, according to the real character of the responding spirits Psychic force, or will-power, accompanied by intelligence I and individuality of character, has no other expression in the English language than by the words spirit and soul. Those who, after witnessing displays of intelligence, and talking with the invisible agent as a human being still hesitate to use the word spirit betray great weakness in manifesting such an aversion to the use of the only word by which they can properly express their idea.
Since the wide prevalence of physical manifestations from spiritual sources, there has been a very general demand to know what is the decision of science on this subject. The demand, however, is not very intelligently made—it presumes a mysterious power in science and scientists which does not exist. Science is nothing but established, systematized, and comprehended facts. The facts of spiritual communication, carefully collected and described in a systematic manner by Alfred R. Wallace, Robert Dale Owen, Epes Sargent, and yourself, even if there were no other competent and able writers in the field, constitute an impregnable body of science, of permanent and surpassing value to mankind, unequalled by any other contributions from scientists in the present century.
It is idle cavilling to say that it is not of the systematic and rationalized character of science. Compare it with the slightly analogous discovery of America by Columbus, and the narratives of its exploration during the first thirty years, which were certainly a valuable contribution to geographical science, and we must admit that the discovery and exploration of the spirit world has been far more copious in its facts, and satisfactory in its investigations. Compare it with medical science, rich as it is in the labors of its many thousand cothinkers, and we must confess that its huge mass of clinical, pathological, and therapeutic facts and doctrines, leading to conflicting systems of practice, is scarcely yet as lucid and scientific in form, and consistent in practice, as the system of Psychology which has been built up by the Baconian method of induction more faithfully than any science now known, when its whole history is considered.
The voice of science, then, is the voice of fact—it is expressed for Psychology in the volumes which record the facts and experiments already too numerous to be mastered by any common reader.
But perhaps the opinion of scientists is what the public desire, or the reports of scientific investigators. If so, let them read the publications of the London Dialectical Society, and they will find all that reason can demand.
But it must not be forgotton that modern Psychology is virtually a new science. There were some glimmerings of the science in Greece, in the schools of Socrates and Plato, and among the Egyptians—but the modern developments are essentially new and foreign to all other sciences. To ask a professor of Physics familiar with levers and steam engines, or a professor of chemistry, whose researches relate entirely to atomic combinations of matter, or a learned Physiologist, who knows nothing professionally of the Psychic element of the human' constitution, but studies the body as a chemical laboratory, working with protoplasm—for an opinion on the new psychology, is simply asking them to leave their own field and pronounce upon matters more foreign to their knowledge and modes of thought than Egyptian hieroglyphics or the trapping of beaver in the American wilderness. Upon such a subject any intelligent citizen is as competent to form and express a rational opinion, as the most learned, physical scientist—of ten better qualified, indeed, from not being exclusively occupied with subjects of so different a nature. I would not exchange your opinion, trained as you are in the practical study of mankind and examination of evidence, fer that of the entire British National Association of Scientists, whose President, Prof. Tyndall, is as shallow in philosophy as he is profound in science.
Among the cherished and cultivated sciences, there are none coterminous with the new Psychology—none that include it even in the limits of their penumbra—and we look in rain among professional scientists for those whose familiarity with such subjects has been acquired by their usual professional pursuits.
The psychic world and the physical world come into contact only in the highest condition of organized matter—the brain—which is so organized as to give the readiest access of the psychic to the control of physical forces.