< Henry Slade's Mediumship (continued from page 7-68) >
I hinted, at the close of my first treatise—the manuscript of which was finished during the month of August, 1877—that a considerable number of physical phenomena, which can be deduced “synthetically a priori” from the standpoint of an extended space, and of Plato’s projection hypothesis, were to be reconciled with the so-called Spiritualistic phenomena. With express caution I there remarked, p. 276, “To those of my readers who are inclined to see in the above theoretic possibilities an empirical confirmation by Spiritualistic phenomena, I will remark that we must first have a more exact definition and criticism of the objectively real from the standpoint of idealism. Indeed, if all things which are apprehended by the senses are only appearances produced within us by causes unknown to us, then the distinction between the objectively real (bodies) and the subjectively real (phantasma) must be sought for, not in the essence of being, but in the accidental attributes of the process of their presentation. If now these unknown causes produce a presentation of such a nature that the same appears simultaneously to several individuals, and only differs to their perception in accordance with the difference of the position in space of the observer, we attribute such a presentation to a real object outside of us;” apart from this condition, we attribute it to causes within us, and call it a hallucination. Whether Spiritualistic phenomena belong to the first or the second of these two categories, I will not venture to decide, since I have never witnessed them. On the other hand, I do not estimate the superiority of my understanding so far above that of such men as Huggins, Crookes, Wallace, and others, as to believe that I should not, under their circumstances, have arrived at similar conclusions.” (Written in Aug. 1877).
The supposition herein expressed was fully verified by experiments, four months later, with the American gentleman, Henry Slade. I was, during these experiments, intent on testing the above-named criterion of subjective phantasma as against objective facts. The four knotted string with the seal intact is lying before me; I can produce it as a proof to other men; I could send it in succession to all the learned bodies in the world, that they might convince themselves it is no question of subjective phantasma, but of an objective permanent result produced in the real physical world, which no human understanding is in a position to explain from our present standpoint regarding space and force.
If they still call in question the accuracy of this fact deduced from my view of extensions of space, then there remains only one other explanation, which certainly might arise from a moral status only too common in these days. This explanation consists in the assumption that I and those honourable men and citizens of Leipzig, in whose presence the sealing of many such threads took place, are either vulgar deceivers, or were not sufficiently in possession of our senses to observe how Mr. Slade, before the sealing, tied all those knots in the string “without our having remarked it.” The discussion of such a hypothesis would, however, belong not to the domain of science, but to that of social proprieties. My readers will find on this subject a short lecture with demonstrations from living creatures in my first treatise On Effects at a Distance, p. 181. Should my colleagues, Helmholtz and Pfaundler, be inclined to class me and those honoured men (among whom is one whose name is engraved in indelible characters and golden letters in the annals of German science) with “wonderworkers,” “the undiscerning credulous,” or even the “nobly deceived” (comp. p. 172), I will venture to remind them, that, before I witnessed these phenomena in person, I was entirely in the position of their ally, Tyndall, who declares: “I was by no means absolutely unbelieving, but I thought it more probable, that some physical principle, unknown to the Spiritualists, lay at the root of these appearances” (p. 178). The difference between Mr. Tyndall and myself is that he considers his understanding so highly developed as to be able in one quarter of an hour under the table, to discover his “physical principle.” (“I crept under the table. I continued under that table for at least a quarter of an hour.”) I, on the contrary, considered my power to explain these remarkable phenomena so insufficient, that at the beginning of my experiments with Slade, I felt little hope that, after a week’s continuous and painstaking experimental research, I should be so fortunate as to arrive at the demonstrated proof of the correctness of my theory of “a priori synthetic inference.” *
If Alexander the Great, who, 2,212 years ago cut through the Gordian knot with his sword, had been given an American medium to experiment with, and had at the same time possessed the knowledge of the theory of extended space of Kant and Gauss, perhaps he might have hit upon the idea of loosing the knot without the application of the sword. It would have been more in accordance with the oracle, which awarded him the dominion of the world for loosing that knot, if the solution had been arrived at by the help of intelligent four-dimensional beings without a sword. For the history of human culture is none other than the history of the liberation of the world by the intellect. Herein lies the ideal importance and the justification of the German struggle for culture. It requires, however, that a people shall have reached morally that plane of self-consciousness from which it can defy the scarecrow of so-called u public opinion.” For this same “public opinion” is variable, and must be made by a nation of sound mind to serve in the cause of truth; it is dependent on the moral and intellectual tone of those who not with “blood and iron” in war, but rather with ink and pen in the press, are striving to advance the nation’s prosperity. But a people must first win its political self-dependence, in order afterwards to fight out its moral and intellectual independence. In the first case the enemy is from without, in the second from within, in the form of a morally and intellectually degraded literature and press. In the first case a nation founds the scene of its political and economic activity on spatial territory, in the second case the reward of victory and the dominion of mind are all the kingdoms of the earth. To that end must every one of us first individually gain a moral victory over himself; he must have the courage of our great statesman, Bismarck, who has declared, not only in private correspondence, but in the most public manner: “As for the Virchow affair, I am past the time when men take counsel in that flesh and blood manner; when I set my life to any work, I do it in the same faith that I use to strengthen myself for a long and severe fight, but with sincere and humble prayer to God, when no word of man, not even that of a friend in the Lord or a servant of His Church, can turn me from it.” (See p. 382 Wiss. Abh.) When such moral courage as this shall be awakened in every one of us, so that in the winged words of Prince Bismarck, “the appeal to fear will find no response in German hearts,” shall be an active principle, not only in the form of admonition, but in actual deed in the domain of literature and science, then will Herr Virchow read the Simplicius Simplissimus, by Grimmelshausen,** and will perceive in the prophecy therein contained, an admirable proof that the ideal sense of the German people, even in the times of its deepest degradation during the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, did not renounce the hope of better times to come, and its belief in the enduring victory of intellect and of German good sense over dogmatic egotism and pedantic vanity.
* I made other surprisingly successful experiments, which I had worked out from my standpoint of space-theory, and which Slade himself did not believe to be possible. The appreciative and sympathetic reader will understand what pleasure this gave me, and how gratefully I presented Dr. Slade “in remembrance of hours spent in Leipzig " with the first volume of my Principles of an Electro-dynamic Theory of Matter, in which I had some years previously discussed the possibility of theories of extended space in relation to our physical world. As Dr. Slade made on myself and my friends the impression of being a gentleman, his conviction for deception in London awakened our liveliest moral sympathy. For after witnessing those physical facts which took place in his presence with such great variety, there could be no reasonable ground for supposing that Slade had in any single case resorted to conscious deception. Mr. Slade was, therefore, in our eyes, innocently condemned, a sacrifice to the uninformed judgment of his accuser and his judge.
** Dr. Virchow declared on the 16th March, 1876, in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies:—“I have been so unfortunate as to buy this book on the strength of that recommendation, and have seldom been so shocked as by its contents. I did not know how to keep it secret, in order that it should not fall into the hands of any of my family.” Dr. Virchow then said, “The nation must be compelled to take this thing into its own hands, must swallow and digest it, and finally work upon it, ... . for everything is based upon this, that we men of science make our dogmas perfect and complete.” (Comp. Virchow’s speech on “The Freedom of Science in the Modem State,” delivered 22nd Sept., 1877. Conference of men of science at Munich). I will point out to Dr. Virchow that between “freedom” and being “compelled” there exists a contradiction, and that among his “perfect and complete dogmas” are some which the German nation is too healthy to digest. If it is, however, obliged to swallow them, nothing will remain for it but to chew them over again, which will leave a bitterness against those men of science whom our nation and our great statesmen will degrade to that office. “The delusion of progress is retrogression in progression!’’ said Heraclitus 2,400 years ago.
Editor's notes
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