< A Theory of Mediumship (continued from page 8-342) >
That knots have come upon a closed cord is certainly a very wonderful fact; but it is well known that there are other facts equally wonderful which make as much against as for the necessity of calling in the aid of fourfold space. The strength of that position consists in the fact that threefold space may be regarded as a limited form of fourfold space, so that the removal of the limiting condition necessitates the transcending of ordinary experience which is built up on the lines of ordinary threefold space. Attention was called to this in the discussion on Kant's “View of Space,” consequent of the publication of a paper by J. J. Sylvester, Esq., the particulars of which will be found in one of the early volumes of Nature.
While I object to the assumption of space of four dimensions as illegitimate, both on the ground of breach of continuity of thought and on that of unnecessary multiplication of entities, I must say that I think it more than probable that a theory involving the assumption of a sense form of four elements may yet play its part in the treatment of the recondite problems of clairvoyance, mesmerism, &e., but. not in the manner objected to above.
Sir W. R. Hamilton, the great Irish mathematician, was haunted with the idea of space of four dimensions, till his discovery of a true tridimensional space algebra, in 1843, rendered evident to him the significance of the fourth unit, which he regarded ever afterwards as related to time. He was also of opinion that his calculus would be applicable wherever the idea of polarity was involved, so that the application of the principles latent in his great discovery may not unnaturally be expected to play a leading part in reducing to a scientific order the scattered and disjointed elements of a theory of vital dynamics. The very objection urged by some mathematicians that the fourth element is uninterpretable in relation to geometrical and mechanical problems may be the advantage which will enable Hamilton’s symbolic method of reasoning to deal with questions involving feeling and sensation, and therefore time,'' not forgetting to mention the double nervous system of the two sides of the body, differently related to space, and so forcing upon us the idea of polarity. Hamilton’s sciences of pure time and pure space were suggested to him by the internal and external sense forms of Kant; and it would be something extraordinary if the powerful instinct and insight of that man of genius guided him towards the construction of an instrument capable of dealing with the external and internal senses, the barrier between them having been broken down in the world of fact and experiment; the Kantian distinction of external and internal sense forms founded on purely empirical data, though suggestive to him, yet not leading him into a corresponding error in the nature of his instrument. Just as Hamilton’s algebra—the science of pure time—is not necessarily the first stage in the discovery of his quaternion calculus, so the internal sense form and its contents do not give us space and its contents; but the distinction does not hold when the terms arc reversed, for Hamilton’s space algebra does suggest the idea of time, and the progress of modern psychological thought forces us to the conclusion that space and its contents are real in the chronological order before time and its contents, the Ego and its affections (and so more comprehensive)—a fact used by Kant in his refutation of idealism. On grounds such as these I enter a disclaimer against the adoption of the four dimensions of space theory of Professor Zollner. Even granting that the hypothesis fully explained some of the phenomena, there are others more easily explained by making some justifiable assumptions which do not contradict established principles and laws. I mean in regard to those phenomena showing the construction and disintegration of the pseudo-material space reals which are so often reported on, now that a knowledge of mediumism is general. It is, after all, mailer which is to us'' tridimensional and not space; and if into the construction of matter polar elements enter, which have their counterparts in the joint action of a double nervous system, we have in the study of diseased and disturbed human beings, and in the investigation of the extraordinary functional activity of those who produce real manifestations, the only true means of ascertaining such relationships and analogies, through the discovery of the part the medium plays, and the manner of it, in the construction of the pseudo-material but “phantasmal portraiture of wandering human thought,” The ultimate stuff of which these simulacra are composed is as far beyond the grasp of conscious sensibility as that ultimate stuff of matter from which we cannot differentiate it, with the moulding of which into the forms in the universe around us man has nothing to do, though he is inevitably bound to the dead and living things around by the attribute of a common materiality. Man has, however, the rare privilege of examining how a something very similar to matter, capable of reacting to impressed force, and in some way obedient to will, docs come into existence and take a definite form.
But, to our experience, matter is not permanent and continuous in the same sense that a geometrical curve is. It is the slate of the feeling organism that puts matter out there and keeps it there, that is permanent and continuous. If there is one lesson more than another that the educated Spiritualist ought to have learned, it is this—the departure from the standard of the ordinary (as in manifestations) is invariably accompanied by departure from the physiological standard on the part of the medium. While the great fields of sense, perturbation, and functional nerve disturbance arc absolutely untouched in their relation to extraordinary manifestations, it is no better than hypothetical patchwork when space of four dimensions is used as a playground to permit us to account for changes in the phenomenal thing.
The truth is, a very varied and lengthened experience is necessary to enable one to regard the facts which mediumship reveals with an evenly-balanced mind, so startling and so impressive is the experience opened up. Each endeavours to grasp the subject from the standpoint of his own particular scientific platform, and so no real advance has been made towards the establishment of a general theory, which, without violating established principles or dislocating the recognised scientific order, calmly accepts the new with the hope of assimilating it with the old and known, shunning alike an offensive one-sidedness and a childish acceptance of unproven credentials.
I venture to put forward, in bare outline, the sketch of a rational theory of mediumship for the <... continues on page 8-344 >